The world really is turning upside down, or, "much in the heavens and Earth go askew"

I thought it was just me. I thought that the preznit's constant state of denial, of saying one thing while his henchman do another, and of calling black white was making me just a little light headed. There was, I comforted myself, no physical reason for this feeling of topsy-turvy-ness.

Right?

Wrong.

The collapse of the Earth's magnetic field, which both guards the planet and guides many of its creatures, appears to have started in earnest about 150 years ago. The field's strength has waned 10 to 15 percent, and the deterioration has accelerated of late, increasing debate over whether it portends a reversal of the lines of magnetic force that normally envelop the Earth.

During a reversal, the main field weakens, almost vanishes, then reappears with opposite polarity. Afterward, compass needles that normally point north would point south, and during the thousands of years of transition, much in the heavens and Earth would go askew.

A reversal could knock out power grids, hurt astronauts and satellites, widen atmospheric ozone holes, send polar auroras flashing to the equator and confuse birds, fish and migratory animals that rely on the steadiness of the magnetic field as a navigation aid. But experts said the repercussions would fall short of catastrophic, despite a few proclamations of doom and sketchy evidence of past links between field reversals and species extinctions.

Scientists "say" that we shouldn't be alarmed. That even the worst-case scenario has this 2,000 years off.

But I say, had they figured on a Bush administration in their calculations and computer models?

"Today, because America has acted and because America has led, the forces of terror and tyranny have suffered defeat after defeat, and America and the world are safer," Mr. Bush said.

I'm getting dizzy.

"Although we have not found stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction, we were right to go into Iraq," Mr. Bush said. "We removed a declared enemy of America who had the capability of producing weapons of mass murder and could have passed that capability to terrorists bent on acquiring them. In the world after September the 11th, that was a risk we could not afford to take."

In his half-hour speech at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, a nuclear weapons research site, Mr. Bush ranged widely over the actions his administration had taken over the past three years. He said that through diplomacy and military action, alone and through international coalitions, the United States had put terrorists on the run, confronted nations pursuing illicit weapons programs, liberated millions of people from tyranny and sown the seeds of democracy in regions that have been breeding grounds for fanaticism.

I believe I've fallen and I can't get up.

The world groans under the weight of Bush logic.