***

On days when I'm thinking all the IT jobs are gone and it's time to go back to my first love, news, I get to thinking about what I miss most about life in the news business.

The answer may surprise you.

It's talking to Larry Sabato.

Dr. Sabato, the author of the above quote, is a political scientist at the University of Virginia. In the Rolodex at the old UPI bureau in Richmond, we had his name and numbers, and then someone had scrawled underneath "Dr. Dial-A-Quote."

In the 10 years since I've been out of news, Sabato has grown in standing (the Wall Street Journal called him the most-quoted professor in America). He now has a dandy Web site that deserves a plug -- http://www.centerforpolitics.org/crystalball. (My Web developer instincts want to get on him over the <Iframe> implementation, but that's a quibble).

The reason I now quibble over the dial-a-quote designation is that nowadays there's an entire cadre of alleged experts (Ann Coulter) and talking heads (Jesse Ventura) who get far more air time than Sabato. And that's too bad. Unlike the aforementioned, Larry always knows his stuff. His memory is incredible. His analysis, steeped in history, is generally very, very good. And his discussion of America being split between red states and blue states should be must reading for every voter.

And boy do I miss him talking to him. He was always unfailingly polite, and when I was working the political beat, it was extra nice when I could trade intel with him. Too bad that Robb, Baliles and Wilder seem like ancient history nowadays. His current analysis on Wesley Clark is absolutely classic.

For what it's worth, if I ever hit the lotto, I'm running for the U.S. Senate. And when I do, I hope he remembers me kindly.

At least I'll know not to meet him for dinner at a steak house.

-30-

Anybody else angered by the ridiculous comparisons to current U.S. plans to rebuild Iraq and the post-World-War-II Marshall Plan? Leave it to an old-school legislative hand, Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., to point out its folly. You can find his remarks here.

"She's so fine, there's no telling where the money went." RIP Robert Palmer.

Football. History suggests the fourth weekend of the season is a prime day for upsets. Since I've sworn off betting on football this year, here's one of my biggest secrets. Statistically, lots of teams that have won three straight games will lose their fourth. Keep that in mind if you're prone to pick the Baltimore Ravens over Kansas City this weekend. FYI, I've made four upset picks in three weeks, and three have come true.

Power to the people. Someone asked me, since I've been ragging about the ridiculous amounts of time it is taking people to get electrical power back, just what I want to see changed. I want to see a phased-in program where every power line in America is buried. The federal government would front the money and it would be paid off over time via electric bills. People say it's a complicated mess involving legal easements, etc., and my answer to that is who cares. Nothing's easy. Just get it done.

The Paper Lion. RIP George Plimpton. Here's one for you: among the areas in which he was an expert -- fireworks.

***

Thanks to Ken Layne, I found this fabulous nugget. A music critic, declaring there's nothing original to say about the band Radiohead, went to an elementary school, played Radiohead tunes, and asked children to draw whatever came to mind. The pictures -- dark, dark, dark -- are fantastic. Great work, Rob Harvilla.

My soul is 54 percent pure, and it's worth £20,860. See for yourself at We Want Your Soul dot com.

I've been saying it for years -- now a big time group of computer security experts is saying it. Microsoft is a national security issue and worse yet, according to this article from CNET, it's using the guise of increased security as a way to increase its monopolies.

One quick impression on the California gubernatorial debate, and then bullet points on each candidate.

At the end of the debate, neither myself nor the First Dumpling could figure out who had won, but we agreed on who lost -- Arnold Schwarzenegger. So of course we watch the pundits and post-debate spins, and sit pretty much dumbfounded as Arnold got the royal media treatment as the ratings-driven front-runner.

Anyway...

• Peter Camejo, Green candidate: Great stuff, but like most fringe candidates, he has to learn to get off the tax-the-rich thing. His objection to the term illegal alien was classic. They are here, they are working, they are paying sales and other taxes. Saying someone is illegal implies they are going to be arrested immediately. And they are not. They are laying your foundations, trimming your hedges. Great work, dude -- now don't play a Ralph Nader and pull just enough votes to let your worst possible outcome come true. Which, of course, is the most likely outcome. Oh, the peril of idealism once reality intrudes.

• Arianna Huffington: Independent. Dandy spinner of sound bites and a tough, smart woman. If you could find a way to combine her with Hillary Clinton, she'd be unbeatable. Well, if you could combine Arianna, Hillary and Ronald Reagan's sense of optimism. Many politicians forget the necessary cheerleading aspects of the job. Dour (Dukakis) and negative (Mondale) doesn't sell.

• Tom McClintock, Republican. Cookie-cutter, machine Republican using the same abolish-the-car-tax thing that got Jim Gilmore elected in Virginia (and got Virginia's budget out of whack). No doubt he's an experienced legislative hand, but always remember that legislatures need good legislators who know what they are doing instead of always aspiring to be the governor.

• Arnold Schwarzenegger, Republican. If you make a joke about Terminator 4, you are thinking of your movie career, not a political vision of the future. Hard for a rational person to look at this man as more than a soundbite-spewing machine. On the post-debate spin shows, you could almost see the tears in the eyes of CNN's Tucker Carlson. How and why does Arnold get any cred at all?

• Cruz Bustamante, Democrat. Clearly his strategy was to let everyone else look silly so he'd look sane. Not a bad strategy if you have a big lead, but he's currently not in the lead. The lieutenant governor didn't get any audience response to his line about the difference between tolerance and acceptance, but he sure deserved it. He did well, but history shows soft-spoken, thoughtful Democrats get killed.

So as the pundits try to figure out what all this means and what it all portends over the next two weeks, I'm left with one impression above all else. I see a scenario where the recall vote fails and this becomes the greatest exercise in much ado about nothing in political history. That would be a cruel sort of joke, but not as much of a bad joke as Governor Arnold.

-30-

9-24-2003
Dominion's Power

In the wake of Hurricane Isabel, patience is growing short when it comes to the lack of electricity. Thursday will mark the one-week milestone of the storm, and Dominion, the giant utility holding company, is scrambling to have power restored to 75 percent of its customers by that time. To put it another way, more than half a million households will be without power for longer than a week.

Mainstream media coverage preaches patience and praises the nearly 11,000 workers out trying to restore power. WAVY TV in Portsmouth ran a feature Tuesday night on Virginia Power employees still living without power, a masterpiece of spin in my book.

Here's one for the mainstream media. The utility company initially deployed 7,000 workers to restore power. Considering that number has ballooned by half, might there have been a failure in planning? Might the number of crews been dictated by money, and not damage estimates?

Let's see: Richmond got hit by Hurricane Fran in 1996, Hurricane Floyd in 1999, the Super Bowl Ice Storm of 2000 and now Hurricane Isabel. Seems like that's a pretty good statistical base for making some calculations about the cost of burying power lines as opposed to the cost of rebuilding them after storms.

Modern, deregulated utilities have only one incentive to fortify their lines -- they don't make money when they are not selling power. That's one of those libertarian, leave-the-free-market-alone sort of arguments that misses the point entirely. It's pretty clear that for utilities, it is cheaper for their stockholders to patch up downed lines as opposed to burying and protecting existing lines.

This is a classic American example of profits being private, but the costs being societal. When it comes to Dominion's balance sheet, the costs of providing reliable power lands squarely on them. The costs of power being out, however, land elsewhere.

People I talk to have lost on average $200 in spoiled food, and there's been more than a million people without power. There's millions in lost business, and millions more in tax dollars, considering FEMA's need to keep life manageable until the power comes back on.

It's time to get over the notion that storms are an act of God. They are regular occurrences, and the utility industry's current system for dealing with them is woefully inadequate.

A little history is in order. Dominion is only 20 years old. The idea behind its creation was to take money from regulated utilities, Virginia Power in my case, and use those profits to go into areas that were unregulated.

And, boy, did they ever. Oil and gas. Foreign power companies. Broadband. The last 20 years have seen stunning growth. According to the Virginian-Pilot, Dominion now has $42 billion in assets. According to www.dom.com, the market cap (the value of all stock) is now $19.7 billion.

It's certainly making money -- Dominion's return on equity is 14.1 percent, and its post-tax profit margin of 13.3 percent -- but don't expect it to invest that money in underground lines anytime soon. It ran up big debts ($14.4 billion) in making all its acquisitions, and its debt to equity ratio currently stands at 1:6. That's enough to have its bond ratings, according to the Virginian-Pilot, to be the third-worst; not junk, but far from prime.

Will extended outages prompt a cry for change? We'll see. In the meantime, consider this quote Tuesday from Gov. Howard Dean, M.D., a Democratic candidate for president: "What's at stake in this election is democracy itself. James Madison and Thomas Jefferson spoke of the fear that economic power would one day seize political power. That fear has been realized ... ."

A new ironic meaning to the phrase "power to the people."

-30-

9-23-2003
Isabel-interrupted surfing

• Why you can't nuke a hurricane to keep it from coming ashore.

• RIP Maytag repairman Gordon Jump.

• Dick Grasso, disgraced head of the NYSE who resigned after outrage over his $140 million payday, will leave with $50 million in his pocket according to Newsweek's Alan Sloan. Also of note: what got Grasso in trouble is business-as-usual for President Bush.

• Memo to President Bush. Your poll numbers are plummeting because people see clearly what's going in in postwar Iraq. There's only one reason the U.S. would not turn over rebuilding that country to the U.N. -- making money. A million Americans are still without power in the U.S. five days after Hurricane Isabel, yet the power grid being rebuilt isn't on the East Coast but in Baghdad.

• Further memo to the President: Your Texas tough-guy tone is all wrong in the world of diplomats. It's pretty galling, really, to run roughshod over the U.N. in launching a war under false pretenses, and then demand -- instead of ask -- the U.N. help clean up the mess you made.

• Regular readers know I'm a big fan of Gregg Easterbrook's Tuesday Morning Quarterback. Especially cool are his non-football rants, in this case, the idea that scientists can't find 90 percent of the universe.

• Further evidence that Flash is a product in search of a mission (unsuccessfully, I might add). The Fat Ninja of Love.

• From Slashdot by way of Bifurcated Rivets: "The Internet is a medium, being neither rare nor well done."

Covering the earth is a thin layer of leaves, many upside-down and silver. The grinding of chainsaws has replaced the singing of birds. And after dark, starry skies burst into view, no longer obscured by streetlights.

Welcome to life after Hurricane Isabel.

After three days of no electricity in Richmond -- and we don't expect to see it restored anytime soon -- I dashed to Virginia Beach. What an irony. The First Dumpling had to evacuate because of potential flooding, but it turns out the beach didn't get hit nearly as hard as Richmond. She got power and I got into my truck. Hey, the Browns were on national TV. (They won, too, 13-12, totally sucking it up after getting humiliated the week before).

But I digress.

President Bush will be visiting Richmond today to inspect the damage. Too bad I won't be there. I'd like to tell him to stop spending money in Iraq and start spending money protecting the electric power grid from storms, terrorists and system overloads. (See the post immediately below for details on burying power lines; I have total cred on this call.)

In terms of life today, I can write, but I can't Web surf, and I can't apply for the two really nice jobs I saw advertised recently. That last point is particularly painful. Knowing there's a killer job out there, and getting busy signals from RCN, is a pretty hopeless feeling.

From my reporter days, I know a great deal about hurricanes, but in all my years in the news business, I was never the guy sent to the scene. I was always the guy on the desk, taking reports from the field and working the phones and trying to tie everything together. This time I didn't have to worry about traveling into harm's way to do one of those Weather Channel-style stand-ups. The hurricane came right over my head.

To bulletize:

• Call it the New York City syndrome. In a time of crisis, neighbors help neighbors. There's a sense of we're all in it together, and it's quite comforting. People who are letting drivers in and out of traffic because stop lights aren't working will go back to blowing horns and acting annoyed in just a few days. Try to enjoy the camaraderie while it lasts. As the days without power stretch on, the level of annoyance will creep upward.

• Priorities. In one Virginia Beach neighborhood, two fellas used their generator to keep their beer fridge and their TV working. They shared ice from the fridge throughout the neighborhood. One Shore Drive restaurant used a generator to stay open throughout the storm. Owner had a boat parked in back in case flooding got too bad.

• Ice, ice baby. Within 48 hours of the storm's passage, it was nearly impossible to find a bag of ice in Richmond. I ate like a king. People cooked up steaks and roasts and other perishable foods just before they would perish, and shared them with neighbors. I barely dented my camping supplies, though that will likely change as the days without power stretch on. I stocked my entire freezer with ice before the storm. Gave most of it away.

• Timber! My guess would be at least 10,000 trees are down in the Richmond area. I had six trees sharing the property line with my neighbor Margaret. Two are standing. Two are down and already chainsawed and stacked for removal. One remains leaning against Margaret's house; the other tree, a giant locust, is leaning at a 30 degree angle, balanced on the neighbor's roof, my porch, my powerlines and another tree. It will be a complicated mess to clear. For much of my block, every other house has a tree lying on its roof. If the eye of the storm had veered a little to the east, those tree would be on my house, not hers.

• Kuh-ching. The going rate for clearing a downed tree, including grinding the stump, is $700. If you don't see any posts for awhile, it's because I took my borrowed chainsaw and went into business.

• The trees must be replanted. No whining. It must be done. Don't be scared of storms; plant the right tree in the right spot and you'll be fine.

The planet will thank you later.

-30-

9-16
We Come To Bury You

My hurricane preparation list -- candles, fuel , batteries -- isn't dominated by Mother Nature. It's dominated by Dominion.

Power companies, including Dominion Virginia Power here, live on maximized shareholder value. To translate that to plain English, it's more important to have a high stock price and pay good dividends then it is to, say, invest in moving utility lines underground.

Think about it -- what's the first thing you hear in any disaster story? The power lines are down. Go to an upscale suburb and you won't see any power lines.

It's not magic. It just costs more.

***

The electric industry fits in my ever-expanding category of things that are actually simple but we the people have let get complicated.

First, remember that the buzzwords of the industry are deregulation and competition, yet how much competition can you really have when there's only one line coming to your house?

This isn't deregulated phone and cable fighting it out because there are two wires there. Power is more fundamental. It's on par with having safe drinking water, and I don't think I've ever heard of someone getting rich in deregulated water conglomerates.

Since it's a given that burying electric wires is a matter of money, and since we know that most battles over money are really battles about will, how might that money come about?

Well, here's a good time to point out that most Americans pay far more money each month for cable TV than they do for water.

***

For most of our lifetimes, the debate about power lines was on how ugly they look, and indeed, most of the upscale suburbs buried the lines for aesthetic reasons.

So while this may be a new concept, it's still a legitimate question -- at what point, after fixing lines after every ice storm and hurricane, is it cheaper to bury and fortify them?

The economics of these big utility holding companies gives little reason for optimism. From the BBC I learned the company that's prime suspect in the Great 2003 Blackout, First Energy, is squeezed by paying off debt accumulated during all the acquisitions it made to create itself as a super conglomerate. First Energy dealt with this by laying off 800 maintenance workers. Not hard to see how a big blackout could follow.

Consider, too, that these were good jobs in a Rust Belt region starved for good jobs. Isn't this Republican cut-taxes-and-deregulate thing supposed to create jobs? In this case, it's created a power system that reflects the power system -- in the lawyer-lobbyist-accountant sense -- more than the realities of an aging, outage-prone grid.

My difficulties in the coming days -- this storm is very similar to Hurricane Fran and that storm left much of Richmond without power for four days -- will not stem from nature. They will stem from not having electricity.

The utility industry will tell you it's an act of God. Excuse me, but praying a hurricane doesn't hit hardly qualifies as a business practice.

Actually, there's more than weather in play here. The second leading cause of blackouts is squirrels. If we can't fend off squirrels, how might the grid stand up to terrorists?

***

To conclude, the case continues to build for money needing to be spent on reliable electricity. And that means somebody is going to have to pay for it.

One might think this is a case where the federal government might be useful, considering anti-terrorism spending, considering the notion of spending money to create jobs and stimulate the economy, considering the notion of keeping the citizenry safe.

One simple fact makes this highly unlikely, and that fact sums up what a confused mess the energy industry is in today.

The man in charge of the Department of Energy, Spencer Abraham, spent years as a U.S. Senator trying to get the department abolished.

How's that for bringing a strong future vision to a job?

-30-

9-15-2003
The Gigantic Insurance Company

I'm getting closer to personally defining a great truth, and it's somewhere between the shouts of grubby street protesters -- "Rich Republicans are stealing my country!" -- and Paul Krugman's New York Times Magazine (9-14) story "The Tax Cut Con."

Mr. Krugman, a Times columnist and Princeton professor, presented a lengthy case about a weighty issue. But considering the whole field of government finance reporting is long and boring, and not prone to bumper stickers or sound-bites, I'll just offer a short summary here.

Rich Republicans are stealing your country.

Now the way this is going about is not some grand Hollywood heist, but a decades-long calculated process. This process stems from two groups who back tax cuts for different reasons; folks who believe tax cuts spur the economy, and folks who believe the only way to shrink government is to shrink the amount of money government takes in.

Mr. Krugman's article rakes both sides.

I have long argued that the tax cut, deregulation mantra of the right has not had the economic benefits commonly touted. This article agrees with me, and presents better proof than I've ever been able to assemble. The American electorate is more aware of the mythology of tax cut theory than the actual performance.

The second group, the people who want to shrink government, pose the more serious question for Mr. Krugman. The theory is called "Starve the Beast," and it was coined by Reagan budget director David Stockman. It's common to hear politicians rail against waste, fraud and abuse, but within a decade, the federal deficit (and the bond market) will be so out of hand, drastic cuts will be needed in areas most Americans support -- education, Social Security, Medicaid.

The politicians will say they've been forced to do it. What they won't say is that they created the choice for themselves.

For those unable to find the entire article in NYT archives, copyright law, under the rights of a reviewer, allows me to cite a few of Mr. Krugman's cited facts.

-- Tax cuts are a real priority for GOP politicians, yet Americans typically pay less tax than citizens of other countries.

-- Tax cuts are largely sold as designed to help the poor and middle class, but the poor and middle class are paying, on average, about the same they've always paid. Taxes for the rich, however, are now the lowest in 70 years.

Now here's the wild part. According to one political theory followed by these folks, middle-class taxes shouldn't be cut, they should be raised. It is important for voters to hate taxes; that's what will make it possible, in the end, to radically scale back government.

To understand how people can believe such things, Mr. Krugman goes back to when the tax-cuts-spur-the-economy theory was known as "supply-side economics." The term didn't come from economists; it came from political think tanks. Most economists have always considered the effects of supply-side economics marginal at best. But it sounds good, and it feeds -- and feeds off -- public anger over taxes. It may be terrible policy, but it makes good politics -- getting government out of the way and letting business be business -- and if you win the politics, the policies are yours to make.

Look at it this way. President Bush cut taxes $200 billion allegedly in order to stimulate the economy and create new jobs. If the U.S. had just flat used the money to create average paying jobs, there would be four million new jobs. Have we seen four million new jobs lately? In fact, just the opposite is true -- roughly three million jobs have been lost since Bush took office.

I close, first, with a strong recommendation that people find and read the entire article, and secondly, with this short excerpt. It earns the highest compliment I can give. It's so good, I wish I had written it.

"As Peter Fisher, under secretary of the treasury for domestic finance puts it, the federal government is 'a gigantic insurance company with a sideline business in defense and homeland security.' And about a decade from now, those policy holders will begin making a lot of claims."

-30-

9-15-2003
Brown and Blue
If not for the grief I'd cause my mom, my girlfriend, my family and my friends, I'd have jumped off a bridge Sunday night.

Now when you're saying something half-joking, always remember that it's half true.

Two conditions are essential for contemplating suicide. The first is having no hope for the future, and in that regard, everyone in America should read Paul Krugman's piece in the Sunday New York Times Magazine -- The Tax Cut Con.

The second condition in contemplating jumping off a bridge is that you have to have no religious beliefs. Well, I do have a religious belief: I believe religion causes more problems than anything else in the world.

Actually, in my case there's a third condition.

You have to be a fan of the Cleveland Browns.

***

I'd like to start by saying I'm a pretty smart fellow, and here's the first rule of being smart -- as soon as you start thinking you are smarter than everybody else, you are actually being very stupid.

I bring that up because Butch Davis, head coach of the Cleveland Browns, is a smart guy. And to use the classic British line, he's been too clever by a half.

Some background. In 1995, a man second only to Hitler in my list of 20th century villain, Art Modell, stole the Browns from Cleveland and moved them to Baltimore. For four years, I paid more attention to futbol (soccer to the minivan moms) than the No Fun League. When the Browns returned, I returned, too, and bled right along with the struggling young team. They were bad. They were very bad, but it takes time to get good and patience has always been a virtue.

Last year, the Browns made the playoffs and things were getting good again. Until Mr. Davis got smart.

First, because of salary promises that could not be kept, five starters -- including every linebacker -- were let go. One player retired, but the other four all landed jobs with other teams in like, oh, no time flat. So then it was time for the annual draft of college players, and a team in dire need of immediate help picked two developmental players (people who will be no factor this year), and two centers. I played center and I can tell you what a nothing position it is.

Mr. Davis insisted his young linebackers would be fine, his barely tested quarterback would be fine, his no-name offensive line would be fine. And so came Sunday's game against the Baltimore Ravens.

Now Baltimore has a running back by the name of Jamal Lewis. Mr. Lewis is a fine player but not an elite one, and during the week he told the Browns he was going to run all over them and set a new NFL single-game rushing record. What disrespect! What motivation! That was going to be one-fired up defense on Sunday.

And Jamal Lewis ran all over them. He did indeed set the record. Like Babe Ruth calling his home run. Long run after long run, and nobody on this younger, allegedly faster defense could catch him from behind. On the other side of the ball, the Baltimore defense made the Browns look dismal, and the final score ended up Baltimore 33, Cleveland 13, and truthfully, the game was not that close. In the first half, the Browns managed 52 yards. That was less than a third of what Lewis had by himself at halftime.

Truly, truly, truly depressing – and made even worse that I had to put money in Art Modell's pocket to see the demolition in person.

***

The good news is I now have my Sundays back. I don't need to spend money in sports bars, I don't need to take road trips to catch the Browns in person. They are on course to be one of the three or four worst teams in football, and it's just too painful to watch. So I won't.

Time to tune back into the English Premiere League.

Sure do like that keeper for Tottenham.

-30-

There's a soundbite gaining traction that needs to be derailed immediately, the one about it being better to battle terrorists in Baghdad than Boston.

While this is unassailably true, it's also patently ridiculous.

Look at this construction from Logic 101.

Noboby's perfect.
I'm a nobody.
Therefore I'm perfect.

This is an example of using logic to show something is illogical

Here's another example.

Some dogs are brown.
My dog is brown.
Therefore my dog is some dog.

Now the Halliburton version.

It's good for the US to fight terrorists.
Terrorists are now flooding into Iraq.
Therefore it's good to fight terrorists in Iraq.

See where I'm going here?

The US ignored history in Afghanistan (even Alexander the Great couldn't conquer it) and Osama bin Laden remains elusive. The U.S. ignored history in Iraq (Lawrence of Arabia) and now an American G.I. dies every other day.

There's one other lesson of history forgotten by the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld crowd, and it concerns Viet Nam. The genius of Ho Chi Minh was that he knew his side did not have to win. All it had to do was not lose. Deny victory to the other side and eventually they will go home.

Now the U.S. is in Iraq to provide stability, which means, of course, as long as a handful of people keep creating instability, the goal -- and victory -- is denied. But not according to the current twisted logic of the U.S. Administration:

Victory equals stability.
Stability is easy to disrupt.
Therefore, victory is easy.

Obviously there are some problems with that logical construction. So now let's try one other approach.

One way to solve the problem of drunken driving is to eliminate all cars. One way to get rid of termites is to burn down the house. Now obviously these actions may be logical, but they are also absurd.

But now apply it to the war on terror. Consider that terrorists are the drunken driver subset of all drivers. Consider that terrorists are the termites of the house. So what has the U.S. done? In a war against terrorists, who operate in small cells, the U.S. has invaded entire countries -- by analogy, eliminating all cars, burning down the entire house. And where, my friends, is the logic in that?

Now consider the case of North Korea, the country most likely to be invaded if the Republicans are in trouble in the 2004 elections.

The U.S. keeps threatening North Korea
North Korea wants nuclear weapons to deter the U.S. threat
Therefore the U.S. wants North Korea to have nuclear weapons

The logic of the outcome is opposite the stated goal.

To close, I go back to a recent conversation (okay, shouting match) I had with a tree-butchering crew from the electric company. The question was put to me: "Would I rather have electricity or trees?"

I blistered the crew chief for such an ignorant false choice. The reason these people butcher trees with their 10-foot setback is they only do it every seven years; keep a more current schedule, and lines could be kept clear without such sweeping damage.

I bring that point up because it's the way the Bush Administration operates; it puts itself in bad situations and then says it has no other choice but the one it has chosen.

"Iraq is now the Central Front on terror," Bush declared Friday. Well, no joke; the U.S. made itself an easy target in a land favorable to the enemy when it did not have to, and committed itself to an open-ended stay to boot. That's not freedom on the march; that's illogical. Instead of a plan, there's a vague hope that Iraqis will hold an American-style election and the soldiers will come home.

The U.S. believes in free elections
In a free election, Iraqis will vote for an Islamic regime like Iran
Therefore, the U.S. believes in Islamic regimes like Iran

And, apparently, willing to spend $1.5 billion a week on them, too.

I can't say for sure what Osama bin Laden is doing nowadays, but I'm sure of one thing.

He's grinning ear-to-ear.

-30-

Rush Limbaugh. On 9-11, he said the war on terror will continue until all the extremists are eliminated. Memo to Rush and the rest of the conservative crowd leading us on a hayride to Hell. The extremists will never be eliminated through violence; every son who loses a father will pick up the cause. It's time for a Plan B, and the Republican Party, historically, is lousy at Plan Bs.

Jerry Springer. Apparently women who flash the camera now get Mardi Gras-style beads. And to think he was the mayor when I was growing up in Cincinnati.

CNN's American Morning. Certainly understand why it's dead last in the morning news show ratings. It's my favorite. It's news, not concerts, not games, not job-swapping. I'd love to have Jack Cafferty's job. And thanks to Cafferty, I have a new jargon alert: SARAHs. It stands for Single And Rich and Happy. I wish I qualified; that "R" things gets in the way for me.

Johnny Cash. He was a bad-ass before being a bad-ass was cool. Amazing that he was able to use a Nine Inch Nails tune to film his own obit, and even more amazing that such a tremendous video lost out in the VMA's to some dreck from an apparent marionette named Justin Timberlake. RIP and thanks.

Dick Grasso. The man in charge of the New York Stock Exchange while it was the scene of numerous high-dollar accounting scandals got a $140 million paycheck for his valuable service. The best thing about this story, now a week or so old, is that it is not going away. Perhaps shame still exists as an American concept.

Wesley Clark. Here's a tip, dude. Campaign nowhere except South Carolina, win there, and then argue Howard Dean can't win the election unless he can carry the South. It won't make you president, but it would mess things up for every other Democrat. Come to think of it, here's a second tip. Go back to CNN and lose the presidential delusions.

Hurricane Isabel. "Barreling toward the East Coast," MSNBC declared breathlessly at 11 a.m. Friday. For the record, Isabel is moving at nine miles per hour.

John Ritter. Here's a vote for putting some "Hooperman" episodes on Trio's "Brilliant But Cancelled" series. Never saw it? Not many other people did either. More proof that if GL likes a TV show, it's doomed. RIP and thanks.

Sept. 9
Modern Economics

• Here's one in the what-we-let-companies-get-away-with department. On the average credit card with an average balance of $4,000, if you make only the minimum payment each month, it will take you 25 years to pay off the debt. Is that a help to a cash-strapped consumer or a big help to monster financial companies? You decide.

• WWBT-TV financial commentator Randy Cost on one way to pick stocks. "Make money off companies making money off of you."

***

Okay, reality check. Why is the music industry suing its customers? This cannot be taught at Wharton.

I have always had the right to make myself a copy of "Tom Sawyer" by hand. It's my property, I paid for it, and most likely, paid handsomely for it, too. When did people start allowing intrusions on what they can do with a legal product? Why do the music companies insist they have the right to control distribution infinitely? The only thing they get is first dibs. After that, it's not their property anymore. It's mine. That transaction is over.

The recent legal actions of the record companies against file swappers are not about criminal activity. These moves are about protecting their market share. It's worth remembering there's no constitutional right to profit in the Bill of Rights.

This morning, catching a bit of TV drek called "The View," the hosts were discussing file swappers. "Well, we're all guilty," said Meredith Viera. No, Meredith, we're not. Information wants to be free. It wants to spread. If you want proof of that natural law, I can sum it up in one word -- gossip.

Ideas spread. Books spread. Music spreads. Should Simon & Schuster sue my mom because whenever she buys a book, she passes it along to my sister and me? What about libraries -- think of all the money Barnes and Nobel must be losing.

The creator of a work of art or music or whatever has the right to make some money of that work if he or she so desires. If there are ways to do that outside of traditional corporate constraints, say, by publishing on demand or paid Internet downloads, then that, folks, is what they call a new paradigm.

For years a big company in this town was Ethyl, the people who put lead in gas. Gas is unleaded nowadays, and Ethyl didn't sue me for switching. Ethyl diversified into insurance and other businesses. It survived. So would the record industry. It's just that nowadays, the record industry finds it cheaper to stifle things via the legal system than adapt to a changing marketplace.

For those new to this issue, there's a close connection between music swapping and "pirate" software. For folks who are not new to the issue, save your emails that I'm an idiot -- that I did not buy property, I bought a limited license to use this property in some way.

That's my point entirely. The idea of a license is what's idiotic. It's another example of non-common-sense foisted upon us by the legal class working in concert with entrenched economic and political elites. Toyota doesn't give me a license to use a truck; it sells me a damn truck.

Technology doesn't create criminals. Technology changes the marketplace. As a worker, I have to adapt or die. Big conglomerates need to adapt or die, too.

It's not a complicated issue; it's completely simple. In a democracy, people are supposed to make the laws, not the lawyers lapping at the corporate trough. File swapping isn't bad; file swapping laws are.

-30-
Sept. 8
Ready for some football

My one-time roomie and fellow OU Postie Peter King continues to do fine work for Sports Illustrated. I really appreciate it when he covers his own foibles. Take this item from his latest Monday Morning Quarterback.

4. I think my preseason predictions are off to a fine start. I said the Rams would win the Super Bowl, and they fumbled six times and ran for 40 yards and, well, you know the rest. They lost to the Giants. I predicted Broncos quarterback Jake Plummer would be MVP. He threw three picks in a win over the Cincinnati Kittycats. Raiders TE Teyo Johnson, my co-rookie of the year? Catchless.

For the record, since I'm trying to swear off betting football this year, I see the Titans and the Chiefs in the AFC championship game, and I see the Seahawks against the Giants in the NFC championship. I honestly can't tell you if my Browns will go 10-6 or 6-10, To quote another old OU Postie, Tony Grossi from Monday's Plain Dealer:

Having it decided on the next-to-last play was routine for the Browns, who have seen 20 of the 34 games under coach Butch Davis go down to the final minute. Thirteen of those now have been decided on the last or next-to-last play.

***

• Cultural relevance. I always enjoy this annual list of the different mindsets between college freshmen (born in 1985) and the rest of the world.

• Great legal logic. Sometimes the complicated (for instance, the DMCA) needs something simple to be easily illustrated. So look at how copyright law affects garage door openers.

• Star Trek on Ice. FYI, the creator behind it all belongs to an outfit called "Geeks For Dean."

• Ever heard of Georgy Russell? Hey, why not finance a run for governor by selling thongs?

• If I ever decide to spend money on pictures of naked of women, it would be at victorlindenborn.com. Aside from the fact I've always wanted to do a horizontally scrolling gallery page, I'll always like pretty pictures of pretty women. There's a difference between beauty and porn, and if you don't believe it, compare Lindenborn or DOMAI with www.snotgirls.com.

***

• Souvenir models of "building of disaster." Imagine a desktop paperweight of the shattered Murrah federal building in Oklahoma City or a desktop paperweight of the Unabomber's shack. I assume the artist is trying to make a point; pretty tasteless in my book.

• For those who may not know, I used to work for the Cleveland Plain Dealer way back when. It was the best job I ever had. I tell my friends the Plain Dealer is still very old school, still digging for news. So consider this recent classic from the PD:

The head of a company vying to sell voting machines in Ohio told Republicans in a recent fund-raising letter that he is "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year.". . .O'Dell attended a strategy pow-wow with wealthy Bush benefactors - known as Rangers and Pioneers - at the president's Crawford, Texas, ranch earlier this month. The next week, he penned invitations to a $1,000-a-plate fund-raiser to benefit the Ohio Republican Party's federal campaign fund - partially benefiting Bush - at his mansion in the Columbus suburb of Upper Arlington. The letter went out the day before Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell, also a Republican, was set to qualify Diebold as one of three firms eligible to sell upgraded electronic voting machines to Ohio counties in time for the 2004 election.

• Keeping up with the monopoly: Microsoft apparently tries to steal Burst.com technology. Only one catch: it's protected by 37 patents. What's interesting in this Robert Cringely piece is how Microsoft is now (allegedly) using a sleasy legal trick perfected by Big Tobacco. Consider it an eight on a must-read scale of 10.

• Two items from the Macintosh world. The next supercomputer will be Mac-based, and it will be at Virginia Tech. I sure wish the engineers well on this one.

Secondly, thanks to the Mac Observer, a virus count on Microsoft Word. To save you the trouble of clicking, there are 553 Word viruses for PCs, 26 Word viruses for the old Mac operating system, and zero for Mac OS X.

• Let's score one for useful science. Here's a story on whale farts.

• And finally, I can't say if this is legit, but if so, it's awfully cruel and a lawsuit waiting to happen. Imagine your Japanese tatoo is actually a Japanese obscenity.

-30-

G.L. Marshall is wondering if it's possible to get back into the news business after seven years in the IT world. Actuallly, he's wondering if anybody can find a good job in this economy nowadays.