super duper dome

Mission Accomplished! Highlights of the game looked like a TV commercial for incumbents in Congress who are running for office this November. I'm not surprised that repairing the Superdome was a top priority, and worth every penny of the $170 million that FEMA paid to get this rush job done on schedule.

If a category 4 or 5 hurricane hits New Orleans next year, will the levees provide greater protection than they did last year? Or will the same disaster happen all over again? Michelle Roberts of the Associated Press says "some of the most substantial work planned on the levee system won't be done for the next couple of years."

Why entrust the job of building a flood control system to the Army Corps of Engineers? Their incompetence has already been proven. The U.S. government needs to reassess its priorities.

take a librarian to lunch

Yes, it's Banned Books Week. Those subversive deviants at the American Library Association have been observing this event since 1982.

just a thought

Does Bush really want the United Nations to impose sanctions on Iran before the U.S. elections on November 8? Sanctions would likely cause the price of gasoline to skyrocket.

quite a coincidence

The price of gasoline at the pump in the U.S. is going down, down, down. This couldn't hurt the incumbents in November. They need all the help they can get.

news industry manufactures consent

If you're wondering why the U.S. "news industry" behaves the way it does, read Manufacturing Consent by Nobelist Noam Chomsky.

rotten district?

While watching the boob tube on Labor Day, I caught a CBS Evening News story titled Probing Earmark Ethics.

A transcript of the story is available at CBS.com--the transcript says "After a long summer recess, Congress returns to Washington Tuesday and House Republican leaders say they'll clamp down on secretly requested funding projects known as earmarks. But CBS News chief investigative correspondent Armen Keteyian reveals why some members of the House may be reluctant to end something that has turned routine pork barrel politics into personal profit."

Riverside, California Rep. Ken Calvert is mentioned a bit later in the story.

"Take California Congressman Ken Calvert."

Take my Congressman, please. I've lived in Riverside for seventeen years.

"In July 2005, he took credit for $8 million in improvements to an exit ramp--an earmark, he proclaimed, would streamline access to a local military base."

That would be March Field--an Air Force Reserve base.

"What Calvert didn't disclose was just two months earlier, he bought land about a mile from the base. Public records reveal that within a year, Calvert and a partner sold the land at a profit of $435,000."

Did he pervert ethics--if not the letter of the law?

"Calvert denies any wrongdoing, saying the earmark was for the benefit of his district and not himself."

He'll probably be re-elected in November. But I predict that he'll be very lonely in the next term of Congress.