I guess that means there’s no point worrying, because there’s nothing we can do.  Which is fine, because there are people who fill our worry bandwidth to overflowing and no two people do more in that regard than Charles and David Koch.

You may have heard of them.  They’re the billionaire brothers who own Koch Industries, the second largest privately held company in America.  Their main business is oil, although they take your money for everything from toilet paper to cattle.  Much as they’ve tried to keep a low profile, they’ve been outed in the past few years as funders of the Tea Party movement and contributors to such backward-looking politicians as Wisconsin’s Scott Walker.  A prankster even portrayed the Kochs and Mr. Walker as being controlled from Hitler’s bunker.

If only it were all fun and games.  Sadly, the Koch also control 57 facilities that use dangerous chemicals and present threats to the health and lives of an aggregate 4.4 million people who live near them.  Had the 9-11 terrorists – or a future group of terrorists – targeted one of these facilities, they death toll could have been an order of magnitude higher than what it was.
But wait, it gets worse.  Most of these hazards can easily be avoided.  Having huge stockpiles of volatile, dangerous chemicals on site at production facilities is as obsolete as the adding machine.  While some American technology (thanks, Steve Jobs!) races ahead, system engineering at many manufacturing facilities are still controlled by the best minds of the 19th century.  Since the horrendous attacks a decade ago, a coalition of more than 100 environmental and labor groups has lobbied Congress and the Bush and Obama administrations to get these retrograde thinkers to join the present day, not only to protect lives (because we know captains of industry don’t give a crap about you or me) but at least to keep them competitive on a global basis.

As former Senator Jim Jeffords (I-VT) said, these factories are “pre-positioned weapons of mass destruction,” meaning that if someone sets off a little bomb next to one, the entire facility becomes one big bomb.

This week, not one, but two reports – by Greenpeace and the Center for Public Integrity – detail how Koch Industries has lobbied hard and donated lavishly to politicians to keep in place the antiquated rules that endanger the lives of millions of your fellow citizens (and, depending on where you live, your family).

All the key players blocking legislation to make these plants safer (Republicans and Democrats, but mostly Republicans) take campaign cash from the Kochs.  It’s among the clearest indications that the state of our union is now lower than it’s been since the same late 19th century when we first started collecting huge piles of chlorine, anhydrous ammonia and hydrogen fluoride at factories.  Why?  For money, that’s why.  Charles and David Koch care about two things – money and power in their control – and they don’t care who dies so they can have them.

The robber barons are back and they’ve got a gun to your kids’ heads.

© Mark Floegel, 2011

According to active and retired officials from both nations, if the US got a shot at bin Laden, they were authorized to make a unilateral strike inside Pakistani territory. The Pakistanis, in return, would scream and holler about it for the consumption of the Pakistani public, but really they had no problems with it. The pact was renewed in 2008, when Pakistan transitioned to a civilian-led government.

It’s interesting, because it describes exactly what happened when the US figured out where bin Laden was hiding. We took him out and Pakistan screamed and hollered. The US press, which has not picked up on the Guardian piece, has spilled several barrels of ink describing the myriad ins and outs of US-Pakistani relations and how the bin Laden raid may or may not affect them. How about this for a headline: “Bin Laden Furor: It’s All Theater”?

We know that. (By “we,” I mean you, the people who continue to read these depressing commentaries and me.) We’re jaded. We expect our government’s activities – foreign policy especially – to be theater.

This particular play has several acts. Remember how then-candidate Hillary Clinton frothed at the mouth when then-rival-candidate Barack Obama said in a debate that he would order a unilateral strike inside Pakistan if he was president and learned bin Laden was there?

Is it possible Sen. Obama heard about the US-Pakistan deal in a classified briefing and decided it would be a bold stroke to “call his shot” in a televised debate? Make him look decisive and commander-in-chief-like? Is it possible Sen. Clinton (and later, Sen. John McCain) spewed froth from their lips not because Mr. Obama was reckless, but because they hadn’t thought of the gambit first?

(Sen. Clinton: “I’ll show him. I’ll use his own tactic against him. I’ll make a commercial about answering the White House phone at 3 a.m. That’ll get him.”)

(Sen. McCain: “I’ll show him. I’ll whine about it in a sing-song voice to remind everyone I’m like their cranky grandfather.”)

Aside from the Pakistanis’ lines, we’ve had the political spectrum from Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) to former Secretary of State Condi Rice trash-talking the Pakistanis for not knowing Osama was camped out a quarter mile from an elite military academy. (Not sure the philosophical distance between Ms. Feinstein and Ms. Rice constitutes a “spectrum” but willing suspension of disbelief is required from theatergoers.)

Amid all the threats and imprecations, I have been waiting for someone (anyone!) in the US government to make the one obvious statement to the Pakistanis: “We found Osama bin Laden sitting in your front parlor. That makes you look bad. There are still high-level Al Quaeda leaders at large. If we find them in Pakistan, we’ll take them out and you will look bad again. If you find them in Pakistan and take them out, you’ll look good. So, find them and take them out. Look good.”

Is that hard? Or obscure? Or elusive to common sense?

Maybe it’s just not in the script.

© Mark Floegel, 2011

The next day, President Barack Obama announced the formation of a commission to investigate the Deepwater Horizon blowout oil disaster and the safety of offshore drilling. He appointed former Florida Senator Bob Graham (D) and former EPA Administrator William Reilly to head the panel.

Flash forward ten years. It’s 2020. Will Sen. Graham and Mr. Reilly be sitting before a congressional committee, testifying that, six years after their commission completed its work, the federal government still has not acted on the key recommendations of its report? The more immediate concern is: Will the commission even make the right recommendations about America’s energy future?

“Blue ribbon” commissions are not the only things 9-11 and the BP disaster have in common. The 9-11 attacks were indirectly – but profoundly – about oil and America’s energy policy, or lack of one.

As the president took to the airwaves Tuesday, his administration was again releasing a new estimate of how much oil is actually spurting from the seabed in Mississippi Canyon 252. Now we’re told it’s as much as 60,000 barrels a day – 30 times more than BP and the government told us initially.

Speaking from the Oval Office, Mr. Obama was clearly a man on the horns of a dilemma. On one hand, his duty to American citizens and stewardship of our environment point clearly in one direction. On the other hand, any progress is retarded by the overwhelming political power of the oil companies. The POTUS may be the most powerful man in the world, but the world runs on an oil economy and oil logic. Beltway observers ask why Mr. Obama can’t make up his mind, but indecision is not the issue. The issue is that even a president cannot simultaneously satisfy two constituencies. Mr. Obama will have to choose and choose soon.

Which leads to the third similarity between the 9-11 attacks and the BP Gulf of Mexico disaster: in each case the sitting president found himself with significant support from the American public to take bold steps to remedy the situation. George Bush squandered his moment, using the 9-11 tragedy to launch opportunistic wars. What will Obama do with his moment?

So far, the BP Deepwater Disaster commission is off to a poor start. Two of the panel’s seven members — Mr. Reilly and Alaska’s Fran Ulmer — have strong oil industry ties.

Mr. Reilly is on the board of directors at Conoco-Phillips and has been for 12 years, three times as long as his EPA tenure. In an August 2009 sale, Conoco-Phillips finished second — right behind BP — in snapping up deepwater leases in the Gulf of Mexico. Surely, Conoco has an interest in seeing deepwater drilling continue.

Ms. Ulmer, Alaska’s former lieutenant governor and outgoing chancellor of the University of Alaska Anchorage (UAA), has a long history of accepting campaign contributions from the oil industry, including contributions from BP going back to her 1990 candidacy for the Alaska House of Representatives. As chancellor of UAA, Ms. Ulmer presided over the stifling of marine conservationist and oil spill expert, Professor Rick Steiner, who was harassed into resigning over his warnings about the environmental hazards of offshore drilling.

As if that doesn’t cast enough doubt on the impartiality and independence of the commission, last Friday Mr. Obama’s energy and climate czar, Carol Browner, told The Hill that she hopes the administration can persuade the yet-to-be-named commissioners to curtail the six-month moratorium on offshore drilling.

As Ms. Browner was busy undermining the commission, Louisiana’s Sen. Mary Landrieu (D), Congress’s top recipient of BP campaign contributions in the 2008 election cycle ($17,000), sent a letter to the White House claiming that the six-month moratorium will mean the loss of 38,000 jobs. Which begs two questions: 1) Did Ms.. Landrieu take into account the effect of Gulf cleanup jobs? And 2) Why not just send the bill to BP?

Across the environmental movement, activists cringe with anticipation that Mr. Obama will use the catastrophe in the gulf to justify more loan guarantees to the nuclear industry. Even though the documented carelessness and incompetence of nuclear engineers rivals their oil industry counterparts, the nuclear crowd doesn’t have an active disaster up and running this week.

President Obama has a unique opportunity to have a “clean slate” discussion with Americans about energy policy. Will he bungle his chance the way Mr. Bush did? If the establishment of commissions is any guide, the outlook isn’t hopeful.

© Mark Floegel. 2010

I like to keep up with the news, but I’m suffering from sensory overload: a huge economic crisis, what is on the verge of being labeled a global swine flu pandemic (or as the American Pork Producers Council implores, “the H1N1 virus”), a global war on terror (or as the Obama administration corrects, “overseas contingency operations”), an outbreak of euphemisms, the end of the American auto industry as we’ve known it, musical chairs in the US Senate, nuclear Pakistan becoming unstable, nuclear North Korea becoming more unstable, none-too-stable Iran lusting for nuclear capacity.

Hurricane season is just one month away. WooHoo!

In the summer of 2002, I posted a commentary in which I speculated that if I could have accurately predicted 2002’s news (airplanes flying into skyscrapers, shoe bombs) twenty years earlier, I would have been treated for mental illness. By 1989, my mental illness would have been worse that it was in 1982.

It turned out that the bad president, the one who started the unnecessary war, was tapping the phones of American citizens and was ordering people to be tortured. If fact, we used the same torture that we executed Japanese war criminals for using in the 1940s. The new president – who by the way is the first black president – doesn’t seem inclined to do anything about that, but at least he says we won’t torture anymore. And the bad president destroyed the economy and the rednecks are building a wall all along the Mexican border….

Click. The little window on my padded cell snaps shut and the orderly walks away, shaking her head.

In that 2002 post, I noted the publication of a new book, “Dow 36,000: The New Strategy for Profiting from the Coming Rise in the Stock Market,” by James Glassman and Kevin Hackett. Where are you today, guys? Living in an improvised hut built of remaindered copies, I’d guess.

In a September 2006 post, I predicted the demise of the American auto industry. I’d just attended a three-day meeting on global warming, during which the auto industry had been assessed with cold-blooded objectivity.

As I drove away from that meeting (in an American car, no less), I couldn’t ignore the lump in my stomach. The automakers were dying of a thousand self-inflicted cuts, but I was witness to the death of one of the central myths of the American century. Every one of the negative predictions made during that meeting has come to pass. (To be fair, a few of the wishes have come true, too. “If only we could oust John Dingell as chair of the Energy and Commerce Committee…”)

Another one of those spurious memes relating to the Chinese is that the Chinese character for “crisis” combines the words “danger” and “opportunity” and while it’s poor linguistics, there might be a good idea there.

The opportunity in this convergence of crises is that it offers us a chance to wipe the slate cleaner than we have for half a century. It gives us the opportunity for new beginnings. Maybe the message we’re getting is that incremental solutions won’t work. (I’m looking at you, Tim Geithner.)

For the next several years, times will be hard and things will be weird. So be it. It would be really stupid, I mean like “American auto executive stupid,” for us to try to “solve” our problems by getting back to where we were just before the walls fell in. That’s not a solution; that’s the “rewind” button.

Let’s not wait for more crises to accrue before we listen. Let’s start wiping the slate, start new and do a better job this time.

© Mark Floegel, 2009

The US, via the CIA helped with money, weapons and training. If you watched “Charlie Wilson’s War,” it all seems like fun with a few caveats thrown in. That movie leaves one with the impression that it was the movement of millions of US tax dollars, plus some nights in Middle Eastern cafes with shady arms dealers that made the difference.

That’s not how Osama bin Laden and his friends see it. Their version of history says God – Allah – strengthened their hand and all that CIA money was just a manifestation of God’s will. The displeasure of Allah with the godless Commies was such that not only were the infidels driven from Afghanistan, but the Soviet Union collapsed soon after.

From where I sit, the collapse of the Soviets wasn’t so simple. It had to do with economics, Soviet political sclerosis, the price of oil and a dozen other factors. To Islamic fundamentalists, however, that was of a class with the CIA money in Afghanistan. Just part of the plan. To them, the Iron Curtain was torn because Insha’Allah: God wills it.

Then, Saddam Hussein’s Iraq invaded Kuwait. Osama thought Saddam should be pushed back, but he wanted only Muslims to do the pushing. The Saudi royal family disagreed and threw in with a coalition of western nations. Part of the deal allowed US military personnel to operate from bases in Saudi Arabia.

Saudi is home to the holiest of Muslim shrine at Mecca and Medina and the presence of non-believers on Saudi soil was infuriating to Mr. bin Laden and his followers, even though – in an uncharacteristic burst of cultural sensitivity – the Pentagon bent over backwards to keep from offending Muslims. Non-Muslim religious services were kept to a minimum, women were kept on base, so devout Muslims would not have to look at them, no beer, etc. etc. True, we stepped on the civil rights of our people trying not to offend their people, but we never seem to be able to get that stuff just right.

The point is, Osama thinks he and God got together and destroyed the Soviet Union and since Mr. bin Laden thinks God is an angry god, he probably felt he was speaking for Angry God when he declared that the unfaithful US must be destroyed and so the attacks on the US began and reached a high point (so far) on Sept. 11, 2001.

Since then, Osama has been quoted as saying he and Allah will destroy the US, just as they did the Soviets. From where he sits, it may look like the plan is working. The US is tied up in two wars, neither of which is going very well. In fact, what’s happened to the US military in the past six years looks an awful lot like what happened to the Soviet military in Afghanistan in the 1980s.

Of course, what really brought down the Soviets was their economy, because you can’t be a military power and an economic weakling. And now our economy is tanking – and taking much of the global economy with it, but that’s OK with Osama and his pals because… well, they live in caves and the standard of living they’d prescribe for the rest of us wouldn’t look much different.

From our side of the world, we see that America’s current weakness (military and economic) is due to the incompetence of George Bush and the people around him. It’s odd that both Mr. Bush and Mr. bin Laden think Mr. Bush’s actions as president were ordained by God.

Mr. Bush’s time is nearly through and let’s hope Mr. bin Laden’s is too. Maybe, going forward, we can take responsibility for our own actions and dig ourselves out of this mess.

© 2009, Mark Floegel

The most absurd character in the book is Milo Minderbinder, who – at least initially – runs the mess hall. A true entrepreneur, Milo steals supplies from the army and sells them on the black market. He justifies this by telling the servicemen he’s cheating that they will all benefit from his larceny. He issues “shares” in M&M Enterprises. The Ms stand for Milo and Minderbinder, but he put an ampersand between them to “demonstrate” that the company will benefit all. “What’s good for M&M Enterprises is good for the country,” he tells the airmen who complain that he’s ripping them off and endangering their lives by selling the safety equipment from their planes. (Does any of this sound familiar?)

By the end of the book, Milo has misappropriated an entire squadron of planes and is bombing his own airbase, having signed a contract with the Germans to do so. It’s absurd, right? Mr. Heller, like many novelists, uses exaggeration to allow readers to see our own society in a new light.

If only. I looked at the news Tuesday afternoon to see ABC reporting that the Justice Department now admits American military personnel tortured prisoners at Guantanamo Bay on behalf of the Chinese government. Milo immediately came to mind. “We’re doing this on a contract with the Germans!” I heard him say.

Joseph Heller’s irony is now our reality. The people we tortured at Guantanamo for the Chinese are Uighurs. Uighurs are an ethnic minority from western China who practice Islam. U.S. military personnel kept the Uighur prisoners awake, unfed and subjected to low temperatures for hours prior to the arrival of Chinese interrogators. The idea was to “soften them up” and make them more likely to tell the Chinese what they wanted to know (or at least what they wanted to hear).

It’s come to this. In the hectic days after Sept. 11th, John Yoo and other Bush administration functionaries cranked out memos justifying torture on the grounds that America was under threat of imminent, devastating terrorist attack. Two and half years later, we were treated to scores of photos from Abu Ghraib of soldiers torturing prisoners as they “softened them up” for military and CIA interrogators. A few enlisted were held accountable, even though authorization for such tactics went all the way to the Oval Office, via then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. Now we learn America is the outsource for Chinese torture and no even seems to blink.

The other voice in my head, sounding quite at home next to Milo Minderbinder’s, belongs to George W. Bush. “They hate us for our freedom,” he said repeatedly in the months after September 11th. What kind of freedom, Mr. Bush? Religious freedom? The Uighurs of western China just want to be left alone, like the Tibetans, another ethnic minority whose homeland has been occupied by the Chinese, who disapprove of their Buddhist religion.

I thought the “global war on terror” was supposed to bring the values of western democracy to the world. Seven years on, our own civil liberties have withered away, Iraq and Afghanistan are ruined nations, the terrorists are stronger than ever and our government acts more like them every day.

China holds over a trillion dollars in U.S. currency, thanks to our enormous trade deficit, so when they come asking for a wee bit of torture, it’s awfully hard to say no. America, which in very recent memory was a beacon of liberty for the world, is now torturing people who seek religious freedom at the behest of the Communist government of China. We turn our heads away as Tibetans protest the half-century of Chinese occupation and repression because, hey, we want our Olympics. The tee vee rights and the marketing tie-ins are worth billions.

Welcome to the 21st century and to hell with the notion that all people are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. What’s good for G&W&B Enterprises is good for the country.

© Mark Floegel, 2008

Q: Why is Paris Hilton stupid?
A: Because it pays so well.

Ms. Hilton does, however, provide a public service. She furnishes parents and preachers with an easy morality tale: while being crass and vacuous may be, in some cases, a path to fame and fortune, it’s better to make a positive contribution to society and retain your self respect. If “getting ahead” is all you care about, what separates you from the guy selling drugs on the corner?

On the other hand, let’s consider John Yoo, a professor at the Boalt Hall School of Law at the University of California at Berkeley. From 2001 to 2003, Professor Yoo was in the Office of Legal Counsel at the Department of Justice.

Mr. Yoo is famous (not “Paris Hilton famous,” but famous enough) for his work at Justice. He is a proponent of the “unitary executive” theory of government, which boils down to: “The president is above the law and can do whatever he damn well pleases.”

The week before Ms. Hilton’s first television program was aired, “pirated” copies of an explicit sex tape featuring her and an ex-boyfriend appeared in cities across the country. Copies of the tape – “One Night in Paris” – are still available at street-corner card tables staffed by sketchy-looking guys. (These men often appear in morality tales, next to the guys selling drugs.)

In a 2005 debate, Mr. Yoo said if the president orders it, government officials might legally crush a child’s testicles, in order to get the child’s father to reveal information the government officials think the father may be withholding.

On several occasions, Ms. Hilton made news by arriving at social events and – in front of a crowd of photographers – emerging from an automobile in a miniskirt, having “forgotten” to wear underwear.

In a 2003 memorandum, made public in the last week, Mr. Yoo argued American military personnel were allowed to inflict bodily harm on “enemy combatants,” as long as the harm was not inflicted on American soil and as long as the harm did not cause “death, organ failure or permanent damage.” If those conditions were met, Mr. Yoo wrote, such treatment did not amount to torture.

Ms. Hilton recently appeared naked and covered in gold paint in ads for an Italian canned sparkling wine. We haven’t tried the product, but can only assume its quality from its association with Ms. Hilton.

In another old memo made public (sort of) this week – this one written six weeks after the September 11th attacks – Mr. Yoo claimed, “Our office recently concluded that the Fourth Amendment had no application to domestic military operations.” We don’t know exactly what Mr. Yoo’s memo said, because it hasn’t been released; what we do know was gleaned from a footnote in another formerly secret memo that was released to the American Civil Liberties Union.

I’m no legal scholar, but I believe the Fourth Amendment does apply, always and everywhere in the United States and not only that, the Posse Comitatus Act forbids the use of the military in domestic law enforcement.

Aside from applications of gold body paint, there is little difference between Paris Hilton and John Yoo. Both are clearly making it up as they go along. Both have been too richly rewarded – Ms. Hilton with money and fame, Mr. Yoo with prestige and influence – for subscribing to the theory that the ends justify the means.

It’s easy and appropriate to lament the reduced state of American cultural values when we consider the case of Paris Hilton, but Paris Hilton is, for the most part, a victimless crime. We should not let her antics distract us from the important news of the day, which is that the United States, under the pen of John Yoo and people like him, has devolved in eight years from a democracy to a totalitarian state.

One can perhaps forgive “Entertainment Tonight” for having no ethical basis – what’s the University of California at Berkeley’s excuse?

© Mark Floegel, 2008

Meanwhile, here on the Earth’s crust, the Environmental Protection Agency – part of the same federal government as Aegis-class cruisers and Standard Missile 3 rockets, only not as glamorous – has a list of 100 industrial facilities that use chemicals hazardous to public health.

The satellite struck by the missile was called USA-193, also known as National Reconnaissance Office launch 21, also known as NROL-21, also known as L-21. It was a spy satellite. I suppose that accounts for all the aliases. It was launched on 14 December 2006 and the NRO won’t say exactly what L-21 was designed to do, but whatever it was, it didn’t do it. Ground control lost contact with L-21 hours after launch. Rumors that L-21 had gone over to the Russians are just that, rumors. (And John McCain’s dealings with that blonde lobbyist chick were strictly above-board.)

That list over at EPA, however, says if there was an accident or terrorist attack at any one of the 100 industrial facilities, the lives one million or more citizens – also known as taxpayers, also known as consumers, also known as the only people keeping our crappy economy afloat – would be in danger.

Satellite L-21 weighed 5,000 pounds, was the size of a bus and was traveling 17,000 miles an hour when it was struck by the Standard Missile 3 rocket. Of those 5,000 pounds, 1,000 were comprised of frozen hydrazine fuel. According to Marine Gen. James Cartwright, if L-21 had been allowed to enter Earth’s atmosphere and if its hydrazine fuel did not burn up on re-entry and if L-21 had landed in a populated area, then it’s possible the now-gaseous hydrazine could cover an area equal to two football fields. (The odds of this happening are several million to one.) If humans were exposed to the gaseous hydrazine for an extended period, Gen. Cartwright said, they might possibly experience some discomfort breathing.

If there was to be an accident or terrorist attack at an industrial facility using chlorine (many of the facilities on EPA’s list use chlorine), it’s estimated that an urban area of 14 square miles would be affected. The US Naval Research Laboratory estimates that if an accident or attack occurred to a 90-ton chlorine rail car in Washington, DC, (these rail cars pass within a few blocks of the Capitol every day) the death rate could be as high as 100 people per second for the first 30 minutes. An accident or attack at Kuehne Chemical Company in South Kearny, NJ endangers 12 million people in the Newark-New York City region.

The federal government spent $60 million to shoot down L-21 with a Standard Missile 3 rocket. The Navy responded quickly to the threat, before the satellite could fall from orbit. The US chemical industry has spent as much as $74 million lobbying Congress to prevent the drafting of legislation that would force industrial facilities to make their hazardous chemicals secure or convert manufacturing to less-hazardous chemicals. The federal government has reacted slowly. The Department of Homeland Security was founded on September 11, 2002 and has yet to take action to protect citizens from the threat posed by hazardous chemicals at industrial facilities. It has, however, blocked cities and states from taking action on their own to protect citizens.

Of the 17,000 objects we’ve launched into space, this is the first one we’ve shot down. Some say we did it because the Chinese shot down an old weather satellite in 2007 and the US didn’t want the Chinese to look uh…. Um…well, it gets a bit Freudian here. I think we all know what we’re talking about. Others say we shot L-21 down because we didn’t want our non-functioning spy equipment to fall into the hands of the Chinese or the Russians.

Of the 100 plants on the EPA’s list, none have yet had a catastrophic explosion, of the kind that hit the Texas refinery a few days ago, or the Georgia sugar plant a few weeks back. If it does happen and people die, I don’t know what the folks at the Department of Homeland Security will say. They can’t say they weren’t warned.

© Mark Floegel, 2008

All of this year’s presidential candidates – the ones that have dropped from the race and the ones still in – promise change.

Our world is changing around us at a rapid rate. Most changes are for the worse. Even if change is for the better, it’s difficult. People don’t like change and they really don’t like rapid change.

What people don’t like about change is uncertainty. Is my job safe? Will we lose everything if someone in my family faces a medical emergency? When will this war end? When will our troops come home? What happens if my town is hit by a major storm? Will I still be able to afford insurance?

Since the major accomplishment of the Bush/Cheney administration has been to deliver this bouquet of uncertainty to each and every American, all the people who want to replace George Bush promise change. In this case, change means a return to peace and prosperity.

Don’t believe them. All the candidates mean well and are sure they are the right person to lead the nation in uncertain times, no doubt. There will be no magic on Inauguration Day next year. The messes Mr. Bush made – the war, the ruin of America’s reputation, the wrecked economy – and the messes he didn’t create but merely exacerbated – global warming, the health care crisis – will not leave us for many years, not in our lifetimes.

Here’s one piece of it. The federal Energy Information Agency reported Monday that for a year – from 1 October 2006 through 30 September 2007 (the latest date for which figures are available), the global demand for oil exceeded supply. (You can see the numbers by clicking here. Scroll to the bottom of the page and click on the Excel spreadsheet entitled “World Oil Balance” in the lower left corner.) In the third quarter of 2007, average demand was one million barrels per day higher than supply.

Since the Oil Age began, we’ve never had a year in which demand has exceeded supply. Our global petroleum system is big enough that there’s sufficient oil “in the pipeline” to keep society running even as we run a consumption deficit, but if the situation continues, the laws of both economics and physics require that hard times are ahead.

Hard times ahead bring to mind hard times past. The most obvious comparison is the early decades of the 20th century, when the planet was ravaged by war, epidemic, famine, revolution and depression.

The citizens of the hard-hit nations of Europe, sickened by the abrupt changes in their lives, opted for certainty, even though the certainty offered was the foolish certainty of tyrants like Mussolini, Hitler and Stalin. They got their security – some of them did – at a terrible cost and for a very short time.

America, spared the revolutions and famine and less injured by the Great War, found its leader in Franklin Roosevelt. He promised boldness and change – and delivered both – but he did not promise certainty.

In the years of uncertainty since the terrorist attacks of 2001, we have as a nation sought the foolish certainty of a perceived strong leader – “the decider” as he styles himself – and we’ve paid for our foolishness.

If there is sensibility left in the American people, and I think there is, we will this year turn away from the glib promises of those who would trade our freedom for security and deliver neither.

As ashamed as I have been of my nation’s leaders, things could have been worse. Things may become worse yet, if we as citizens fail to take the appropriate action available to us.

The years ahead will lack certainty. They do not have to lack democracy.

© Mark Floegel, 2008

Mr. Marshall has provided copious evidence to prove Mr. Rove’s lie, but I was thinking, “Hey, I’ve been writing this thing for 11 years, what did I have to say about it?”

Sure enough, there it was in my commemoration of the first anniversary of the September 11th attacks.