Lately I've been feeling like a pre-creepy Michael Jackson. You know, the dude with the Afro who could Moonwalk.

The planning and the damage done

Half a century ago, California realized it had created a problem. Through an intensive system of government suburban-automotive subsidies, lawmakers had created an intensely lucrative market for land speculation -- far beyond the traditional cores of California's cities. In the hopes of efficiently channeling rural residents into the city for shopping, cultural activities and employment, they began building an elaborate network of automotive highways.

And, in the hope of building that rural population base, which would come into the city and thereby vitalize both, they extended traditional urban services, such as water and sewer, far beyond the city center.

The result was a love-letter to the God of Unintended Consequences. The highways, instead of funneling people into the cities, became a backwards conduit out of the cities, particularly for middle class and affluent white Americans.

George W. Bush could be the world champion Limbo dancer.

Just when you think that even a snake couldn’t squeeze under such a low bar of expectations, Dubya prances under effortlessly, with plenty of headroom to spare.

Okay, what’s his latest? What could be lower than all that’s gone before -- election-stealing, war crimes, spying on American citizens, advocating torture, etc.?

Well, it was when he clamored for another $180 billion to continue his war on Iraq until he leaves office. Congress, too spineless to cut off funds and end the war, instead tried to authorize $50 billion to fund higher education for Iraq/Afghanistan war veterans -- a sort of G.I. Bill update.

When burned, coal produces three times its own weight in carbon dioxide (CO2) -- making it far dirtier than any other energy source, per unit of usable energy. Carbon dioxide is the main human contributor to global warming, so as more people worry about the future of human civilization in a hothouse world, new coal plants are being canceled across the country.

To protect its enormous investment in land, equipment, politicians and environmental groups, the coal industry has bet its future on an untried technology called "carbon capture and storage" (CCS). The idea is to capture the carbon dioxide emitted by burning coal, compress it into a liquid and bury it a mile below ground, hoping it will stay there forever.

The coal industry's fanciful name for this is "clean coal," a.k.a. carbon sequestration. And even though clean coal does not actually exist anywhere on Earth, the industry has sold the idea so effectively that more than 60 percent of Americans say they favor it.

To gain permission to build new coal plants, the coal and electric power industries are now promising the moon: "This new coal plant will be 'capture-ready.' Just let us build this plant now, and we'll add a CCS unit onto the back end as soon as CCS technology has matured and is affordable."

Reading George Will's June 22 op-ed in the Washington Post "More Prisoners: Less Crime" one would think that he must have moved to Second Life and given up reading the papers. He speaks of a "third ear" to listen for what is not said about criminal justice and then quotes Sen. Barack Obama for talking about the subject where Will claims silence.

He should consider reading the Wall Street Journal, which has had an extensive series on American prisons that presents a picture that contrasts radically with the views that he presents. Of course he should not ignore Mother Jones.

Paraphrasing Stalin, who spoke of a single death as a tragedy but the death of millions as a statistic, when a man commits a crime he bears responsibility, but when a nation imprisons over 2.3 million of its citizens the nation bears responsibility for those millions. These are people and not a statistic.

For more than 100 years, the Local Council of Women (LCW) has held significant control, on the community’s behalf, over Bloomington Hospital. On June 16 it gave up that power to pave the way for a friendly takeover of the hospital by Clarian Health Partners Inc., hopefully to improve local health care.

In return, LCW is supposed to ensure community influence through its appointments to a post-merger board. The events around the recent vote suggest LCW is not yet able to do that but could with increased community participation.

LCW founded, built and ran Bloomington Hospital throughout most of the 20th century. Eventually, the business of health care overtook the caring part, and LCW gradually ceded control to the professionals. In 1988, LCW gave Bloomington Hospital the property it was built on.

With perennial optimism we always anticipate that monsoon season will end and spring will arrive. This year spring was long and chilly but typical of Indiana weather that fluctuates like the wind. We are now, WHAM, smack dab into summer.

We are always impressed with the determination and bravery of the little spring flowers who weather late season ice and snow to bloom in glorious colors. They are awesome to behold but perhaps paled a bit this year in comparison to the determination of the two Democratic presidential candidates. The change to warmer weather was indeed abrupt and not unlike the end of the campaign between Obama and Clinton.

After months of being drenched in rain and the competitive dialogue, debates, not-so-subtle slandering and then pandering to various groups as well as one another, it’s over, and Clinton has literally disappeared from the scene. WHAM again! Makes us wonder what it was really all about anyway. Seems way too coincidental that for the first time ever we had two candidates from the most disenfranchised groups in our culture taking center stage in a run for the highest office.

Two big capitalistic forces are at work to exhaust and impoverish Americans, and both power themselves by exploiting fears they themselves create.

The similarities are remarkable, once you look at them together.

The first of those forces has long been known by the name President Eisenhower gave it: The Military-Industrial Complex.

The second is coming to be recognized for the problem it is, but it needs a name, so I shall here dub it "The Health Scare Industry."

Scott McClellan's memoir What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception continues to make headlines nearly two weeks after the former White House press secretary released his tell-all book about the Bush Administration's efforts to manipulate public opinion on the war in Iraq. No small feat when you consider that two weeks is an eternity in the modern news cycle -- not to mention the fact that there have been a few dramatic developments in the Democratic presidential primary race in recent days.

McClellan's revelations are not simply an indictment of the Bush administration's deceptions. He argues that mainstream media were complicit in selling Bush's war to the American people like so much snake oil. According to McClellan, "The national press corps was probably too deferential to the White House." Further, he argues that by "enabling" the administration's propaganda efforts, the press failed to fulfill its critical role as a watchdog of the powerful.

As with most high-profile news stories these days, this one has generated more heat than light. Not surprisingly, the Republican attack machine has been operating at full throttle to discredit McClellan -- and the press dutifully records all of it. Likewise, journalists and pundits have wagged incessantly about McClellan's motivations, how these revelations might affect the general election, and what all of this might mean for the Bush legacy.

Civitas’ title is also that of a 2005 monograph by James Howard Kunstler. Kunstler’s thesis was simple: as a species we are reluctant to abandon any path we’ve set down, once we’ve made the commitment to set down the path.

And no matter how clear it becomes that the path leads to nowhere.

Indeed, we’ve romanticized the image of the stick-to-it hero who, damn the torpedoes, forges full-speed-ahead. And we’ve demonized those who, once committed to a path, subsequently choose another -- John Kerry wasn’t lionized for keeping his head up and alert, he was criticized for being a “flip-flopper.”

Which is nonsense, of course. The flip-side of staying the course is bullheaded stubbornness. Once, when criticized for changing his position on monetary policy, the great economist John Maynard Keynes shot backl, “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?”

The longest-ever season of the SURVIVOR “reality” show continues, and we Americans are glued to our screens to see who will be eliminated from the island the next time the tribe has spoken.

Being as self-centered and myopic an audience as Americans are, we hardly give a thought to the impression this show is making on another audience:

That is, the rest of the world.

What? All those foreigners are interested in SURVIVOR (also known as our presidential election)?