The day after John McCain flew to Canada to glorify the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), 73-year-old Rosie Edwards repeatedly laughed about her flood-ravaged home in Martinsville.

"I've cried all I can cry," the grandmother of 55 grand and great-grandchildren said on June 21 in her moldy, now-gutted home of six years. "I've lost everything."

Just across State Road 37, which Republican Gov. Mitch Daniels and his Democratic opponent Jill Long Thompson envision as an extension of the Interstate 69 NAFTA Highway, Bill Bergman likewise chuckled. He became a minor media star after painting "Mitch, Make Me an Offer?" on the side of his home and signed it "I-69 Backer."

"If I don't hear from him soon, it's going to be 'Ditch Mitch' on the roof," said Bergman, who sees I-69 as "part of progress."

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.

When it comes to respect from their constituents, state and national politicians fail miserably in Indiana, according to a poll released June 24 by the Mike Downs Center for Indiana Politics in Fort Wayne.

Poll results also show Republican Gov. Mitch Daniels and November challenger Democrat Jill Long Thompson in a tie if the election were held today.

After three-and-a-half years in office, Daniels received the equivalent of an F on constituent respect, an average of 5.7 on a scale where 10 meant "you have the highest possible respect for the person." Long Thompson averaged 4.8.

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.

Identifying the most astonishing figure in a folder full of state government documents on Combined Sewer Overflows (CSOs) in Hartford City is a daunting task.

For example, the East-Central Indiana community of 7,000 has 17 combined-sewage "overflow points" on four small creeks, according to the Indiana Department of Environmental Management (IDEM). Only Kokomo and Muncie have more, with 30 and 23, respectively.

But, discharge reports from March 2002 indicate that untreated sewage flowed into Little Lick Creek, Moore Prong, Mud Run and Big Lick Creek on 239 occasions in 2001. The combined durations of these releases equaled 58 days of continuous sewage flow a year, 26.75 hours every week.

Still, city, state and federal officials identified Hartford City's CSO pollution as needing remediation 35 years ago.

Anyone who has read a word I've written these past 30-plus years had better be firmly planted if he or she plans on reading any further.

Let me just get it out there. The Barack Obama phenomenon has persuaded me that Americans may be catching on. The nation's Great Black Hope and the national Democratic Party, dare I say it out loud, have given me some hope.

I've not felt this way since the June 1968 morning I sat in my 1962 Chevrolet Impala convertible before school waiting on my girlfriend to emerge from her apartment. It was there, in the Kingston Square parking lot on Indianapolis' east side, that I heard on the radio that Bobby Kennedy had been assassinated.

Coming less than five years after John Kennedy's and two months after Martin Luther King's murders, it was hard to put too much hope into any one individual after that. It didn't seem like the good died young, as the song Abraham, Martin and John said. They died, regardless of their ages.

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)?