By The River

HYDROLOGIC OUTLOOK
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE STATE COLLEGE PA
356 AM EDT THU AUG 31 2006

...HEAVY RAINS FROM THE REMNANTS OF ERNESTO LIKELY LATER FRIDAY INTO
SATURDAY...

THE REMNANTS OF TROPICAL STORM ERNESTO WILL BE MOVING UP THE
EASTERN SEABOARD AND TOWARD PENNSYLVANIA OVER THE NEXT COUPLE OF DAYS.

THE DEEP...TROPICAL MOISTURE ASSOCIATED WITH WHAT REMAINS OF
ERNESTO WILL BE ENHANCED BY A STRONG EASTERLY FETCH FROM THE
ATLANTIC OCEAN...AND A STALLED FRONTAL BOUNDARY THAT WILL LIE
JUST TO THE SOUTH OF THE STATE THROUGH FRIDAY NIGHT.

WHILE THERE IS STILL SOME UNCERTAINTY TO THE EXPECTED TRACK OF
ERNESTO...THE THREAT FOR HEAVY RAIN OVER CENTRAL PENNSYLVANIA WILL
INCREASE AS THE STALLED FRONT AND WHAT IS LEFT OF ERNESTO INTERACT
AND MOVE NORTHWARD.

AT THIS STAGE...THE MOST LIKELY TIME FOR HEAVY RAIN TO AFFECT
CENTRAL PENNSYLVANIA WILL BE FROM ABOUT FRIDAY EVENING THROUGH THE
OVERNIGHT INTO EARLY SATURDAY MORNING. THIS RAIN COULD LEAD TO
FLOODING.

IF THE THREAT BECOMES MORE CERTAIN...YOUR NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE
WILL ISSUE A FLOOD WATCH.

LISTEN TO NOAA WEATHER RADIO OR YOUR LOCAL MEDIA FOR THE LATEST
UPDATES ON THIS SITUATION.

FOR ADDITIONAL WEATHER INFORMATION...CHECK OUR WEB SITE...AT
WEATHER.GOV/STATECOLLEGE...ALL IN LOWER CASE.

Posted by David at 10:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I don't like the look of this one.

AccuWeather is reporting that that Central Pennsylvania might be hit with a deluge, which it defines as more than six inches of rain. If the worst scenario for Ernesto comes to pass, we are expected to receive 6-10 inches of rain on Friday afternoon and Saturday. You'd better plan to wear Scuba gear if you go out in that.

My Shipoke neighbor, Mike Tapper, was grim-faced and down this afternoon. He said "people are saying" that Ernesto could be another Tropical Storm Agnes. Agnes, which hit in late June, 1972, was the single most destructive flood in recorded Pennsylvania history. The flood crested at 32 feet at Harrisburg, enough to fill both the basements and first stories of homes in Shipoke and many other places throughout the region. That got my attention.

The National Weather Service's Mid-Atlantic River Forecast Center has an informative historical piece on Agnes on its website. There are indeed some disturbing parallels between Agnes and what is being forecast for Ernesto. What caught my eye was that the Mid-Atlantic region received an average of 6-10 inches of rain during Agnes after the storm parked itself over north central Pennsylvania.

But there are some significant differences as well. Agnes made landfall in south east New York and moved west across New York State before looping down into north central Pennsylvania to dump its rain well north of Harrisburg. And while an average 6-10 inches fell throughout the region, the amount that fell in north central Pa. was far greater. Shamokin, which is about 75 miles northeast of Harrisburg in Northumberland County, received an astonishing 18 inches of rain. That was the Agnes record, and they were still repairing things when I arrived there as a young reporter in 1975.

Ernesto is supposed to move north through the Carolinas, Virginia and Maryland before entering south central Pennsylvania and parking over the region when it collides with the cold front. If the worst of the rain falls at or south of Harrisburg, it would seem to me the flood problem would be to the south of us as well. I always tell newcomers to Shipoke that it's not the rain that falls on Harrisburg they have to worry about, it's what falls over the upper reaches of the Susquehanna River that can hurt us.

The other mitigating factor would be the extreme lack of rainfall much of the region has experienced this summer. The rivers and streams are low, and the ground is dry. When Agnes hit, the ground had already been saturated with 2-3 inches of rain. And of course, Ernesto could turn out to sea, eliminate this whole problem, and save this Labor Day weekend. I hope so. Our collective backs in Shipoke are still sore, at least in a metaphorical sense, from the flood scare in late June.

Let's hope we get lucky, but just in case, start making plans for moving your stuff out of harm's way.

Posted by David at 09:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I suppose it is appropriate that on the six-month anniversary of By The River I am writing, once again, about a flood threat.

Living by the Susquehanna River in the Shipoke neighborhood of Harrisburg, Pa., means you occasionally crank up the Worry Machine if weather conditions appear conducive in some way to having a flood. It isn't possible to live here if you worry too much--you won't enjoy the parties and good life if you do--but it would be completely inhuman not to have at least a twinge of anxiety when the path of Hurricane Ernesto (may we call it Che?) appears to lead directly to central Pennsylvania.

This hasn't gotten much attention in the media, but we may get a whole lot of rain over the weekend, as much as 8-10 inches Accuweather.com's chart is to be believed. The City of Harrisburg has been tracking the storm since Sunday, I'm told, and is weighing whether it should postpone the Kipona Festival. That would be a blow to the arts and craft vendors, many of whom travel long distances to spend the weekend here and may have other shows to sell at the following weekend. But what are you going to do?

Of course, hurricanes can head toward the midstate only to peter out or turn out to sea before they drop much rain where it counts. If you read through the Accuweather site, you will findseveral good scenarios and bad scenarios for Ernesto.

All the same, people who live along rivers and streams in central Pennsylvania ought to make sure they have enough boxes to move their possessions from the basement and first floor living area to a higher floor. Office Max or Staples will sell you, for a reasonable price, flats of a dozen or so boxes that you assemble as needed. The building supply stores such as Home Depot and Lowes will sell you sawhorses on which you can raise those sofas and dining room tables that are too large to carry up to the second floor. Take advantage of these next couple of days to be prepared.

Posted by David at 08:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

One of my deeply held beliefs is that the massive tax cuts for the wealthy engineered by George W. Bush and the Republican Congress early in the President's first term have been extremely damaging to the country. Combined with the money being shoveled into the furnace to fund the disastrous and unnecessary Iraq War, the impact has been to leave the United States with insufficient funds to meet the costs of being a modern, civilized nation. This quasi-religious devotion to tax cuts--and the budget cuts that come in their wake--has left soldiers without body armor in Iraq, New Orleans with pitifully inadequate reconstruction dollars, and an entire nation falling behind our economic rivals China, India, Europe and Japan because cutting school taxes has become more important than educating students to meet 21st century economic challenges.

Now comes a story in the Los Angeles Times that shows the depths to which we have fallen because of Bush Administration policies or lack thereof. The U.S. Bureau of Land Management, because it doesn't have enough money and is run either by extreme Republicans with their heads in a dark place or by timid bureaucrats cowed by the political apparachiks, has by default let relic looters rampage through the Canyons of the Ancients National Monument in the Four Corners region of southwestern Colorado.

This National Monument, created by President Clinton in 2000, is one of the richest areas of Indian pre-history in the West. It has 100 archaeological sites per square mile, and it covers 250 square miles. Guess how many police offiers patrol Canyons of the Ancients to guard against looters. Exactly one, according to the Times. They cite a study released this summer by the National Trust for Historic Preservation that concluded the Bureau of Land Management was "too cash-strapped anbd understaffed" to meet the challenge. Some of the thieves are believed to be people employed at oil and gas drilling operations in the National Monument.

What really got me was this statement by Sally Wisely, Colorado state director of the BLM. She claimed that money alone would not solve the looting problem. "The ultimate answer is an individual stewardship ethic, with every individual understanding what these resources are land what they mean to us. It means people behaving themselves out there and keeping themselves to a higher standard," she told the Times.

Oh, if people would only behave themselves, no banks would be robbed, no old ladies would be mugged on the street, and no drugs would be sold to schoolchildren. Of course, we could hire more police officers to patrol Canyons of the Ancients, but that would put a strain on the severely limited tax revenues brought about by Bush's tax cuts for the wealthy. And it might piss off the Texas energy companies so beloved of Vice President Cheney and President Bush himself if we started arresting oil workers sneaking out ancient relics in the back of their pickup trucks.

Ask yourself where you've heard this "more money won't help" rubric before. Think of the desperate, ongoing debate on how to improve the country's schools for the 21st century. Just about everyone who isn't on the payroll of a conservative thinktank will tell you we need better teachers and smaller class sizes. Both of those carry a price tag. Because nothing, nothing, can be allowed to stop the drive by conservative Republicans for lower taxes, they are forced to come up with meaningless drivel like "more money won't help."

If you want to see what life is like with an underfunded government controlled by the wealthy, go to most any South American country except Cuba. The rich do quite well, the poor suffer terribly, and looters carry away relics because the government can't hire enough policemen to patrol everywhere the looters might go. I don't want to go any further down that path than we've already gone in the first six years of the Bush Administration. We had a good country once. We can have one again, but only if we act quickly and vote out the Bush faction in November.

Posted by David at 08:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young performed in Hershey Stadium last night and showed that rock's older generation still has a thing or two to teach Gen Y about political commitment, protesting the policies of George W. Bush--and singing in harmony.

This was probably the most political concert I have ever attended. Neil Young, the most artistically active of the four men, was in charge of song selection and the general tone of things, I'm told. If so, he plucked many of their most political songs from the last 40 years to round out "Our House," "Teach Your Children," and their other radio hits. From Graham Nash--no political slouch he--came "Chicago," about the political turmoil there in 1968, including the Chicago 7 conspiracy trial of anti-Vietnam War leaders, and "Immigration Man," as timely as ever.

David Crosby sang "Almost Cut My Hair," about the pressure to conform, which any male from that era can still appreciate, from the band's second album. "Ohio," about the Kent State Massacre in 1970, and "Find the Cost of Freedom" (Ohio's flip side in its 45 rpm release in 1970), backed by photos of American War dead in Iraq, were timely as well.

Neil Young and the band (the other three make a find back-up band for Neil) sang many of the songs on his latest "Living with War" album, capped by 'Let's Impeach the President,' which the band did as a singalong with the audience. I wasn't sure how well this would go over with a central Pennsylvania audience, but many people sang along with vigor. I think a few may have walked out, but maybe they were just going for beer.

All four were in fine voice, especially David Crosby, who seems to have come through his liver transplant and drug bust jailing in Texas a few years back in relatively good shape. I had forgotten what a bluesy voice Stephen Stills has. I last saw him in concert as a solo artist around 1973, so perhaps that's why! When Graham Nash sings 'Our House,' his love song to then-girlfriend Joni Mitchell, you wonder how they ever could have broken up.

Attendance at the concert was not that good, especially compared to the Rolling Stones last October. The Stones filled the Stadium, but CSN&Y filled about a third of it. I blame the high ticket prices for this. Top tickets were nearly $200 with service charge, and low-end ones close to $50. With the price of gas being what it is, people just don't have as much disposable income to drop on a rock concert, however pleasant it may be.

Posted by David at 05:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

It's great to be the King. George W. Bush figured that out a long time ago. So it must have come as a shock when his demand that a busy HOV (high occupancy vehicle) lane on Interstate 395 in Virginia be reserved for his personal use during rush hour the other day was denied. HOV lanes are normally reserved for buses and cars with more than one person inside. Shutting it down so Bush's limousine could speed along unencumbered would have caused massive traffic jams and inconvenienced thousands of commuters.

The urgent national business that required that the President be given exclusive use of the HOV lane? Going to a fundraiser for beleagured U.S. Sen. George Allen, R-Va., he of "Macaca" fame, whose own sister recently published a book detailing his many failings. Perhaps an hour in D.C. rush hour traffic will show the President the error of his ways in starving the Federal government (and states) of the revenues they need to provide the services (like more and better rail passenger service) needed in a 21st century economy. But don't count on it.

Posted by David at 07:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The New York Times, picking up on a story first reported by the Chronicle of Higher Education, reports that the U.S. Department of Education has quietly removed evolutionary biology as an "approved major" on which federal student aid money may be spent.

This has all the hallmarks of a classic stealth attack by Christian Rightists embedded in the national government since the advent of George W. Bush in 2000. There was no public notice of the change and it probably wouldn't have come to light if a concerned mid-level bureaucrat in the agency hadn't quietly alerted people on the outside, who went to the media with the story. I salute the courage of whoever did that, because people in the Bush Administration are probably looking for him or her even as we speak. It is a fundamental tenet of the Bush religious base that the theory of evolution--proven six ways to Sunday by real scientists--is wrong.

Of course, the Department of Education now claims it was just a "clerical error," but if you believe that, you probably also believe in the 6000-year-old Earth and that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction at the time the Bush Administration invaded Iraq. And remember folks, we have 2 1/2 more years of this.

Posted by David at 07:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Tonight I watched the first half of Spike Lee's stunning HBO documentary about New Orleans and the Hurricane Katrina cataclysm, "When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts." He has done many things with this film, but topping them all is restoring humanity to the black victims of the storm and the criminally negligent way they were treated by the Bush Administration and their own city government. White victims are treated fairly and honestly, but this is a film primarily about the African-American experience in Katrina. They tell their stories with no voiceover, in classic documentary style, and become real people once again.

And what stories they are. Lee and his assistants have sorted through the endless feet of video footage shot by professionals and amateurs during the storm and manage to show both the natural fury of the hurricane as it advances on the city and the political fury that swirled in the rest of the country as Americans watched the tragedy playing out on TV and in their newspapers. At the center of the latter is President George W. Bush and his minions, who played air guitar on TV (Bush) or went luxury shoe shopping in Manhattan (Condoleeza Rice) while the storm destroyed a major American city and its people. We are reminded, if anyone really forgot, of the President's infamous line, "Brownie, you're doing a heckuva job" about the incompetent former head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Katrina became the human disaster it did for a number of reasons having nothing to do with the storm itself. Too many U.S. Army and National Guard units were deployed in Iraq, leaving few to send to a city that desperately needed a firm, outside hand to take control. The President's tax cuts for the wealthy early in his first term and the great costs of the needless Iraq War had depleted the Federal government of the resources it needed at a time like this. Bush was a also slave to the doctrine of "states' rights," which calls for a weak Federal government that lets states do pretty much what they want, for better or worse. It is a uniquely Southern philosophy, spawned by lingering antagonism about the Civil War and the Northern effort to end slavery in the 19th century. That's at the heart of it, folks, like it or not.

Lee gives respectful treatment to the widely-held belief among New Orleans blacks that someone dynamited the levees protecting their homes in the Lower 9th Ward to save white areas of New Orleans, especially the French Quarter. That did happen in previous major hurricanes--he even finds archival footage of it. One of my neighbors did a volunteer stint as a nurse in New Orleans after Katrina and told me that belief was widespread. But no credible evidence so far has surfaced that blasting was done during Katrina.

As a two-time flooding victim, though one not nearly as bad off as the ones portrayed in this film, I give thanks to the fact that our most recent Shipoke flood, in September 2004, occurred during the heart of the Presidential campaign in a state that was most definitely up for grabs between Bush and Sen. John Kerry. We were showered with Federal aid, and it arrived quickly. Shipoke benefited from having a city mayor who knew how to handle flooding and getting aid, but I suspect that had it not been a Presidential election autumn, FEMA would have been far less generous in many ways.

Part 2 of "When the Levees Broke" runs tonight on HBO from 9-11 p.m. HBO repeats specials like this ad infinitem, so if you missed it this time, you'll get another chance.

Posted by David at 11:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

We've spent the past week in a rented cottage along Lake Michigan, one of the Great Lakes. It is big enough to seem like an ocean when I stand on the sand at its edge: 300 miles long and 80 miles wide, much too wide to see the other side. You trade killer waves and seafood at Ocean City, Md., for moderate waves, lake perch dinners, fresh water, and no sharks or jellyfish here. The water is quite clear and reasonably warm, 64 degrees yesterday. My cousin, Kathy Winkler, who is a world-class Ironman triathaloner (she won her age group at Kona two years ago) says that Lake Michigan is the only place other than Lake Tahoe in California where she can actually see what she is swimming through on her morning two-miler. She and her daughters, her father, sister, and her brother and his wife came from California for our annual family beach reunion.

Unlike the ocean, much of Lake Michigan is bordered by steep, forested dunes. Most cottages, including this one, have long staircases, some more rickety than others, leading down to the beach. Going to this beach is more exercise than one normally gets at Ocean City. There are many cottages along the lake, but very few condo units. People hang onto these cottages for decades. The people across the street from us in the Eagle Crest cottage association have been coming here for 47 years. The woman's parents owned it, and now she and her brother share ownership. She calls it her "magical place." Because you face directly west at the crest of the dune, the sunsets here are wonderful.

Michigan, like Pennsylvania, is in the throes of a gubernatorial election campaign. Incumbent Democratic Gov. Jennifer Granholm is being challenged by Amway heir Richard DeVos, Jr. The Republicans have been reduced to running anti-Granholm ads that admit she's a nice person and a great politician, but argue that she is an ineffective leader. Of course, DeVos would be less than 100 percent effective, too, if he faced a Legislature controlled by extremists from the opposite party. DeVos is a son of wealth and privilege (his father's minions sold a lot of soap) who probably prays every night that Bush is able to permanently cut the estate tax. He is said even by fellow Republicans to be a bit stiff, the Oliver Douglas type who wears an expensive suit and Italian shoes to milk a cow. His father, and Amway co-founder Jay Van Andel, now passed on, are/were extremely conservative. Van Andel funded creation "science" groups.

What I found most interesting in the TV ads I saw is that the Republican candidates don't use the word Republican in their ads. They're running as fast as they can from President George W. Bush and the GOP extremists who control Congress. With the President's support level at about 34 percent, and polls showing most people inclined to vote Democratic at all levels this year, they are quickly becoming candidates from nowhere. We can only hope that the Republican nightmare that began with their capture of Congress in 1994 will end this year.

Posted by David at 09:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Last week, I speculated that maybe, just maybe, the Bush Administration had pushed the British to make early arrests of terrorists plotting to blow up airliners in order to distract attention from a major political setback for the President, the primary election defeat of U.S. Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Connecticut, an Iraq War supporter.

That was just an educated guess based on past behavior, mind you, but evidence to support my hypothesis is beginning to accumulate. NBC News is reporting that the Bush Administration did in fact pressure the British to move up the arrests, although it doesn't directly connect that move to a desire to get the Lieberman defeat off the front pages.

There is no doubt that the Bush Administration has moved aggressively to make political hay out of the British arrests. The President, Vice President, and everyone else connected with this awful gang has always tried to politicize the fight against terrorism, Why should anybody be surprised that they would do it again?

And now back to my vacation.

Posted by David at 07:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Baseball on a pleasant summer night. Two great teams, a nice breeze blowing in from Lake Michigan, and reasonably-priced beer and sandwiches. What could be better? Well, if the Detroit Tigers hadn't thought it was 2005, when they lost many, many games. They were shut out 5-0 by the Chicago White Sox at U.S. Cellular Field.

The Tigers have the best record in baseball this season, but you wouldn't have known it last night. They played like losers, while the Sox played like the 2005 World Series champs that they were. I've been a Tigers fan all my life but wondered for the last several years if they ever would be in playoff contention, let alone World Series contention again. This season they have won, and won, and won, but of course I go to see them on a really off night.

We rode the subway to the game, and it was packed with White Sox fans, many wearing the black and white pinstripes of the team. My daughters insisted on getting White Sox jerseys of their own, and cheered lustily for the team their father didn't support. But it was all good fun. The game was a near sell-out. Attendance was a shade over 39,000, and I didn't spot many empty seats, even in the upperest portions of the upper decks. There were a few in the right field bleachers, but that was all. It was Elvis Night at the game, so the place was overrun with Elvis impersonators and men wearing fake sideburns. All in all quite a show. We left after the Tigers went down in the 8th inning and the outcome seemed certain, hoping to beat the rush to the subway.

Chicago has been fun, although very expensive. I find it much moreso than New York, although perhaps that's because I know New York better. We drive up to Michigan today, where we have a cottage rented along Lake Michigan near Holland for the week. My uncle and his family are coming out from California to a nearby cottage, and some other relatives are coming for the day on Wednesday. On to the beach!

Posted by David at 06:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

We went to the sold-out King Tut exhibit at the Field Museum in Chicago this morning. It was the first time the Tutankhamun antiquities have toured the U.S. since 1977 (a show I also saw at the Field). While I found the new exhibit to be nice, I feel compelled to warn anyone who saw the 1977 show that this is a very different sort of show. For one thing, many of the objects on display are from the time of Tut, not from the tomb. Perhaps most disappointing, the magnificent golden death mask is not in the exhibit, even though its image is used to the max in marketing materials and literature for the show. Whether Egypt wouldn't let it out of the country again or what, I don't know. But it isn't in the exhibit, and neither is the boy Pharaoh's sarcophagus. The 1977 show consisted almost entirely of objects recovered from the tomb, which was discovered by British Egyptologist Howard Carter in 1922.

Exelon, which owns Commonwealth Edison in Illinois and PECO Energy in Pennsylvania, was the major corporate underwriter for the show. Chairman John Rowe is an Egypt buff and has purchased Egyptian antiquities for his personal collection. That nearly scuttled Exelon's sponsorship at the last minute after Zahi Hawass, secretary-general of the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities, pitched a fit when he found out Rowe had a 2,600-year-old Egyptian sarcophagus on display in his corporate office. Hawass believes private ownership of antiquities is wrong, and shortly thereafter Rowe announced he would loan the sarcophagus to the Field Museum.

And can you imagine? They didn't have Steve Martin's "King Tut" playing in the background! :-)

Posted by David at 05:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I'm on vacation in the Midwest with my wife and daughters, and yesterday we visited the Auburn-Cord-Duesenberg Museum in Auburn, Indiana. It is a collection of about a hundred of the sort of automobiles most people have only seen in movies. They were built here in Auburn for wealthy Americans, mainly in the 1920s and 1930s, and are among the most beautiful automobiles of all time. The museum is housed in the Art Deco former corporate headquarters of the Auburn company, which went out of business in 1937.

You gaze upon these automobiles--calling them "cars" seems inappropriate--and envision the Jazz Age and the world created by American author F. Scott Fitzgerald. If Jay Gatsby didn't have one of these, he certainly wanted one. E.L. Cord, the salesman CEO who made the Auburn company what it was, knew how to create visually appealing automobiles.

Touring this museum was an education. I've always known that Detroit was not the only place in America where automobiles were built in the early 20th century, but didn't realize that Indiana had dozens of auto manufacturers. Some didn't stay in business very long, but others, like Auburn and Studebaker, were around for quite awhile. Many American children grew up in the 1950s and 1960s believing that Henry Ford invented the automobile, that most quintessentially American of inventions. In fact, Ford was merely among the more successful of many inventors of the auto the world over, all at about the same time.

Auburn, Indiana, is about 20 miles south of Interstate 80, and maybe 15 miles north of Fort Wayne. Like many old manufacturing centers of the Midwest, it is trying to find a new way in the 21st century.

Posted by David at 08:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I don't doubt that the plot uncovered by the British in which jetliners were to be blown up over the Atlantic Ocean is real--after all, 21-some arrests have been made--but I do question the timing of the announcement.

After all, it's only two days after President Bush suffered a major political setback when Sen. Joseph Lieberman, his lapdog Democratic war supporter in Connecticut, was defeated in the primary by an anti-Iraq War candidate, Ned Lamont. Lamont's victory and what it meant for continued Republican control of Congress after November was the talk of the news. No more.

I suspect we'll eventually learn that the timing of the arrests and the announcement of the thwarted plot was entirely coincidental. But given everything that has happened in the past, I can't rule out that the White House pushed the British to make the big splash now, knowing it would push the Lamont victory off the news pages and out of the public mind.

And however the timing came about, the President and his minions are rushing to exploit the arrests for political gain.

Posted by David at 08:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

One of the interesting questions in the wake of the primary election defeat by anti-Iraq War Democrat Ned Lamont of Sen. Joseph Lieberman in Connecticut has been whether Bush political guru Karl Rove was secretly helping Lieberman behind the scenes. Huffington Post writer R.J. Eskow has considered the question and found several of the old Deuce's hallmark tactics. I thought the Election Day crash of the Lieberman campaign website was a bit suspicious myself. My guess is that Republicans did it to enrage Lieberman (who immediately blamed Lamont) and make it more likely that he will run as an independent in hopes of retaining his seat. And it might work. Lieberman, at least at this point, is saying he will file a petition to do just that.

Lamont is an interesting person. He's a great-grandson of Thomas Lamont, one of the founding partners of J.P. Morgan and Co. You can read about his great-grandfather in Ron Chernow's excellent book, The House of Morgan. Lamont will win Lieberman's seat in the general election (the Republican candidate is basicly a sacrificial lamb) unless Lieberman gets into the race, in which case it becomes a toss-up. Lamont won the primary with a 52 percent margin. Lieberman won't hold onto all his votes in the general, but if he gets a significant number of Republican votes, he could cobble together a victory. And then turn Republican? Crazier things have happened, and he certainly seems more comfortable with Bush's party than the Democratic Party.

What Lieberman refuses to accept is that large numbers of moderate American voters as well as liberals are fed up with George W. Bush's war in Iraq and every other failed policy of the President. Lieberman embraced those sickening failures in the name of a phony bipartisanship that was really ideological surrender. On Tuesday, the voters of Connecticut said enough was enough.

Posted by David at 05:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

One of the stories that has continued in the background as the Mideast blows up has been the investigation of alleged plagiarism by rightwing opinionator Ann Coulter. According to Media Matters for America, which seeks to find out if there is any truth in what the wingnuts tell us, even the footnotes of Coulter's book "Godless: The Church of Liberalism" are suspect.

As I learned myself when my book on the Centralia mine fire was plagiarized by a writer for Harper's Magazine in 2004, plagiarism is a sin that is only punished by Big Publishing if the victim has the means to bring a lawsuit. Most don't, and I certainly didn't, so Harper's told me to go pound sand. The people allegedly plagiarized by Coulter appear to be either fellow wingnuts or people who can't bring legal actions. Her publisher, Random House, has already pretty much made clear it values the profits of publishing Coulter's books more than the truth of what she writes.

It's worth pointing out again that the sort of plagiarism that is winked at by Harper's and Random House would get a newspaper reporter fired or an academic disgraced. Plagiarism continues because it is easy to get away with and downright profitable if you have no morals.

Posted by David at 09:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The Los Angeles Times reported today that their reporters were able to look at thousands of pages of U.S. Army investigations of Vietnam War atrocities committed by American soldiers. They were placed in the National Archives in College Park, Md., after 20 years, and had sat there unnoticed for years. Seems the Bush Administration sought to yank them back after it got wind the Times was looking at them.

This isn't a rehash of My Lai or the Tiger Force--these are all new to history, if not to the men who committed them or were sickened as they watched. The stories are nauseating. I'm not trying to dump on Vietnam vets for things that happened 35-40 years ago. I bring this up in an attempt to discredit the specific Vietnam "Swift Boat" vets who sought to destroy the candidacy of U.S. Sen. John Kerry in 2004 by claiming that he lied about U.S. Army atrocities and slandered "all" American soldiers. What Kerry basicly said was that atrocities did occur, more than just My Lai, and that they were more common than people wanted to believe.

Posted by David at 07:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

With a title like that, this blog post could be about (A) global warming, (B) the Iranian A-bomb threat, (C) the Bush Administration approach to just about everything, or (D) a really funny and promising new comedy website.

The correct answer is (D), at least for today. I can't promise what it will be tomorrow.

The Doomed Planet made me laugh, and I think you will, too, even if you're outside the 14-35 target demographic. Here is one of their short films that has gotten a lot of attention, including from Salon.com. It's called "Snakes on a Plane: How Hollywood Really Works.

Click here to go to The Doomed Planet website. You can watch the movies there or download them free to your video iPod through the Apple iTunes Music Store. They actually look quite good on the iPod screen.

Posted by David at 06:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

It would appear that the ability of the Green Party to get its U.S. Senate candidate, Carl Romanelli, on the ballot in Pennsylvania this November is due almost entirely to donations from people who otherwise are supporters of Republican incumbent U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum. With Republican money, the Greens were able to hire people to circulate petitions to meet the state's onerous requirements for getting a third party on the ballot. Russ Diamond, despite all his fame from the legislative payraise fight, wasn't able to do the same in the race for governor.

It was a slick move for the Republicans, yet another in a long list of ways they have leveraged the great wealth of some of their supporters to achieve their ends. Between money and appeals to the yahoo religiosity of another large part of the Republican base, the GOP has been able to advance an agenda that would be voted down decisively if it ever got into a fair fight. If they could have done this in 1933, we never would have had the New Deal. But avoiding a fair fight is a key part of political success for any party, and the Democrats will have to move to neutralize this threat Romanelli poses to Bobby Casey, their Senate candidate who is currently leading Santorum in the polls by double digits or nearly so.

I have nothing against Romanelli personally. From his website, he seems like a sincere, committed progressive. I agree with most of his issues, even to a certain, limited extent his call to end the "war" on illegal drugs. But he doesn't have a chance in hell of winning, and he could ensure the state has Santorum for six more years.

Getting a pro-choice Green candidate on the Senate ballot was a coup for the Republicans. If Romanelli drains even 1-2 percent of liberal votes away from Casey, it could be decisive in a close race. Liberal Democrats in Pennsylvania have been told they have to accept Casey's anti-abortion and anti-stem cell research views if they want to have a chance of beating Santorum. Casey, to be fair, is great on many other core Democratic issues, most notably concern for working families and the underprivileged.

If I was an elder of the Democratic Party, I would be working hard on Romanelli to persuade him to drop out of the race, or at least to do only minimal campaigning. I would also be urging Casey to reach out more to liberal voters to persuade them not to stay home on Nov. 7.

Posted by David at 07:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Last summer, in a bit of temporary insanity, I bought a white linen suit from the online men's store Hunter & Coggins of North Carolina.

I suppose many writers are attracted to these suits, especially if they like the books of Tom Wolfe or Mark Twain. Both authors seem to wear or have worn white linen suits on most days of their lives, and certainly at public readings. I like both of them. Not everything they wrote, but a lot of it. I even stopped to visit Twain's grave in Elmira, N.Y., one day while I was heading up to the Finger Lakes. The cemetery is right off Route 15. I really felt I needed to wear a white suit to be there, but I didn't own one then. The other thing people associate with white suits, of course, is Southern lawyers. You see white suits in a host of old movies, usually paired with a glass of bourbon (sounds good!) and somebody named Big Daddy or Atticus Finch.

White suits are not really practical. You can only wear them, according to the unwritten rules of men's fashion, between Memorial Day and Labor Day, at least up North. They are comfortable on 100 degree days like yesterday and today, which is why they became popular in the hot, humid South, but their downsides are many. For one thing, they wrinkle easily and are dirt magnets. The trick is to wear one all day and not have to stop at the dry cleaners the next morning. If it's raining and you have to walk anywhere, forget it.

I debuted my suit in June of last year at the big Book Expo America trade show in New York City. I was there for a number of reasons, and decided to look literary. The reactions were definitely interesting. More than one person did a double take after spotting me out of the corner of their eye. Did they think I was Tom Wolfe walking by? I'm way taller than he is. I saw Tom Wolfe the next day signing autographs, of course wearing a white suit. He must have a closetful of them and a really good dry cleaner.

People in Harrisburg almost feel compelled to comment when they see me in my white suit. This morning, the security guard at the Market Street pedestrian crossing in front of the Patriot-News said, "Hey, looks comfortable!" My colleague Dave Wenner said he didn't realize I was "into Tom Wolfe." Reggie Sheffield, another colleague, once commented that I belonged in Louisiana with a suit like that.

I'm one of the few reporters at the Patriot-News who even wears a suit anymore. Dress codes at newspapers have relaxed considerably over the years, but on the Business staff, where I work, or in the Capitol Bureau, it's still pretty much required. My theory is if you need to wear a suit, you might as well look good. In white or not.

Posted by David at 07:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)