Dog days of August wear on

While the nation swelters in the sweaty grip of another global warming summer, we are left to wonder how safe we are as a nation. No, we're not talking about terrorist threats or the war on Iraq. We're talking about our own infrastructure. For once, TV news was onto a real story this week, instead of Michael Chertoff's gut.

The news is not good. The tragic bridge collapse in Minneapolis on August 1 raised questions about just how safe the thousands of bridges in America might be. Remember that bridge that Tony Soprano kept driving over? Well, it just got a rating of two out of 100 for "structural deficiency." The Minneapolis bridge got a rating of 50. Bet James Gandolfini's glad he doesn't have to drive over the Pulaski anymore.

Apparently, 70,000 bridges all over America are suffering from stress and structural deficiency, which could cause another serious collapse like the one in Minneapolis. So what's a commuter to do? Do we end up with collective bridgephobia? Are Oakland dwellers destined never to drive to the City by the Bay again, and vice versa, since the Bay Bridge got a rating of 27? Are Brooklynites destined to be stranded and Manhattanites marooned, since that bridge has a rating of 39? Or do we just relax and be happy, and not worry about the impending doom?

According to in-depth reports from ABC, NBC, CBS and CNN, we should be concerned, but not go into a gephyrophobic (fear of bridges) spin. The feds say there's no money to repair all the aging bridges in America because it would cost billions. What about that $500 billion we've spent on Iraq? Oh right, that was to destroy Iraq's infrastructure, not fix our own.

As tragic as the bridge collapse was, it was not Katrina. Yet both President Bush and his wife were on hand two days after the disaster for photo ops and pledges of help. Meanwhile, a few tons of ice being kept in trucks since Katrina (never delivered when people were dying of dehydration in New Orleans two summers ago) was finally dumped out to melt this week. It cost $13 million to keep it in the trucks. Did anyone drive the trucks to drought-stricken areas to dump the ice and maybe do some good with it? No. How many days until November 2008?

Speaking of political missteps, it's difficult to imagine how a majority of the candidates for 2008 are going to pull themselves out of the poll slump they are in. If the election were held today, or tomorrow, or next week, it would be Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) in the same kind of landslide with which she won both her Senate terms. The new polls were out August 3, and they didn't look good for anyone but Clinton.

It's hard to imagine that the new crop of "Bush, who's Bush?" Republicans could have lower approval ratings than the President himself, and yet they do. Giuliani is still the front-runner, but he's 12 points behind Hillary. McCain and Romney are at 17% and 11%, respectively. Fred Thompson, who remains undeclared, the better to keep his platform as secret as possible a la Dick Cheney, his hero, is at 18%.

Things are equally grim on the Democratic side if you aren't Hillary. Clinton's lead is now massive. According to CNN, NBC, and ABC polls (August 3), she's at 44%. Her closest rival, Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL), has plummeted to 21%, an 11-point drop in just two months. John Edwards is at 11%, and no one else among the Democrats has raised themselves beyond a 3% share.

The reason for the big leap is that she's won every debate hands down with her pink-jacketed arms tied behind her back, but that hasn't kept the pundits from trying to dismiss her lead. Tim "Bush is my hero" Russert was beside himself on NBC Nightly News, trying to find a way to mince or parse her lead. But NBC's own poll numbers were clear: In a race with Giuliani, she'd win by eight points. In a race with McCain, she'd win by 20 points. In a race where it was she, Giuliani and Bloomberg, she wouldn't lose points, Giuliani would. She'd still win.

Cokie Roberts and David Gergen were on ABC's This Week trying to paint her the way they painted her husband 15 years ago: as a commie, pinko, radical leftist, socialized-medicine-pushing — front-runner.

Gergen, a seasoned analyst who goes from right to left like a wind sock, couldn't dispute her command of the issues and the debates. But he still tried to portray her as too left-leaning. Meanwhile, Roberts was insisting that taking a stance to bring the troops home was an extremist view, instead of the mainstream opinion of all of centrist America.

Meanwhile, Hillary's playmates are beside themselves trying to find a way to bring her down. Edwards attacked the pink jacket. Obama went in a different direction, and decided to leap wildly to the right of her. In an effort to prove that he isn't as un-savvy on foreign policy as he appears to be in every debate, on August 2 Obama said he'd invade Pakistan. Way to show you aren't Bush-lite, Senator.

Then there's that Bill factor. ABC's weekend anchor Kate Snow spent last week in Africa with a sexy, smooth, utterly confident and totally beloved Bill Clinton, doing what he's been doing for the past seven years, working on AIDS in Africa. (You can view her entire trip and see her interviews with him at ABCnews.com.) There are only two camps on Clinton, those who hate him and those who love him. Only the politically comatose have no opinion. But far more people love than hate him, and that can only benefit Hillary.

What we've seen in the debates is what we've seen for years: She's tough enough to run with the bulls at Pamplona. When she declared on the January 27, 1998 Today Show in a now-infamous interview with host Matt Lauer that there was a "vast right-wing conspiracy" going after her husband, people dismissed her.

Well, it turned out she was correct. Except the conspiracy was broader than even she envisioned. In the intervening years, it's taken us to Iraq and to the brink of a constitutional crisis in our government. But Hillary identified it, believed in it and refused to be beaten by it. That, more than anything, is why she's winning the debates. Where Al Gore and John Kerry didn't think they had to take the Republicans on at their own level, Hillary gets it and refuses to let them set her agenda. The next debate is in a week. Watch her trounce the competition. It's a smackdown, alright.

Whoopi & Sherri

Speaking of smackdowns, The View has two new hosts, both of whom promise the occasional smackdown, if not the ferocity with which Rosie O'Donnell wiped her competition. Whoopi Goldberg and Sherri Shepherd bring some color, literally, to all-white daytime talk. We all know Whoopi, but Shepherd (who was guest-hosting on what ended up being Rosie's last day when she duked it out with Elisabeth Hasselbeck) isn't as well-known. A stand-up comedian, she was a regular on Everybody Loves Raymond. The show can only be better with these two spitfires speaking their left-leaning minds.

Speaking of daytime, Good Morning America co-host Robin Roberts, who has been on everybody's dykes-to-watch-out-for list for eons, announced on the August 1 show that she has breast cancer.

A tearful Roberts, 47, told Diane Sawyer and the audience that she had discovered a lump in her breast on the day GMA movie critic Joel Siegel died of cancer. A mammogram showed nothing, but a follow-up ultra-sound and biopsy did.

Roberts had surgery on August 3 and was home recuperating on August 4 (proving that even celebrities don't get to stay in the hospital for long these days). She has promised to chart the course of her recovery, through surgery, chemo and radiation. You can see her comments or post your own at ABCnews.com.

ABC has two new shows debuting this week that are newsy and of interest in this doldrums summer. On Tuesday nights Prime Time Crime airs, followed by the much-heralded iCaught. The former is one of ABC's limited series, all of which have been superb. The latter focuses on YouTube-type user-generated videos with play-by-play commentary. It's being touted as the newsmagazine for the YouTube generation. Screening the first episode churned our stomach, but YouTubers may delight in its raw footage.

Speaking of getting caught, we've been kvetching all summer that Luke (Van Hansis) still doesn't have a boyfriend on As the World Turns, which seemed grossly unfair given that he's been languishing on the show for two years. Well, this week he admitted to Noah (Jake Silbermann) that he's gay and he has a thing for him. Noah was naturally taken aback, and immediately said he's not gay.

But previews for next week have presented quite a teaser: Luke and Noah shirtless and wet at the Snyder farm, accidentally falling into each other in the kitchen, Noah up against Luke, who is up against the sink. It looked steamy to us. And frankly, even if it doesn't go anywhere, this one scene is more action than Luke has seen since he came out two years ago. How cutting-edge would it be for ATWT to have a love triangle involving two boys and a girl, where one of the guys is in the middle? Looks promising, but time will tell.

Finally, our rant of the week is again about the news you aren't seeing: News coverage of the Minneapolis catastrophe was superb. But while the networks fell over themselves to present the most accurate info, they also neglected all the other news. Southeast Asia is currently having the worst floods in 60 years, a direct result of global warming. Russia staked out ground beneath the polar ice caps for oil-drilling. And civilian casualties were up 60% in Iraq for the month of July.

Just so you know. Stay tuned.