Over the last several years as more people, organizations and governments began to take the prospect of global warming and human influenced climate change more seriously there has arisen a kind of 60 cycle background hum over the potential dangers of social unrest, disease, famine and mass movements of populations resulting from such change.

A few days ago while randomly browsing on the web I read an article at the Kansas City Star that sent a quick chill through my bloodstream: "Intelligence director: Worldwide economic crisis top U.S. security threat.

In a piece in this morning's Washington Post titled Torture? Prosecute Us, Too Richard Cohen leads with this:

"The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there." So goes an aphorism that needs to be applied to the current debate over whether those who authorized and used torture should be prosecuted. In the very different country called Sept. 11, 2001, the answer would be a resounding no.

Contrary to what has become the accepted noise, "the world" did not "change" on 9/11. Our laws, our treaties and international agreements as well as our values remained. We did not become a "very different country" on September 12, 2001 despite Mr. Cohen's (and others) claim.

In many ways it is our body of law that binds the past, present and future. The rule of law gives constancy to our "values." Laws may change but the process of change is, and should be reasoned and deliberate, not an impassioned reaction to the events of the day. That kind of reaction to the passions of the moment is the path of the lynch mob.

Last week was exhilarating for Democrats and, judging by the international media, for people all over the planet who have suffered for nearly a decade from the misguided and often criminal policies of George Bush and his terribly inept administration.

The swearing in of Barack Obama and the departure of the Connecticut Cowboy from our public affairs was something long anticipated, and, after our long dark winter, as welcome as the return of springtime and birdsong, at least in these quarters.

The school was "almost completely" segregated because it was located within a good Hail Mary pass of Wright Patterson AFB. I don't remember exactly the reasons but we were told that because the school received federal funds for students who were military dependents that it had to be integrated.

"Integration" was accomplished by the admission of two young Black kids, The boy was named Sam. I remember because we became friends for awhile until the transparent racist displeasure of my little Quaker Grandmother became thick enough to keep him from dropping by. She wasn't ready for a black president.

The girl's name is beyond my atrophied powers of recall. I can see their faces though; both were exceptionally attractive, beautiful in fact, bright, "A" students (National Honor Society), and the son and daughter of Air Force Officers. They weren't related, although they might have passed for brother and sister (to my eyes) and they knew each other from the Air Base (the Air Force at the time wasn't a lot more integrated than my high school).

Their presence among the lower and middle class adolescent white children of factory workers, shopkeepers and lower level bean counting managerial types caused no great stir. There were no serious problems (to my eyes) other than an occasional racist taunt, or snub. Civility towards them was rigorously enforced. The powers that be paddled freely and often back then and the sting of that paddle and its humiliation was seldom sought.

What crime do I have to commit to get sentenced to house arrest at Bernie Madoff's Manhattan apartment.

Bear in mind that I'm not a ruthless guy, I'm no more venal than the average Joe, but in spite of a weak resume I am willing to work at this.

I'm advancing in age more rapidly every day and my social security and veterans pensions are being steadily diminished by inflation, fuel prices, governmental and corporate incompetence and criminality.

This economy, cut backs at the VA, and my disabilities have me scratching for beans in my "golden years," and an extended weekend at Bernie's (say ten years) is just what I need.

I'm not looking for a handout here, I'm willing to work, within limits. I'll pick pockets, defraud innocent people of their money, destroy their lives, their futures and the futures of their heirs. I'm an honest guy, what does it take to get remanded to custody in that Manhattan hellhole?

I won't do violence though, as Muhammad Ali once said of the Vietnamese, "I'll beat 'em" up, but I won't kill 'em.

What do I have to do to get sentenced to Bernie's.

Bob Higgins
Worldwide Sawdust

"Should Bush administration officials be put on trial for crimes such as authorizing torture?"

Bear in mind that I live in a flyover state where many have limited tolerance for carefully parsed, nuanced or constipated prose, preferring instead to "throw it out on the lawn and see if any dogs come up and pee on it."

Ms Marcus says, less pithily and with a bit more ambiguity, that she is:

"just relieved to have this crowd heading out of office and its policies -- on torture, on indefinite detention, on warrantless wiretapping, on overweening executive power -- soon to be inoperative."

I share her delight in the departure of this gang of criminals but I fear that if they do not leave Washington in handcuffs and leg irons aboard a Federal prison bus that the chances of rendering the "policies" stated above "inoperative" are approximately ... zero.

When they weren't whining about Obama being some kind of closet Islamofacist commie they were pontificating about the sanctity of free markets, the evils of big government, the purity of privatization, the miracles of laissez faire capitalism and the horrors of such social tools as unemployment insurance, public welfare programs, food stamps and the minimum wage.

One sight that warms the heart of the average conservative is a long employment line. The vision of hundreds, thousands of job seekers vying for bone crushing, mind numbing labor at spirit crushing wages is a romantic one, the favored fresco on the temple walls of Republicanism.

Photo: Some presidents get high schools named after them, others get highways and bridges. What does George W. Bush get? A sewage plant! Through a brilliant plan hatched in a bar, SF voters may be able to name the Oceanside Water Pollution Plant after our current president, George W., in November. dnguyen

In one of the more asinine posts I have read lately the Wall Street Journal today ran an opinion piece titled "The Treatment of Bush Has Been a Disgrace ," which I recommend to anyone needing a real howler to start the day after the stress and tension of a long and rancorous election season.

Jeffrey Scott Shapiro begins the piece by castigating San Franciscans for naming a  sewage treatment plant after Bush which which calls "one example of the classless disrespect many Americans have shown the president."

I see a more delicious, if malodorous, whimsical irony in the "tribute" than disrespect or cruelty. But that's just me.

He decries Bush's record low approval ratings as if surprised that the public, the world and his own party would run screaming in revulsion from an arrogant and incompetent sociopath who has personally done so much to bring about the death, destruction displacement and impoverishment of so many.

Shapiro's plaintive cry, "What must our enemies be thinking?,"  has an easy answer from this point of view, his enemies appreciate him somewhat less than his "friends."

I voted Friday in Ohio and although at times in my life I have cast an occasional vote for a local Republican candidate, this time I reverted to my roots and voted like an old fashioned straight ticket Democrat. My Grandfathers would both be proud.

It felt good. No, it felt great as if I were striking a blow for freedom.

After eight years of thoroughly corrupt and incompetent government, the unrelieved horror of several nightmarish wars, the near destruction of American constitutional liberties, the

pillage and plunder of our public treasury by wealth bloated plutocrats and oiligarchs, and the almost total loss of our international reputation I just felt safer somehow checking off the "D's."

Note: The cartoon is the logo of the real Joe the Plumber in Amarillo. Send him some business, I'm told that he's an Obama guy. If his website takes off because of all this attention maybe he can switch from actual plumbing to an online plumbing advice column. Bob

The month began with Sarah Palin celebrating her campaign's close identification and long association with "Joe Six Pack," the mythic every man vision of America that he and they dream that they represent.

Then in last night's "debate" came "Joe the Plumber," a guy who claims that he wants to buy a business which "makes" 250k a year and he's worried about Obama's tax policies. Who's next, Joe Bananas, Joe Cool, Joe Mama?

Forgetting for the moment that I have strong suspicions that "Joe the Plumber" is a ringer. Yes, nefarious as it sounds I'm afraid that Joe may be, a not too carefully selected, and poorly rehearsed plant from the McCain camp. He was probably chosen by the same group of desperately drunken political geniuses who trotted out Sarah Palin.

It has been said in some quarters that the "plan" Nixon alluded to, but never spelled out, was a nutty scheme (nutty schemes seem to abound in the halls of power) to have Kissinger convince the Russians that Tricky Dick was just batshit crazy enough to use nuclear weapons if the North Vietnamese would not come to the table and end the war on his terms.

History has shown that Nixon was nuts enough. So was and is, Henry the K, but the Vietnamese, after fighting a collection of Yankees, French, Japanese and Chinese among others, for uncountable hundreds of years weren't impressed with new and improved threats, from new and unimproved enemies.

They had been hardened over the centuries to leave early for work knowing that they might have to bury their dead or rebuild a bridge or two on the way. They would not be cowed by threats of death and destruction; death and destruction was all around them, forever.

What I saw and heard:

Joe Biden was a picture of confidence and self assurance. He took the stage with over three decades of experience in the Senate and his stature as one of the preeminent legislators of the latter half of the twentieth century and a key policy maker in the current one, was inescapable.

For the most part he offered serious and thoughtful answers to the questions which were put to him and presented a solid supportive picture of the Democratic ticket and their intentions in office.

He performed his first major job as vice president admirably if cautiously. Although I saw his anger rise several times when confronted with Palin's distortions of his and Obama's records, and her flatulent cutesiness, he kept it under control. He proved that he belongs in my White House on either position of the ticket.

Sarah Palin, doggone it, what can I say, golly, wasn't she just precious, the way she read talking points and sound bites to the cameras. She was a model of right wing Church Lady womanhood, all lip gloss and sly winks to the camera, and jeepers she was so folksy, reminded me of the time Aunt Martha fell in the privy at the family reunion.

She was the Stepford Vice President. I thought her delivery to be robotic, canned, and obviously drilled into her by rote.

Compared to the calm seriousness and substance of Joe Biden she offered the ultimate pop cultural spam of what modern Republicans pass off as political discourse.

She also pronounces the word nuclear exactly like George Bush: NuKUler. I find that single fact eerily and enormously frightening. Hell, she even cribbed on Ronald Reagan, "Now Joe, there you go again."

Palin could not be a more transparent fraud. In that area she needs no practice; she learned the curtsy and dimples shtick in the beauty pageant business.

I do not want this woman anywhere near my White House. Alaska is not far enough away, maybe we can get her a place on Big Diomede so she can see Russia for the first time.

Bob Higgins
Worldwide Sawdust

I think that single decision shows us who John Sidney III really is, reveals him more clearly than anything I have seen in this or his many previous failed campaigns.

His choice, as far as I have been able to determine, may have been partially forced upon him by the darker forces of neo-conservative Republican politics. The Roves and the Cheney's intend to rule from Mordor long after their official tenures are over in Washington. They need their Bushes, their McCains and Palins.

Forced though the choice may have been, McCain made it with a degree of public glee, of arrogance and cynicism that I have never personally witnessed in presidential politics in my tired old life.

As McCain says, in times of extreme crises like this we should suspend political debate and all this unseemly partisan electioneering and put Wall Street first.

There are a lot of people wearing Gucci shoes and Hermes neckties gathered in the halls of power right now, eagerly waiting for his assistance in the slicing of this historic pie of capitalist opportunity.

McCain, after all, has chips in the game and so do his people, it is important that he, and they, be in on the split. They, who did so much in their tireless, albeit well paid, efforts to deregulate the finance industry deserve to be in on the grim harvest. These are truly historic times.

I have tried to remember, yes, it comes back to me now, Lincoln campaigned against his own Republican party as a National Unionist at the height of the Civil War until he hammered out a deal with Fremont and defeated McClellan, an unenthusiastic Democrat, who he had relieved from command years before. I don't remember Lincoln running home to avoid public political debate.

Wilson ran a bitter campaign against Hughes during the darkest hours of the "war to end all wars,"
when American neutrality and our imminent involvement in Europe was the central issue. Woody did not run home to avoid political debate, he campaigned to victory.

FDR fought serious health problems and a tenacious Republican named Tom Dewey in 1944 amidst the Allied invasion in France and as a prelude to the "Battle of the Bulge." He did not avoid political debate with cynical and self serving calls to "put country first." He solidified his party and beat Dewey's republican ass although the campaign probably hastened his death.

I know John McCain to be a liar of the first order. I know John McCain to be a panderer and a pimp for corporate, religious, and political interests that he believes will assist him on his road to what he mistakenly believes is power. John McCain is "a fraud."

I have read that John McCain was dubbed "Songbird" by his fellow POWs. I now believe that John Sidney McCain is an unconscionable opportunist as well as a political coward. In my book he is "unfit for command."

Bob Higgins
Worldwide Sawdust