Remember all those suspicious people who told us that the official theory of the crime at the World Trade Center didn’t wash, in part, because a couple tank loads of jet fuel couldn’t possibly burn hot or long enough to melt the steel posts on which those buildings were hanging. Considering the way that freeway ramp in Oakland looks right now, it might be interesting to hear some more from those people. Freeways are, literally and figuratively, bigger than life in California. We love them so much that we spend all our transportation money building and maintaining them while sprinkling a few pennies on other types of transportation, such as trains. It’s almost as if the whole state might crumble if not strung together like a plate of spaghetti by those ribbons of asphalt on which we rely so faithfully.

It’s an uncomfortable feeling when something we trust unconditionally tumbles so easily. I have to admit I appreciate the irony of something being destructive, essential and vulnerable, all at the same time, but the dark side of it is that it illustrates the potential appeal of all those rolling fuel tanks to people who are anxious to die for their god and take a few infidels with them. Just one more way that fossil fuel might kill us before it gets us where we need to go.

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One local thing: The Nevada City Council is trying to do something about the long simmering feud between the downtown merchants and the younger folks who like to hang around in the doorways and sidewalks drinking coffee, smoking cigarettes and, occasionally, making potential customers feel a little uneasy. The city has hired a couple of "community service officers" just to walk around town and try to head off trouble just by talking to people. What an enlightened concept in these days of "run ‘em out of town or run ‘em in" law enforcement. These guys will work for the police chief but won’t be wearing uniforms or carrying guns. Sounds promising. I agree with Chamba about one of the guys who got the jobs; don’t know the other guy. Now if we can just resolve the feud among the merchants about the business improvement district, our little tourist town might get positively harmonious.

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Since the past week has been pretty slow for news, I thought we might talk in more general terms about a couple of topics that turn up frequently on Local Views. First is presidential politics. I said last week that Dennis Kucinich calling for the impeachment of Dick Cheney looked like he didn’t mind have Bush in the White House if he could get Cheney out. It has since been pointed out to me that impeaching Cheney is a preliminary move. Removing Dubya accomplishes nothing if Cheney ascends to the Presidency. Good point, but as we’ve said before, impeachment isn’t practical and isn’t on the table because the Democrats lack the time and the votes.

Chamba read something yesterday which took the Democrats to task for failing to end the Iraq war and failing to impeach anyone since "coming into power." The thin majority the Donkeys enjoy in Congress hardly constitutes being in power, and for all their fractious ineffectuality, the Dems put up a good dialogue in getting passage of the budget calling for a deadline to get the troops out of Iraq, even in the knowledge that Dub would veto it. They’ll put on the show of trying to override, but if they can’t do that, impeachment is out of the question.

I read a piece called Are We Ready For a Woman President, mostly about attitudes on gender which are peculiar to the US. The tone of it was "Why has it taken so long for this to become a real possibility in this country?" I was surprised to learn that women currently occupy the top leadership position in 11 countries, and 40 others have done the same since "sear a mavo bander a nike" assumed the top job in Sri Lanka in 1960.

The irony with Hillary Clinton is that, if she is elected or even nominated, she’ll be doing something radical, but she’s reached that position by being the candidate of the mainstream.

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I saw a headline in the local daily this week about a murder conviction, and the sub-head said the defendant cried and blamed the media. Convicted or acquitted, those guys get blamed for everything. The media probably pack a lot more clout than most of us realize, but they probably don’t sway too many juries unless the defendant is a politician or a famous entertainer. Then I noticed the recorded voice of Alec Baldwin calling his pre-teen daughter a "thoughtless little pig," and I was reminded that the media isn’t just newspapers, magazines, radio and TV anymore. The traditional media are desperately trying to keep up with the available electronic information while maintaining a separate identity. It may be an impossible task. Baldwin’s comment was a little harsh, for sure, but who really wants the whole world to hear or even be interested in hearing us chew out our kids? Not everyone regrets the loss of privacy. Eight years ago, the CEO of Sun Microsystems said, "You have zero privacy anyway. Get over it." Things like that are enough to send you back to pen and paper, or heaven forbid, actually talking to people.

The good news media trend I’ve noticed lately is that ideas which used to be seen only in "alternative" media are turning up in the traditional news sources, both in the content and in the advertising. Suddenly, environmentalism is popular, and thanks in part to the recent news about pet food poisoning, nutrition has become popular too. The mainstream no longer is afraid to tell us that factory farming and processed food may be poison, figuratively and literally. The advertisers are pushing hybrid cars and organic food. The restaurants are advertising their local ingredients, and the biggest grocers are displaying more and more stuff they call "organic." We’ll talk later about "corporate organics," but for today, the media trend is encouraging. To paraphrase Mark Morford, "It looks like the hippies were right after all.