It shouldn’t just be votes for dogs. Porschy should aim higher. She should run for president herself. She’s qualified. She is smarter than Perry, better informed than Cain (I talk to her a lot about public affairs, and even a casual listener would have an idea what’s going on in Libya.) Unlike Gingrich, she has never orchestrated a government shut-down.

She is not cruel: she has never promoted waterboarding or executing anybody; she is firmly opposed to electrified fences. She would take me to the vet if I needed it without even asking whether I was insured.

Porschy has been consistent and unwavering about these positions. Further, she is popular with pets and pet owners to boot. She has never, ever, put anyone into a dog carrier on a luggage rack (even one with a windshield) during our seasonal trips to the inlaws’ place in L.A.

If the GOP frontrunners were all who were running, I wouldn’t hesitate to form an exploratory committee and set up a Super PAC: Pooches for Prosperity. I’ve already taught her to answer to the words “President Porschy.”

But oops – she’s probably too smart, I might not be able to talk her into running. I’ll have to beg.

As with many other instances during the George W. Bush administration in which legitimate duties of government (such as statesmanship) became conflated with and ultimately displaced by punishment, pure and simple, we are all of us coming to realize that Bush-era techniques employed in efforts to extract information from unwilling and even uninformed “informants” went way too far. Not only international conventions but also our own laws and morals were savagely violated by actions taken with a veneer of government approval.

As ever more reeking information continues to seep from the closed drawers of the military and spy agencies, it is clear that the heritage of America’s own dirty war will not go away on its own.

The problem now seems to be what to do about it. Should we go on talk shows and claim that torture wasn’t really torture? Should we-Nuremberg-style-prosecute and punish those who carried out illegal policies endorsed by our then-government? Should we convene a truth and reconciliation commission, so that those who carried out the torture can ‘fess up and hug their surviving former victims? Should we talk the issue onto its deathbed, bury it in paper, smother the legal and moral outrages in subtleties, and move on to health care, global warming and other pressing matters? Or should we see-to paraphrase the late folksinger, Phil Ochs– the pictures of the pain?

What to do? In this case, although I consider myself a progressive, I really would like to see Washington run more like a small business. I ask: “What would Main Street do?”

If I identified an embezzler in my business, I would likely institute controls to identify financial misdeeds earlier and more readily. I might choose not to prosecute the culprit due to concern about publicity. But would I keep the embezzler around to do next season’s taxes?

If I were a small town editor who discovered one of my writers was plagiarizing, I would probably increase my future scrutiny of news stories prior to publishing them. But would I continue to accept articles from the freelancer who burned me?

If I were a carpenter who discovered that a vender sold me wood for a house that was so weakened by wormholes that the house I was building could not stand, I might devise new methods for stress testing my materials before beginning construction. But would I buy again from that vender?

If I, a hapless householder, hire a plumber who recklessly breaks a pipe and lets a stream of sewage spew into my front yard, will I call the guy up again when the garbage disposal stops grinding?

I am not a carpenter or accountant. I do my own cleaning. My business does not earn enough to have employees, let alone ones who embezzle, and my garbage disposal is not broken, but you get the idea.

If I were a new president who discovered his employees had engaged in torture, I would likely devise new methods and policies to keep torture out of government. But would I continue to keep people who authorized it or did it on the payroll?

C’mon. Really? Would you? Would anybody? –buckdata

For her part, buckdata is wondering why money isn’t getting to the people most hard hit by this depression, such as those on the verge of losing their homes, those who have already lost them, and those for whom a tarp is not a government program but a literal roofing strategy in tent cities around the country.

To aid the President—on this issue at least– the following modest solution is hereby submitted:

Let’s all be bankers! Maybe it’s time for the poor and dispossessed and the rest of us to found some banks. Buckdata has a few in mind: First Foreclosure Bank in Stockton, Credit Default Swappers Bank in the New Orleans Ninth Ward, Toxic Assets Bank in Flint, Bonus Plus Bank with a nice Manhattan address, the Bank of Kaput in New Shock, Pennsylvania, and, of course, the online Bank of Buckdata.

Consider the possibilities: Laid off attorneys can volunteer time to help with the charters and incorporations. Laid off Wall Street employees can help us set up the books. Laid off web designers can devote their graphics talents to creating suitable online presence and branding. Impoverished retirees can exhume their mothballed suits and ties to lend us all gravitas at the headquarters front office.

Once the banks are set up, perhaps the homeless, the foreclosed, the evicted, and the about-to-be dispossessed will be able to approach Washington politely, hats (if we still have them) in hand, in search of generous bailouts. After all, a democracy, too, involves a contractual obligation, doesn’t it?

The proposal has a further benefit: If the sheriff’s deputies should arrive to evict us before the bucks start rolling in, we can always live in the vault. –buckdata

Note to readers: This is a satire. The above banks do not now exist. There is no Bank of Kaput in New Shock, Pennsylvania. There is no New Shock, Pennsylvania. No intention to single out particular existing institutions should be inferred from this blog post. This caution is necessary because of an unusual initiative reported in the New York Times on April 8. The article by Graham Bowley and Michael J. de la Merced details a scenario in which ordinary citizens may  be cajoled to invest in private mutual funds which are to be set up with government support to purchase other private institutions’ soured assets. The writers suggest such citizen investments may be envisioned as similar to the patriotic purchases of “Liberty Bonds” during the World War I. In such an audacious climate, formal disclaimers truly become necessary. Without such disclaimers, even well-informed readers may find themselves unable to distinguish pastiche from reality.

And the federal government is sort of progressive, too, when it comes to protecting children. For example, it is against the Mann Act to bring a minor across state lines for sexual purposes.

But what about when the purposes are political? Are there any penalties—local or federal–for bringing a minor across state lines to display her—unmarried and pregnant–on podium and television for political gain? Legal or not, like Chris Kelly at the Huffington Post, I find this pretty disturbing.

About 20 years ago, when an angry mother in California planted her youngster out in her front yard with a sign around his neck, detailing what she perceived to be her offspring’s wrongdoings, her public humiliation of the child provoked public outrage and disgust.

So we’ve abandoned the stocks and moved beyond Hester Prynn and her scarlet letter. Or haven’t we?

The American heartland was once exemplified by a Grant Wood painting depicting an upright rural family. In Wood’s iconic “American Gothic,” a staid farm couple pose before an arching farmhouse window. He is in overalls, pitchfork in hand, gazing straight at the viewer. She is in a patterned apron and looks to her left with a world-weary face. Times are tough, as their faces show, and they appear a bit puritanical, but neither appears a likely candidate to publicly humiliate a pregnant teen.

But the times are apparently a’changing. Now we have new images for the heartland: a candidate for president whose recurring mantra in his acceptance speech-–kind of like the chanting of a Cold War-era high school pep rally—is “fight.” A man who needs his wife’s assistance to get onto the Internet and who in his maverick independence has plucked up a caribou hunter from Alaska to serve as a political ideal of motherhood and women’s achievement. An honored vet whose vetting is in question. And his choice for vice president is a parent who would do this to her own kid. Wow.

Readers, would you let either of these people carpool your child to soccer practice? Would you hand either one the keys to the car? To the country?

This goes way beyond gothic. It’s American grotesque.

Secondly, he thanked the firefighters, noting he had “this special sense that I was with them.” Then he went on to thank “all those who are helping making the effort work here—people are working long hours and the citizens of this part of the world really, thank you for it.”

The president then thanked the Boy Scouts for working on his “Healthy Forests” initiative. He added: “Finally, I’d like to let the people out here know that we’re paying attention in Washington, D.C., we care about you, and that we’ll respond as best as we possibly can.”

Coverage of the speech on the The White House website included comments given in Redding by California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who had appeared with Bush when the president made these comments. In the attribution of governor’s comments by the White House website, the governor’s name was misspelled.

As of July 18, 2008, meanwhile, the area burned in California reached 907,568 acres, according to figures provided by the CAL FIRE (the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection) That’s 1418 square miles burned.

We Californians love firefighters. They save homes and lives. In fact, with the evacuations in Paradise and the recent fire threats to coastal cities and hamlets, we would like to see more of them here.

California’s National Guard reports an additional 200 of the state’s guard members have just finished training to fight fires on the ground. This brings the total number of California National Guard members called up for actual direct fire-fighting duty to 400. The figure does not include support people, according to the California National Guard’s public affairs office. Altogether some 1,300 California guards are involved in either fighting the fires or in support functions, according to the guard’s public affairs office. By contrast, there are 131 California National Guard troops currently in Iraq. A total of 1500 California National Guard troops are on “federal active duty” either overseas–including Iraq–or elsewhere outside California, according to the guard’s public affairs office.

These are not enormous numbers. They are dwarfed by the 19,706 personnel currently fighting the wildfires in the state. They are dwarfed by the sizes of the impacted areas. The website of the California Department of Forestry—CAL FIRE– reports 230,372 acres as having burned within its jurisdiction since June 20, and that 13,067 residences are threatened. When fires on Federal lands within California are counted in, the total of burned acres since June 20 rises to 702,394, CAL FIRE reported July 10 on its website.

That’s over 1,000 square miles! Maybe we need some help.

“More than 2,500 National Guardsmen continue the fight to save lives, rescue victims, and ease the suffering of those affected by the wildfire devastation in southern California,” the California National Guard last year reported in a press release dated October 26. The 2007 press release added: “More than 14,000 CNG personnel are available to the Governor if he requests additional CNG presence.”

Don’t hesitate, Governor. It’s time to pick up the phone.

As women in America, we have still not achieved equality on a lot of fronts. Anyone who disagrees need only look at her Social Security benefits statement. We can vote, we can mobilize, we can run for office. A majority of the population, we still do the majority of the housework and the low-paying jobs. We still bear the children. And some of these—the poorer ones especially—still go to war.

My husband served in Vietnam. He, like many who experienced that war, is left chilled by Republican John McCain’s joking response to a student’s question about his age. The 70-something candidate is quoted in the San Francisco Chronicle on March 16th as responding in part: “Thanks for the question you little jerk …You’re drafted.” I, too, am chilled by this.

A woman could do better, I always told myself. A woman would prize community over its destruction. A woman would understand that it takes a peaceful village to raise children. A woman would not see war as the solution. A woman would make the connection between excessive spending on war and the squeeze on household budgets.

But perhaps that understanding is no longer a shared feminist one. While initially elated by Hillary Clinton’s spirited run for the White House, I was still troubled by the fact that her vote was among those which enabled George Bush to launch a war on Iraq based on fraudulent information. I did not like Saddam Hussein. I do not like the situation now. On the Internet, I see women mourning their dead children in the street. I see figures indicating millions of refugees–families, children.

I voted for John Kerry in 2004, despite severe discomfort with his own vote authorizing the war. Despite his lengthy clarifications, it still sounded to me like complicity. Feeling helpless, wondering whether any of those in Washington consider the consequences of their actions, I attended a candlelight vigil called by MoveOn.org. In following months, I stood in a village center close to home on Wednesday evenings with others from my rural community, protesting the war. Just before the 2006 election, I brought along the flag which had lain on my father’s casket, and we held it up as traffic passed us.

My father was no pacifist. A very private person, he served in World War II. He did not die in battle. A New Deal Democrat, he had worked to mitigate the impacts of the great depression before the war; later, after it, he labored for the success of farmer cooperatives and crop insurance. He did not live to see these times, so I cannot know what he would say today. I know that he valued his country, as do I.

I must speak for my family now. Holding up my end of the flag in 2006, I spoke to my community, to the commuters’ cars, to the bus and delivery drivers, to the headlights. Then a fellow demonstrator, who had held up the other end—for these casket flags are really long and heavy– helped me fold the flag correctly back into a triangular package, as he had learned to fold so many other flags during the Vietnam war.

Last week, a report in the Huffington Post included a tape of Senator Clinton blaming the “activist base” in her party for state caucus losses, and disavowing MoveOn, specifically. This may have seemed an expedient move in the wake of Super Tuesday defeats, but it was unwise. It made caring people into things.

The Irish poet, William Butler Yeats wrote in his iconic poem, “Easter, 1916” that “too long a sacrifice can make a stone of the heart.” I believe that too much expediency can do things to the heart as well: It can cause a candidate to harden hers. It can fracture mine.

It can split a party wide open.

–Shelley Buck lives in Northern California. She was a founding editor of Her Say News Service. Copyright, 2008.

This may be good news for many voters concerned about the environment who have paused quietly on the sidelines throughout the current campaign with the polite demurer, “My candidate isn’t running.”

In the report by Devlin Barrett, Obama is quoted as stating that he will make a commitment that Gore–who won a Nobel Prize last year for his environmental efforts– “will be at the table and play a central part in us figuring out how we solve this problem.” Senator Obama reportedly did not mention a specific job post for the former Vice President, but reportedly characterized climate change is “something we have to deal with now…” Hey, it’s about time!

Has Vice President Gore agreed to this? What job might he accept? Does this mean an endorsement is forthcoming?

I decided to help out the Pope by proposing a few more sins to help the Church modernize. Here they are:

*Carbon Gluttony (CG): This sin involves using more carbon based materials–such as oil–than your planet or your national budget can afford. Employing this new concept, we will be able to characterize drivers of SUVs as sinners and breakers of the Revised Commandment, New Millenium, which states, of course: “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s oil.”

*This brings us to the second sin: Absentee Warlordism (AW): Old fashioned warlords used rape, pillage, and private armies to hold onto territory after sovereign governments broke down; however, in a global era, this concept has been outsourced. The commandment should be: “Thou shalt not seize they neighbor’s oil using paid surrogates, puppet leaders, or your own country’s adolescents to conduct the battle, while you sit home.” Better yet, just say “no” to AW, and skip the W, as well.

*Closer to home is a proposed sin which is of particular concern to the buckdata blog: Buck-Passing. Banks and lenders, now that they have completed the task of blaming middle-class consumers and the houseless poor for obtaining home loans on the only terms possible to them, are currently engaged in passing the buck–or rather the lack of it–back onto the same hapless taxpayers by coaxing breaks and liquidity from the federal government. It’s a sin from the 1980s , dressed up in a new outfit, come back to haunt us again: The Sin against Accountability (SA).

*This brings us to proposed sin number four: False Attribution (FA), as in “My predecessor in office got us into this mess.” We will be hearing more of this sin, shortly. One of the correlated commandments could probably be: “Thou shalt not continue thy predecessor’s unjust war.” You can probably think of a few more.

These are just a few of the hot new sins that could be added to the Vatican’s playlist to give the church a whole new sound. I leave it to others to ponder the matter of revising penances. Hey, isn’t it about time?