Why am I not surprised?

Via Americablog comes this little tidbit that won't be reported in the media:

The Keystone XL pipeline, awaiting a thumbs up or down on a presidential permit, would increase the import of heavy oil from Canada's oil sands to the U.S. by as much as 510,000 barrels a day, if it gets built.



Proponents tout it as a boon to national security that would reduce America's dependence on oil from unfriendly regimes. Opponents say it would magnify an environmental nightmare at great cost and provide only the illusion of national benefit.



What's been left out of the ferocious debate over the pipeline, however, is the prospect that if president Obama allows a permit for the Keystone XL to be granted, he would be handing a big victory and great financial opportunity to Charles and David Koch, his bitterest political enemies and among the most powerful opponents of his clean economy agenda.

Because maybe if he shovels a couple more billion dollars into the Koch brothers' pockets they'll be nice to him.



There is no longer anything this President can do to convince me he represents me one tiny iota.

But the only stories deemed newsworthy by our media are Anthony Weiner's weiner and Dead White Child

The other day the lead stories on Good Morning America were:

1) Anthony Weiner's weiner
2) Candy Spelling's mansion
3) The Casey Anthony trial

So now the media and the Democrats have gotten the scalp they wanted and Anthony Weiner has resigned...but last night Chris Matthews insisted on devoting most of his show to this faux "scandal" anyway. At least now we know that the whole thing was just because the media's sole reason for being is becuase they like to make dick jokes. Maybe Trey Parker and Matt Stone really ARE America's greatest humorists after all. So if Mr. Weiner expects the whole thing to go away now that he's capitulated and left Congress, he'd better guess again. Because nothing gets in the way of print and broadcast media people with the sexual maturit of a nine-year-old and their weiner jokes.

But in the news that is actual news and ISN'T being covered, there's this:

A fire in Nebraska's Fort Calhoun nuclear power plant briefly knocked out the cooling process for spent nuclear fuel rods, ProPublica reports.

The fire occurred on June 7th, and knocked out cooling for approximately 90 minutes. After 88 hours, the cooling pool would boil dry and highly radioactive materials would be exposed.

On June 6th, the Federal Administration Aviation (FAA) issued a directive banning aircraft from entering the airspace within a two-mile radius of the plant.

"No pilots may operate an aircraft in the areas covered by this NOTAM," referring to the "notice to airmen," effective immediately.

Since last week, the plant has been under a "notification of unusual event" classification, becausing of the rising Missouri River. That is the lowest level of emergency alert.

The OPPD claims the FAA closed airspace over the plant because of the Missouri River flooding. But the FAA ban specifically lists the Fort Calhoun Nuclear Power Plant as the location for the flight ban.

The plant is adjacent to the now-flooding river, about 20 minutes outside downtown Omaha, and has been closed since April for refueling.

WOWT, the local NBC affiliate, reports on its website:

"The Ft. Calhoun Nuclear Facility is an island right now but it is one that authorities say is going to stay dry. They say they have a number of redundant features to protect the facility from flood waters that include the aqua dam, earthen berms and sandbags."

OPPD spokesman Jeff Hanson told Business Insider that the nuclear plant is in a "stable situation." He said the Missouri River is currently at 1005.6" above sea level, and that no radioactive fuel had yet been released or was expected to be released in the future.

Asked about the FAA flight ban, Hanson it was due to high power lines and "security reasons that we can't reveal." He said the flight ban remains in effect.

Sandbags and berms -- and a wing and a prayer. That is a nuclear plant right here at home. Oh, and by the way, you haven't heard a peep about the Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan, lately, have you? After all, what is a nuclear plant meltdown in terms of newsworthiness compared to a Congressman's salacious tweets? But here's what's going on there, in news the media refuses to cover because they'd so much rather just titillate:

Gov't to designate new evacuation spots near Fukushima plant


Tech companies to begin cleaning water at Japan nuclear plants (Sorry, but I just don't buy that nuclear waste can be turned into glass and that we won't see it in food containers in a store near you.)

Radiation "hotspots" hinder Japan response to nuclear crisis

Radioactive caesium found in whales

Greenpeace finds radioactive sea life off Japan

But hey...Anthony Weiner sent naked photos!

FUBAR.

Not a surprise, but a shock nonetheless:

The Japanese government's nuclear safety agency has decided to raise the crisis level of the Fukushima Daiichi power plant accident from 5 to 7, the worst on the international scale.

The Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency made the decision on Monday. It says the damaged facilities have been releasing a massive amount of radioactive substances, which are posing a threat to human health and the environment over a wide area.

The agency used the International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale, or INES, to gauge the level. The scale was designed by an international group of experts to indicate the significance of nuclear events with ratings of 0 to 7.

On March 18th, one week after the massive quake, the agency declared the Fukushima trouble a level 5 incident, the same as the accident at Three Mile Island in the United States in 1979.

Level 7 has formerly only been applied to the Chernobyl accident in the former Soviet Union in 1986 when hundreds of thousands of terabecquerels of radioactive iodine-131 were released into the air. One terabecquerel is one trillion becquerels.

I have colleagues in Osaka. The distance from Osaka to Fukushima as the crow flies is 332.18 miles. That's a little less than the distance from my house to Richmond, Virginia.

I may never fly anywhere again

When I first started going to visit my sister in North Carolina, I flew on 737 jets. Then American Airlines started flying smaller regional jets into Raleigh-Durham. Now you can't even get a regional jet into there; instead you get a prop plane that we now know after the Buffalo crash of 2009, is probably piloted by someone making less in salary than your average manager of a Dunkin' Donuts.

Last time I went, I flew USAir into Charlotte, rented a car, and then drove the 2-1/2 hours to Chapel Hill -- anything to fly an actual 737 jet piloted by a Real Pilot.

Except now those 737 jets may be suspect too:

Federal aviation authorities said on Monday that they would order airlines to inspect some early Boeing 737 models after Southwest Airlines found subsurface cracks in three aircraft during checks that were conducted after a five-foot hole ripped through the roof of a 737-300 jetliner on Friday.

The Federal Aviation Administration said that it would issue an emergency directive on Tuesday requiring inspections for fatigue damage. The action would initially apply to about 175 aircraft worldwide, 80 of which are registered in the United States, and mostly operated by Southwest Airlines.

“Safety is our No. 1 priority,” the Transportation secretary, Ray LaHood, said in a statement. “Last Friday’s incident was very serious and could result in additional action depending on the outcome of the investigation.”

The statement came shortly after Boeing said it was preparing a service bulletin that would recommend “lap-joint” inspections on certain 737-300’s as well as the 737-400 and 737-500 models.

Friday’s incident unfolded at nearly 35,000 feet with the sound of an explosion during a flight involving a 15-year-old Boeing 737-300 carrying 118 passengers from Phoenix to Sacramento. Some passengers reported feeling dizzy during the swift loss of cabin pressure. Oxygen masks were released and at least two people passed out as the pilot guided the plane to an emergency landing at Yuma Marine Corps Air Station in Arizona. No one was seriously injured.

The F.A.A. directive would require initial inspections using electromagnetic, or eddy-current, technology in specific areas of the aircraft fuselage on Boeing 737 aircraft in the -300, -400 and -500 series that have accumulated more than 30,000 flight cycles — one takeoff and one landing. It would then require repetitive inspections at regular intervals.

I already refuse to fly Southwest because I have no desire to be kicked off a plane and publicly humiliated for Flying While Wearing a Size 16. But what assurances do we have that USAir's, or any other airline's 737s are in any better condition?

Amtrak, here I come. Or perhaps even Greyhound.

This about sums it up.

Well, he should just lose height then

You didn't read that wrong. The title of this post does say "height", not "weight".

It was one thing when you could just shrug and say an overweight airline passenger should just go on a diet. But perhaps when a passenger is too tall to fit his legs in the space allotted between rows, can we please just acknowledge that when airlines are trying to cram ever-more passengers on a plane, no adult in even the normal range of sizes is denied even basic comfort?

When Brooks Anderson boarded a Spirit Airlines flight from Chicago to Ft. Myer's, Fla., to spend Christmas with his family, he said he didn't expect to be standing for the next two-and-a-half hours.

"I was in an aisle seat and I clearly didn't fit into the seat at all," he said. "I couldn't even stuff myself in there."

The 25-year-old is 6'7" and as he tried to squeeze his knees under his chin, his tall frame proved to be too big to fit into Spirit's tiny coach seat.

"This is the most crammed I've been by far," Anderson said.

Even though he was in the last row of the plane, Anderson said the flight attendants wouldn't let him stick his knees out into the aisle, so he was forced to sit with them jammed into the metal tray table on the seat in front of him.

"It's incredibly painful," he said.

Anderson said he asked to be moved to an exit row seat, which typically has more legroom.

"The stewardess and I talked before the takeoff," he said. "She asked if anyone in the emergency row would switch spots with me [but] came back and said, 'You're stuck'."

Brooks Anderson stands at 6'7" and is shown here with his grandparents.

When none of the other passengers offered to help, Anderson said he decided to take matters into his own hands and asked if he could stand for the flight.

"I said, 'I need to do something about this, is it O.K. if I stand after the seatbelt sign is turned off?,'" he said. "She said it was O.K."

It got to the point where if the attendent wouldn't let him stand, Anderson said he seriously considered getting off the plane and missing the flight altogether.

"If I had to sit in my seat the whole time, I would have been in physical pain, with metal jamming into my knee caps for the whole flight," Anderson explained.

He then spent the remainder of the flight "dodging people going to and from the bathroom."

"It's like being in a subway car for two-and-a-half hours, which is awful," he said, adding that there was luckily no turbulence during the flight.

"It's bizarre," said Anderson's mother, Katie Anderson. "This was the first time he's been treated like this."

One could argue that if you're flying Spirit, you know that what you're getting is to be crammed into a sardine can. But other airlines aren't significantly better. Standing on a crowded subway train for a half-hour at rush hour is gruesome enough. But you paid two-and-a-half bucks for that ride. To pay hundreds of dollars (after including fees and taxes) to fly, and then be told that you have to stand if you don't want your legs crushed, means it's time to speak to the airline industry in the only language it understands: money. Just stay home. Now that there's Skype, you can have face-to-face conversations with your relatives that way.

Unsafe at any size

Last week I flew a US Airways 737 to Charlotte, NC even though I was headed to Chapel Hill. I didn't want to fly direct because the only airline flying direct to Raleigh-Durham from Newark was Continental Express through its regional affiliate, ExpressJet. After the January 2009 Buffalo crash of a Continental Express plane, after which we learned that pilots for regional airlines have less experience, work crushing schedules, and are paid peanuts, I didn't want to trust my life to one of these regionals.

Instead, I dealt with a too-fast approach and landing, a ridiculous line at the Avis/Budget rental car counter, and a cancelled return flight.

But at least the planes I were on did not spring holes at 31,000 feet:

It's harrowing enough when a commercial airliner mistakenly announces an emergency landing over water -- or, for that matter, when air passengers capture footage of an actual emergency landing on their cell phones. But passengers on a recent American Airlines flight from Miami to Boston experienced a much more vivid sense of airborne peril when a 2-foot hole opened up in the plane's fuselage about 30 minutes after takeoff.

The Boeing 757 was cruising at 31,000 feet Tuesday when the cabin began to decompress rapidly -- a "super-terrifying" experience, a passenger told WSVN-TV in Miami. The flight was carrying 154 passengers and six crew members.

But soon enough, the crew established emergency procedures: The passengers donned the oxygen masks that drop down when cabin pressure decreases, and the pilots were able to reverse the flight and land the damaged plane safely at Miami International Airport.

"The crew declared an emergency and made a normal landing. There were no injuries," American Airlines said in a rather terse statement. "The aircraft has been taken out of service."

Once the plane was on the ground, inspectors discovered the problem -- not that it was exactly easy to miss. A 2-foot-by-1-foot hole had opened just above the "A" of the logo near the plane's front left cabin door. Initial reports indicate that the plane probably took off with a smaller crack in the fuselage -- and that wind pressure caused it to expand after the jet's takeoff. However, investigators say that they have yet to isolate the precise cause of the hole. Both the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board are investigating.

As mistermix notes, we're told that being bombarded with radiation by semi-skilled TSA workers every time we get on a plane is necessary for our safety in the air, but we're also being told that businesses, including the airline industry, are so burdened with regulation we can't even institute the kind of regulations that would make airlines take unsafe planes out of service. After all, it's easier to just deal with the lawsuits if hundreds of people die because too-old planes or planes serviced by outsourced, non-FAA-certified mechanics, are not taken out of service when they are no longer safe. The airlines are allowed to do financial cost/benefit analysis with YOUR LIFE.

Tomorrow I'm getting on a plane. It's a 737. Hopefully it won't fall apart in midair. But show the above-lined article to your friends who are tempted to vote Teabag on Tuesday and tell them that this is what Teabag America is going to look like.

Welcome, TBoggers

That's "TBoggers", not "Teabaggers". Welcome to all who came over here from the Great and Wondrous Land of TBogg. I'm just back from out of town so I need to catch up, but I'd guess that the country is just as FUBAR as it was last Thursday. But now I have to finish cleaning up the 128-oz bottle of Wisk that spilled all over the basement laundry room floor.

MIssion Accomplished

No, not the U.S. mission in Iraq, or even the one in Afghanistan. The only mission that's been accomplished is the one by Osama Bin Laden and others like him to bring a once-great nation to its knees. And I'm glad someone with the stature of Ted Koppel had the guts to say it:

America's war on terrorism is widely perceived throughout Pakistan as a war on Islam. A muscular Islamic fundamentalism is gaining ground there and threatening the stability of the government, upon which we depend to guarantee the security of those nuclear weapons. Since a robust U.S. military presence in Pakistan is untenable for the government in Islamabad, however, tens of thousands of U.S. troops are likely to remain parked next door in Afghanistan for some time.

Perhaps bin Laden foresaw some of these outcomes when he launched his 9/11 operation from Taliban-secured bases in Afghanistan. Since nations targeted by terrorist groups routinely abandon some of their cherished principles, he may also have foreseen something along the lines of Abu Ghraib, "black sites," extraordinary rendition and even the prison at Guantanamo Bay. But in these and many other developments, bin Laden needed our unwitting collaboration, and we have provided it -- more than $1 trillion spent on two wars, more than 5,000 of our troops killed, tens of thousands of Iraqis and Afghans dead. Our military is so overstretched that defense contracting -- for everything from interrogation to security to the gathering of intelligence -- is one of our few growth industries.

We have raced to Afghanistan and Iraq, and more recently to Yemen and Somalia; we have created a swollen national security apparatus; and we are so absorbed in our own fury and so oblivious to our enemy's intentions that we inflate the building of an Islamic center in Lower Manhattan into a national debate and watch, helpless, while a minister in Florida outrages even our friends in the Islamic world by threatening to burn copies of the Koran.

If bin Laden did not foresee all this, then he quickly came to understand it. In a 2004 video message, he boasted about leading America on the path to self-destruction. "All we have to do is send two mujaheddin . . . to raise a small piece of cloth on which is written 'al-Qaeda' in order to make the generals race there, to cause America to suffer human, economic and political losses."

Through the initial spending of a few hundred thousand dollars, training and then sacrificing 19 of his foot soldiers, bin Laden has watched his relatively tiny and all but anonymous organization of a few hundred zealots turn into the most recognized international franchise since McDonald's. Could any enemy of the United States have achieved more with less?

Fear Nation

I wonder: If the news about Park51 had broken in, say, February of LAST year, would it have become as big a story? I doubt it. With Jan Brewer showing the entire country just what "catch the immigrants" looks like in real life, Republicans needed a new scapegoat to keep Americans afraid enough to give them back the keys to the car -- and Park51 gives them the perfect scapegoat: Muslims. Even when the underwear bomber was apprehended we didn't see anything like this. There's been no new attack, no new threats, just the right whipping up a frenzy of anti-Muslim sentiment -- because it tends to work for them. Rachel went over the fearmongering in detail on last night's show (video to come shortly), but our status as a Nation of Fear didn't start with a community center planned in lower Manhattan. It's been going on for nine years, and as we head into the ninth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, I think we ought to take a look at ourselves and see just how much nineteen guys with box cutters succeeded in bringing a once-great nation to its knees, willing to sacrifice everything it stands for in order to achieve an illusion -- a delusion, if you will -- of safety.

The latest tactic in the whack-a-mole of anti-terrorism arose after the Attempted Underwear Bombing of 2009 in the form of full-body screening machines replacing the hodgepodge of metal detectors and pat-downs at airport security checkpoints. If you are going to fly out of many airports now, you must submit to a dose of radiation as a prerequisite -- or suffer the consequences:

f you somehow missed the hoopla, there are two types of machines being installed, which have raised concerns about privacy, health risks and even their effectiveness at catching terrorists. The more controversial “backscatter” devices project an X-ray beam onto the body, creating an image displayed on a monitor viewed by a T.S.A. employee in another room. The “millimeter wave” machines, which are considered less risky because they do not use X-rays, bounce electromagnetic waves off the body to produce a similar image.

Unlike metal detectors, these machines can detect objects made with other materials, like plastic and ceramic. But they can’t see anything hidden inside your body, or detect certain explosives.

[snip]

The T.S.A. claims that the machines have been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Devices and Radiological Health, the Commerce Department’s National Institute for Standards and Technology and the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. But when I called these organizations to ask about their evaluations, I learned that they basically tested only one thing — whether the amount of radiation emitted meets guidelines established by the American National Standards Institute, a membership organization of companies and government agencies.

But guess who was on the committee that developed the guidelines for the X-ray scanners? Representatives from the companies that make the machines and the Department of Homeland Security, among others. In other words, the machines passed a test developed, in part, by the companies that manufacture them and the government agency that wants to use them.

[snip]

Mr. Kimball said passengers can choose not to go through the scanner and opt for the metal detector and a pat down instead, information that is also on the T.S.A.’s Web site. But the message travelers are getting at the airport isn’t that clear.

“It definitely didn’t feel optional at all,” said Drew Hjelm, an Army veteran who recently encountered the X-ray machine at O’Hare Airport in Chicago. After asking to go through the metal detector, being turned down and even speaking with a supervisor, he was given other choices.

“The officer said, either you go through the body scanner or you leave the airport or we’re going to call the police and they’re going to come and arrest you,” Mr. Hjelm said. “After I went through the body scanner, they still patted my pants down.”

Since other passengers have said they weren’t given a choice, or were subjected to an aggressive pat down if they declined to be X-rayed, the Electronic Privacy Information Center has created an online form for travelers to report problems.

The advocacy group has also filed a motion in court to suspend the body scanner program, saying that it violates the Fourth Amendment (and other statutes) by imposing search procedures that are more intrusive than the courts have allowed for routine screening.

So this is what flying is now -- exposure to radiation by machines that have only been tested by people with a vested interest, automatic suspicion if you refuse to expose yourself to such radiation, and abuse by TSA personnel.

All in the same of quote-safety-end-quote -- safety that is, like the principles we used to stand for, only an illusion.

Nine years ago, Osama Bin Laden succeeded to a degree he could not even imagine. So when you observe the anniversary of the attacks tomorrow, by all means mourn the dead. But also mourn something else that died that day -- our very nation.

(Oh, and just as an aside -- these machines would NOT have detected the explosives carried by the so-called "underwear bomber".)

We were right all along

Remember when we marched in the streets of New York City in early 2003, over a half-million of us that no one called a movement, chanting "No blood for oil!"? They said we were wrong. They said it was about a constantly-changing stream of excuses to go to war in Iraq. Rachel Maddow, whose microphone was cut off right in the middle of it, had a devastating commentary on the wreckage of America's reputation as a result of the Bush/Cheney lies. I'll post the video in the morning if it's up. But it turns out we were right all along. I posted earlier this week about how Halliburton and Shell oil had been given the rights to develop the Iraq oil field. And now the parade truly begins:

But as the troops move out, the oil companies are moving in. According to a July report from the U.S. government’s Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, oil production in Iraq is currently about 2.4 million barrels per day. The goal, by 2017 is to produce 12 million barrels per day. That’s quite a leap, especially since average production levels have held steady for more than two years. It’s going to a take a lot of investment to expand production by 10 million barrels per day.

How much? That’s anybody’s guess. For example, in January, ExxonMobil signed an agreement to redevelop and expand an oil field in southern Iraq. A company spokeswoman says that “total field capital expenditure will depend on full project scope,” which is currently being examined.

There’s a pile of oil money pouring into Iraq right now. Since last year, the Iraqi government has awarded 11 development deals to various consortia. BP and China National Petroleum Corp. are developing the enormous Rumaila field, which has a total proven reserves of about 18 billion barrels. Other companies winning awards include Royal Dutch Shell (working with ExxonMobil on one project and Malaysia’s Petronas on another), France’s Total SpA, Angola’s Sonangol, Italy’s Eni SpA, Russia’s Lukoil and China National Offshore Oil Corp. The signature bonuses to be paid by the consortia are anywhere from $100 million to $500 million.

More investment is on the way. Iraq’s oil ministry is planning to build four new refineries that will nearly double the country’s refining capacity. Oil services firms like Weatherford International and Schlumberger are expanding their operations in the country. Earlier this month Halliburton won a deal to drill 15 wells in the Basra province in southern Iraq, though the financial terms have not been disclosed.

If development goes as planned, rebuilding Iraq’s oil sector could be a highly profitable investment for these companies over the long-term. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, Iraq has the third largest proven oil reserves in the world (after Saudia Arabia and Canada). In 2008, oil exports accounted for nearly 90% of the country’s revenues.

Go take a look at "Faces of the Fallen" over at Washington Post. Go look at those faces of sons, brothers, lovers, husbands, fathers, wives, sisters, and friends whose blood was spilled because the Bush family not only regards the entire country as their own little fiefdom to be plundered for the benefit of themselves and their friends, they regard the entire WORLD as their own little fiefdom to be plundered for the benefit of themselves and their friends.

These young Americans died so that Dick Cheney can stuff more cash into his pocket in an attempt to fill the black hole that he has inside him where most of us have souls. These young Americans died so that George W. Bush could finally feel like a man. These young Americans died so that oil executives everywhere could buy a few more Maseratis, another mansion, more diamonds for their trophy wives.

We honor the service of these young Americans. We grieve their deaths, and we will carry the burden of our responsibility for them the rest of our lives. These young people trusted their country and they trusted their government. These young people loved their country. They believed in their country. And their country betrayed them. And no amount of revisionist history is ever, ever going to change that.

We should feel no joy tonight; no sense of relief that it's finally over. Because it will never be over. There are still 50,000 American soldiers in Iraq, and tens of thousands more in Afghanistan, trapped in an effort run by aging men who refuse to accept, even after the lessons of Vietnam, that some wars cannot be won and should not be fought. We do this over and over and over and over again. As long as there are small, mean little men who think that sending other people's children to fight somehow makes them bigger, as long as we give these mean little men the power to do so, we are going to be trapped right along with them.

Oh, and in case you want to know what the bottom line of it all is? Here you go.

Oh, and President Obama? Your party is still going to get its ass kicked in November anyway.

UPDATE: Rachel:

Rachel and Richard Engel:

Sometimes the jokes just write themselves

Note where the purveyor of literally rotten eggs is located (emphasis and linkitude mine):

Hundreds of people have been sickened in a salmonella outbreak linked to eggs in four states and possibly more, health officials said Wednesday as a company dramatically expanded a recall to 380 million eggs.

[snip]

Initially, 228 million eggs, or the equivalent of 19 million dozen-egg cartons, were recalled by the Wright County Egg company of Galt, Iowa, but that number was increased to nearly 32 million dozen-egg cartons.

I'll be here all week. Don't forget to tip your waitress.

Do you really think this is by accident?

The evisceration of the middle class started during the Nixon years, but the process really started to accelerate with the inauguration of Ronald Reagan, a man who slipped the shiv into the guts of the middle class, smiling affably all the way, so that said middle class didn't even know it was being disemboweled. Since then, as Republicans have appealed to the reptilian brain that has responded to a bunch of rich guys saying "Look DOWN the ladder! Look at that Black guy/Latino woman with 5 kids/Muslim/[fill in your own group down the socioeconomic ladder here]! S/HE is the one causing your problems!" -- while all the while lifting the last two dollars out of the middle class' pocket while their backs were turned. And now the nefarious plan has almost completely succeeded:

Once upon a time, the United States had the largest and most prosperous middle class in the history of the world, but now that is changing at a blinding pace.

So why are we witnessing such fundamental changes? Well, the globalism and "free trade" that our politicians and business leaders insisted would be so good for us have had some rather nasty side effects. It turns out that they didn't tell us that the "global economy" would mean that middle class American workers would eventually have to directly compete for jobs with people on the other side of the world where there is no minimum wage and very few regulations. The big global corporations have greatly benefited by exploiting third world labor pools over the last several decades, but middle class American workers have increasingly found things to be very tough.

Here are the statistics to prove it:

• 83 percent of all U.S. stocks are in the hands of 1 percent of the people.
  
• 61 percent of Americans "always or usually" live paycheck to paycheck,
  which was up from 49 percent in 2008 and 43 percent in 2007.
  
• 66 percent of the income growth between 2001 and 2007 went to the top 1% of all Americans.
  
• 36 percent of Americans say that they don't contribute anything to retirement savings.
  
• A staggering 43 percent of Americans have less than $10,000 saved up for retirement.
  
• 24 percent of American workers say that they have postponed their planned retirement age in the past year.
  
• Over 1.4 million Americans filed for personal bankruptcy in 2009, which represented a 32 percent increase over 2008.
  
• Only the top 5 percent of U.S. households have earned enough additional
  income to match the rise in housing costs since 1975.
  
• For the first time in U.S. history, banks own a greater share of residential
  housing net worth in the United States than all individual Americans put together.
  
• In 1950, the ratio of the average executive's paycheck to the average worker's paycheck was about 30 to 1. Since the year 2000, that ratio has exploded to between 300 to 500 to one.
  
• As of 2007, the bottom 80 percent of American households held about 7% of the liquid financial assets.
  
• The bottom 50 percent of income earners in the United States now collectively own less than 1 percent of the nation’s wealth.
  
• Average Wall Street bonuses for 2009 were up 17 percent when compared with 2008.
  
• In the United States, the average federal worker now earns 60% MORE than the average worker in the private sector.
  
• The top 1 percent of U.S. households own nearly twice as much of America's corporate wealth as they did just 15 years ago.
  
• In America today, the average time needed to find a job has risen to a record 35.2 weeks.
  
• More than 40 percent of Americans who actually are employed are now working in service jobs, which are often very low paying.
  
• For the first time in U.S. history, more than 40 million Americans are on
  food stamps, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture projects that number will go up to 43 million Americans in 2011.
  
• This is what American workers now must compete against: in China a garment worker
  makes approximately 86 cents an hour and in Cambodia a garment worker makes approximately 22 cents an hour.
  
• Approximately 21 percent of all children in the United States are living below the poverty line in 2010 - the highest rate in 20 years.
  

[snip]

The reality is that no matter how smart, how strong, how educated or how hard working American workers are, they just cannot compete with people who are desperate to put in 10 to 12 hour days at less than a dollar an hour on the other side of the world. After all, what corporation in their right mind is going to pay an American worker 10 times more (plus benefits) to do the same job?

And THAT is what is really going on in America. It isn't desperate Mexicans crossing the border. It isn't lazy, shiftless black people -- or lazy, shiftless white people for that matter. It is a systematic effort that has been developed by our own government, in thrall to wads of corporate cash, to eliminate the middle class -- a middle class created by the New Deal and the G.I. Bill and the Great Society. The problem is that a middle class that has a full belly and a roof over its head tends to do things like unionize, and ask for fair wages and benefits and safe working conditions -- things that are antithetical to the greedy corporate mindset. A desperate population is one that will enlist in the military to fight wars concocted out of lies. A desperate population is one that will work in a sweatshop for pennies. A desperate population is one that will train its replacements before being laid off because it doesn't know when its next paycheck may come. A desperate population is one that is too busy scrambling for the scraps left under the table by the wealthy who are stuffed to the gills with caviar fois gras and Ferraris and 40-room mansions.

And that is also why Dick Armey and other corporate shills founded the Tea Party groups. Because they need to channel that anger into scapegoating of those at the bottom of the ladder. Because when a desperate population looks to the top, well, just ask Louis XVI.

Why do the Founding Fathers curse the Mets from beyond the grave?

As any longtime Mets fan (or Mets victim, if you prefer) knows, July 4 weekend is fraught with peril. Yesterday's game was no exception, and today's promised to be no better. Saturday's game saw the Mets facing the hapless Washington Nationals -- and Stephen Strasburg, the 6'4" hype-machine phenom.

I don't know what it is with the Mets and the Nationals. Even when the Mets are great (and this year they still only qualify as "pretty good at times"), the still can't seem to figure out one of the worst teams in baseball. They can take two out of three from the Yankees, and then lose two out of three to The Team Formerly Known As The Montreal Expos. I'd say it's a question of concentration, but yesterday saw one great infield play by David Wright, aggressive baserunning, an ability to lay off enough Stephen Strasburg fastballs to make the young phenom look like Nuke Laloosh after five innings, scratching out a few runs on almost no hits, a great outing by the crafty pickup-off-the-scrap-heap R.A. Dickey, and what should have been a satisfying 5-3 win.

Until Frankie Rodriguez came to the mound in the 9th.

I remember when there was such a thing as a closer. I remember when Jesse Orosco was good enough that if he came out, you could turn the game off and go get dinner. I remember when Randy Myers would come out and you could turn the game off and go to bed, confident that the game was in good hands. Those days are long gone. It all started with "Heart Attack Johnny" Franco, and it's been downhill ever since.

They call him "K-Rod", as if giving him a moniker similar to the third baseman in the Bronx will somehow turn him into a similar kind of machine. But with now five heartbreaking blown saves this year, one wonders how anyone could think he's a stopper, and where one can find the factory that produced Mariano Rivera -- the real stopper across town who at 40 shows no signs that he's ready to relinquish the role.

It must be something about 4th of July weekend. I can hardly bear to watch today.

But of course I have to, because today is the fourteenth anniversary of the greatest, looniest, craziest Mets game ever played. And remember, this is the team that took sixteen innings to take the pennant against the Houston Astros and Bob Knepper in 1986 and went on to take the World Series the day after Bill Buckner entered the same Hall Of No Fame as Ralph Branca. It was The Infamous July 4 Game Against Atlanta.

Mr. Brilliant and I had gone into the city for the Macy's fireworks, and then to get something to eat with friends. We came home, watched a few extra innings, and fell asleep, only to wake up around 3 AM to hear broadcaster Steve Zabriskie say, "If you're just tuning in now, write in and tell us why." Of course we stayed up to watch the rest of it, and sure enough, there were fireworks after the game ended. At 4:00 AM.

But what I remember most about that game is this, described brilliantly last year by Chris Jaffe, who called that game "MLB's greatest game ever":

In the 17th inning, home plate umpire Terry Tata ejected Met star Darryl Strawberry and manager Davey Johnson for arguing a called third strike. When asked about it after the game, Tata responded with the words later engraved at the Tomb of the Unknown Umpire: "At three o'clock in the morning, there are no bad calls."

Next inning, a light appeared at the end of the tunnel. The Mets capitalized on Brave reliever Rick Camp's throwing a would-be double play ball into the outfield, and scored the go-ahead run for an 11-10 lead.

Atlanta had the bottom of their order due up. The hitters looked as weary as they must have felt. In a handful of pitches, the first two batters each feebly grounded out. At 3:30 a.m, the Braves were down to their last man; not only was it the pitcher's slot in the order, but they had no more position players left to pinch hit.

Thus Rick Camp strode to the plate, representing Atlanta's last and least hope. Even for a pitcher, he was never much of a hitter in his decade-long career. A few years earlier he'd gone 1-for-41 on the season. Now a reliever, he rarely even hit. This would be his eighth plate appearance on the year, and he hadn't had a hit all season. As he faced Tom Gormon at 3:30 a.m. on what was now July 5, 1985, his lifetime batting average was .060.

Gorman, now in his sixth inning of work, saw no need to mess around with Camp. He quickly got two quick strikes on the hapless "hitter." Brave fans still in attendance—and one truly had to be a fan to stay in attendance this late through all that rain and time—could at least console themselves that it had been a hard fought battle, even if Atlanta was doomed before the better team.

Ah, but here is where the game became something for the ages. Part of the appeal of sports is that you never know what will happen next. What has just happened and what ought to happen merely serve as indicators for what could and should happen, not what will. The next moment was so ridiculous, that it defied all logic and a damn good chunk of all illogic. An ape on a typewriter would have a better chance typing out the complete works of William Shakespeare by sheer happenstance than a repetition of this at-bat.

When Gorman threw his third pitch, Camp went for broke on the 0-2, two-out offering and took a mighty swing. Crack! He made contact, and the ball floated out past the infield, into the outfield, beyond the wall and to the stunned horror of the Mets, landed in the bullpen for a game-tying home run. The Met outfielder in pursuit was so shocked he fell to his knees and grabbed his head with his hands. The fans were ecstatic, as well they should be, for if any fans deserved to see something great, it was the small band still in the stadium. Suffice it to say, it was not just Camp's biggest career home run, but it was his only one. The game went on, tied 11-11.

You know the Braves were in trouble when Camp left the dugout to pitch the 19th inning. Fresh from his first and last homer, he had an unstoppably huge grin on his face. Upshot: he was not in the best frame of mind to pitch. In the space of three singles, a double, and two intentional walks, the Mets had a 16-11 lead, putting the game away.

Or was it out of reach? As difficult as it might be to top a five-run lead in the 19th inning, that would be nothing compared to what happened in Atlanta's previous turn at the bat. The Mets weren't leaving anything to chance, putting in star starter Ron Darling to pitch.

By all rights, it should've been an easy 1-2-3 inning. Two of the first three batters made simple outs. The inning stayed alive because Keith Hernandez, normally a superlative fielder, made an error to put a man on. With two outs, Atlanta went into its surreal clutch mode: two straight walks loaded the bases, and a single scored two runs. 16-13.

Not only that, but incredibly the tying run came to the plate. Again. Surely enough—you could not script it any better—the batter was the very last man on planet Earth the Mets would want to see represent the tying run with two outs in this Twilight Zone of a game. That's right, up there stood the god himself: the man, the myth, the legend, Rick Camp, only now he stood tall with a whopping .065 career batting average. Though the rain had long since stopped, I like to think a dramatic thunderclap occurred when he stood in the batter's box and faced Darling.

Just like last time, Camp fell behind quickly, and he stared down the barrel of a 1-2 count. At 3:55 a.m., Camp was in a perfect position to certify his position as the all-time grand master of the fourth hour of the morning, game-tying homer.

Darling threw his pitch and Camp swung. Somehow, someway, the ball miraculously sneaked past the uber-fearsome batter. Strike three. Game over. Camp, the most disappointed hitter since Mudville cut Casey, slammed down his bat on the plate in frustration. One can only assume in his previous 168 at-bats he had never been nearly so upset by any of the 83 earlier times he'd fanned.

The fans weren't disappointed. How could they be after witnessing a game like that? Even the players in the Brave dugout stood and applauded as the game ended.

However, many others would soon be very upset. You see, like all games scheduled for the Fourth of July, this one advertised a fireworks display. And sure, even though the sky was beginning to lighten, the Braves began exploding their picturesque bombs promptly at 4:01 a.m. The noise woke up many in the neighborhood, causing many frightened souls to call the police, claiming Libya was bombing Atlanta!

In his book "If at First", Keith Hernandez described how the next day, Tom Gorman (I wrote about this in 2006 and erroneously said it was Terry Leach) received a call in his hotel room from a caller who simply said, "Rick Camp? You gotta be shitting me!" -- and promptly hung up. And the player Jaffe refers to was Danny Heep, who last time I saw him at the closing of Shea Stadium looked like he could still play.

July 4. Hot dogs. Baseball. Everything that makes America great. Except that these days, it doesn't feel so great. And watching the Mets reminds us that no matter how well you think you're doing, utter futility is just around the corner.

Oh, just swell.

Just when you think it can't possibly be any worse:

The problem with the April 20 spill is that it isn't really a spill: It‘s a gush, like an underwater oil volcano. A hot column of oil and gas is spurting into freezing, black waters nearly a mile down, where the pressure nears a ton per inch, impossible for divers to endure. Experts call it a continuous, round-the-clock calamity, unlike a leaking tanker, which might empty in hours or days.

[snip]

Accidents have occurred before in which oil has gushed from damaged wells, he said. But he knew of none in water so deep.

And "everything is bigger and more difficult the deeper you go," said Andy Bowen, a research specialist who works with undersea robotics at the Woods Hole center. "Fighting gravity is tough. It increases loads. You need bigger winches, bigger cables, bigger ships."

An analogy, he said, is the difference between construction work on the ground versus at the top of a mile-high skyscraper.

To BP falls the daunting task of trying to stop the gush before it becomes the most damaging spill in American history. If the flow is not stopped, it will exhaust the natural reservoir of oil beneath the sea floor, experts say. Many months, at least, could pass.

And if that happens, all the drill baby drill in the world won't save us.

Yes, but in six months no one will remember that Afghanistan started as Bush's war

Joe Conason does a service by reminding us just why there is still any issue of Afghanistan at all:

It would be much less fair, however, to ignore the events that led us to this moment, when whatever choice he makes will offer no great guarantee of progress and no small prospect of trouble.

Those events began with the inexplicable decision by officials of the previous administration to allow Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri and other ranking leaders of Al Qaeda to escape from Afghanistan to Pakistan in December 2001. At the time, as a new Senate report on the battle of Tora Bora recalls, Donald Rumsfeld, the secretary of defense, and Gen. Tommy Franks, the commander of American forces in Afghanistan, decided not to augment the tiny force of special operations troops on the ground with sufficient force to capture or kill Mr. bin Laden and his deputies. They later claimed to be worried that “too many American troops in Afghanistan would create an anti-American backlash and fuel a widespread insurgency,” a rationale that can only evoke bitter laughter now.

None of the reasons offered back then for inaction at Tora Bora made sense after the outrage of 9/11, when the entire world, including the Afghan people, were cheering the U.S. invasion. The pattern of deception that later led to war in Iraq began with expressions of doubt by both General Franks and Vice President Dick Cheney about Mr. bin Laden’s presence in Tora Bora—a doubt that none of the commanders on the ground shared and that always sounded more like an excuse than an explanation. If there was any chance that the perpetrators of 9/11 could be found in those mountains, then maximum force should have been deployed as rapidly as possible.

What we know now, of course, is that Mr. Cheney, Mr. Rumsfeld, and President Bush himself were distracted from the vital necessity of victory in Afghanistan—which meant not only driving out the Taliban but installing a real government in their place—by their obsession with Iraq. Not only did the Al Qaeda leadership escape, but so did Mullah Omar, the leader of the Taliban, who returned to mount a threatening insurgency two years later, just as the Bush White House and the Pentagon were declaring “mission accomplished” in Baghdad. The resulting neglect of Afghanistan—with all the corruption, disillusionment and anger that has ensued—had reached a critical stage when the Bush administration finally departed. Their own commanders were left behind to warn Mr. Obama that the enemy had gained the upper hand.

It's important to remember this, because it flies in the face of the notion that we had a competent defense team in place to respond to the 9/11 attacks. Because there are only two explanations for what the BushCheney Admininstration did after all their rhetoric about smokin' him out and dead or alive. Either they were so incompetent as to have been unfit for their jobs, or else the tinfoil hatters are right -- and Bin Laden was allowed to escape because he's not the black sheep of his family after all and is therefore connected to the Bush family.

What's it going to be then, eh? Take your time. It's one or the other. Your choice.

But in six months, no one is going to remember this, if they even do now. Nor is anyone going to care. As the flag-draped bodies start coming back in multiples again, and the apologies for massacre of civilians attending a wedding, and soldiers going nuts during their fifth, sixth, seventh and beyond deploymentand opening fire on their own platoons start coming back, no one is going to care that George Bush allowed Osama Bin Laden to escape and turned his back on Afghanistan because he wanted to prove that his penis is bigger than his daddy's. Barack Obama may have inherited this war, but by capitulating to the military/industrial complex and the generals whose very lives are defined by wars, he's made it his own. And if you want to know just how preposterous, how, well, Bushian the "Obama plan" is, look no further than Juan Cole:

Months after the controversial presidential election that many Afghans consider stolen, there is no cabinet, and parliament is threatening to go on recess before confirming a new one because the president is unconstitutionally late in presenting the names. There are grave suspicions that some past and present cabinet members have engaged in the embezzlement of substantial sums of money. There is little parliamentary oversight. Almost no one bothers to attend the parliamentary sessions. The cabinet ministries are unable to spend the money allocated to them on things like education and rural development, and actually spent less in absolute terms last year than they did in the previous two years. Only half of the development projects for which money was allotted were even begun last year, and none was completed.

In other words, we can say of the Afghanistan government what Gertrude Stein said of her inability in later life to find her childhood home in Oakland, Calif.: "There is no there there."

The only thing that changes over the generations is that a new "Big fool says to push on."

The Iranians are not sitting idly by and watching their election be stolen by right-wing thugs

If there is anything good to come out of the debacle that is the election in Iran, it may very well be the sight (which of course you have to find online, because the mainstream media are still all hopped up on the Letterman/Palin foofarah) of Iranian citizens taking to the streets in an attempt to take their country back from election-stealing thugs. Not only does this show that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is NOT the true face of Iran, but it also shows us how you protect your democracy.

Steve Clemons reports on a meeting he had with a well-connected Iranian:

He conveyed to me things that were mostly obvious -- Iran is now a tinderbox. The right is tenaciously consolidating its control over the state and refuses to yield. There is a split among the mullahs and significant dismay with Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. A gaping hole has been ripped open in Iranian society, exposing the contradictions of the regime and everyone now sees that the democracy that they believed that they had in Iranian form is a "charade."

But the scariest point he made to me that I had not heard anywhere else is that this "coup by the right wing" has created pressures that cannot be solved or patted down by the normal institutional arrangements Iran has constructed. The Guardian Council and other power nodes of government can't deal with the current crisis and can't deal with the fact that a civil war has now broken out among Iran's revolutionaries.

My contact predicted serious violence at the highest levels. He said that Ahmadinejad is now genuinely scared of Iranian society and of Mousavi and Rafsanjani. The level of tension between them has gone beyond civil limits -- and my contact said that Ahmadinejad will try to have them imprisoned and killed.

Likewise, he said, Rafsanjani, Khatami, and Mousavi know this -- and thus are using all of the instruments at their control within Iran's government apparatus to fight back -- but given Khamenei's embrace of Ahmadinejad's actions in the election and victory, there is no recourse but to try and remove Khamenei. Some suggest that Rafsanjani will count votes to see if there is a way to formally dislodge Khamenei -- but this source I met said that all of these political giants have resources at their disposal to "do away with" those that get in the way.

He predicted that the so-called reformist camp -- who are not exactly humanists in the Western liberal sense -- may try and animate efforts to decapitate the regime and "do away with" Ahmadinejad and even the Supreme Leader himself.

I am not convinced that this source "knows" these things will definitely happen but am convinced of his credentials and impressed with the seriousness of the discussion we had and his own concern that there may be political killing sprees ahead.

If these predictions come to pass, it would not surprise me if we see U.S. intervention in Iran, but not for the reasons Dick Cheney wanted it. The dilemma for the U.S. is how we respond if the sort of "political cleansing" described above takes place, creating a genocide based on political alliance rather than ethnicity.

Meanwhile, if you want to find out what is going on in the U.S., you have to search the blogs and the international press, because the U.S. press is busy elsewhere. Aside from a photo album of pictures from Iran, MSNBC.com's lead stories as I write this are the political risks of Obama's spending (General Electric can't WAIT for Newt Gingrich to become president) and how the coach of the L.A. Lakers is "on the verge of immortality." CNN's coverage at least has the Iranian election front and center, but follows it with a large-type headline "Are you at Bonnaroo?" Now I'm as interested in Bonnaroo as the next jam band fan, but seriously...does it really matter that much against Iran on the verge of explosion and North Korea threatening nuclear war? The New York Times' web site does have the situation in Tehran as its first headline, but it's overshadowed by a photo of three east Asian young men who have founded a Web site that matches Harvard alumni willing to lend money to cash-strapped students. And over in the belly of the beast, the Faux Noise site, there's a photo with the caption 'NUCLEAR WAR' in the same Impact font used in creating LOLCat pictures. To give the devil his due, at least their two lead-ins are the twin debacles of Iran and North Korea. Things are at a sorry pass indeed when of the largest traffic conventional media sites of the U.S. media, only Fox News seems to have its priorities straight. Of course one of the links gleefully speculates that if Ahmadinejad prevails, that spells a death knell to any idea of "engagement" with Iran, much the way Larry Kudlow was grinning from ear to ear on the night of September 11, 2001, because the attacks meant an end to talk of a Social Security "lockbox."

At least the increasingly tabloidy Huffington Post recognizes the importance of the story.

Overseas, the media situation is less embarrassing. Robert Fisk at U.K. Independent:

First the cop screamed abuse at Mir Hossein Mousavi's supporter, a white-shirted youth with a straggling beard and unkempt hair. Then he smashed his baton into the young man's face. Then he kicked him viciously in the testicles. It was the same all the way down to Vali Asr Square. Riot police in black rubber body armour and black helmets and black riot sticks, most on foot but followed by a flying column of security men, all on brand new, bright red Honda motorcycles, tearing into the shrieking youths – hundreds of them, running for their lives. They did not accept the results of Iran's presidential elections. They did not believe that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had won 62.6 per cent of the votes. And they paid the price.

"Death to the dictator," they were crying on Dr Fatimi Street, now thousands of them shouting abuse at the police. Were they to endure another four years of the smiling, avuncular, ever-so-humble President who swears by democracy while steadily thinning out human freedoms in the Islamic Republic? They were wrong, of course. Ahmadinejad really does love democracy. But he also loves dictatorial order. He is not a dictator. He is a Democrator.

Hmmmmm.....sound like a certain recent former president we know? No wonder Bush hated Ahmadinejad so much. It was like looking in a mirror.

And remember, Cheney wanted a pardon last week for Scooter Libby

Remember Valerie Plame, the CIA NOC operative that the winguts all said was "just a pencil pusher" but who turned out to be investigating trafficking of weapons in and out of Iran? The then Vice President decided it was more important to get petty revenge against Plame's husband, Joseph Wilson, for debunking the Iraq/yellowcake/Niger claim of the Bush Administration than to, uh, KEEP ACTUAL WEAPONS OUT OF THE HANDS OF ROGUE NATIONS.

These are the guys that we were told for eight years were "keeping us safe."

Well, now the chickens unleashed by Cheney's vindictive, petty revenge have come home to roost:

Iran has built up a stockpile of enough enriched uranium for one nuclear bomb, United Nations officials acknowledged on Thursday.

In a development that comes as the Obama administration is drawing up its policy on negotiations with Tehran over its nuclear programme, UN officials said Iran had produced more nuclear material than previously thought.

They said Iran had accumulated more than one tonne of low enriched uranium hexafluoride at a facility in Natanz.

If such a quantity were further enriched it could produce more than 20kg of fissile material – enough for a bomb.

“It appears that Iran has walked right up to the threshold of having enough low enriched uranium to provide enough raw material for a single bomb,” said Peter Zimmerman, a former chief scientist of the US Arms Control and Disarmament Agency

The new figures come in a report from the International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN’s nuclear watchdog, released on Thursday. This revealed that Iran’s production of low enriched uranium had previously been underestimated.

Perhaps if Cheney and Scooter Libby had allowed Valerie Plame to do her job, we wouldn't be in this mess today.

Just something to think about the next time Cheney decides to shoot his mouth off again.

Delusional right to the bitter, bitter end

Microsoft is "seriously exploring significant work force reductions."

Circuit City is liquidating.

AMD is cutting 1100 jobs.

Varian, a maker of scientific equipment, is cutting 240 full time and 80 temporary employees.


Hertz - 4000 jobs. Wellpoint - 1500 jobs.

All told, 40,000 job cuts were announced today.

And what does George W. Bush have to say, as he finishes his Crapapalooza Legacy Tour?

President George W. Bush said Friday that while the current economic crisis has sent shock waves around the world, he believes steps taken by his administration have "laid the groundwork for a return to economic growth and job creation" early in the administration of President-elect Barack Obama.

"The American economy has consistently proven its strength and resilience" Bush wrote in his final economic report to the nation.

He said this resilience has continued despite multiple blows to the economy.

[snip]

"A measure of stability has returned to the financial system," Bush said.

Delusional and self-justifying right to the bitter end. And it is to our eternal shame as a nation that we allowed this man to occupy this office for eight years.

And yet something ELSE the Bush Administration has screwed up

After George W. Bush turns over the keys on January 20 after holding an eight-year-long kegger and wrecking the joint, some far more intrepid soul than I will have to put together a compendium of everything this man has botched during his eight years in office.

I heard about this on Errol Louis' radio show here in New York yesterday and while I wish I could say I couldn't believe it, given this Administration's track record, it just seemed like more par for the course:

Shawn Nguyen bragged that he could sneak anything past airport security using his top-secret clearance as a federal air marshal. And for months, he smuggled cocaine and drug money onto flights across the country, boasting to an FBI informant that he was "the man with the golden badge."

Michael McGowan used his position as an air marshal to lure a young boy to his hotel room, where he showed him child porn, took pictures of him naked and sexually abused him.

And when Brian "Cooter" Phelps wanted his ex-wife to disappear, he called a fellow air marshal and tried to hire a hit man nicknamed "the Crucifixer."

Since 9/11, more than three dozen federal air marshals have been charged with crimes, and hundreds more have been accused of misconduct, an investigation by ProPublica has found. Cases range from drunken driving and domestic violence to aiding a human trafficking ring and trying to smuggle explosives from Afghanistan.

The Federal Air Marshal Service presents the image of an elite undercover force charged with making split-second decisions that could mean the difference between stopping a terrorist and shooting an innocent passenger.

But an examination of police reports, court records, government reports, memos and e-mails shows that 18 air marshals have been charged with felonies, including at least three who were hired despite prior criminal records or being fired from law enforcement jobs. A fourth air marshal was hired while under FBI investigation. Another stayed on the job despite alarming a flight attendant with his behavior.

If you think that having federal air marshals on flights is keeping you safe from terrorst hijackings, you'd better go read the whole thing and guess again.