Remember "Groundhog Day," with Bill Murray? He played a TV weatherman, doomed to live the same day, Groundhog Day, over and over again. As this odd summer slowly winds down, I feel a bit like Murray. I've been here before.

             Take the tunnel in Iraq, already filled with military and intelligence analysts by the hundreds reporting that there's light somewhere up ahead. Here, for example, is Anthony Cordesman, of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, and on his better days, nobody's fool.

             On Washington's carousel, Cordesman is a prominent fixture. The Center is the prime Republican think tank on K Street, where an elevator ride can confront you with museum pieces stretching all the way back to Reagan's first National Security Council adviser, Richard Allen. Cordesman has held down big jobs in the Defense and Energy departments, has served as Senator John McCain's national security assistant and strides confidently before the cameras whenever ABC News summons him for analysis and commentary.

             Last Dec. 3, from all his dignity as the Arleigh Burke Chair at

Dark eyes and vague pronouncements,
a catalogue of mistrust
in his eyes like the cloudy sense
that time moves but life stalls,
that his whole moment
in the long history of existence is
no longer than the lifespan
of some unnamed insect,
he could never remember which, hated
biology and the sciences, though
they kept returning, coming back
into his life, mind, invading
his conscience with pitchforks and shovels and clubs,
angry villagers making their revolt
against the dictatorship
of his expectations, rousing his
mistrust and alienation, rebels roused
from their apathy with a jolt,
and his stare so empty of
any sense that he has anything
worthwhile to keep living for,
but having no stomach for action,
a desire, yes, a readiness to
end it all, but no ability
to really snuff it out, no mind
for guns or blades or pills or gas,
but still waiting, hating,
waiting for something, anything,
to bring the curtain down.

If you run a lootocracy, you have no conception of sufficiency. You set up the rules to grab as much money as you can, as if you've won a supermarket shopping spree. You also concentrate power, the better to arrange the world for your benefit. Unchecked by modesty, satiety, or shame, you take all you can get away with. You loot until someone stops you.

The word lootocracy was originally coined to describe the corrupt cartels that have ruled and plundered countries like Nigeria, Kenya, and some of the former Soviet Republics. But with an amazingly small amount of national debate, George Bush is installing a more global and sophisticated version-one where those on top can do whatever they choose without the slightest constraints. Bush began his presidency by giving the wealthiest five percent of all Americans massive tax breaks of $75 billion a year. He paid for them in part by cutting child abuse prevention, community policing, Americorps, low-income childcare, health care, housing, and even support for military families. This spring he passed another round of cuts, $35 billion a year targeted overwhelmingly to the same lucky lootocrats.

George W. Bush has officially told the people of New York City that as far as he's concerned, they can drop dead. And thanks to his lies, many of them will.

With his latest attack on the Clean Air Act he's said the same to millions more.

Bush has used the 9/11 "trifecta" to build his popularity, fund the military and tear up the Bill of Rights. But the GOP's cynical uses of the tragedy have gone to a new level.

The White House directly interfered with planned Environmental Protection Agency warnings about the toxic fallout from the World Trade Center explosions. It had "competing considerations" that came before protecting the health of the people of New York. Among them were re-opening the stock exchange as quickly as possible, and limiting clean-up costs and liability claims.

Because of Bush's lies, thousands of Americans will suffer cancers, emphysema, heart attack, stroke, birth defects, stillbirths, sterility, eye/ear/nose/throat disease and much more.

There have been few toxic events to match the explosions that pulverized the

Just saw Wasserman on Fox News.  What an idiot!!  To suggest that  putting solar panels on every building would somehow mitigate the type of blackout caused by the upset in the ancient  northeast power grid is just absurd.   What a jerk!! Crawl back under the rug Harvey.   Nobody want s to hear your stupid ranting.

G.L. Gunderman
Florence, Alabama