The WAWG Blog

I don’t like unauthorized wiretaps for the same reasons I don’t like random drug tests in the work place.

First of all, random drug testing removes from ‘local’ management any requirement to do their job and manage their problem employees by shifting that responsibility to ‘security’ and the random drug test that may or may not occur.  The better way is to train management to recognize employee behavior that is drug related.  Then the local impartial manager goes to human resources (HR) for confirmation of their suspicions.  If HR agrees, then they can authorize a drug test for the employee. 

Second, random drug testing implies everyone is guilty until they prove they are innocent.

Third, is random really random?  Is it applied to all employees or just non management? Is there built in bias?

Fourth, it’s an easy out for local management (i.e. it’s not my job).

I don’t like unauthorized wiretaps for the same reasons I don’t like unauthorized searches by police. Again, there is no oversight by an impartial party.   Again, there is an assumption of guilt by someone in a position of power.   Again, there is possible bias due to other circumstances that have no real bearing on the current situation.  Again, unauthorized is easier than getting authorization.

I don’t like unauthorized wiretaps for the same reasons I don’t like torture.  Again, there is no one but the all powerful accuser.  Again, guilt is assumed by those corrupted by power.  Again, there is bias that is amplified by prison circumstances.  Again, authorization comes easy – it’s done in secret.

I close with a couple of quotes from George Bush when questioned about unauthorized wire taps:

“I swore to uphold the laws. Do I have the legal authority to do this? And the answer is, absolutely.”

“I think I’ve got the authority to move forward. I mean, this is what — and the attorney general was out briefing this morning about why it’s legal to make the decisions I make.”

“This new threat required us to think and act differently. ”

Has the President gotten any impartial input on the issue? Is he assuming guilt from the start? Is there a bias from his heritage and his team? Aren’t his means the easiest way to his ends?

As I have written in other WAWG Blog articles religious fundamentalism is either gaining control over the government or identifying their evil enemies. This article is about fundamentalism’s enemy within. Specifically, their fear of and need to marginalize and subjugate women.

Behind every fundamentalist, there is a fear of change – let’s go back to the good ole’ days. As Jim Hoagland put it in a recent editorial, Fanaticism fills void left by rapid civic changes, “They and their devout followers fight back in their own ways against the spreading vulgarization and secularization of societies that seem tempted to dispense with religion altogether. These are by and large counterrevolutionary movements, out of step with a secularizing march by history that many of them would destroy rather than accept.”

Part of the “secularizing march” is the treatment of women as equals. Fundamentalists need to keep women “in their place”. As Jimmy Carter wrote in “Our Endangered Values, America’s Moral Crisis”, “Women are greatly abused in many countries in the world, and the alleviation of their plight is made less likely by the mandated subservience of women by the Christian fundamentalists.”

Jimmy Carter has become so concerned about the subjugation of women and the prevention of their doing God’s work that, “I decided to sever my ties with a denomination to which I had been loyal during the first seventy years of my life.” He did this because the leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention have been insisting, “that women are disqualified for pastoral ministry because man was first in creation and woman was first to fall into original sin.”

For a little more on where Christian religions stand on women’s role in the church, refer to this Wikipedia article. It provides five groupings of Christian churches based on their inclusion of women in church activities – only one group grants full secular and ecclesiastical roles and privileges to women. The membership of each group is not complete, so how widespread this sexism is in Christianity is not determinable.

During the last forty years, I transitioned from a Young Republican during the Vietnam War to a moderate-to-liberal independent during a time of increasing corruption in the legislative and executive branches of the federal government. In both cases, I had/have a need to work against the concentration of power, but especially now.

Back before the South went Republican, it was the conservative Democrats that ran Texas. So, I became a YR to work against those in power. Now it’s the conservative Republicans that not only control Texas, but soon, will control all three branches of the federal government. So, I started this blog.

Neither political extreme is good for Texas or the country, but the extreme we are headed for this time is a place our founding fathers knew well. They lived in an extreme environment of theocracies and took extreme action to separate the new world from that world. So, what has changed to bring us back so close to where ‘we’ started?

It used to be that both parties had a mix of liberal and conservative members and that mix kept both parties more or less on an even keel and able to work together. Forty years ago, the Republicans had Nelson Rockefellor on the left and Barry Goldwater on the right. The Democrats had Eugene McCarthy on the left and Boll weevils on the right. By 1980 that had changed. Republican became synonymous to conservative and Democrat meant liberal – for the most part. But what is taking us back to the really good ole’ days is that the Republican conservatives are being controlled by the evangelical/fundamentalist Christians who want to replace our democracy with a theocracy.

Newt Gingrich recently repeated the well known phrase on power and absolute power but he put it in the context of what has been happening to the U. S. Congress, “Big government tends to corrupt. But government with no party willing to limit its growth is absolutely corrupting.”

He went on to say that the founding fathers were well aware of this power issue and “so they wrote a constitution designed to produce effective, strong, but limited government.”

Todays situation has been enabled by the U.S. Congress since they wrote the laws that allowed this to happen. Mr. Gingrich explains it like this, “Lobbyists attend fund raisers for incumbents, so incumbents can create campaign war chests that convince challengers not to run thus freeing up incumbents to spend more time at Washington fund raisers. And with their reelections on the line and their lobbyists friends to keep happy, House and Senate members find it impossible to say no to special interests. So they keep spending, bloating the government with pet projects and special deals, which in turn attracts more money into lobbying and interest groups. … The simple, but not necessarily, easy way out of the current troubles begins with shrinking the size of the federal government. As long as government is this big, spends this much, and is this powerful, no law or regulation can hold back the tide of corrupting influences.”

He concludes with, “The wisdom of the founders is more relevant today than ever. Big government tends to corrupt and bipartisan big government corrupts absolutely.”

You can listen to his entire commentary via the NPR link below.

Americans’ distrust of major U. S. institutions like medicine, universities, corporations, government, the media, and even religious organizations has grown over the years. However, distrust of religious leaders has been far less than the others. In fact it appears evangelicals are gaining control and have used their distrust of others to identify and abuse their enemies.

Between 1958 and 2004, trust in the government has gone from 73 percent to 47 percent for those who felt they trusted the government “just about always” or “most of the time”.

Click image for better view

More on Voter Demographics

On December 9, 2005, the New York Times published an article titled “Take Your Best Shot; New Surveys Show That Big Business Has a P.R. Problem.” Here is a quote from a reprint of this article:

“It is not clear whether such views will bring significant change, but it is clear that the disaffection is spreading. In a Roper poll conducted from July 28 to Aug. 10, 72 percent of respondents felt that wrongdoing was widespread in industry; last year, 66 percent felt that was the case.

Only 2 percent checked off ‘very trustworthy’ to describe the chief executives of very large companies, down from 3 percent last year. And only 9 percent said they had full trust in financial services institutions, down from 14 percent last year.

Nor do Americans expect much help from Washington: 90 percent of respondents to a Harris poll, conducted Nov. 8-13, said big companies had too much influence on government, up from 83 percent last year.

Business is certainly not the only big institution viewed with suspicion. Recent surveys by the Pew Research Center show that a growing number of Americans believe that government is inefficient. And 68 percent of the respondents to the Harris Poll said the news media were too powerful, while 43 percent said unions were too strong. About 35 percent felt even religious leaders had too much power.”

In September of 2004, a Reuters/DecisionQuest Poll stated, “A nationwide poll found more than 61 percent of Americans report losing trust in leaders and institutions over the last four years in the wake of election recount, war, and corporate scandals. ”

The table below is from page 256 of “The Untied [sic] States of America, Polarization, Fracturing, and Our Future,” by Juan Enriquez, published in 2005.

	Three Decades Ago	End of the 1990s
Government	75%	25%
Medicine	73%	29%
Universities	61%	30%
Major Corporations	55%	21%
Journalism (press)	29%	24%

On the next page the book also states that there is a growing lack of trust of one another, “Four decades ago, 58% of Americans believed ‘most people could be trusted.’ In 2003, only 35% did.”

Even our neighbors to the north have trust issues. In May of 2005, a CBC report stated, “When it comes to religious leaders, 40 per cent said they had little or no confidence. That’s down three percentage points from 2004.” However, note that at 40%, religion is still ranked higher than the institutions listed in the table above.

A 2004 study by DecisionQuest also shows that individuals still hold their religious leaders in higher esteem than other political, media, and corporate leaders. This is shown in the table below in response to the following question, “If you were a juror in a trial where each of the following was giving testimony, on a scale of 0 to 10 with zero being no trust at all and 10 being total trust, how much would you trust the testimony of this witness?” Religious leaders were ranked below firefighter, doctor, police officer, small business owner, and a military leader. Those ranked less were politicians, media, and corporate leaders.

However, note the timing and context of the 2004 survey: “This study was designed to explore how Americans’ trust in leaders and institutions has been impacted by the events and scandals of the last four years. Among the events examined were the 2000 election controversy, white-collar crime scandals, sexual abuse allegations against the clergy, the Abu Graib prisoner abuse reports, and several others.” With the reference to the sexual abuse allegation against the clergy, isn’t this primarily applicable to the Catholic church? How would religious leaders rank on the above survey question for just those that consider themselves evangelical/fundamentalist?

Click on image for larger view.

Maybe the responses to another DecisionQuest survey question can shed some light on how the rankings above might have changed if only fundamentalists had been surveyed. The question was, “As a result of events in the last four years, the church sex abuse scandals, the white collar crime scandals like Enron and Martha Stewart, the controversy over the 2000 presidential election, and the Iraq prison abuse scandals, do you trust the following groups and individuals more, the same, or less?” The table below shows the responses.

Click on image for larger view.

On the one hand President Bush ranked second behind corporate leaders in terms of lost trust. However, he also had a 22.2 percent increase in trust – ten fold greater than the corporate leaders. Might this gain come from the Protestant fundamentalists?

Another study by The Pew Research Center, seems to validate this support for President Bush by the Protestant fundamentalists as they gain control over the future of the U.S.

The following chart from the Pew Research study shows that Republicans are quite happy with the leaders in the nations’ capitol. More importantly, it shows that the difference between the Republicans and Democrats (the evil enemy) has grown significantly from an average of 12 percentage points to over 27. But who are these happy Republicans?

The next table shows how strongly participants in the Pew Research study “affirmed the importance of prayer, belief in Judgment Day and strong belief in God…” As you can see, it is the conservative Republicans that are so happy with the leadership in Washington, D.C. But where do these conservative happy Republicans fall in the sphere of religion?

As you can see from the next chart from the study, they are heavily evangelical or Protestant Fundamentalists and they probably believe they are in control.

What does this mean for those that are distrusted by the fundamentalists who have far more trust in religious leaders and political leaders that wear their religion on their sleeve?

Before answering this question, we need an understanding of what a true fundamentalist is. One list of the characteristics of a fundamentalist can be found on pages 34-35 of Jimmy Carter’s latest book, “Our Endangered Values – America’s Morale Crisis.” I have paraphrased his words below and included [personal comments]:

Most fundamentalist movements require authoritarian males for leaders. These males consider themselves superior to others [They can never admit to mistakes.], are committed to subjugating women [But may not feel comfortable enough yet to say so.] , and dominate their followers [Group Think is required for all members of the inner circle of followers].

Fundamentalists, as conservatives, prefer living in the ‘good ole’ days, but will use both historical self-beneficial religious beliefs and modern technology to promote their agenda.

Fundamentalists take great care in identifying those that are in awe of their leader and those that are ignorant and evil. [Naturally, you must, by definition, distrust the ignorant and evil enemy.]

Fundamentalists are militant and will use both verbal and physical abuse against those who oppose their agenda. [Consider all the verbal abuse coming from the conservative radio talk shows, Pat Robertson, mass mailings and internet emails, and Fox News.]

Fundamentalists suffer from tunnel vision and isolate themselves from their enemies [They only meet with supporters and avoid press conferences]. They demagogue emotional issues, and consider change, cooperation, negotiation, or any effort to resolve differences between his beliefs and those of the enemy as signs of weakness.

So, what does the fundamentalist control of the United States mean for the institutions and individuals that do not agree with them? It means federal funding is taken from those on the enemy list and given to those in the inner circle. It means the enemy is labeled over and over as evil or at least as liberal. It means verbal abuse will become physical abuse and physical abuse will spread from terrorists to other enemies. It means evil liberal ‘activist’ judges will be replaced with conservative ‘activist’ judges. It also means subjugation of women will increase, increased world violence based on our decision for preemptive war, and the standard for human rights has been lowered worldwide by our lead. It means, do something before it’s too late.

Let me conclude with a few quotes from Juan Enriquez’s book, “The Untied[sic] States of America,” referred to earlier in this article.

“As trust in legislators, presidents, and courts erodes, few leaders maintain the personal and institutional legitimacy required to resolve increasingly bitter disputes. So, staying in power becomes a matter of building and maintaining a fundamentalist base.

The U.S., in turn, becomes increasingly polarized by religion-politics-race-class; issues like abortion, right to die, flag burning, and gay marriage further stir the pot.

Political parties reinforce these divisions, exploiting and promoting lack of trust in and hatred in others. (Paul Krugman argues that the 2004 election was about keeping America safe from married gay terrorists.

Words such as change, openness, foreigner, and compromise become dirty words. Moderates are increasingly reviled by all sides. [Boy am I in trouble]

In April 2005, the senate majority leader joined Christian conservatives in a series of national telecasts. They denounced Democrats as opponents of ‘people of faith.’ Meanwhile, Delay argued the judiciary is to liberal and hostile to Christianity.

If this was merely a problem of leadership, or politics, or big business, it would not be a fatal flaw.

It is when people, when communities, stop trusting each other that there is a real problem.”

For more on fundamentalism in America, visit American Fundamentalists by Joel Pelletier.

Whoppers, whether told by presidents of countries or companies, survive only with the help of the profit oriented media.

Most who believe George Bush’s version of the Osama satellite phone story, revived recenlty to justify unchecked spying, also still believe Ronald Reagan’s story about the Cadillac driving, multiple husband, lack of values, welfare queen, which the media gladly repeated with little question. According to Franklin D. Gilliam, “How we come to understand the world around us, according to Walter Lippmann, is a function of the ‘pictures in our heads.’ Lippmann hypothesized that the news media plays a critical role in the formation of these images. In the three-quarters of a century since the publication of Lippmann’s ‘Public Opinion,’ a wealth of scholarly literature has supported his original formulation.”

In 2003, The Washington Monthly, provided The Mendacity Index which rated the current and past three presidents on their abilities to tell “whoppers.” I guess telling whoppers and manipulating a pliable media has become a key part of the job description for the President of the United States.

For a summary of the facts behind Bin Laden’s use and disposal of his satellite phone, review File the Bin Laden Phone Leak Under ‘Urban Myths’

There has been plenty of news recently about the federal Patriot Act and its potential for violating our civil rights and expanding the options for identifying candidates for the terrorist watch list. However, there is state legislation in the final stages of approval that is even more Orwellian.

Guess what state this is happening in. Hint: it’s a four letter word starting with the letter “O”.

In March of 2005, the Ohio Senate passed the the initial version of the Ohio Patriot Act, SB9, by a vote of 32 to 0. The Poor Mojo Newswire listed some of the law’s “features”:

“For example, the bill would prevent a person whose driver’s license has been suspended to be reinstated if there is an active arrest warrant for that person.
The bill would require individuals and businesses applying for state licenses to answer six questions about whether they have provided aid to people or groups on the federal government’s terrorist-exclusion list.
Applicants would not get licenses if they answer ‘yes’ to any of the questions, unless they have not intentionally provided support within the last 10 years and the state Department of Public Safety determines they are not likely to do so.”

On December 14, 2005, the Ohio General Assembly passed an ammended version of SB9 by a vote of 69 to 23. It is now waiting on Ohio Governor Taft.

On December 19, 2005, NewsNet5.com reported, “The Ohio Patriot Act has made it to the Taft’s desk, and with the stroke of a pen, it would most likely become the toughest terrorism bill in the country. The lengthy piece of legislation would let police arrest people in public places who will not give their names, address and birth dates, even if they are not doing anything wrong.”

10 problems with SB9. Here is a summary:

Current laws are sufficient.

Amendments have not fixed the problems.

The issues surrounding the federal Patriot Act provide another example of what not to do.

More bureaucracy does not keep us safer.

We are getting too close to a “show me your papers” society. (I wonder if anyone considered issuing all state residents an arm band that says’ Non Patriot’ until they can prove to the state they aren’t.)

It violates the 5th amendment of the US Constitution, protection against self incrimination.

Duplicates crimes already listed in other laws.

Immigrants could be treated as terrorists.

Political dissent would be punished.

The public won’t be informed of potential dangers – (oh boy, more secrets.)

Secrets are sometimes necessary. However, when they are used to hide corruption and there are efforts to keep the public from finding out about the corruption, then the public needs to know and those who are trying to hide it should be put on trial for violating existing laws. The following quotes are part of a speech given by Bill Moyers on December 9, 2005, at George Washington University describing a disturbing cabal that started after the resignation of President Nixon and continues today in the Bush administration with some of the same saboteurs.

As Mr. Moyers reports, secrecy in his career dates back to 1964 and the Gulf of Tonkin, when President Johnson used a purported “second attack” on American destroyers to justify a strike on North Vietnam and escalated the Vietnam conflict to the next level: “Consider the recent disclosures about what happened in the Gulf of Tonkin in 1964. These documents, now four decades old, seem to confirm that there was no second attack on U.S. ships on the 4th of August and that President Johnson ordered retaliatory air strikes against North Vietnam on the basis of intelligence that either had been ‘mishandled’ or ‘misinterpreted’ or had been deliberately skewed by subordinates to provide him the excuse he was looking for to attack North Vietnam.”

This revelation comes forty years after the fact thanks to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). This act was signed into law by President Johnson on July 4, 1966: “I [Bill Moyers] was there, as the White House press secretary, when President Lyndon Johnson signed the act on July 4, 1966; signed it with language that was almost lyrical — ‘With a deep sense of pride that the United States is an open society in which the people’s right to know is cherished and guarded.’ ”

Bill goes on to say, “The country suffers not only when presidents act hastily in secret, but when the press goes along. … I am taking your time with all this hoping you will understand why I have become something of a fundamentalist on the First Amendment protection of an independent press, a press that will resist the seductions, persuasions, and intimidations of people who hold great power — over life and death, war and peace, taxes, the fate of the environment — and would exercise it undisturbed, in great secrecy, if they are allowed.”

Now what about the present? Mr. Moyers says,

“It has to be said: there has been nothing in our time like the Bush Administration’s obsession with secrecy. This may seem self-serving coming from someone who worked for two previous presidents who were no paragons of openness. But I am only one of legions who have reached this conclusion. See the recent pair of articles by the independent journalist, Michael Massing, in The New York Review of Books. He concludes, ‘The Bush Administration has restricted access to public documents as no other before it.’ And he backs this up with evidence. For example, a recent report on government secrecy by the watchdog group, OpenTheGovernment.org, says the Feds classified a record 15.6 million new documents in fiscal year 2004, an increase of 81% over the year before the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. What’s more, 64% of Federal Advisory Committee meetings in 2004 were completely closed to the public. No wonder the public knows so little about how this administration has deliberately ignored or distorted reputable scientific research to advance its political agenda and the wishes of its corporate patrons. I’m talking about the suppression of that EPA report questioning aspects of the White House Clear Skies Act; research censorship at the departments of health and human services, interior and agriculture; the elimination of qualified scientists from advisory committees on kids and lead poisoning, reproductive health, and drug abuse; the distortion of scientific knowledge on emergency contraception; the manipulation of the scientific process involving the Endangered Species Act; and the internal sabotage of government scientific reports on global warming.

It’s an old story: the greater the secrecy, the deeper the corruption.”

This kind of secrecy needs protection and protection requires collusion. The FOIA needs to be shackled before more recent secrets are revealed. In fact the first attempts to do this were initiated after President Nixon’s secrets were revealed and he had to resign: “This enmity toward FOIA springs from deep roots in their extended official family. Just read your own National Security Archive briefing book #142, edited by Dan Lopez, Tom Blanton, Meredith Fuchs, and Barbara Elias. It is a compelling story of how in 1974 President Gerald Ford’s chief of staff — one Donald Rumsfeld — and his deputy chief of staff — one Dick Cheney — talked the President out of signing amendments that would have put stronger teeth in the Freedom of Information Act. As members of the House of Representatives, Congressman Rumsfeld actually co-sponsored the Act and as a Congressman, Ford voted for it. But then Richard Nixon was sent scuttling from the White House in disgrace after the secrets of Watergate came spilling out. Rumsfeld and Cheney wanted no more embarrassing revelations of their party’s abuse of power; and they were assisted in their arguments by yet another rising Republican star, Antonin Scalia, then a top lawyer at the Justice Department.”

But back to protection and collusion of the secrets of the current administration. Mr. Moyers goes on to say,

“Fast forward to 2001, when in the early months of George W. Bush’s Administration, Vice President Cheney invited the tycoons of oil, gas, and coal to the White House to divide up the spoils of victory. They had, after all, contributed millions of dollars to the cause, and as Cheney would later say of tax cuts for the fraternity of elites who had financed the campaign, they deserved their payoff. But to keep the plunder from disgusting the public, the identities of the participants in the meetings were kept secret. The liberal Sierra Club and the conservative Judicial Watch filed suit to open this insider trading to public scrutiny.

But after losing in the lower court, the White House asked the Supreme Court to intervene. Lo and behold, hardly had Justice Scalia returned from a duck hunting trip with the Vice President — the blind leading the blind to the blind — than the Supreme Court upheld the White House privilege to keep secret the names of those corporate predators who came to slice the pie. “

Of course the Bush Administration had to help Tom Delay,

“It’s no surprise that the White House doesn’t want reporters roaming the halls of justice. The Washington Post reports that two years ago six Justice Department attorneys and two analysts wrote a memo stating unequivocally that the Texas Congressional redistricting plan concocted by Tom DeLay violated the Voting Rights Act. Those career professional civil servants were overruled by senior officials, Bush’s political appointees, who went ahead and approved the plan anyway.

We’re only finding this out now because someone leaked the memo. According to the Post, the document was kept under tight wraps and ‘lawyers who worked on the case were subjected to an unusual gag rule.’ Why? Because it is a devastating account of how DeLay allegedly helped launder corporate money to elect a Texas Legislature that then shuffled Congressional districts to add five new Republican members of the House, nailing down control of Congress for the radical right and their corporate pals.”

But even with secrecy and collusion to keep the secrets secret, shouldn’t the media be interested in exposing it. Of course they should, but as Mr. Moyers points out,

“Yet the press is hobbled today — hobbled by the vicissitudes of Wall Street investors who demand greater and greater profit margins at the expense of more investment in reporting (look at what’s going on with Knight-Ridder.) Layoffs are hitting papers all across the country. Just last week, the Long Island daily Newsday, of which I was once publisher, cut 72 jobs and eliminated 40 vacancies — that’s in addition to 59 newsroom jobs eliminated the previous month. There are fewer editors and reporters with less time, resources and freedom to burn shoe leather and midnight oil, make endless phone calls, and knock on doors in pursuit of the unreported story.

The press is also hobbled by the intimidation from ideological bullies in the propaganda wing of the Republican Party who hector, demonize, and lie about journalists who ask hard questions of this regime.

Hobbled, too, by what Ken Silverstein, The Los Angeles Times investigative reporter, calls ‘spurious balance,’ kowtowing to those with the loudest voice or the most august title who demand that when it comes to reporting, lies must be treated as the equivalent of truth; that covering the news, including the official press release, has greater priority than uncovering the news.”

Mr. Moyers then gets into the details of the secrets and collusion behind the attempts to control public broadcasting and how it attempted to hobble another part of the media. He concludes with, “I have shared this sordid little story with you because it is a cautionary tale about the regime in power. If they were so determined to go with all guns blazing at a single broadcast of public television that is simply doing the job journalism is supposed to do — setting the record straight — you can imagine the pressure that has been applied to mainstream media. And you can understand what’s at stake when journalism gets the message and pulls its punches. We saw it once again when Ahmed Chalabi was in town. This is the man who played a key and sinister role in fostering both media and intelligence reports that misled the American people about weapons of mass destruction. Although still under investigation by the FBI, Chalabi has maneuvered himself into the position of Deputy Prime Minister of Iraq. He came to Washington recently to schmooze with the President and to meet with the armchair warriors of the neoconservative crowd who had helped him spin the case for going to war. The old Houdini was back, rolling the beltway press who treated him with deference that might have been accorded George Washington. Watching him knock one soft pitch after another over the wall, I was reminded that the greatest moments in the history of the press have come not when journalists made common cause with power but when they stood fearlessly independent of it. This was not one of them.”

I can.

Snoopgate!

In the above article, Newsweek columnist Jonathan Alter reported, ” I learned this week that on December 6, Bush summoned Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger and executive editor Bill Keller to the Oval Office in a futile attempt to talk them out of running the story. The Times will not comment on the meeting, but one can only imagine the president’s desperation.”

Mr. Alter concluded with, “In the meantime, it is unlikely that Bush will echo President Kennedy in 1961. After JFK managed to tone down a New York Times story by Tad Szulc on the Bay of Pigs invasion, he confided to Times editor Turner Catledge that he wished the paper had printed the whole story because it might have spared him such a stunning defeat in Cuba.”

Regards,

Jim

In Warnings from Katrina and Rita?, I provided a chart that plots the number of named storms over time for the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico.   This chart was created by a coworker from various internet data sources and goes back to the mid 1800s.  Â The article points out that hurricanes get their energy from the warming oceans.  

This article briefly covers one of the reasons the oceans are warming:  The sea ice at the North Pole is shrinking and more of the sun’s energy is being absorbed by the Arctic Ocean.

According to an article in a recent issue of Popular Science magazine, not yet available on the internet, there has been a loss of 500,000 square miles of sea ice since 1979 as measured at the height of summer when the sea ice shrinks to its annual minimum.  Â This loss is equivalent to the size of Alaska and can easily be seen in the two satellite photos below.

8/31/1979

Click on the image for a full view.

8/31/2005

Click on the image for a full view.

The chart below shows that there is a trend toward further sea ice reductions, more warming of the oceans, and more hurricanes.

For more on what has been happening with the sea ice at the North Pole, check out  The Cryosphere Today