PART I
ED NOTE:
MUSIC WILL BE - Intro/Hendrix, Star Spangled Banner
S9/ Eat Static, Crash and Burn
Exeunt/WildChild, Renegade Master
J. Good morning, and welcome to The Mojowire... I’m Mojo...
S. And I’m Sean, it’s Saturday, June 21, and here’s the news for the week gone-by...
J. Brought to you by Mojohaus-fine journalism, afflicting the comfortable since 1988. Now headlines, from Mojohaus:
S. First this week, William O’Reilly from Fox News gets run from his morning radio slot in Baghdad by the Bay, and apparently, it’s all because of the devil Internet. That’s right net hippy, if not for your child molsestation, wholesome Americans would be able to listen to the No Brain Zone.
J. Next we take a look at how natural gas prices could auger doom for an economy that the Bush administration desparately wants you to believe is in some sort of skyrocketing love fest. Perhaps it really is time to let what’s left the dinosaur’s rest in peace and get some real energy alternatives.
S. Then, a federal Court upholds Count Ashcroft’s authority to disappear suspects into the dungeons of the Justice Department beyond the scope of the public or judical review. Will the last American please take the Bill of Rights with them when they leave...
J. Then the good Doctor Strychnine brings us the horrific news on the environment --*again*-- and we get a dose of what Christine Tood Whitman’s resignation from the nation’s nature watchdog really means and what the administration’s true intentions for national environmental policy are, as if you needed further convincing.
S. Next, a high ranking Intelligence official flees the White House, with dark tales of lying and decit that corroborate charges that the Administrition spun a web of lies to scare the nation into the Iraqi invasion. Rand Beers and the folks at the pro war New Republic lay out even more evidence.
J. And then we bring this week’s presidential primary round up with reports on Howard Dean cleaning the floor in Wisconsin wih John Kerry and what it means, Dennis Kucinich further chasing the freak vote, and Dick Gephardtr playing follow the leader.
S. So stand by to stand by while we get ready to kick this pig...
J. In recent weeks, the Host of Fox News’ “No Brain Zone” *William* O’Reilly fired off a blast at the evil internet and its denizens of liars, theives and liberals. Apparently a radio station in Baghdad by the Bay replaced William’s morning spleen venting, and it was reported by the Chronicle and picked up by the Web that he was run for being a Scrub and a Rush Clone that coulnd’t get the drive time ratings.
According to the Radio Station, they dropped him to put on Jim Romes’ Sports show. Apparently Rome clones were banging their monkey -- that is calling the program manager-- to get fresh Romey live every monring instead of William.
William maintains they simply moved to another radio station, and that he was bumped to make room for someone with a fresh show is Lies, Lies, Lies!
The reason we bring you this slice of William’s delusional life is to let you know who he holds responsible. Apparently, its the source of all of America’s Darkness, The internet..check out his take here..
Quote: “The Internet has become a sewer of slander and libel, an unpatrolled polluted waterway, where just about anything goes. For example, the guy who raped and murdered a 10-year old in Massachusetts says he got the idea from the NAMBLA Web site that he accessed from the Boston public library. The ACLU's defending NAMBLA in that civil lawsuit.”
You know, it really buries the needle on the Irony Meter when someone from Fox News complains about media that spouting slander and libel. It’s even better when it’s William O’Reilly, who has offered such sober takes as the Clinton/Greenspan conspiracy to devalue his 401K, and the hordes of man eating sharks spawned by the Endangered Specias Act hunting off the Jersey Shore ready to mack down on America’s youth.
But what really takes the cake is the hubris of accusing the entire Net populuation of being a gang of thugs and child rapers because he gets run out of his radio slot. And isn’t this the oldest thing the GOP bag of magic tricks, to try to freak out Ma and Pa Walton with horror storeis about Child Molesters skulking in the Internet ready to snacth their kids right through the monitor. But wait, William isn’t done yet...
S. Quote: “Talking Points noted with interest the hue and cry that went up from some quarters about the FCC changing the rules and allowing big corporations to own even more media properties. But big corporations are big targets.
If they misbehave, they can be sued for big bucks. These small time hit and run operators on the net, however, can traffic in perversity and falsehoods all day long with impunity. It's almost impossible to rein them in. So which is the bigger threat to America? The big companies or the criminals at the computer? Interesting question...”
Now we come down to it folks. Wouldn’t you just be safer if you offered all the airwaves and the entire internet to Corporations like Fox? Freedom and competition in the media is scary and untidy. Fine, upstanding people like William are soiled when cranks by you Net Hippie. Especially when you are allowed to post whatever you want without being censored by Rupert.
Actually, Willaim, out of your endless trail of ignorant takes, this one might get you into the Pat Buchanan Hall of Dangerous Crank Fame. While it is certainly true that you can find endless cesspools of Freakery on the Internet, you can find cesspools virtually anywhere if you stare hard enough.
And No, it would not be better to whore out the internet to your masters at Fox and his cohorts in the corporate Media.
We at the Mojowire think Americans can be trusted to distinguish between the bad of the Web and the good. And isn’t that choice the freedom that Conservtives cry themslevs hoarse about while trying to scare everyone that liberals are trying to take it away from you? Let’s make no mistake here folks, William O’Reilly is a punk and crank, but we cannot ignore him.
Because he has the megaphone of a nationally broadcast show, only mediums like the Internet can offer an antidote to his ignorance and stupidity. And that’s why William hates you Net Hippies, not because you are the cause of evil and death, but because you might be able to shout as loud as him, and he can’t cut you off.
J. So how’s this for stoopid...we have a national energy policy built around the laughable notion that fossil fuels will last until the end of all time and that anyone who wants to create energy without poisoning the air or water is simply a commie punk bent on destroying the American way of life.
But this is what you, Wireheads, are being asked to believe. This in spite of reports earlier this week that natural gas prices are getting ready to rocket upwards like the trousers of a 14-year-old boy downloading Miss August for the first time.
Part of the reason for this impending price spike is apparently the scarcity of gas with which we humans are about to be faced. And it could put another nail in the coffin of an economy that despite signs of resiliency and robustness is the continued victim of political hacks and speechwriters who pass as domesitic policy advisors in the Bush West Wing.
For instance, we Southern Californians might not think much of it, but natural gas is a major component in the fertalizer that grows much of our food, from the lettuce that we make our salads with to the grain we feed the cows that become our Exterme Atomic Burgers.
Moreover, the price spikes in gas prices that are expected should manage to coincide with the warm weather that will undoubtedly plunge many of our fellow SoCals in to energy crisis induced darkness. And then, darkness again when you pass out from seeing your electricity bill...
This is all due to the fact that the age of the dinosaurs really is coming to an end. Although demand for fossil fuels, in particular natural gas has increased by almost 25 percent in the last year, the ability to produce it has fallen dramatically, mainly because the main production centers in North America have become so overworked.
This has caused a doubling in price in the last year for natural gas from $3.65 per one million BTUs to more than $6 per one million BTUs.
So, you may be asking, what the hell does this have to do with the overall economy? Natural gas prices are, according to many at the Federal Reserve, one of the canaries in the coal mines, not reflected by the pimps on CNBC, much less in the recent stock market bump.
What is happening is that the factories in the midwest that make fertalizers are starting to close and lay people off because they can not afford the gas necessary to make their product. At the same time it is causing a spike in the cost of agricultural production.
S. Ask one of your roommates who took macroeconomics last semester, and they will tell you that in terms of the national economic health, ag production is a bellweather. It is one of those numbers that are used as the foundation for the rest of the national economic model.
And that number is starting to spike in some nasty and impolitic ways.
So we would like to forward the following imodest proposal: Let the freekin’ dinosaurs rest in peace already. It is time to start looking at other, more efficient, more renwable means of energy.
As much as the GOP might like to start recycling immigrants and minorities in high pressure death chambers to turn them in to oil, it doesn’t seem likely that the rest of us will start letting do that any time real soon.
So how about this? We create a national work project, not unlike the Apollo program, to create a combination hydrogen cell, electric energy system that not only can create energy cheaply, but also store it and transmit across a nationallly standardized energy grid.
What about more research into wind, solar and the like. Hell, we are even in favor of more nuclear energy, if only we could trust the national energy entrepreneurs not to be wretched greedheads who would build fission plants held together with spit and sealing wax.
But the bottom line is that the energy industry in this country needs to back the right horse, and that horse does *not* resemble the *T*Rex from Jurrasic Park. It is in the form of wind farms and massive banks of hydrogen fuel cells generating vast amounts of megawattage.
Is it ideology? Is it short sighted greed? is it simple stoopidity that keeps a single energy company or consortium from getting out in front of this technology? We don’t know. But we do know this. If these companies don’t want to become as extinct as the liquified remains of the animals they are burning now, then this is the time to start that investment process.
Because in 20 years when these other companies are starting to come into play, they will realize the long term viability of their technology, and will work it with the politics they learned from a lifetime of watching the oil and gas industry...at which point, the Xixiulub meteor-version of paradigm shift will make the likes of BP, ARCO and Sempra Energy about as relevant as a Discovery Channel special “Walking with Extinct 20th Century Industrial Monoliths...”
J. This week, the Federal appeals court in the District of Columbia handed down another legal victory for Count Von Ashcroft. The issue at hand was a suit that argued that the DOJ is required to diclose the name of the those detained by the DOJ after the September 11th attacks based on the Departments suspician of thier connection to the attacks.
The 2-1 majority ruled that the Court should show deference to the National Secuirty concerns of the Justice Department in resisting the Freedom of Information Act requests to disclose the names of the detainnees.
“The need for deference in this case is just as strong as in earlier cases, Americans face an enemy just as real as it’s former cold war foes,” says the opinion written by GOP appointee David B Sentelle. So basically, because of the 9/11 attacks, the judiciary should just shut the hell up and go sulk in the corner when Justice decides it wants to lock someone up in the Bastille.
The Lone disesenter in the case, Judge David Tatel, a demorcratic appointee, fired off a nice scud in his disennt. Quote: “by accepting the government’s vague, poorly explained allegations, and by filling in the gaps in the governments case with it’s own assumptions about facts absent from the record, this court has converted deference into acquicescense.”
It seem Judge Tatel is in the possesion of that rare commodity -- an unabriged version of the Bill of Rights that requires the state to disclose the names of anyone arrested, and what they are charged with.
The significance of this decision, which is cetain to go platinum and head up to the Supremes, is not that the District Court has punted on the basis of the Political Question doctrine. What is shocking even to the cynics here at he Wire, is that the Courts have been eager to surrender their vital role to protect the crucial role of judicial review whenever someone is deprived of their liberty.
A.G. Ashcroft would weave a technical argument that immigrants and other such “dangerous” persons are technically not subject to the rigors of Constitutional process. But we would like to remind the AG of the words of Thomas Jefforson in the Declaration “We hold these truths to be self evident, that all Men are created equal”.
In other words, my dear Count Ashcroft, regardless of someones place of birth, the need to protect their rights and their liberties is just as urgent. Isn’t that why we felt it necessary to fight a war of liberation for others so oppressed?
S. At no time has anyone offered up a credible explanation why the Justice Department needs to hold over 700 people incommunicado. Memo to the AG, I think if any of those incarcerated are Al Queda operatives, then Osama bin Laden has figured out you have them.
Hiding their names serves no National Security purpose other than preserving the right of the government to whisk away anyone it deems a threat at any time. I’m sure Dr. Martin Luther King and John Lennon were grateful that the Government did not have this power in past decades, or they would have been held in secret because of the threat they posed.
Remind us why we even have a Federal Judiciary if every off the wall request by the Executive Branch for expanded police powers is granted without question by cowed judges, a colusionary congrress and an apathetic public.
Look, this is very simple. Our country is supposed to be the place where there are no secret police, no hidden tribunals, no politically inspired trials, no disappeared dissidents, no concentration camps and no mass graves...
That’s the sort of country that our founding fathers wanted to avoid, and it’s this vision that has guided almost 250 years of jurisprudence, and created doctrines such as due process and equal protection under the law.
What is so difficult to understand about this? In America, unlike many other places in the world, people can not be whisked off to the Island of Misfit Toys because the current junta doesn’t like how they dance the Tarantella?
And because current efforts are so demonstrably incapable of protecting the security of the state, we here at the wire, along with the legions of Wireheads in the vast radio and internet hinterland, are asking, what the real agenda is here?
More and more people are starting to use the “F” word regarding certain elements within the adminisrtration. And more and more the “Facist” word is being used with more frequency about the overall administration, not merely a “rogue” element or political operatives gone off the reservation.
How else can we describe the utter disrepect with which the dread Vampire Ashcroft is treating our Constitutional rights to be free from government harassment and oppression?
Remember when you go to the polls next year...one party will likely be the party of limited government interference in your life, and it will *not* be the Republican Party...
J. That’s right. It is time once again for our regular contributor Dr. Strychnine, reporting from his super-secret, ultra-dope, mega-cool, extra-jiggy, Mojohaus spy satellite of love high in geosynchronous orbit above Baghdad by the Bay…take it away S9…
S9 . Greetings fellow space travelers, break-abouts, dead-headers and able-bodies. We interrupt your regularly scheduled panic for a brief reminder that the comfort of all our passengers is the highest priority of the flight crew on S9 Station.
Our instruments tell us that the ambient air temperature in the living spaces is rising and the oxygen mixture is running a little leaner than we usually like. Consequently, we have initiated several new protocols to monitor these levels with the objective of developing a plan of action. You can trust us. We're in the *control* room.
You may have noticed that the environmental engineers on the station have been extremely busy lately, and some of them have been more than a little testy. Perhaps, you were alarmed by the sudden resignation of Christine Todd Whitman from her post at the head of the U.S Environmental Protection Agency. Be assured, though, that her decision to spend more time with her family comes as no surprise to the Bush administration.
Yesterday, the E.P.A. leaked internal memoranda to the New York Times showing that the White House censored the draft of a report due out next week that was intended to provide the first comprehensive review of what is and isn't yet known about environmental problems threatening
human health and the environment. According to the Times, the entire section on global warming and climate change will be edited down to just two entirely non-committal paragraphs that say essentially nothing.
And this was the *compromise* language, required to keep the EPA staff from throwing burning tyres around the necks of the savage thugs in the White House Council on Environmental Quality and the OMB-- because the White House *wanted* to replace the entire section with a summary of a report from the American Petroleum Institute that says climate change is caused by crop circles. It has nothing-- nothing whatsoever to do-- with carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide gas emissions from tail-pipes and smokestacks. What are you thinking, man?
Here in the control room on S9 Station, we understand how the greenhouse effect works, and we can read the temperature gauges and run the numbers ourselves. We think the Bush Administration is playing a rather bad game of poker.
When George W. Bush was just a losing candidate for President, he was in favor of limiting power plant and vehicle exhaust emissions, and he was even in favor of establishing an international carbon dioxide credit market-- a key step in the next step after the completion of the Kyoto protocols. Weirdly, these were his positions when Ken Lay of Enron was in his good graces. It was Ken Lay who convinced him of these ideas.
But after he we elected President-- and after the White House stopped returning Kenny Boy's phone calls-- Bush took up with new friends, who are of a decidedly different mind about what is the correct way to deal with climate change.
So it was that last year, the President dismissed an earlier EPA report, as well as a report from the National Academy of Sciences, by waving his hand and saying snottily, "Yeah, I read the report put out by the bureaucracy." Both of those reports truthfully explained the role of greenhouse gases in climate change, but the President's new friends could not abide the truth. The President took a lot of heat for that snubbing of the EPA, and deservedly so.
Sensing that environmental politics are where the President's numbers are the weakest, a GOP pollster named Frank Lutz advised him and all the opponents of regulatory controls on greenhouse gas emissions to "make the lack of scientific certainty a primary issue in the debate." He went further, "Should the public come to believe that the scientific issues are settled, their views about global warming will change accordingly."
As we said, it's a bad game of poker. The President and his wealthy friends in the oil, gas and coal industries are bluffing. These guys can all read the same numbers as everyone else, and they have to know the greenhouse gas writing is on the climate change wall-- it's just a matter of staying in a position to book out maximum bank before the energy economy crashes. So they are bluffing like crazy, and they hope that most of the other players at the table will not bother to count the cards already facing up. Hey, why screw with a good system when it's working for you, right?
The flight crew on S9 Station doesn't mind if you want to gamble your oxygen stake on the zocalo with the freebooters from Zeta Reticuli, but we hope you will play responsibly. You should only put at risk the atmosphere you can afford to lose. Your comfort is our business, and we like having customers to do business with. If you still have a hand in this game-- and if you're within ten light years of Sol, at least, then you almost certainly do-- maybe it's time for you to call the bet.
We now return you to your regularly scheduled panic.
SEE PART II
