Catastrophe. An event resulting in great loss and misfortune that is irremediable. A disaster, cataclysm, tragedy, calamity.

The presidency of George Bush has been a catastophe. I'll make no laundry list. You can remember the incidents anyway. I was watching my mutual funds shrink again yesterday on CNBC, thinking about how much money I would have if the stock market had made it's historical average gains during the last 6 years. I'm about 40% short of where we could expect to be. The abuses in the justice department are sickening. Work for the Democratic Party and go to federal prison. Swear allegience to the Repub party and your corruption cannot be revealed. Executive privilege and all.

I was amazed to see that a Repub senator, Hagel, mentioned that a president who believes he doesn't answer to any one may find himself impeached.

I believe the world needs Repubs. They have a significant point of view on many issues. But when given control they behave like bad children, or gangsters. They run wild. Everything is spun in the media as the opposite of what it really is. I remember in the 60's when we were in a cold war face off with the Soviet Union virtually every day, we were astonished by what was released by their news agencies. Pravda means truth. Yet what they had to say every day was the opposite of truth. We laughed out loud at their pronouncements. Today that same strategy has come to America. Pravda is Fox News. Isaiah comes to mind.

Who believes we are safer today than in 2001?

I watched a NOVA on fighting the war in Iraq last night. Our technology is astonishing. A group of Americans came into contact with a long column of Iraqi tanks. The Americans were horribly outnumbered and in peril. They radioed for help and within 7 minutes a bomb was dropped over the area, it divided itself into many smaller heat seeking bombs right over the column of tanks. Without warning, without coming into contact with any enemy, the first half of the column of tanks exploded, all at once. The remaining tank drivers saw what happened and leaped from their tanks and ran away. NOVA went on to show how inadequate technology was for the current situation, trying to fight house to house against an enemy without uniforms, without shape. Before we could see them and they couldn't see us. Now the tables are turned.

Iraq was always a bad idea. Under the lack of leadership of this administration, and don't blame it on the preznit because he is way too stoopid to have thought of all this by himself, it has become a catastrophe. A scar on the planet.

"Woe unto them that draw iniquity with cords of vanity and sin as it were with a cart rope. Woe unto them that call evil good and good evil; who set darkness for light and light for darkness."

Isaiah chapter 5

The fantasy baseball draft is Saturday. You can study the stats, read the news reports, study the contracts and batting orders. Unfortunately, or fortunately, a lot of information will escape you. Managers are tricky. They don't want their opponents to know if a pitcher has a sore arm or if he just wants to work on his change up today and so he gives up 8 runs. On the last day players will be sent to the minors, unexpected injuries will promote unknowns to be major leaguers. Some old veterens will fade. Rookies will flourish and then wither. Managing your team will make a difference. Should you start that pitcher in Houston or not? Should you bench that slumping player? Should you pick up that sizzling rookie? Last year I finished in the bottom half and I don't want to do that again. Could it be my time to win? I did some homework and know some players, but I have given up on knowing them any better. Oh well.

Totalitarian America. The end of Democracy. The groundwork is laid.

By John W. Whitehead
3/1/2007

[excerpts . . . read it all here.]

We live in a fundamentally different country since 9/11. Not only do many Americans view their government with suspicion, but how their government views them has drastically changed.

A perfect example of this took place last fall. Prior to the elections that transformed the makeup of Congress, the Bush Administration pushed for the inclusion of two stealth provisions into a mammoth defense budget bill. The additions made it easier for the government to declare martial law and establish a dictatorship.

Under these new provisions, the president can now use the military as a domestic police force in response to a natural disaster, disease outbreak, terrorist attack or to any “other condition.” According to the new law, Bush doesn’t even have to notify Congress of his intent to use military force against the American people—he just has to notify them once he has done so. The defense budget provision’s vague language leaves the doors wide open for rampant abuse. As writer Jane Smiley noted, “the introduction of these changes amounts, not to an attack on the Congress and the balance of power, but to a particular and concerted attack on the citizens of the nation. Bush is laying the legal groundwork to repeal even the appearance of democracy.”

The Founding Fathers would have literally been up in arms over Bush’s actions. They understood the dangers inherent in vesting power in a single person, which is exactly what this legislation purports to do. There’s no limit to what the president can now do: the “any condition” language opens the door for total power, a dictatorship. The people are left with no defense.

New US Embassy in Baghdad: Size of Vatican City

Who would think my little brown puppy would turn into a black dog? Her puppy fur is giving way to longer black hair. Special to Rachel: Is Mikey turning black too?

The preznit doesn't seem to like "oversight" all that much, does he? It is certainly something he is not used to. Did you see that the documents concerning the firing of U.S. Attorneys that have been submitted by the White House for perusal contain a 16-day GAP. That's not 16 minutes missing on the tape thank you, but SIXTEEN DAYS OF CORRESPONDENCE, missing. Oops. It seems pretty clear that this goes directly to POTUS, and thus the cover up. He's not going to release the correspondence. In fact, it's systematically being destroyed now, unless I miss my guess. You'll have to impeach the guy to get his attention, even if you don't have the votes to convict, he certainly deserves the indictment.

And now a word from the media.

Wednesday, March 21, 2007

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New US Embassy in Baghdad: Size of Vatican City

Associated Press

BAGHDAD, Iraq - The fortress-like compound rising beside the Tigris River here will be the largest of its kind in the world, the size of Vatican City, with the population of a small town, its own defense force, self-contained power and water, and a precarious perch at the heart of Iraq’s turbulent future.

Who's watching the president?

The GOP abandoned White House oversight, and the results were disastrous.
Ronald Brownstein
LA Times

March 21, 2007

AT TIMES, President Bush's second term has resembled a laboratory test of what happens to a large institution when all mechanisms of accountability are disabled. The results have not been pretty.

Hurricane Katrina, the chaotic occupation and reconstruction of Iraq, the breakdown at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, the FBI's abuse of Patriot Act powers, the troubling dismissals of eight U.S. attorneys — everywhere, the administration has been plagued by an epidemic of incompetence.

Bush has stumbled so badly at managing the basic responsibilities of government that even the National Review, the flagship magazine of the conservative movement and hardly a traditional critic of the president, used its latest cover to plaintively ask: "Can't anyone here play this game?"

How did it come to this for an administration that, as the National Review noted, initially portrayed itself as buttoned-down "adults" returning to Washington after President Clinton's baby boom bacchanal?

[I told you so.]

The scandals are now rolling up so fast that we cannot get them all on the front page. It turns out that Mr. Support Our Troops/Commander in Chief cared nothing for the care of the horribly wounded from this new brand of war. As it turns out, most of them should not have even been wounded--See paragraphs below. Veterans Administration's hospitals have not been ramped up to treat the wounded from the War on Terrorism and wounded soldiers have lain in rat infested quarters, running with roaches, breathing in mold from deterioating buildings. Many hospitals have no care for their head injuries. Red tape and paperwork have been overwhelming for veterans to receive care and some just give up and someone has taken them home. They are firing army generals and the secretary of the army over this, but I thought the preznit was the commander in chief. What happened to "the buck stops here." W. needs a sign on his desk that says "The buck stops somewhere below me." Tony Snow wouldn't even take questions about it, referring the media repeatedly to the Pentagon.

A related story that is far more horrible was on the news for the first time last night. The military has a new personnel carrier called the Betsy. It sort of looks like a big Hum-V, but it is made considerably differently. We've heard nothing of the Betsy with good reason. Betsy is immune to IED blasts. A soldier who rides around Iraq in a Betsy is safe wherever he or she goes. In an interview last night, a soldier said he had been in numerous IED blasts in this vehicle. No one had ever been hurt. He said something like "We usually get out and check the vehicle for damage, but then we just roll on." He also said he never wanted to ride in a Hum-V again.

So let me get this straight. The way the enemy is killing our soldiers is through use of IEDs. We have a vehicle that is impervious to IEDs. In fact, NO SOLDIER HAS EVER BEEN KILLED RIDING IN A BETSY. And the Army is having 50 a month constructed for use in Iraq even though we need thousands of them. We are spending hundreds of billions of dollars but we can't make but 600 of these carriers a year for the troops. In 15 years, we'll have enough for our current need. And why is this not on the front page? Why have I never heard of the Betsy. Have you heard of it? If we were really in an all out war with terrorism, wouldn't we have shifted resources to meet the enemy attacks and protect our troops. If I were in charge we'd be turning out those vechicles at 50 an hour, just like the Ford Plant here in Atlanta, and shipping them to Iraq by the thousands. The preznit is insane.

Then on the front page we have Alberto Gonzales's firing, some time ago, of U.S. Attorneys, for what is now clear from internal documents are clearly political reasons. They were all Republicans prosecutors, but they either did not yeild to pressure to bring indictments against Democratic candidates before the election, or they had the audicity to investigate Repulicans. Tyranny reigns. The preznit is trying to shield Karl Rove and Harriet Myers from having to testify.

On page SIX of the AJC we find an article about the installation of 34 faulty pumps by the Army Corps of Engineers. Pumps to take water out of New Orleans in the event of another flooding disaster there. The pumps cost 26.6 MILLION dollars, and they don't work. "The pumps have been plagued by excessive vibration, overheated engines, broken hoses and blown gaskets." People have been told to return to New Orleans because it is now safe. In an emergency, they would have drowned. Internal documents now indicate that the Corps of Engineers knew the pumps did not work but they installed them anyway. WHO MADE THE PUMPS? David Eller and sons company called MWI (Moving Water Incorporated). Eller has donated $128,000 to political campaigns since 1996, overwhelmingly to Repubs and was already under investigation for fraudently helping Nigeria obtain $74 million in taxpayer-backed loans for overpriced and unnecessary water-pump equipment. That sued them in 2002, 5 years ago, and there has been no resolution of the matter. Mr. Eller is the former business partner of . . . former Florida Governor Jeb Bush.

I promise you that this is only the tip of the iceburg.

Carter,
You were writing about Paul some time ago. I tried to look up what all you said but can't figure out how to go back on your blog. But let me say at least this. As for Paul, he was an odd duck. When you think of a pharisee's pharisee (a nitpicker's nitpicker), the physical infirmity, the no-second-chance attitude, the self-proclaimed apostleship, leaving the comfort of Judaism to live only among Gentiles, extensive travel, the copious writing, surviving a shipwreck, a bachelor's life, imprisonment, and an unrecorded death. He wasn't your average first-century Joe.

Repub media myths regarding education:

Myth one: Merit pay will act as an incentive to better teaching. Good teachers will make outstanding salaries. Bad teachers will fall behind and quit.

Problems:
1. There is not a good mechanism in place to determine who is a good teacher. If administrators were able to do it, bad teachers would be weeded out during their probationary periods and all teachers would be good teachers.

2. Test scores don't show who has a good teacher, they show which students are smart. The same teacher might teach two widely different classes, one with good test scores, one with failing test scores. A great teacher may help students, but cannot overcome them.

How do the students reflect the teacher? Something like this. One third of the students WILL LEARN, regardless of who the teacher is. One third of the students WILL NOT LEARN, regardless of who the teacher is. One third of the students WILL LEARN with a good teacher.

What can be measured? Classroom behaviors. Are students on task? Is the environment neat and orderly? Does there seem to be a reasonable method of disseminating information. Caveat--even with all of the above some teachers do not have good results with their students.

Why is teaching so difficult? It is not enough to know the subject and know basic teaching strategies. Students are so complex that many may not respond adequately to basic teaching strategies. Teachers must determine why a student is not learning and devise a non-standard way to teach the material. This ranges from difficult to impossible. Why does a student not make the jump from point A to point B? Is there an alternate method of instruction that will communicate the ideas. Is motivation an issue? Master teachers can do this. Many teachers cannot. Even master teachers don't know exactly how they do it

Things that affect test scores more than teachers.
1. Parents expectations
2. Home life--safe, secure, nurturing environment
3. DNA
4. Community expectations

3. An even worse problem--Administrators will use merit pay as a way of rewarding their friends, regardless of ability, and to bludgeon their non-friends, regardless of ability. You would be hard pressed to find a teacher who disagrees with this. My drinking buddies, my hunting buddies, my coaching buddies?--merit pay raise. Don't volunteer to take that extracurricular activity that I can't find any one to do, even when it is crappy and time consuming and you have three children and are working on a masters degree in night school?--no merit pay for you. Criticize some thoughtless policy changes even in a kind and thoughtful way?--no merit pay. Even worse--Refuse my flirtations?--no merit pay for you. If test scores are the criteria, then it's easy--assign the lowest and slowest to teachers you don't like. They will still fail and the teacher's will not get raises. Hahahahahahahaha!

Merit pay is a nice idea. It's just that no one has any idea how to make it work. There are lots of nice ideas that don't work. Get over it.

I guess you have seen that 13 Assistant U.S. Attorneys have been fired by the Bush administration for failing to yeild to political pressures. This is not a new practice. There was pressure put on Bob Barr a Repub U.S. Attorney back in the 80's who had the audacity to indict Pat Swindall a Repub congressman. Swindall was guilty and served time. Barr writes about the pressure in today's AJC. Clinton swept out the position on entering office, replacing Repub political appointees with Democrats. Still the preznit's tactics at this point in time are unusual. I'll bet you didn't notice that the new U.S. Attorneys were appointed through a provision in the U.S. Patriot Act that let's them bypass the normal process of congressional approval. Why take that unusual step? Because Timothy Griffin, Karl Rove's assistant, said he would step down rather than face congressional questioning. Huh? Mr. Griffin is likely the perp in a votings rights crime that has come to light through the BBC. It seems some of his emails were sent accidentally to the wrong addressee. Oops. It gave all the details of a voter fraud campaign used in the last presidental election to get 70,000 black voters off the voting rolls. The ploy clearly violates the voting rights act of 1965, but no one was supposed to know. But alas, now they do. No matter for Karl Rove and the bushies. They just march on anyway. Why would a little lawbreaking be of concern after all they have done. See more here.

Rachel I could see it without a subscription. Here it is.

March 1, 2007
The Tragedy of a Dozen Evil Men
Americans Have Lost Their Country

By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

The Bush-Cheney regime is America's first neoconservative regime. In a few short years, the regime has destroyed the Bill of Rights, the separation of powers, the Geneva Conventions, and the remains of America's moral reputation along with the infrastructures of two Muslim countries and countless thousands of Islamic civilians. Plans have been prepared, and forces moved into place, for an attack on a third Islamic country, Iran, and perhaps Syria and Hezbollah in Lebanon as well.

This extraordinary aggressiveness toward the US Constitution, international law, and the Islamic world is the work, not of a vast movement, but of a handful of ideologues--principally Vice President Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Lewis Libby, Douglas Feith, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Elliott Abrams, Zalmay Khalilzad, John Bolton, Philip Zelikow, and Attorney General Gonzales. These are the main operatives who have controlled policy. They have been supported by their media shills at the Weekly Standard, National Review, Fox News, New York Times, CNN, and the Wall Street Journal editorial page and by "scholars" in assorted think tanks such as the American Enterprise Institute.

The entirety of their success in miring the United States in what could become permanent conflict in the Middle East is based on the power of propaganda and the big lie.

Initially, the 9/11 attack was blamed on Osama bin Laden, but after an American puppet was installed in Afghanistan, the blame for 9/11 was shifted to Iraq's Saddam Hussein, who was said to have weapons of mass destruction that would be used against America. The regime sent Secretary of State Colin Powell to tell the lie to the UN that the Bush-Cheney regime had conclusive proof of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.

Having conned the UN, Congress, and the American people, the regime invaded Iraq under totally false pretenses and with totally false expectations. The regime's occupation of Iraq has failed in a military sense, but the neoconservatives are turning their failure into a strategic advantage. At the beginning of this year President Bush began blaming Iran for America's embarrassing defeat by a few thousand lightly armed insurgents in Iraq.

Bush accuses Iran of arming the Iraqi insurgents, a charge that experts regard as improbable. The Iraqi insurgents are Sunni. They inflict casualties on our troops, but spend most of their energy killing Iraqi Shi'ites, who are closely allied with Iran, which is Shi'ite. Bush's accusation requires us to believe that Iran is arming the enemies of its allies.

On the basis of this absurd accusation--a pure invention--Bush has ordered a heavy concentration of aircraft carrier attack forces off Iran's coast, and he has moved US attack planes to Turkish bases and other US bases in countries contingent to Iran.

In testimony before Congress on February 1 of this year, former National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski said that he expected the regime to orchestrate a "head-on conflict with Iran and with much of the world of Islam at large." He said a plausible scenario was "a terrorist act blamed on Iran, culminating in a 'defensive' US military action against Iran." He said that the neoconservative propaganda machine was already articulating a "mythical historical narrative" for widening their war against Islam.

Why is the US spending one trillion dollars on wars, the reasons for which are patently false. What is going on?

There are several parts to the answer. Like their forebears among the Jacobins of the French Revolution, the Bolsheviks of the communist revolution, and the National Socialists of Hitler's revolution, neoconservatives believe that they have a monopoly on virtue and the right to impose hegemony on the rest of the world. Neoconservative conquests began in the Middle East because oil and Israel, with which neocons are closely allied, are both in the MIddle East.

The American oil giant, UNOCAL, had plans for an oil and gas pipeline through Afghanistan, but the Taliban were not sufficiently cooperative. The US invasion of Afghanistan was used to install Hamid Karzai, who had been on UNOCAL's payroll, as puppet prime minister. US neoconservative Zalmay Khalilzad, who also had been on UNOCAL's payroll, was installed as US ambassador to Afghanistan.

Two years later Khalilzad was appointed US ambassador to Iraq. American oil companies have been given control over the exploitation of Iraq's oil resources.

The Israeli relationship is perhaps even more important. In 1996 Richard Perle and the usual collection of neocons proposed that all of Israel's enemies in the Middle East be overthrown. "Israel's enemies" consist of the Muslim countries not in the hands of US puppets or allies. For decades Israel has been stealing Palestine from the Palestinians such that today there is not enough of Palestine left to comprise an independent country. The US and Israeli governments blame Iran, Iraq, and Syria for aiding and abetting Palestinian resistance to Israel's theft of Palestine.

The Bush-Cheney regime came to power with the plans drawn to attack the remaining independent countries in the Middle East and with neoconservatives in office to implement the plans. However, an excuse was required. Neoconservatives had called for "a new Pearl Harbor," and 9/11 provided the propaganda event needed in order to stampede the public and Congress into war. Neoconservative Philip Zelikow was put in charge of the 9/11 Commission Report to make certain no uncomfortable facts emerged.

The neoconservatives have had enormous help from the corporate media, from Christian evangelicals, particularly from the "Rapture Evangelicals," from flag-waving superpatriots, and from the military-industrial complex whose profits have prospered. But the fact remains that the dozen men named in the second paragraph above were able to overthrow the US Constitution and launch military aggression under the guise of a preventive/preemptive "war against terrorism."

When the American people caught on that the "war on terror" was a cloak for wars of aggression, they put Democrats in control of Congress in order to apply a brake to the regime's warmongering. However, the Democrats have proven to be impotent to stop the neoconservative drive to wider war and, perhaps, world conflagration.

We are witnessing the triumph of a dozen evil men over American democracy and a free press.

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.He can be reached at: PaulCraigRoberts@yahoo.com

The neoconservatives are the enemy. Read below. Read it all.

Twelve evil men.

As I have aged I find that my interests have changed radically. I have more questions and fewer answers. Football (brutality) has become less interesting, baseball (strategy) more interesting. Artwork is more interesting. Sculpture. Photography. Nature is astonishing. Books are often less interesting. I don't like wasted storylines or mindless descriptions. I have this idea that writers could describe things in numbing detail only when it is essential to moving the plot, and readers should be hungry for those details. I want to rip the page over to see what is on the next page. I find myself reading the first sentence of a paragraph and then skipping to the next first sentence, thinking who cares about this?

I saw that the hubble telescope has lost its primary camera and that even though a repair mission is going that way next year, the camera is too difficult a repair to be attempted. So a window has gone dark to the universe. Will there ever be anything like it again? I saw a giant coffeetable book of Hubble photos in Barnes and Noble the other morning. Did I tell you about the trip to Barnes and Noble in Savannah? Very weird. It was 9 a.m. and all the mall stores were closed, yet there were 75 cars in front of Barnes and Noble? We went in to find there was no special event, but people were everywhere. The Hubble photos are astonishing images and then in fine print it says that from one side of the photo to the other is a span of 150 million light years. Now how can I get my mind around that? Did you see the images in the space trip part of the movie Contact? Hubble images look like that, or visa versa. Can there ever be any way to travel or even communicate across these distances? Is it possible that people are out there everywhere, but that no human will ever see any of them. Are we even short timers on our own planet? Will something annihilate us all and a new civilization of creatures rise to study our civilization in 40 million years? When I walk the dog at night and look up I feel very small. It makes you wonder what is important? Goodness, pleasure, a future life, nothing? I guess everyone has to keep doing what they "feel" is right. The musicians will keep making music, the engineers designing, the artists painting, the athletes playing, the preachers preaching.

As I get older, it is more difficult to decide what is important. Maybe it is only finding meaningful personal relationships and sharing joy. The earth is a little island in the universe that is safe for us to do that on. How odd.

I've found over the years that it is often difficult to make a purchase for the home that turns out to do what you want it to. Painting is a labor, flooring a speculative venture. We have a large sun room on the back of our home with magnificent tile flooring. Only problem is that in the winter it is coooold and the cold air set up a draft that made our most usuable rooms cold also. The solution has been to run the furnace higher, but even that did not do away with the draft. The tile was wonderfully cool in the summer so wall to wall carpet didn't seem right, plus the tile itself is beautiful to look at. We've gotten a carpet made to lay out in winter months that can be put away in summer and it not only matches everything wonderfully, it also has effectively put a blanket on our heat loss. The room is so much warmer that it is astonishing. And the adjoining rooms are equally more cozy. Sometimes you have an idea and it just doesn't work out. But this time . . . the idea worked.