The trillion dollar question has long been: How do we get the major media outlets in this country to notice that the White House is run by oil barons who launch illegal wars based on lies, defund everything else, and destroy the environment at every opportunity – and that this is a single, connected story?

In June we garnered a bit of interest in the Downing Street Memos story, which then dried up and went away.  Then there was the Karl Rove scandal, which dried up and went away.  It's not that the actual events went away.  More evidence continued to come out, protests continued to grow, congressional action by progressive Dems and brave Republicans accelerated.  But the media lost interest.

Next came the Cindy Sheehan story.  This one was such a big splash that the media announced the birth of an anti-war movement (which was born simply because the media had, after all these years, decided to acknowledge its existence – at least briefly).  And now we have the Katrina story.

But when will we ever have the one story that includes it all?  When will we have the secret energy policy meetings connected to the defunding of flood protection connected to the removal of the National Guard to guard a different nation?  When will the media dare to say that war and domestic poverty are one and the same issue?

When will pundits acknowledge that we cannot pour everything into the Pentagon without the result being wars, that we cannot rely entirely on oil without the result being wars, that massive investment in our economy in the form of renewable energy and mass transit programs could slow down the wars, save lives, save cities and towns, and shift resources out of the Pentagon?

The obvious answer is, of course, when Hell freezes over.  But what about when New Orleans drowns?  Is that enough to shake even media barons to life and decency?

We'll see.