Memo To George Bush From Bob Dylan

You don't have to be a weatherman to know
which way the wind blows. - Bob Dylan.

According to weather forecasters this has been one of the warmest January ever recorded. I watched Dennis Miller the other night. That right-wing comic, stupidly and clumsily attacked the concept of global warming. Like Bush and Cheney, he's in deep denial but, Dylan, not Dennis, speaks the truth and the signs are everywhere.


February 5, 2006, Park Place, Brooklyn -- Confused flora.

Walking down Park Place in my Brooklyn neighborhood, I see plants popping out of the ground but it's only February 5th! Actually, I already had seen shoots weeks ago in mid January. Of course, some weather forecasters will explain it away: "it's because the the cold air (which morphs around the North Pole during the winter) has stayed on the opposite side of the world." Blah, blah, blah. (Accuweather.com ) That may very well be true. But for quite a few days last month, I was sitting outside my neighborhood coffee shop in a t-shirt, and it was almost summery-warm. Further, and this is not scientific but simply anecdotal observations, it seems that, more often than not, there are many more days with much stronger winds than ever before. As a bicyclist, I know what I feel and I've made a mental note of just how often I have to do battle with those strong winds that keep me from rolling forward.

Then there are those increasingly powerful hurricanes and the disasters they have wrought to cities and towns on our Gulf coast. Truly amazing (or on reflection, not so surprising) that Katrina went virtually unmentioned in Bush's State of the Union address last week (162 out of 5306 words). Five months ago a major American city was destroyed by a category 5 hurricane, then left to hang, ignored, by that compassionate conservative. Guess he wanted us to forget his monumental and callous indifference to Americans in desperate need of help from their government and leaders.


While millions of Americans lost their homes or lives in the devastation wrought by hurricane Katrina, Bush, Nero-like, not only went about business as usual, he played the guitar.

NASA's scientists have been scolded by their 24-year old pipsqueak, Bush-appointed, public relations director, George Deutsch, for publicly discussing their research that confirms global warming. This same self-styled overseer, who has no science background, also sent emails to a NASA contractor who was preparing web presentations about Einstein for middle-school students. According to the NY Times, Deutsch demanded that the word "theory" be added to every mention of the Big Bang.

The Big Bang is "not proven fact; it is opinion," Mr. Deutsch wrote, adding, "It is not NASA's place, nor should it be to make a declaration such as this about the existence of the universe that discounts intelligent design by a creator."

If it weren't so fatally serious for the future of our world, the sight of the Oily President calling for an end to U.S. addiction to oil would be fit for a Saturday Night Live parody. After all, this is the Administration that has tried to drill up the Alaska wilderness, gave the axe to the Kyoto treaty, enacted tax incentives for those who purchased gas-guzzling SUV's, stood by as gasoline prices went through the roof (not to mention Exxon's profits) and whose Vice President dismissed ecological concerns as a "personal virtue" (i.e. nothing the government has to be concerned about).

Day by day, the mediocrity, incompetence, immorality and harmful nature of this Administration exposes itself as the worst in our country's history. Let's hope that change comes quickly and the American people, tearing off the blinders of the corporate-controlled media, send a dispossess notice to the current occupants of the White House and their minions in Congress. It could just be that the answer to this nightmare is blowing in the wind.