"I'm Outta Here, You Take the Dustpan."
Should we test the water at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue?
Today, Dan Bartlett, counselor to President Bush and one of his closest advisers, announced he would be resigning. From the AP story:
[Bartlett] said he had no regrets about the Iraq war and he believes Bush's low approval ratings were the result of making tough decisions.
"Sometimes when you lead the country you do difficult things, that you're going to experience periods that are going to be rocky, particularly when it has to do with war and loss of life," Bartlett said.
"It will be one of those things, when I hang up the spurs for the last time, I'll be able to look in the mirror and say, `I know this president and this White House did what they thought was right.' And at the end of the day, that's all you can do."
No regrets about the Iraq war? Not about getting the WMD call wrong? Not about falsely telling the American public there was a significant connection between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda? Not about failing to develop a plan for the post-invasion period? Not about not preparing for the possibility of sectarian conflict? Not about refusing to acknowledge there was an insurgency until the rebellion was in full force? Not about the miserable record of the Coalition Provisional Authority? Not about failing to provide security, water, and electricity to Iraqis after the invasion? Not about getting the cost estimates of the war wrong by perhaps a factor of 50? Not about the repeated White House assertions of progress that were outright wrong? Not about....Well, you get the picture.
Denial seems to run in the family--or clan.
To say that all that counts is that the president did what he thought was right ignores a key matter: competence. Did Bush do the job dutifully and diligently? Did he execute his obligations faithfully and effectively? Of course, that's not a standard Bartlett wants applied to the W. years.
No regrets, indeed--especially since Bartlett is probably set to make a lot of money in the private sector. No one should be allowed to leave this White House while the mess remains in Iraq. And why don't fleeing Bush aides end up working in homeless shelters or for NGOs passing out malaria nets in Africa? Perhaps it's not their fault. What public interest outfit would want someone who's previous job experience was botching a war?
Posted by David Corn at June 1, 2007 03:23 PM
39 comments:
Mr. David Corn,
These slugs lie about everything including lying about their good intentions and sincere efforts.
Nothing on their watch was an accident, no coincidence.
Thanks!
Kirk
Dan Bartlett's Exit Strategy
White House counselor Dan Bartlett, the man who unwittingly confirmed that President Bush participated in discussions with Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and political czar Karl Rove about firing U.S. Attorneys who weren't sufficiently political in their prosecutions, is hightailing it out of the administration.
Bartlett made the traditional Friday announcement of his exit strategy, coupling it with the even more traditional announcement that when the going gets tough the tough suddenly recognize that they want to spend more time with their children.
What really made Bartlett, a veteran if not exceptionally competent presidential apologist, decide at this particular point to follow the rats over the side of the Bush battleship?
Could it be that even Bartlett – a man who has been at Bush's side for 14 years – has tired of the boy king's, er, gee, what's the right word here, um, madness.
More HERE
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Madness is an understatement.
capt
Baghdad Burns, Calgary Booms
The invasion of Iraq has set off what could be the largest oil boom in history. All the signs are there: multinationals free to gobble up national firms at will, ship unlimited profits home, enjoy leisurely "tax holidays" and pay a laughable 1 percent in royalties to the government.
This isn't the boom in Iraq sparked by the proposed new oil law--that will come later. This boom is already in full swing, and it is happening about as far away from the carnage in Baghdad as you can get, in the wilds of northern Alberta. For four years now, Alberta and Iraq have been connected to each other through a kind of invisible seesaw: As Baghdad burns, destabilizing the entire region and sending oil prices soaring, Calgary booms.
Here is how chaos in Iraq unleashed what the Financial Times recently called "north America's biggest resources boom since the Klondike gold rush." Albertans have always known that in the northern part of their province, there are vast deposits of bitumen--black, tarlike goo that is mixed with sand, clay, water and oil. There are approximately 2.5 trillion barrels of the stuff, the largest hydrocarbon deposits in the world.
More HERE
*****end of clip*****
Naomi always informs.
capt
capt --- They used to haul on frozen rivers in the winter to take supplies up to the tar sands. Wonder whether the climate up there has warmed to the point they'll have to build a road...
"I refuse to be silent any longer. I refuse to be party to an illegal and immoral war against people who did nothing to deserve our aggression. My oath of office is to protect and defend America's laws and its people. By refusing unlawful orders for an illegal war, I fulfill that oath today." - U.S. Army First Lt. Ehren Watada
=
"I swore never to be silent whenever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented." : Elie Weisel
=
"Foolish men imagine that because judgment for an evil thing is delayed, there is no justice...Judgment for an evil thing is many times delayed...but it is sure as life, it is sure as death.": Thomas Caryle
===
Thanks ICH Newsletter!
Dying for Nothing
by Charley Reese
I didn't watch any of the Memorial Day events on television. Memorial Day, it seems to me, should be only for the families of the dead. It's really impossible to remember someone we never knew.
Of course, these days Memorial Day gets larded with politics and pseudo-patriotism. It's nauseating to watch a bunch of actors, entertainers and politicians who never heard a gun fired in anger put on a maudlin performance as if they really gave a rat's toenail for the dead.
The fact is, war is started by old men who never go near the war, and wars are always fought by the young. The king of Belgium once noted that it takes 20 years of peace to produce a man and 20 seconds of war to destroy him. Think about that. All that a young human being is – intelligence, health, youth, education, knowledge, potential accomplishments – reduced to a bloody pile of broken bones and guts in an instant. They are strangers killing and being killed by strangers.
War is mass murder, and no doubt part of the degradation of the human species is the fact that starting with the War Between the States, the human toll of war has increased exponentially. It's ironic that wars take the healthiest and bravest, while the unhealthy and the cowardly manage to evade them.
Look at all the draft dodgers of the Vietnam Era who suddenly became war hawks as soon as they were too old to go. I've said it before: If I had children of war age, I would do everything in my power to dissuade them from joining the military.
The present war is a bad war. It is not being fought to protect freedom, let alone the American people. Poor Cindy Sheehan, who bravely protested the war, finally gave up. She felt betrayed by the Democrats, by the antiwar movement, but the saddest thing of all, she said, was that she finally faced the fact her son died for nothing.
And sad as it is to say, it's true. The politicians and some of the media chicken hawks like to fork the fertilizer talking about sacrifices for freedom (sacrifices most of them studiously avoid ever making), but it's just fertilizer.
Why did we go to war in Iraq? Because the president hated Saddam Hussein; because the Israeli lobby wanted us to; because the crazy neoconservatives had the insane idea that the Middle East could be democratized at the point of a gun; because oil companies and other corporations lusted for profit.
Missing is any threat to the safety and freedom of the United States, a threat no Iraqi ever made or ever had the capability of carrying out. So, if you don't want to say the kids are dying for nothing, you can say they are dying for Halliburton, for ExxonMobil, for the president's ego, for a cockamamie theory of a bunch of academics, for Israel, for money or for oil. What you cannot truthfully say is that they are dying for freedom.
The "global war on terror" is just a bad metaphor that doesn't have any connection to reality. How long are the American people going to allow liars to lull them into sacrificing the most precious treasure the country has – its youth – in a futile, lie-ridden, corruption-pocked war?
In my dreams, I see the American people rising like a roaring lion and ripping the guilty politicians out of their offices, but that is only a dream. The kind of people with the courage to do that lie moldering in millions of graves around the world.
Well, this is how Norman Podhorertz – neo-crazy Grand Pooh-Bah and editor-at-large of Commentary magazine – concluded a recent op-ed piece entitled "The Case for Bombing Iran";
"In some of European countries, Holocaust denial is a crime, and the European Union only recently endorsed that position. Yet for all their retrospective remorse over the wholesale slaughter of Jews back then, the Europeans seem no readier to lift a finger to prevent a second Holocaust than they were the first time around.
"Not so George W. Bush, a man who knows evil when he sees it and who has demonstrated an unfailingly courageous willingness to endure vilification and contumely in setting his face against it. It now remains to be seen whether this president, battered more mercilessly and with less justification than any other in living memory, and weakened politically by the enemies of his policy in the Middle East in general and Iraq in particular, will find it possible to take the only action that can stop Iran from following through on its evil intentions both toward us and toward Israel.
"As an American and as a Jew, I pray with all my heart that he will."
Published on Wednesday, May 30, 2007 by The Nation
Killing Silent Spring
by Katrina Vanden Heuvel
Rachel Carson, author of Silent Spring and a seminal figure for the modern environmental movement, would have turned one hundred this past Sunday. “Carson’s book altered the nature of environmentalism,” is how the Washington Post described her legacy. “Previously, it had been mainly about preserving and appreciating parks and other beautiful places. But Carson’s message was that all of nature should be protected, for its own sake and because people eventually would suffer if it was degraded.”
“What she said was, the Earth itself needs an advocate,” said Patricia M. DeMarco, Executive Director of the Rachel Carson Homestead Association.
But when Senator Ben Cardin of Maryland – where Carson was a longtime resident – tried to honor her with a Senate resolution it was blocked by Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma. “Rachel Carson has been an inspiration to a generation of environmentalists, scientists and biologists who made a difference and changed the irresponsible use of pesticides,” Cardin said. “Honoring her 100th birthday should not be controversial. I wanted to share that with our country.”
Indeed, Elizabeth Kolbert describes the magnitude of Carson’s impact in The New Yorker, “As much as any book can, ‘Silent Spring’ changed the world by describing it. An immediate best-seller, the book launched the modern environmental movement, which, in turn, led to the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency, the passage of the Clean Air, the Clean Water, and the Endangered Species Acts, and the banning of a long list of pesticides, including dieldrin.”
But in a released statement Coburn insisted, “[Silent Spring] was the catalyst in the deadly worldwide stigmatization against insecticides, especially DDT” which is used to fight malaria. Spokesman John Hart claims that the treatment of malaria was hindered by Carson’s work: “…millions of people in the developing world died because the environmental movement, inspired by Rachel Carson, created a climate of fear and hysteria about DDT.”
But those who have studied Carson’s work know that it is Coburn who is reacting with unfounded hysteria. In a 1964 tribute/obituary in The New Yorker, E.B. White wrote that Carson “was not a fanatic or a cultist. She was not against chemicals per se. She was against the indiscriminate use of strong, enduring poisons capable of subtle, long-term damage to plants, animals, and man….”
Linda Lear, a professor at George Washington University and a biographer of Carson, said Carson never called for a complete ban on DDT. “Carson was never against the use of DDT,” Lear said. “She was against the misuse of DDT.”
And Neal Fitzpatrick, Executive Director of the Audubon Naturalist Society in Maryland where Carson was a longtime board member, concurs with Lear. “Carson was not opposed to pesticide use – she was opposed to pesticide abuse,” Fitzpatrick says. “And Coburn obviously never read Silent Spring. It’s filled with examples of broad spraying of chemical poisons and the destructive impact on natural resources. Carson’s focus on the wonder of nature is a value not shared by Coburn.”
In these times, when the Bush administration muzzles scientists and caters its policies to the desires of corporate lobbyists, Rachel Carson’s commitment to truth-telling and hard work in order to care for our planet needs to be fully appreciated – and revisited.
Katrina Vanden Heuvel is editor of The Nation.
© 2007 The Nation
We must all strive to be stewards of our planet!!!
Our planet can take a lot of human abuse but at some point even it must give into the abuse and forever be damage beyond repair.
Bush to bomb Iran before leaving office
The author of this article must have stolen my thoughts
For anyone who has taken the time to study the history of the human race, there can be no doubt that one of the primary, if not the primary, cause of harm is that of people taking up arms in the name of God. No one in their right mind can deny that Jesus, the Buddha, Mohammad, Confucius, or Lao Tse were men of good will. However, over the centuries the simple yet profound truths taught by these wonderfully wise men have been perverted beyond recognition. And, as far as the West is concerned, the greatest perversion has been that of the religious right’s willingness to accommodate the needs of neoconservatives in Washington D.C., a well-thought-out, although no doubt surreptitious, plan to allow the Bush-Cheney presidential administration to utilize their faith (a plan of salvation that rather conveniently ignores the teachings of Jesus, the fact that we should love rather than kill others) as a theologically-based (no doubt divinely inspired) justification for a cadre of militants all to ready to go to war in order that they might one day rule the world……. and all of such in exchange for political presence, an increased opportunity for the religious right to publicize a gospel of family values (a rather fabricated attempt to “sugarcoatedly-disguise” an undoubtedly well-documented ideology of out-and-out social-political conservatism). Looking back at history, there can be little doubt that much the same occurred in the 1980’s when Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority decided to align itself with Ronald Reagan’s tenure as President, and, before that, when Germanically-oriented Christians decided to go along with, and therefore to support, Adolph Hitler’s Nazi inspired efforts to rule the world.
Christians are repeating the sins of their fathers by supporting the nuclear bombing of Iran. Why has Christ been removed from the word Christian?
In conclusion, in order that you might understand where I am coming from, you need to realize that I do in fact have a bit of respect for my country, or at least for that which was envisioned by our forefathers, the founders of, what has turned out to be, a once great nation. However, just as we would with someone we love, we have no choice but to call attention to weakness, since in doing such a thing we give our loved ones an opportunity to address the problem. It is, and must be, the same with that of the land in which we have been born. If we truly care about our country, if we really do want our nation to flourish, then we should realize that we have not only the right, but, much more importantly, the responsibility, perhaps even, one might say, a moral responsibility to point out its deficiencies in order that it might once again be revived. For we must remember, as our nation goes, so do we……. in its flourishing we, as a people, will no doubt thrive, but in passing away, we, as a collective society, might well cease to exist.
Doug Soderstrom, Ph.D. is a psychologist and can be reached at dougsoderstrom @ sbcglobal.net
Saturday morning cartoons at Bob Geiger.
Always a good little chuckle or two.
capt
Congress Wants Ashcroft's Testimony
The House and Senate Intelligence Committees have asked the former attorney general to testify about his role in a dramatic showdown over a controversial eavesdropping program. Will he play ball?
The Senate and House Intelligence Committees are asking former attorney general John Ashcroft to testify about a March 2004 hospital-room confrontation during which he refused to sign off on a continuation of President Bush's warrantless eavesdropping program, according to congressional and administration sources.
The sources, who asked not to identified talking about sensitive matters, said the Senate Intelligence Committee has tentatively scheduled a closed-door hearing for later this month. The panel plans to question Ashcroft, his former chief of staff David Ayres and former deputy attorney general James Comey about a heated dispute with the White House that roiled the Justice Department three years ago. The House committee is also planning a separate closed-door hearing with Ashcroft, according to a spokeswoman for Ashcroft.
The requests for Ashcroft's testimony reflect the mounting frustration on the part of committee leaders in both chambers who feel they have been denied vital information about the wiretapping issue by the Bush administration. Despite having received numerous private briefings from senior administration officials over the last year, members were stunned to learn just how deeply troubled the Justice Department was about aspects of the program - a glimpse they got only when Comey publicly testified about the program at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing last month.
More HERE
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I wonder if Ashcroft will cover for Bunnypants or tell the truth?
capt
Maybe some posters have been listening to Hitler Bush recently? If you have, you surely must have picked up his subtle talk that he cannot leave the mess in the Middle East to a new president. Hitler Bush is subtly suggesting that he will not leave office in 2009.
THERE WILL BE NO 2008 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS!!!
Praying Each Day: June 3
Helen Keller was truly a remarkable woman. I am always in awe of what she has been able to accomplish in her life.
The Texture of Peace
This article summarizes how I feel. Yet, I am an idealist who believes that posting is important even though I want to cut back on my posts. I find it difficult to just walk away. Nazi America's political system is broken. There is little difference between the Dems and the repukes. They are opposite wings of the same bird. This bird is controlled by Nazis and by corporate Nazi America.
One of the favorite tactics of empire is to create false leaders to draw followers that would otherwise follow true leaders such as our Lord. The media loves to flatter itself with its power to create such leaders (Hillary is the obvious current candidate), and so is seduced into serving the empire in this way. Cindy, on the other hand, led from a beating heart, hence the viciousness of the media's attacks. They perceive genuineness as weakness and react accordingly.
The Perfect Presidential Candidate
He is a true repuke!!!
Steve Gilliard has died.
www.thenewsblog.net
Welcome to The Weekly Sunday Section by Gerald
Personal stress must be reduced to control the heart arrhythmia that increases the heartbeat to a dangerous degree and places my life in grave jeopardy. I need to develop a carefree attitude about Nazi America and her imminent demise. A carefree attitude is difficult to achieve when I see Nazi America murdering humanity.
John 31:34-35
A new commandment I give you, that you love one another as I have loved you, so you also love one another. By this will all men know that you are my disciples, if you love one another!
Psalm 51:1
Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy loving kindness: according unto the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out my transgressions.
Love and mercy are essential behaviors for a better world and for all of God’s children.
Proverb 3:5-6
Have confidence in the Lord with all thy heart, and lean not upon thy own prudence. In all thy ways think on him, and he will direct thy steps.
Prayer for Peace – John Paul II
O God, Creator of the universe, who extends your paternal concern over every creature and guides the events of history to the goal of salvation, we acknowledge your fatherly love when you break the resistance of mankind and, in a world torn by strife and discord, you make us ready for reconciliation. Renew for us the wonders of your mercy; send forth your Spirit that he may work on the intimacy of hearts, that enemies may begin to dialogue, that adversaries may shake hands and peoples may encounter one another in harmony. May all commit themselves to the sincere search for true peace that will extinguish all arguments, for charity that overcomes hatred, for pardon that disarms revenge!
Illegal immigrants can voice their concerns but nonviolent protesters against the Iraq war are arrested. There is something wrong in Nazi America.
May God bless and keep you in the palm of His hand!
How Great Thou Art
Dying for Nothing
by Charley Reese
I didn't watch any of the Memorial Day events on television. Memorial Day, it seems to me, should be only for the families of the dead. It's really impossible to remember someone we never knew.
Of course, these days Memorial Day gets larded with politics and pseudo-patriotism. It's nauseating to watch a bunch of actors, entertainers and politicians who never heard a gun fired in anger put on a maudlin performance as if they really gave a rat's toenail for the dead.
The fact is, war is started by old men who never go near the war, and wars are always fought by the young. The king of Belgium once noted that it takes 20 years of peace to produce a man and 20 seconds of war to destroy him. Think about that. All that a young human being is – intelligence, health, youth, education, knowledge, potential accomplishments – reduced to a bloody pile of broken bones and guts in an instant. They are strangers killing and being killed by strangers.
War is mass murder, and no doubt part of the degradation of the human species is the fact that starting with the War Between the States, the human toll of war has increased exponentially. It's ironic that wars take the healthiest and bravest, while the unhealthy and the cowardly manage to evade them.
Look at all the draft dodgers of the Vietnam Era who suddenly became war hawks as soon as they were too old to go. I've said it before: If I had children of war age, I would do everything in my power to dissuade them from joining the military.
The present war is a bad war. It is not being fought to protect freedom, let alone the American people. Poor Cindy Sheehan, who bravely protested the war, finally gave up. She felt betrayed by the Democrats, by the antiwar movement, but the saddest thing of all, she said, was that she finally faced the fact her son died for nothing.
And sad as it is to say, it's true. The politicians and some of the media chicken hawks like to fork the fertilizer talking about sacrifices for freedom (sacrifices most of them studiously avoid ever making), but it's just fertilizer.
Why did we go to war in Iraq? Because the president hated Saddam Hussein; because the Israeli lobby wanted us to; because the crazy neoconservatives had the insane idea that the Middle East could be democratized at the point of a gun; because oil companies and other corporations lusted for profit.
Missing is any threat to the safety and freedom of the United States, a threat no Iraqi ever made or ever had the capability of carrying out. So, if you don't want to say the kids are dying for nothing, you can say they are dying for Halliburton, for ExxonMobil, for the president's ego, for a cockamamie theory of a bunch of academics, for Israel, for money or for oil. What you cannot truthfully say is that they are dying for freedom.
The "global war on terror" is just a bad metaphor that doesn't have any connection to reality. How long are the American people going to allow liars to lull them into sacrificing the most precious treasure the country has – its youth – in a futile, lie-ridden, corruption-pocked war?
In my dreams, I see the American people rising like a roaring lion and ripping the guilty politicians out of their offices, but that is only a dream. The kind of people with the courage to do that lie moldering in millions of graves around the world.
An empire founded by war has to maintain itself by war. - Montesquieu
If you want some information on the Bilderberg Group Conference, please go to http://www.prisonplanet.com
The conference concludes today, June 3, 2007.
Democrats hide pork barrel from public
Pet projects proliferate
After promising unprecedented openness regarding Congress' pork barrel practices, House Democrats are moving in the opposite direction as they draw up spending bills for the upcoming budget year.
Democrats are sidestepping rules approved their first day in power in January to clearly identify "earmarks" — lawmakers' requests for specific projects and contracts for their states.
Rather than including specific pet projects, grants and contracts in legislation as it is being written, Democrats are following an order by the House Appropriations Committee chairman to keep the bills free of such earmarks until it is too late for critics to effectively challenge them.
Rep. David Obey, D-Wis., says those requests for dams, community grants and research contracts for favored universities or hospitals will be added to spending measures in the fall. That is when House and Senate negotiators assemble final bills.
Such requests total billions of dollars.
More HERE
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Politics as usual.
capt
Giuliani: Worse Than Bush
He's cashing in on 9/11, working with Karl Rove's henchmen and in cahoots with a Swift Boat-style attack on Hillary. Will Rudy Giuliani be Bush III?
2,100-year-old melon found in Japan
TOKYO, June 1 (UPI) -- Japanese scientists say the inside of an ancient melon has been found in the Shimonogo ruins in Moriyama.
The Shimonogo Municipal Board of Education said the fruit dates back about 2,100 years.
The melon segment was kept from contact with the atmosphere and was able to preserve its inner fruit, the newspaper Yomiuri Shimbun reported Friday.
The age of the fruit was determined using radiocarbon dating.
More HERE
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Mmmmmm melon.
capt
Greenland Ice Melt Speeds Up
Warming: Trend is Confirmed via Satellite, Flyovers
NASA scientists reading signals from a satellite in orbit, and flying aboard a low-flying plane over Greenland, are finding fresh evidence of melting snows and thinning glaciers in vast areas of the massive island.Their observations confirm the climate’s warming trend in the far northern reaches of the world, they say, where changes in the circulation of waters feeding into the Arctic Ocean are altering crucial patterns of ocean currents there with effects that are increasingly uncertain.
The pace of glaciers sliding into the sea along Greenland’s southwestern coast "is speeding like gangbusters this year," said William Krabill, leader of a NASA team that has just ended a three-week airborne mission probing glacier dynamics with lasers and radar.
In order to avert distortion by dense clouds, the team flew crisscross patterns over the ice at altitudes no higher than 1,500 feet, Krabill said Friday in a telephone interview from his base at NASA’s Wallops Island Flight Facility in Virginia.
In similar flights seven years ago, he recalled, data gathered by instruments aboard the plane showed that glaciers were moving into the ocean at a rate of only about 6 feet a year. But seven flights this spring, covering 16,000 miles of Greenland’s surface and coastal glaciers, revealed that ice along the southern coast is speeding to the sea at more than 75 feet a year, Krabill said.
More HERE
*****end of clip*****
I am certain they are mistaken as global warming is just a scam. Big oil is just trying to help get the truth out and they are our friends.
Forget CAFE standards and use as much oil and gas as you can.
Maybe we can subsidise more coal now that the D's are running the show?
capt
Ignorance on global warming
IF RACHEL CARSON were alive and writing 45 years after "Silent Spring," her new book would be "Stagnant Summer."
Among her subjects would be NASA administrator Michael Griffin. His own top climate scientists reaffirmed in a study last month that "global temperature is nearing the level of dangerous climate effects." The study concluded that "little time remains to achieve the international cooperation needed to avoid widespread undesirable consequences."
This week, National Public Radio asked Griffin whether climate change was a problem mankind should "wrestle with."
Griffin responded as if one of NASA's deep-space probes had dropped him off on Pluto. "I have no doubt that a trend of global warming exists," he said. "I am not sure that it is fair to say that it is a problem we must wrestle with."
Digging his toes deeper into his mouth, Griffin said, "I guess I would ask which human beings -- where and when -- are to be accorded the privilege of deciding that this particular climate that we have right here today, right now, is the best climate for all other human beings. I think that's a rather arrogant position to take. . . . Nowhere in NASA's authorization . . . is there anything at all telling us that we should take actions to affect climate change. . . . NASA is not an agency chartered to, quote, 'Battle climate change.' "
Berrien Moore, director of the Institute for the Study of Earths, Oceans, and Space at the University of New Hampshire, said Griffin's comments were "bizarre," "baffling," and "mind-boggling."
"It is such a strong statement based on such a high level of ignorance," Berrien said yesterday in a phone interview. He has been a lead author in past reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. "It indicates he doesn't have any knowledge on the topic he's talking about. Even a cursory reading [of the research] would not support what he said."
Griffin came off as the newest bad cop to remind people where the Bush administration stands on global warming. Griffin said this on the same day that President Bush, with his popularity among Americans dropping to its depths among Europeans, said he wants to commune with the planet on climate change. But in advance of next week's G-8 summit, Bush has already rejected the call by Germany, Britain, and Japan to slash greenhouse gas emissions.
This is a modern version of what Carson, who would have been 100 years old this week, wrote about in 1962 when she woke up the world to the dangers of pesticides. "We are accustomed to look for the gross and immediate effect and to ignore all else," she wrote. "Unless this appears promptly and in such obvious form that it cannot be ignored, we deny the existence of hazard."
The day before Griffin denied the existence of hazard, I spent 90 minutes observing two mallard families at Mount Auburn Cemetery. One mother had four chicks. The other had 10. We take mallards for granted as our most common duck, with 7.3 million of them in the United States and Canada, according to the US Fish and Wildlife Service. But they did plummet from about 11 million birds to about 5 million between 1958 and 1965. The total number of ducks, 36 million today, was down to 25 million when Carson wrote "Silent Spring."
In noting the pesticide residues building up in some wildlife refuges, she wrote, "such poisoning of waters set aside for conservation purposes could have consequences felt by every western duck hunter and by everyone to whom the sight and sound of drifting ribbons of waterfowl across an evening sky are precious."
She would have warned us that climate change is the new poison. In his stagnation, Griffin last year oversaw the deletion of the words "to understand and protect our home planet" from NASA's mission statement. Now he is asking which human beings should accord themselves the privilege of fighting climate change. Carson would have asked right back from "Silent Spring":
"Who has made the decision that sets in motion these chains of poisonings, this ever-widening wave of death that spreads out, like ripples when a pebble is dropped into a still pond? . . . Who has decided -- who has the right to decide -- for the countless legions of people who were not consulted that the supreme value is a world without insects, even though it be also a sterile world ungraced by the curving wing of a bird in flight?"
More HERE
Top audio books of 2007 are honored
A new category, Judges Award, was limited this year to politics. The winner was "Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal and the Selling of the Iraq War" by veteran journalists Michael Isikoff and David Corn, produced by Oregon-based Blackstone Audio.
More HERE
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Congratulations DC and Mike!
capt
Daily Science today has an important article on agrichar.
Seems to be all benefit and no harm...
Church of England proposes drastic rules
LONDON, June 3 (UPI) -- Bishops at the Church of England have drafted a "rule book" of traditional beliefs that would force out those unwilling to abide by them.
The proposals call for a "narrower definition of Anglican belief" and are partially meant to keep out homosexual clergy members, Britain's Sunday Telegraph reported.
The proposals also strongly discourage the Anglican community and clergy from pursuing liberal politics. Bishops said they are aware such proposals could lead to a split within the church.
The Telegraph reported the concept was first introduced last year, but most of the church's more liberal members refused to believe it would be supported.
Members of the General Synod, who meet next month in York, will reportedly be asked to endorse this covenant, which would mark the most significant change in the Anglican Church since its creation in the 16th century.
More HERE
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Can you feel the love?
capt
"(agrichar) Seems to be all benefit and no harm..."
And yet I suspect there will be some against it.
capt
Global warming 'is three times faster than worst predictions'
Global warming is accelerating three times more quickly than feared, a series of startling, authoritative studies has revealed.
They have found that emissions of carbon dioxide have been rising at thrice the rate in the 1990s. The Arctic ice cap is melting three times as fast - and the seas are rising twice as rapidly - as had been predicted.
News of the studies - which are bound to lead to calls for even tougher anti-pollution measures than have yet been contemplated - comes as the leaders of the world's most powerful nations prepare for the most crucial meeting yet on tackling climate change.
More HERE
Mafia prosecutor now has Bush in his sights
George W Bush has seen off Al Gore, John Kerry and Saddam Hussein. But with the varnish fast disappearing from his administration, the president may finally be about to meet the man who could prove his undoing.
Preet Bharara is a 38-year-old Indian-American lawyer, who made his name prosecuting the bosses of the Gambino and Colombo crime families in New York.
Now the former district attorney has President Bush in his sights, as well as the man they call "Bush's Brain": Karl Rove, the president's chief political adviser.
Mr Bharara is spearheading the Democrat campaign to uncover corruption, mismanagement, incompetence and financial impropriety at the heart of the Bush administration.
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Shall we clap as loudly as we can?
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clap. clap. Clap! Clap! CLAP!!
US to Meatpackers: Don't Do Mad Cow Test
The Bush administration said Tuesday it will fight to keep meatpackers from testing all their animals for mad cow disease.
The Agriculture Department tests less than 1 percent of slaughtered cows for the disease, which can be fatal to humans who eat tainted beef. But Kansas-based Creekstone Farms Premium Beef wants to test all of its cows.
Larger meat companies feared that move because, if Creekstone tested its meat and advertised it as safe, they might have to perform the expensive test, too.
A federal judge ruled in March that such tests must be allowed. The ruling was to take effect June 1, but the Agriculture Department said Tuesday it would appeal - effectively delaying the testing until the court challenge plays out.
Mad cow disease, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy, is linked to more than 150 human deaths worldwide, mostly in Britain.
There have been three cases of mad cow disease in the U.S. The first, in December 2003 in Washington state, was in a cow that had been imported from Canada. The second, in 2005, was in a Texas-born cow. The third was confirmed last year in an Alabama cow.
The Agriculture Department argued that widespread testing could lead to a false positive that would harm the meat industry. U.S. District Judge James Robertson noted that Creekstone sought to use the same test the government relies on and said the government didn't have the authority to restrict it.
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"Creekstone Farms Premium Beef wants to test all of its cows."
They (Creekstone) WANT to test all of their cows but Bush all of the sudden doesn't believe in the meat packers policing themselves? The free market concept shouldn't be allowed in this case?
Creekstone would have a better product and THAT is something this maladministration will not tolerate at any cost.
Fascists by strict definition. UGH!
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U.S. government prevents meat packer testing for mad cow disease
In what is being seen by many as a curious and in some ways surprising move, the U.S. government is trying to prevent a Kansas meat packer from testing all of their animals for Mad Cow disease.
The company, Creekstone Farms Premium Beef, are keen to test all of their own animals for the presence of Mad Cow disease - bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) - a progressive neurological disorder of cattle that results from infection by an unconventional transmissible agent.
Under current regulations, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) tests less than one percent of all slaughtered cows for the disease; the meat from affected animals is fatal to humans if it is eaten.
BSE first appeared in Europe in 1986 and caused a major epidemic in cattle; more than 183,000 cases of BSE were confirmed in the UK alone in more than 35,000 herds through to the end of November 2003.
The epidemic in the UK peaked in January 1993 at almost 1,000 new cases per week and experts believe the outbreak may have been the result of feeding sheep meat-and-bone meal which contained scrapie, to cattle.
Experts in the UK agree that the evidence suggests that the outbreak was exacerbated by the feeding of rendered bovine meat-and-bone meal to young calves.
By 2004, 157 people acquired and died of a disease with similar neurological symptoms subsequently called vCJD, or (new) variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.
It is estimated that 400,000 cattle infected with BSE entered the human food chain in the 1980s in Britain and although the BSE epidemic was eventually brought under control by culling all suspect cattle populations, people are still being diagnosed with vCJD each year.
This is because the disease can have a long incubation period and it can be decades before symptoms appear.
As a result the full extent of the human vCJD outbreak is still not clear.
To date, there have only been three cases of Mad Cow disease in the United States, and the USDA who regulate the test, say widespread testing could lead to false positives that could potentially harm the meat industry.
If the company do test all of their own animals for the presence of BSE, Creekstone Farms will have a huge advantage over the bigger meat packers, who apparently have not considered such a move.
Even though a federal judge has ruled in favour of Creekstone, the USDA has said it will appeal, which means in effect that the meat packer will not be able start to tests until the appeals process is exhausted.
In a report in 2005 the consumer group Public Citizen found more than 800 Mad Cow safety violations at U.S. meat packing plants, 460 of which occurred because slaughter plants had inadequate systems for dealing with BSE in their food safety plans.
Of those 460 violations, 60 percent apparently had plans that did not even mention Mad Cow disease.
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