AUSTIN, Texas -- When in the midst of a Blame Typhoon, with charges and counter-charges being hurled in all directions, I find it most useful to consult those two polar stars of utter wrongheadedness, Tom DeLay and The Wall Street Journal's editorial page.

            Both good for a chuckle, and both perfect weathervanes for the wrong direction. When in doubt, Disagree with DeLay, And you'll be OK.

            The Journal, in addition to meretricious arguments, vast leaps over relevant stretches of fact and history, and an awesome ability to bend any reality to its preconceived ideological ends, also offers that touch of (SET ITAL) je ne sais quoi, (END ITAL) that ludicrous dogmatism that never fails to charm.

            A column about energy politics by George Mellon in Tuesday's Journal contained just the right mix of irrelevant argument (he's very upset that a bunch of nervous nellies want to shut down the Indian Point nuclear plant, as though this had anything to do with the frail, undercapitalized transmission grid that caused the blackout last week), expedient forgetfulness (uh, actually, OPEC had quite a bit to do

1) "The Cuckoo," a humanist, pacifist, feminist, indigenist film about a Soviet soldier, his Finnish enemy, and a Lapp woman who takes them both in, when they have each escaped sentences of execution by their respective armies. None of them speaks a language either of the others can understand. There is no preaching by any of them about anything. But when a Russian writer or director wants to be humanist, no one of any other nationality can hold a candle to him.

    2) "Camp," not a documentary but filmed in an actual summer camp for would-be theater and other performers in their teens and younger. As performers they are so extraordinary that I think the casting directors (plural) deserve Oscars. But the film is about adolescents. There isn't a single false touch.

    3) "Whale Rider," Maori actors depicting their culture. A lead character is as confident that nothing has changed in 2,000 years as the Israeli settlers I'd seen the previous week at the SF Jewish Film Festival, so it takes a miracle to provide a happy ending, which is about as realistic as if Jonah's whale landed on the beach in Tel Aviv

The California energy crisis should have been a warning to the White House. Opening up the electricity sector to competition may eventually provide consumers with cheaper power but it won't ensure a reliable flow of electricity unless the high-voltage transmission lines used by energy companies to send power to customers are upgraded.

  But spending tens of billions of dollars to improve the country's electricity grid doesn't give publicly traded utilities that own the lines a return on the investment and will likely result in a lower rating from Wall Street analysts and even a lower valued stock. At least that's the story that's been told by energy company executives for nearly a decade.

Running an empire means having a crowded date book. So many anniversaries to remember, or to remember to forget. Only a month ago we had the 50th birthday of the Cuban revolution, and there was Fidel Castro still hale enough at 77 to celebrate that day when he and his comrades attacked the Moncada. A few years later, they rode in triumph into Havana. Chalk up a bad day for Empire.

            Another 50th came this week on August 19, which was the day, back in that same year of 1953, that the CIA supervised the overthrow of the popularly elected Mohammad Mossadegh government in Tehran and installed the Shah on his Peacock Throne, a day that was hailed in Washington, D.C., as a very good one indeed.

            Iran had been dominated by U.S. or British oil companies and intelligence agencies. It was producing 600 tons of opium a year. Then in 1953, the nationalist Mossadegh won election and immediately moved to suppress the opium trade and push forward with land reform and nationalizing the oil industry.

            Within a few weeks, U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles

"I think this must be heaven," Peter McPherson told the State News on July 3rd, "I think life is good." On sabbatical from his Presidency at Michigan State University (MSU), McPherson is not on a summer vacation. He's overseeing the economic restructuring of Iraq.

Since May, at the behest of President Bush, McPherson has been the point man in charge of "making Iraq safe for capitalism," as Fortune put it on June 23rd. He's managing Iraq's oil revenue, administering its central bank, and working to privatize Iraq's state owned enterprises. "It's fun to put together a country's budget," he told the State News, MSU's student newspaper.

Rather than release him outright, the MSU Board of Trustees cheerfully granted McPherson, the former head of the U.S. Agency for International Development, a 130-day leave of absence. He's scheduled to return to the East Lansing campus in the fall.