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migo -- thanks -- I swear I'm making these posts simply because I'm really concerned about these things, and not because I'm trying to pull any ego thing on anybody -- I'm glad you have found these posts worthwhile, I sure have put some time into a couple of them -- take care
spree -- my thoughts? -- BINGO! EXACTLY RIGHT! DEAD SOLID PERFECT! -- like that . . .
some may think that some of my recent posts here contain expression where I've deliberately used hyperbole for dramatic effect, just to emphasize a point; this is not so -- I genuinely believe that we are right now in an EXTREMELY dangerous situation with THIS administration, that we are at IMMINENT risk of losing our Constitution, our rights and liberties, forever -- we've lost plenty already, at least for so long as dubya, Halliburton-boy, rummy, asscrack and gang remain in power -- and from here, just one little executive order declaring martial law for some reason or other (real or concocted), and . . . -- I honestly think we're right up to the tipping point, right now . . .
thank you for your post -- in my opinion it is nearly impossible to overstate how important it is for each of us to give our current situation thought, to be aware
and to any who fail to see reason for me to be as concerned as I am, I ask that you please read and carefully consider the following:
Gen. Franks Doubts Constitution Will Survive WMD Attack
John O. Edwards, NewsMax.com
Friday, Nov. 21, 2003
Gen. Tommy Franks says that if the United States is hit with a weapon of mass destruction that inflicts large casualties, the Constitution will likely be discarded in favor of a military form of government.
Franks, who successfully led the U.S. military operation to liberate Iraq, expressed his worries in an extensive interview he gave to the men’s lifestyle magazine Cigar Aficionado.
In the magazine’s December edition, the former commander of the military’s Central Command warned that if terrorists succeeded in using a weapon of mass destruction (WMD) against the U.S. or one of our allies, it would likely have catastrophic consequences for our cherished republican form of government.
Discussing the hypothetical dangers posed to the U.S. in the wake of Sept. 11, Franks said that “the worst thing that could happen” is if terrorists acquire and then use a biological, chemical or nuclear weapon that inflicts heavy casualties.
If that happens, Franks said, “... the Western world, the free world, loses what it cherishes most, and that is freedom and liberty we’ve seen for a couple of hundred years in this grand experiment that we call democracy.”
Franks then offered “in a practical sense” what he thinks would happen in the aftermath of such an attack.
“It means the potential of a weapon of mass destruction and a terrorist, massive, casualty-producing event somewhere in the Western world – it may be in the United States of America – that causes our population to question our own Constitution and to begin to militarize our country in order to avoid a repeat of another mass, casualty-producing event. Which in fact, then begins to unravel the fabric of our Constitution. Two steps, very, very important.”
Franks didn’t speculate about how soon such an event might take place.
Already, critics of the U.S. Patriot Act, rushed through Congress in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, have argued that the law aims to curtail civil liberties and sets a dangerous precedent.
But Franks’ scenario goes much further. He is the first high-ranking official to openly speculate that the Constitution could be scrapped in favor of a military form of government.
The usually camera-shy Franks retired from U.S. Central Command, known in Pentagon lingo as CentCom, in August 2003, after serving nearly four decades in the Army.
Franks earned three Purple Hearts for combat wounds and three Bronze Stars for valor. Known as a “soldier’s general,” Franks made his mark as a top commander during the U.S.’s successful Operation Desert Storm, which liberated Kuwait in 1991. He was in charge of CentCom when Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda attacked the United States on Sept. 11.
Franks said that within hours of the attacks, he was given orders to prepare to root out the Taliban in Afghanistan and to capture bin Laden.
Franks offered his assessment on a number of topics to Cigar Aficionado, including:
President Bush: “As I look at President Bush, I think he will ultimately be judged as a man of extremely high character. A very thoughtful man, not having been appraised properly by those who would say he’s not very smart. I find the contrary. I think he’s very, very bright. And I suspect that he’ll be judged as a man who led this country through a crease in history effectively. Probably we’ll think of him in years to come as an American hero.”
On the motivation for the Iraq war: Contrary to claims that top Pentagon brass opposed the invasion of Iraq, Franks said he wholeheartedly agreed with the president’s decision to invade Iraq and oust Saddam Hussein.
“I, for one, begin with intent. ... There is no question that Saddam Hussein had intent to do harm to the Western alliance and to the United States of America. That intent is confirmed in a great many of his speeches, his commentary, the words that have come out of the Iraqi regime over the last dozen or so years. So we have intent.
“If we know for sure ... that a regime has intent to do harm to this country, and if we have something beyond a reasonable doubt that this particular regime may have the wherewithal with which to execute the intent, what are our actions and orders as leaders in this country?”
The Pentagon’s deck of cards: Asked how the Pentagon decided to put its most-wanted Iraqis on a set of playing cards, Franks explained its genesis. He recalled that when his staff identified the most notorious Iraqis the U.S. wanted to capture, “it just turned out that the number happened to be about the same as a deck of cards. And so somebody said, ‘Aha, this will be the ace of spades.’”
Capturing Saddam: Franks said he was not surprised that Saddam has not been captured or killed. But he says he will eventually be found, perhaps sooner than Osama bin laden.
“The capture or killing of Saddam Hussein will be a near term thing. And I won’t say that’ll be within 19 or 43 days. ... I believe it is inevitable.”
Franks ended his interview with a less-than-optimistic note. “It’s not in the history of civilization for peace ever to reign. Never has in the history of man. ... I doubt that we’ll ever have a time when the world will actually be at peace.”
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2003/11/20/185048.shtml
zitboy -- re Jefferson -- one more thing --
as you correctly noted, Jefferson was "a victim of religious persecution and slander in the public forum" -- however, in your eagerness to mischaracterize that "religious persecution and slander" of Jefferson as having been a persecution of Jefferson for being a Christian, for being a member of the Christian religion, you somehow forgot to note the fact that those who subjected Jefferson to such "religious persecution and slander" were none other than certain Christians, Christians who just could not find it within themselves or their beliefs to either respect or tolerate Jefferson's having possessed and exercised his own individual freedom to choose, for himself, his own personal, individual, and yes indeed deistic appreciation of Jesus as a great man, rather than and instead of their Christian religion and system of religious belief and dogma (which for himself he completely and utterly rejected) -- where those Christians who hounded Jefferson were just like the many fundamentalist Christians in this nation today, notably including (and being relentlessly and shamelessly pandered to by) dubya and (our AG, dammit!) asscrack, who are not satisfied with merely having complete and unfettered freedom of religion properly understood as such, but who instead are manifestly unable or unwilling to respect or tolerate the rest of us each having that same freedom respectively, and who correspondingly are hell-bent on hijacking our secular law and government and remaking our secular constitutional republic into a Christian fundamentalist theocracy -- a Christian fundamentalist theocracy which they clearly feel and are arrogantly insisting that they, simply and solely because of their chosen intolerant and absolutist (and unproven and unprovable) religious belief and dogma, are somehow specially entitled to demand from and force upon the rest of us, the Constitution and the rest of us be damned; a Christian fundamentalist theocracy which, as I said in my post linked below, would in the broader reality be more precisely "some sort of "perfect"-ly unfree high-tech nightmare of a neo-fascist plutocracy that, in unprincipled pursuit of its plutocrats' very private interests, chokes off its own citizens' rights and liberties and parades about the world as an arrogant and ultimately out-of-control and self-destructive superpower, all the while wearing and lording both over others and over its own citizens the authoritarian and obscenely disingenuous holier-than-thou guise of a Christian fundamentalist theocracy" . . .
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=2223498
Bush Wants Court to Reverse Mexican Trucks Rule
Friday, January 30, 2004
FOX NEWS
SAN DIEGO — The U.S. Supreme Court will get involved in a two-decade long fight over whether Mexican trucks and busses can do business in the United States.
The court has agreed to hear the Bush administration's appeal of a 1994 NAFTA (search) ruling that keeps Mexican trucks off American roads until an environmental study is completed.
"The major problems are diesel emissions, particularly in the border states and they can be very severe and cause asthma and many, many problems," said Joan Claybrook of the public interest group Public Citizen (search).
President Bush feels Mexican trucks can meet U.S. safety guidelines and thinks allowing door-to-door deliveries will cut down on shipping costs and ultimately benefit consumers.
But critics say Bush is using the trucking issue to forge better ties with Mexico and special interest groups while ignoring the American worker.
"The Bush administration has already sent out enough American jobs outside of this country," said Teamsters (search) spokesman Bret Caldwell. "It's time we stood up for good-paying, high-wage productive jobs in this country and kept them here."
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,109905,00.html
bulldzr -- here's a post of your article, sourced directly from Reuters, in case the Yahoo! link you provided becomes inactive:
Bush Sidesteps Call for Outside Probe on Iraq WMD
Fri January 30, 2004 06:32 PM ET
By Caren Bohan
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Bush on Friday sidestepped demands for outside review of pre-war intelligence on Iraq, but said it was important to know all the facts surrounding White House assertions Iraq's illicit weapons justified the U.S. decision to invade.
"I want the American people to know that I, too, want to know the facts," Bush told reporters at the White House.
Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain has broken party ranks to join Democratic demands for an independent probe into how U.S. intelligence got it wrong given the failure by searchers to find weapons of mass destruction Bush insisted were in Iraq.
"McCain is the guiding light on this," said a Republican insider who predicted that the Bush administration may shift its view and accept an investigation.
"Clearly, this has been a bad hair week for the administration," the source said, while noting that a probe does carry plenty of risks for the administration in an election year.
The source noted that it was pressure from McCain that helped to persuade the administration to accept an independent commission to study the events leading up to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.
Meanwhile, the president gave no public sign yet he planned to yield to the demands for a probe, though he did not completely shut the door on the idea. Instead, Bush stuck to a position that the U.S. government will compare in an internal CIA probe the pre-war intelligence with what the weapons hunters have found.
"I want to be able to compare what the Iraq Survey Group has found with what we thought prior to going into Iraq," he said when asked whether he would support an independent probe.
Condoleeza Rice, Bush's national security adviser, on Thursday acknowledged that there may have been some flaws in the intelligence.
"I think that what we have is evidence that there are differences between what we knew going in and what we found on the ground," she told CBS.
Former chief U.S. weapons hunter David Kay said on Capitol Hill on Wednesday "we were almost all wrong" about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and that his search there found no evidence of biological or chemical arms.
Kay and a number of leading Democrats on Capitol Hill have also called for an investigation, but Republicans say they fear an election-year political witchhunt.
Bush said Kay had made clear in his congressional testimony that Saddam Hussein was a "growing danger" who had to be dealt with given the post-Sept. 11 world.
"He was defiant, he ignored the request of the international community and this country led a coalition to remove him. We dealt with the danger," Bush said. But critics emphasize that was not the main justification given for the war, in which more than 500 U.S. troops have so far died.
Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California added her voice to those calling for a probe of the Iraq intelligence.
"An independent investigation is the only way that we can uncover the truth," Feinstein said in a statement.
© Reuters 2004. All Rights Reserved.
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=4253702
Intelligence Probe Would Be Risky for Bush
Posted on Fri, Jan. 30, 2004
TERENCE HUNT
Associated Press
WASHINGTON - A full-blown investigation of Iraq intelligence failures would pose election-year risks for President Bush. No one could be certain where it would lead, who it would touch or what it would uncover.
But resisting an investigation has hazards, too, because that would give Democratic presidential rivals an opening to keep the issue alive and question what the White House might be hiding.
A bipartisan proposal for an independent investigation is blossoming into a prominent issue on the presidential campaign trail and on Capitol Hill. The issue moved to the fore when former chief U.S. weapons inspector David Kay said he believed Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction and Bush's decision to go to war was based on inaccurate intelligence.
For now, the White House appears to be playing for time, hoping the furor will die down. Bush refused to endorse the idea of an independent investigative commission on Friday but insisted, "I want to know the facts." The administration needs more time to investigate, he said.
With Republicans in control of Congress and the White House, it's unlikely an independent commission would be created without the president's blessing.
While Bush once raised dire warnings, he now seems to say Saddam's weapons were almost beside the point. "Saddam Hussein was a danger," Bush said. "The world is a better place and a more peaceful place and the Iraqi people are free" without him
In terms of the weapons, Bush argues that the Iraq Survey Group once headed by Kay should pursue its investigation, as long as that takes.
Whenever that investigation is complete, the administration will compare its findings with the pre-war evidence that Bush found conclusive - it led him to say that Saddam threatened the world with "some of the most lethal weapons ever devised." Of course, the investigation - and then the comparison - will take time and there is no guarantee it would be concluded before the election.
"It's like a basketball game, and he's got the ball and there's a problem here and there and he's just going to play out the clock. And he may be able to do it," said James Thurber, director of the Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies at American University.
The specter of world threats and danger is a key element of Bush's re-election campaign. His strongest suit against Democrats is his leadership of the war against terror, polls show, and the White House is eager to protect and enhance that reputation.
"Presidents don't seem to like to admit mistakes and he can't attack the intelligence community, for heaven's sake," said presidential analyst Stephen Hess of the Brookings Institution. "He's still the commander in chief. ... And yet if he's doing his job he'd better knock some heads together in the intelligence community, or figure out at least what we should be doing that we didn't do before."
Democratic presidential candidates already accuse Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney of manipulating pre-war intelligence to make the case for invasion.
Former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean says Cheney berated midlevel analysts at the CIA because their weapons' analyses weren't strong enough.
Sen. John Kerry says there are "very legitimate questions about what the vice president of the United States was doing at the CIA." Dean and Kerry, along with their fellow presidential candidate, Sen. John Edwards, support creation of an independent commission. But it is not strictly a partisan issue: Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona supports the idea, too.
Kay's recent comments have created another major headache for an administration already being investigated for the leak of an undercover CIA employe's name, and for mistakes that some say may have left the nation vulnerable to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
The administration wants the Sept. 11 commission to wrap up its work and is resisting its request for a deadline extension. The leaks investigation is in the hands a federal grand jury, beyond the control of the White House.
By their very nature, investigations have the potential to embarrass a White House - such as the Tower Commission's investigation into the U.S. sale of weapons to Iran and the diversion of proceeds to Contra rebels in the mid-1980s. Ronald Reagan gave the commission conflicting accounts of what happened and wound up looking befuddled, concluding that he simply did not remember.
Beyond the obvious political risks, an intelligence investigation could put a heavier strain on ties between the White House and the CIA, particularly Director George Tenet. The White House blamed Tenet last year for the failure to stop Bush from saying in his State of the Union address that Iraq had sought uranium from Niger for weapons.
The administration seems happy to have that feud behind it.
"I've got great confidence in our intelligence community," Bush said this week. "These are unbelievably hardworking, dedicated people who are doing a great job for America."
---
EDITOR'S NOTE - Terence Hunt has covered the White House since the Reagan administration.
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/breaking_news/7837860.htm
Bush Seeks to Quell Election-Year Budget Rebellion
Fri January 30, 2004 07:38 PM ET
By Adam Entous
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Bush came under pressure from his fiscally conservative base on Friday to make deeper spending cuts after the White House acknowledged its newly-enacted prescription drug plan would cost far more than expected.
Facing the prospect of an election-year rebellion from members of his own Republican party, Bush promised to halve the deficit over five years in spite of the additional cost.
The fiscal 2005 budget he will send to Congress on Monday will call for limiting spending growth outside of defense and homeland security to 0.5 percent -- well below the rate of inflation.
But his budget will also acknowledge that adding prescription drug coverage to Medicare would cost at least $530 billion over 10 years -- 33 percent more than the $400 billion Congress and the administration had promised when the law was approved less than two months ago.
The higher estimate cast doubt on Bush's plans to cut the deficit in half by 2009. Many budget experts -- including some of Bush's allies in Congress -- were already skeptical.
But Bush insisted: "The budget we'll submit on Monday does fulfill that promise that will reduce the deficit in half." The White House expects this year's budget deficit to reach a record $521 billion -- a potential election-year liability.
Arizona Republican Rep. Jeff Flake urged the president to take a harder line on spending, and said he may be able to start getting lawmakers behind putting caps on entitlement growth.
Conservatives urged Bush to back up his words by threatening to veto costly highway and energy bills.
Traditional allies of the Republican administration, many fiscal conservatives opposed the Medicare plan, in part because of the huge long-term cost of providing drugs to seniors as the baby boom generation retires.
They seized on the White House's new cost estimate as vindication, and warned that Bush could face an election-year backlash over spending.
"The real question is what did the president know and when did he know it," said Stephen Moore, president of the Club for Growth, a politically powerful conservative group.
He called the new cost estimate a "financial scandal."
The White House denied it intentionally underestimated the cost of the Medicare law to pick up votes during the congressional debate.
Bush told reporters he learned about the new estimate two weeks ago, and asserted that increased competition would eventually hold down the cost of Medicare.
While he said his 2005 budget would call for cutting the deficit in half over five years, Bush put the onus on the Republican-controlled Congress to hold the line on spending.
"Congress is now going to have to work with us to make sure that we set priorities and are fiscally wise ... I'm confident they can do that, if they're willing to make tough choices," Bush told reporters.
Officials said the discrepancy between the drug cost estimates reflected long-standing differences in assumptions the White House and Congress make about the program, particularly how many people will participate and how much it will help to reduce drug costs.
But conservatives were not appeased.
They said Bush has overseen a nearly 25 percent surge in spending over the last three years -- the fastest pace since the Johnson administration of the mid-1960s.
Republican lawmakers who oversee the spending process could also rebel.
They warned this week that Bush's plan to freeze some federal spending could mean painful cuts in programs ranging from veterans' health to medical research.
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=4253814
To Cut Deficit, Bush Delays Tax Change, Iraq Funds
Fri January 30, 2004 06:54 PM ET
By Adam Entous
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Bush will leave out of his budget widely anticipated Iraq-related costs and an expensive tax system overhaul to meet his election-year goal of cutting the federal deficit, congressional aides and budget analysts said on Friday.
Bush is banking on strong economic growth and spending restraint from Congress -- neither of which is a certainty -- to reduce the deficit from this year's projected record high of $521 billion to less than $260 billion by fiscal 2009.
Congressional officials and analysts say Bush will also rely on budget gimmicks -- from stretching the definition of homeland security to sidestep spending limits to proposing only a temporary extension of provisions that prevent the alternative minimum tax from raising taxes for potentially millions of middle-class workers.
Even though the Pentagon is all but certain to need $40 billion or more to fund operations in Iraq in fiscal 2005, the White House has told lawmakers that Bush's $401.7 billion military budget for next year will leave that out, congressional aides and analysts said.
Doing so makes it easier for the administration to project a reduction in the deficit in 2005. But the decision is already drawing fire from Bush's Democratic challengers, as well as fiscal conservatives, who say the administration could provide at least a partial cost estimate.
An administration official defended the decision to put off any Iraq-related requests until Congress convenes in 2005 after the election. "It is too early to adequately predict what the needs will be," he said.
Congressional aides said the White House was taking a similar approach toward taxes.
But Bush has little choice, if he hopes to cut the deficit in half on schedule. According to congressional estimates, fixing the alternative minimum tax and related changes could cost $658 billion over 10 years, and push the deficit well above $260 billion in 2009.
Bush can ill-afford to let the current alternative minimum tax relief expire at the end of this year since doing so would raise taxes for millions of mid-level earners, a critical voting block in the November presidential election.
Republicans and Democrats criticized the practice as deceptive.
"It's irresponsible," said one senior Senate aide of Bush's plans for the alternative minimum tax, which requires some middle and upper-income taxpayers to calculate their taxes in two ways and pay the higher bill.
Congressional aides say the White House has settled on a stop-gap measure to minimize the budget impact.
Instead of proposing a budget-busting long-term fix, the administration is expected to propose one- to two-year extensions of the alternative minimum tax provisions, delaying the issue and the costs.
Unlike the regular income tax, the alternative minimum tax is not indexed for inflation. This means that the number of people affected will skyrocket -- and reach further into the middle class. By 2010, the alternative minimum tax could affect one-third of all tax returns.
© Reuters 2004. All Rights Reserved
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=domesticNews&storyID=4253763
Bush: New Medicare price tag means 'tough choices'
President vows budget deficit can be halved in 5 years
From Dana Bash
CNN Washington Bureau
Friday, January 30, 2004 Posted: 2:14 PM EST (1914 GMT)
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- President Bush said Friday the news that his Medicare overhaul would cost significantly more than expected would require lawmakers to be careful with spending.
The Congressional Budget Office had estimated the Medicare legislation would cost $400 billion over 10 years, but this week the Office of Management and Budget put the figure at $535 billion.
The president is scheduled to present his 2005 budget to Congress on Monday.
"The Medicare reform we did is a good reform," the president said. "It fulfills a long-standing promise to our seniors.
"Congress is now going to have to work with us to make sure that we set priorities and make sure that we are fiscally wise with the taxpayers' money," he said.
"I am confident they can do that if they are willing to make tough choices so the budget we submit will show that we can cut the deficit in half in a five-year period."
The Medicare bill -- which includes a prescription drug benefit -- passed the House of Representatives after GOP leaders made the unusual move of keeping the vote open for hours as they sought to get conservative Republicans to vote for it.
Concerned about creating what they saw as a big-government program, some of those Republicans reluctantly voted in favor after being assured the estimated cost would not balloon.
White House spokesman Scott McClellan said the disparate numbers do not mean the president misled Congress. He said the administration's actuaries in the budget office began work on the numbers only after the bill became law.
"It is a very complex and difficult matter to predict," McClellan said. "Now the legislation has passed, and we made our best estimate based on the latest economic data available."
"It shouldn't be surprising that there are different cost estimates between the OMB and the Congressional Budget Office," he said. "That happens all the time."
Republican Reps. Mike Pence of Indiana and Jeff Flake of Arizona said the revised Medicare projections stunned them.
On retreat in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where administration officials briefed them on the 2005 budget, GOP lawmakers are concerned, sources said.
The president was briefed on his budget office's new estimates in the last couple of weeks, McClellan said.
McClellan declined to give Bush's reaction, saying only that "the president made a commitment to give seniors help with their prescription drug costs and modernize health care and he delivered on that commitment."
When asked if the president misled anyone on the program's cost, McClellan responded, "Of course not."
He said the White House has no plans to change the law because of the revised numbers.
Deficit projections draw fire
Democrats are calling the latest projection proof the new law doesn't do enough to curb the high cost of prescription drugs.
An opponent of the bill, Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Massachusetts, has said the plan benefited drug companies more than patients. He said the new figures widen the disparity.
"The news on the Republican Medicare bill gets better and better for drug company profits and HMOs, and worse and worse for seniors and the Medicare program," said Kennedy.
"This new finding means an extra $49 billion in profits for drug companies, but the legislation still does nothing to reduce the exorbitant prices that drug companies charge."
Despite Bush's insistence he will be able to halve the deficit in five years, administration and congressional sources said a $520 billion deficit is predicted for 2004.
http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/01/30/white.house.medicare/
(COMTEX) B: Administration Signs 'Unbalanced' Plan For National Petroleum Reserve Groups Say; Alaska Decision Ignores Calls for Balance ( U.S. Newswire )
WASHINGTON, Jan 22, 2004 (U.S. Newswire via COMTEX) -- Disregarding public calls to strike a balance between oil development and environmental protection in the National Petroleum Reserve -- Alaska, the Bush administration today announced that it will make the entire 8.8-million-acre northwest planning area of the reserve available for oil leasing. The 23.5-million-acre NPR-A, located in America's western Arctic, is the largest remaining block of unprotected land in the nation. The region is home to myriad wildlife and waterfowl, and is a vital subsistence hunting and fishing ground for native Alaskans.
"This decision certainly gives big oil and gas plenty to be thankful for," said Eleanor Huffines, Alaska Regional Director of The Wilderness Society. "It fails to give real protection to one single acre, resource, or cultural value in the western Arctic. All we've asked for is a rational balance between oil and gas development and protecting wildlife and the environment, but apparently even that was beyond the capacity of this administration to understand."
"Conservation groups presented the administration with an alternative that would have allowed oil leasing, while putting a few of the most special areas off limits. What's shocking is that not only did the administration say 'no,' it refused to even consider this option," said Deirdre McDonnell of Earthjustice in Juneau.
BLM's deferral of leasing in some areas near Peard Bay and Kasegaluk Lagoon offers no real or permanent protection for these important wildlife and subsistence resources. The decision makes these areas available immediately for intrusive seismic surveys, as well as future oil and gas development. Because it will take at least 10 years for pipelines and other oil industry infrastructure to reach the area, the deferrals have no real-world impact.
Today's decision weakens current environmental safeguards by allowing the Bureau of Land Management to modify or waive all of them on a case-by-case basis for "economic" reasons. It also changes existing strict lease requirements designed to protect wildlife and the environment, substituting vague guidelines, to be set and monitored by the industry itself.
"What makes this even worse is that BLM has failed to study the effects of oil activities on the environment like it has promised to do. It even dismantled its Research and Monitoring Team," said Cindy Shogan, executive director of the Alaska Wilderness League.
A report last year by the National Academy of Sciences found that after more than 25 years of drilling on Alaskas North Slope, the impacts of the current extent of industrial activity have eroded wildland values, clean air, and clean water over an area far exceeding the area of the industrial oil drilling complex itself, and warned of possible future dangers to human health in the region. The NAS report also reported that wildlife have suffered in a number of ways, including direct mortality and displacement, reduced reproductive rates of birds and caribou, and altered distributions of caribou and bowhead whales.
Conservation groups and the public, as well as experts from the US Fish and Wildlife Service, urged the administration to protect key areas, such as Dease Inlet, the southern Ikpikpuk River and adjacent wetlands, Peard Bay and Kasegaluk Lagoon from oil development. These areas contain globally important summer bird habitat for ducks and geese that migrate to almost every continent.
Part of a vast network of coastal lagoons, deep water lakes, wet sedge grass meadows, and braided streams, the region harbors nearly one in four of the world's Pacific black brant population. Kasegaluk Lagoon provides critical habitat for the greatest aggregations of beluga whales and spotted seals in northern Alaska.
"This administration threw away the chance to protect some of the nation's last arctic gems," said Mike Matz, executive director of the Campaign for America's Wilderness. "Instead of seizing an opportunity to set aside some of the area's treasures for our children and theirs, they have again sacrificed our public land. Future generations will be the poorer for it."
Conservationists sent a letter this week to the Bureau of Land Management expressing strong concerns over the decision. For more information and to access the letter, visit http://www.arcticgems.org
For more information, contact:
Alaska Wilderness League -- Lexi Keogh, 202-544-5205
Audubon Alaska -- Stan Senner, 907-276-7034
Campaign for America's Wilderness -- Susan Whitmore, 202-266-0435
Earthjustice Juneau -- Deirdre McDonnell, 907-586-2751
Natural Resources Defense Council -- Chuck Clusen, 202-289-2412
Northern Alaska Environmental Center -- Kelly Hill Scanlon, 907-452-5021, ext. 24
Sierra Club -- Sara Chapell, 907-766-3204
The Wilderness Society -- Pete Rafle, 202-429-2642, or Eleanor Huffines, 907-232-0020
http://www.usnewswire.com
CONTACT: Pete Rafle, 202-429-2642, or Eleanor Huffines,
907-232-0020
Copyright (C) 2004, U.S. Newswire
-0-
*** end of story ***
yo rooster -- how about you go pluck yourself, you waste of perfectly good feathers (. . .)
zitboy -- re our secular nation --
at least unless and until you can decide and then state clearly and coherently whether or not, and if so how, you actually disagree substantively with what I've said (as versus trying to put words into my mouth or even to make it seem as if I disagree with what I've said, as you do several times in your confused rant), the following will have to do as my response:
all you quote from and about Jefferson in fact could not be more consistent with the broader, spiritual sense of what it is to be a deist, notwithstanding that narrow and inadequate dictionary definition you set up as a straw man as if to strike down what Jefferson or I have said as not consistent with that definition would prove that what I'm saying about Jefferson being a deist is wrong (not that you've even managed to do that; you haven't, and you're only deceiving yourself, mischaracterizing and misunderstanding the very sources you've cited, if you believe you have) -- Jefferson, who utterly abhored all organized religion (including in particular the dogma and supernatural elements of organized religion), was in no way whatsoever any sort of 'Christian' in the usual religious sense, and as stated in the very description you quote regarding the work that I'd bet Jefferson would agree has frankly unfortunately come to be known as the 'Jefferson Bible', it was and is a 'bible' purely of ethics, of the philosophy of Jesus, explicitly stripped of "the religious dogma and other supernatural elements that are intermixed in the account provided by the four Gospels" and thus explcitly not a 'bible' of religion like the Bible (tellingly in support of what I'm saying about Jefferson, in describing Jesus's life in the 'Jefferson Bible' Jefferson makes no mention whatsoever of any immaculate conception, or of any resurrection, or of any ascension . . .) -- much as I do myself, Jefferson had a great regard and respect for Jesus as an immensely wise, noble and brilliant man and teacher, but not as such as the 'son of god', at least not any more than in the universal sense in which we are every one of us a child of god, where in turn by his uses of the term 'god' he meant the great unknown creator of all that is, rather than any particular 'god' as proclaimed and characterized by any particular organized Christian or other religion or church
and you'll pardon me for pointing this out, but the very source materials you quote absolutely confirm that Jefferson could not have agreed more strongly with my assertion that this nation was indeed explicitly secular from its very beginning, as I correctly stated to begin with -- the whole key point being precisely that for there to be true religious freedom for all, the state must be and always remain absolutely secular, and such true religious freedom cannot, must not and does not ever include or permit the right or ability of any persons of any religion to enshrine their own religious beliefs and diktats in the law and thus cause the government to become a means of forcing their religious beliefs and diktats upon others, and thus of abusing the true religious freedom of others -- that is, true religious freedom cannot, must not and does not ever include the right or ability to hijack the secular law to serve one's own religion and religious views and thus turn the secular government into an agency to enforce one's own religion and religious views upon others -- only so long as this core principle of separation of church and state is honored by all, will we all, rather than just those having the 'correct' religion and religious views, have true religious freedom (as well as other rights and liberties in general, recalling the good old days under the Church of England and how this nation came to be . . .)
[F6 RANT WARNING} and this where it is absolutely clear and more than fair to say that there are many fundamentalist Christians in this nation today, including many of those in or with access to power at all levels of our government, who would like nothing better than to scrap this core principle of separation of church and state and openly turn this secular nation into a fundamentalist Christian theocracy safe for the rights and liberties, religious and other, of fundamentalist Christians ONLY -- and just to rub in their rank and greedy lust for total power in a spectacular display of arrogant self-pity that they can't just be 'blessed' to go on ahead and remake this country in their own image to the exclusion of the rest of us, whenever any court does its job to block, or any of the rest of us has the audacity to object against, any step in or element of such a hijacking of our free, secular nation, these fundamentalist Christians then turn around and proclaim that they are therefore being persecuted and denied their religious freedom -- never mind that they have always been and continue to be absolutely free to believe and practice their religion on their own any way they wish, just like the rest of us -- but no, that's not good enough, they won't be satisfied unless and until they hijack our secular law and government completely, the rights and liberties of the rest of us, religious and other, be damned, as they evidently think the rest of us properly should be!!! -- talk about disingenuous, self-serving, unclear-on-the-concept whining traitors to the soul of this great nation!!!!!!!! . . . [ALL CLEAR -- F6 RANT OVER]
by the way, thanks for lecturing me on why folks really left England to come over here, i.e., to escape oppression at the hands of the monarchy's own Church of England and the correspondingly claimed 'divine right' of the Crown -- as if that wasn't a key point I'd made on my own behalf to begin with (. . .)
so anyway, homey, you should try again to see if you can even parse the foregoing well enough to even make sense of your own thoughts before you go off trying to contest mine -- the hamhanded, rambling rant you've posted fails miserably to twist the source materials you've cited (which in fact strongly support my contentions that this nation was indeed explicitly secular from its beginning and that Jefferson was indeed a deist) into any sort of support or argument for the your apparently desired conclusion that Jefferson was somehow a religious Christian as such -- he absolutely was not, and your daffily overwrought apparent attempt to argue the contrary proves only that you do not even understand the concepts at issue to begin with
zitboy -- re the coming ice ages --
are you at all familiar with what research into past climate has shown, and has shown beyond any doubt!?
put very simply, ice ages have happened thoughout known climatic history, including the most recent climatic history (and in fact account for the bulk of the known climatic history, such that ice age conditions can properly be said to be the normal climate of our planet), as have warmer periods such as the one we're in right now (which warmer periods account for only a small fraction of the known climatic history) (btw, of course not all of the earth is covered in ice even during a global ice age -- as if I ever said it would be)
further, there is absolutely no known basis whatsoever to think, indeed it is patently ridiculous to think, that this sort of climatic cycling has suddenly ended, and that what we have seen in the last couple of hundred years should now be the expected constant norm until the sun ages into a red giant and consumes the earth within its vastly expanded volume a few billion years from now
as for the sort of mechanisms involved, the article I originally posted should be more than enough for you to get started on gaining an understanding -- then keep in mind such additional factors as variations in solar output and the several cycles inherent in the earth's orbit around the sun and in the earth's attitude in that orbit, and add in the effects of asteriod/comet impacts and volcano and (especially) supervolcano eruptions as random triggers for sudden and at times extremely significant global coolings correspondingly resulting in at times vastly expanded snow and ice fields that correspondingly increase the earth's albedo and thus directly cut the heat from the sun retained by the earth, and you should start to get a much more accurate picture of the certainty of the continuation of high-amplitude variability in our climate going forward
to be a sport and give you a little something more to consider, perhaps it'll interest you that the Pentagon, for example, is taking quite seriously that which you dismiss as impossible, as described in the following article:
CLIMATE COLLAPSE
The Pentagon's Weather Nightmare
The climate could change radically, and fast. That would be the mother of all national security issues.
FORTUNE
Monday, January 26, 2004
By David Stipp
Global warming may be bad news for future generations, but let's face it, most of us spend as little time worrying about it as we did about al Qaeda before 9/11. Like the terrorists, though, the seemingly remote climate risk may hit home sooner and harder than we ever imagined. In fact, the prospect has become so real that the Pentagon's strategic planners are grappling with it.
The threat that has riveted their attention is this: Global warming, rather than causing gradual, centuries-spanning change, may be pushing the climate to a tipping point. Growing evidence suggests the ocean-atmosphere system that controls the world's climate can lurch from one state to another in less than a decade—like a canoe that's gradually tilted until suddenly it flips over. Scientists don't know how close the system is to a critical threshold. But abrupt climate change may well occur in the not-too-distant future. If it does, the need to rapidly adapt may overwhelm many societies—thereby upsetting the geopolitical balance of power.
Though triggered by warming, such change would probably cause cooling in the Northern Hemisphere, leading to longer, harsher winters in much of the U.S. and Europe. Worse, it would cause massive droughts, turning farmland to dust bowls and forests to ashes. Picture last fall's California wildfires as a regular thing. Or imagine similar disasters destabilizing nuclear powers such as Pakistan or Russia—it's easy to see why the Pentagon has become interested in abrupt climate change.
Climate researchers began getting seriously concerned about it a decade ago, after studying temperature indicators embedded in ancient layers of Arctic ice. The data show that a number of dramatic shifts in average temperature took place in the past with shocking speed—in some cases, just a few years.
The case for angst was buttressed by a theory regarded as the most likely explanation for the abrupt changes. The eastern U.S. and northern Europe, it seems, are warmed by a huge Atlantic Ocean current that flows north from the tropics—that's why Britain, at Labrador's latitude, is relatively temperate. Pumping out warm, moist air, this "great conveyor" current gets cooler and denser as it moves north. That causes the current to sink in the North Atlantic, where it heads south again in the ocean depths. The sinking process draws more water from the south, keeping the roughly circular current on the go.
But when the climate warms, according to the theory, fresh water from melting Arctic glaciers flows into the North Atlantic, lowering the current's salinity—and its density and tendency to sink. A warmer climate also increases rainfall and runoff into the current, further lowering its saltiness. As a result, the conveyor loses its main motive force and can rapidly collapse, turning off the huge heat pump and altering the climate over much of the Northern Hemisphere.
Scientists aren't sure what caused the warming that triggered such collapses in the remote past. (Clearly it wasn't humans and their factories.) But the data from Arctic ice and other sources suggest the atmospheric changes that preceded earlier collapses were dismayingly similar to today's global warming. As the Ice Age began drawing to a close about 13,000 years ago, for example, temperatures in Greenland rose to levels near those of recent decades. Then they abruptly plunged as the conveyor apparently shut down, ushering in the "Younger Dryas" period, a 1,300-year reversion to ice-age conditions. (A dryas is an Arctic flower that flourished in Europe at the time.)
Though Mother Nature caused past abrupt climate changes, the one that may be shaping up today probably has more to do with us. In 2001 an international panel of climate experts concluded that there is increasingly strong evidence that most of the global warming observed over the past 50 years is attributable to human activities—mainly the burning of fossil fuels such as oil and coal, which release heat-trapping carbon dioxide. Indicators of the warming include shrinking Arctic ice, melting alpine glaciers, and markedly earlier springs at northerly latitudes. A few years ago such changes seemed signs of possible trouble for our kids or grandkids. Today they seem portents of a cataclysm that may not conveniently wait until we're history.
Accordingly, the spotlight in climate research is shifting from gradual to rapid change. In 2002 the National Academy of Sciences issued a report concluding that human activities could trigger abrupt change. Last year the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, included a session at which Robert Gagosian, director of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, urged policymakers to consider the implications of possible abrupt climate change within two decades.
Such jeremiads are beginning to reverberate more widely. Billionaire Gary Comer, founder of Lands' End, has adopted abrupt climate change as a philanthropic cause. Hollywood has also discovered the issue—next summer 20th Century Fox is expected to release The Day After Tomorrow, a big-budget disaster movie starring Dennis Quaid as a scientist trying to save the world from an ice age precipitated by global warming.
Fox's flick will doubtless be apocalyptically edifying. But what would abrupt climate change really be like?
Scientists generally refuse to say much about that, citing a data deficit. But recently, renowned Department of Defense planner Andrew Marshall sponsored a groundbreaking effort to come to grips with the question. A Pentagon legend, Marshall, 82, is known as the Defense Department's "Yoda"—a balding, bespectacled sage whose pronouncements on looming risks have long had an outsized influence on defense policy. Since 1973 he has headed a secretive think tank whose role is to envision future threats to national security. The Department of Defense's push on ballistic-missile defense is known as his brainchild. Three years ago Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld picked him to lead a sweeping review on military "transformation," the shift toward nimble forces and smart weapons.
When scientists' work on abrupt climate change popped onto his radar screen, Marshall tapped another eminent visionary, Peter Schwartz, to write a report on the national-security implications of the threat. Schwartz formerly headed planning at Royal Dutch/Shell Group and has since consulted with organizations ranging from the CIA to DreamWorks—he helped create futuristic scenarios for Steven Spielberg's film Minority Report. Schwartz and co-author Doug Randall at the Monitor Group's Global Business Network, a scenario-planning think tank in Emeryville, Calif., contacted top climate experts and pushed them to talk about what-ifs that they usually shy away from—at least in public.
The result is an unclassified report, completed late last year, that the Pentagon has agreed to share with FORTUNE. It doesn't pretend to be a forecast. Rather, it sketches a dramatic but plausible scenario to help planners think about coping strategies. Here is an abridged version:
A total shutdown of the ocean conveyor might lead to a big chill like the Younger Dryas, when icebergs appeared as far south as the coast of Portugal. Or the conveyor might only temporarily slow down, potentially causing an era like the "Little Ice Age," a time of hard winters, violent storms, and droughts between 1300 and 1850. That period's weather extremes caused horrific famines, but it was mild compared with the Younger Dryas.
For planning purposes, it makes sense to focus on a midrange case of abrupt change. A century of cold, dry, windy weather across the Northern Hemisphere that suddenly came on 8,200 years ago fits the bill—its severity fell between that of the Younger Dryas and the Little Ice Age. The event is thought to have been triggered by a conveyor collapse after a time of rising temperatures not unlike today's global warming. Suppose it recurred, beginning in 2010. Here are some of the things that might happen by 2020:
At first the changes are easily mistaken for normal weather variation—allowing skeptics to dismiss them as a "blip" of little importance and leaving policymakers and the public paralyzed with uncertainty. But by 2020 there is little doubt that something drastic is happening. The average temperature has fallen by up to five degrees Fahrenheit in some regions of North America and Asia and up to six degrees in parts of Europe. (By comparison, the average temperature over the North Atlantic during the last ice age was ten to 15 degrees lower than it is today.) Massive droughts have begun in key agricultural regions. The average annual rainfall has dropped by nearly 30% in northern Europe, and its climate has become more like Siberia's.
Violent storms are increasingly common as the conveyor becomes wobbly on its way to collapse. A particularly severe storm causes the ocean to break through levees in the Netherlands, making coastal cities such as the Hague unlivable. In California the delta island levees in the Sacramento River area are breached, disrupting the aqueduct system transporting water from north to south.
Megadroughts afflict the U.S., especially in the southern states, along with winds that are 15% stronger on average than they are now, causing widespread dust storms and soil loss. The U.S. is better positioned to cope than most nations, however, thanks to its diverse growing climates, wealth, technology, and abundant resources. That has a downside, though: It magnifies the haves-vs.-have-nots gap and fosters bellicose finger-pointing at America.
Turning inward, the U.S. effectively seeks to build a fortress around itself to preserve resources. Borders are strengthened to hold back starving immigrants from Mexico, South America, and the Caribbean islands—waves of boat people pose especially grim problems. Tension between the U.S. and Mexico rises as the U.S. reneges on a 1944 treaty that guarantees water flow from the Colorado River into Mexico. America is forced to meet its rising energy demand with options that are costly both economically and politically, including nuclear power and onerous Middle Eastern contracts. Yet it survives without catastrophic losses.
Europe, hardest hit by its temperature drop, struggles to deal with immigrants from Scandinavia seeking warmer climes to the south. Southern Europe is beleaguered by refugees from hard-hit countries in Africa and elsewhere. But Western Europe's wealth helps buffer it from catastrophe.
Australia's size and resources help it cope, as does its location—the conveyor shutdown mainly affects the Northern Hemisphere. Japan has fewer resources but is able to draw on its social cohesion to cope—its government is able to induce population-wide behavior changes to conserve resources.
China's huge population and food demand make it particularly vulnerable. It is hit by increasingly unpredictable monsoon rains, which cause devastating floods in drought-denuded areas. Other parts of Asia and East Africa are similarly stressed. Much of Bangladesh becomes nearly uninhabitable because of a rising sea level, which contaminates inland water supplies. Countries whose diversity already produces conflict, such as India and Indonesia, are hard-pressed to maintain internal order while coping with the unfolding changes.
As the decade progresses, pressures to act become irresistible—history shows that whenever humans have faced a choice between starving or raiding, they raid. Imagine Eastern European countries, struggling to feed their populations, invading Russia—which is weakened by a population that is already in decline—for access to its minerals and energy supplies. Or picture Japan eyeing nearby Russian oil and gas reserves to power desalination plants and energy-intensive farming. Envision nuclear-armed Pakistan, India, and China skirmishing at their borders over refugees, access to shared rivers, and arable land. Or Spain and Portugal fighting over fishing rights—fisheries are disrupted around the world as water temperatures change, causing fish to migrate to new habitats.
Growing tensions engender novel alliances. Canada joins fortress America in a North American bloc. (Alternatively, Canada may seek to keep its abundant hydropower for itself, straining its ties with the energy-hungry U.S.) North and South Korea align to create a technically savvy, nuclear-armed entity. Europe forms a truly unified bloc to curb its immigration problems and protect against aggressors. Russia, threatened by impoverished neighbors in dire straits, may join the European bloc.
Nuclear arms proliferation is inevitable. Oil supplies are stretched thin as climate cooling drives up demand. Many countries seek to shore up their energy supplies with nuclear energy, accelerating nuclear proliferation. Japan, South Korea, and Germany develop nuclear-weapons capabilities, as do Iran, Egypt, and North Korea. Israel, China, India, and Pakistan also are poised to use the bomb.
The changes relentlessly hammer the world's "carrying capacity"—the natural resources, social organizations, and economic networks that support the population. Technological progress and market forces, which have long helped boost Earth's carrying capacity, can do little to offset the crisis—it is too widespread and unfolds too fast.
As the planet's carrying capacity shrinks, an ancient pattern reemerges: the eruption of desperate, all-out wars over food, water, and energy supplies. As Harvard archeologist Steven LeBlanc has noted, wars over resources were the norm until about three centuries ago. When such conflicts broke out, 25% of a population's adult males usually died. As abrupt climate change hits home, warfare may again come to define human life.
Over the past decade, data have accumulated suggesting that the plausibility of abrupt climate change is higher than most of the scientific community, and perhaps all of the political community, are prepared to accept. In light of such findings, we should be asking when abrupt change will happen, what the impacts will be, and how we can prepare—not whether it will really happen. In fact, the climate record suggests that abrupt change is inevitable at some point, regardless of human activity. Among other things, we should:
• Speed research on the forces that can trigger abrupt climate change, how it unfolds, and how we'll know it's occurring.
• Sponsor studies on the scenarios that might play out, including ecological, social, economic, and political fallout on key food-producing regions.
• Identify "no regrets" strategies to ensure reliable access to food and water and to ensure our national security.
• Form teams to prepare responses to possible massive migration, and food and water shortages.
• Explore ways to offset abrupt cooling—today it appears easier to warm than to cool the climate via human activities, so there may be "geo-engineering" options available to prevent a catastrophic temperature drop.
In sum, the risk of abrupt climate change remains uncertain, and it is quite possibly small. But given its dire consequences, it should be elevated beyond a scientific debate. Action now matters, because we may be able to reduce its likelihood of happening, and we can certainly be better prepared if it does. It is time to recognize it as a national security concern.
The Pentagon's reaction to this sobering report isn't known—in keeping with his reputation for reticence, Andy Marshall declined to be interviewed. But the fact that he's concerned may signal a sea change in the debate about global warming. At least some federal thought leaders may be starting to perceive climate change less as a political annoyance and more as an issue demanding action.
If so, the case for acting now to address climate change, long a hard sell in Washington, may be gaining influential support, if only behind the scenes. Policymakers may even be emboldened to take steps such as tightening fuel-economy standards for new passenger vehicles, a measure that would simultaneously lower emissions of greenhouse gases, reduce America's perilous reliance on OPEC oil, cut its trade deficit, and put money in consumers' pockets. Oh, yes—and give the Pentagon's fretful Yoda a little less to worry about.
http://www.fortune.com/fortune/print/0,15935,582584,00.html
My Dime -- I hear you -- I say what the heck, let dubya, Halliburton-boy, rummy, asscrack and the rest of 'em do their worst, as they no doubt will -- it may just blow up in their faces so badly that we get Congress back as well . . .
I honestly believe dubya's already a lame duck walking -- I see his and his gang's bs and lies wearing very thin with his base (as you also are seeing, right?) -- I think that before the election plenty of people all over the place who supported dubya last time will have finally had that "holy sh@! dubya sucks!" moment; and I expect Kerry will effectively present himself in the campaign as an alternative, pocketbook-wise as well as liberties-wise, that many of those people will support instead of, and to get rid of, dubya
we shall see . . .
bulldzr -- thank you again! -- great links (and excellent posts to go with 'em, btw)
here's one link I have that you probably already have, but on the chance you don't, almost every day there's something new of real interest either on or linked from the following page (Eric Alterman/Altercation):
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/3449870/
bulldzr -- re "Funny isn't it." -- seems to me that more and more of the good, Main-Street-type folks who supported dubya last time, folks who in fact have been and continue to be used and abused every which way but loose by this bunch, just may be beginning to see through the rank and dangerous bs and lies dubya and company keep throwing at us all as they continue to screw everything up for the rest of us in order to serve their wealthy masters -- ya think?
ed -- so, you gleefully lick the boots of the raging imbecile Michael Savage, eh? -- thank you, thank you very much -- now the rest of us KNOW your place in the grand scheme of things . . .
My Dime -- if this were a Democratic president, he'd have been impeached and convicted by now . . .
My Dime -- yep, can't hardly argue with that good ole asscrack sort of logic, now can we (. . .)
bulldzr -- THANK YOU for the Ivins link -- right into the old favorites!
oh sh@! rooster, you are a funny one, I've gotta give you that -- Kerry's a very smart guy, and courtesy of dubya, Halliburton-boy, rummy, asscrack and company he has so much to work with; dubya's a semi-literate (e.g., 'nuke-u-lur') lying tool who represents nobody but the wealthy, playing out the last days of his miserably failed one-term presidency -- I am so looking forward to the debates, assuming that dubya doesn't find some excuse to duck them, as he no doubt should -- something like 'too busy playing army', perhaps? -- roflmao . . .
rooster -- what dubya, Halliburton-boy, rummy, asscrack and company are doing is betting that most voters are fools -- and it's already getting good, in case you hadn't noticed (Kerry having outpolled dubya in the latest national poll I've seen . . .) -- and don't you worry, we are watching . . .
Thar she blows! Dead whale explodes
Taiwanese street, shops showered after gases built up inside
MSNBC staff and news service reports
Updated: 11:48 a.m. ET Jan. 29, 2004
TAIPEI - Residents of Tainan learned a lesson in whale biology after the decomposing remains of a 60-ton sperm whale exploded on a busy street, showering nearby cars and shops with blood and organs and stopping traffic for hours.
The 56-foot-long whale had been on a truck headed for a necropsy by researchers, when gases from internal decay caused its entrails to explode in the southern city of Tainan.
Residents and shop owners wore masks while trying to clean up the spilt blood and entrails.
"What a stinking mess. This blood and other stuff that blew out on the road is disgusting, and the smell is really awful," a BBC News report quoted one Tainan resident as saying.
The whale had died on Jan. 17 after it beached itself on the southwestern coast of the island.
Researchers at the National Cheng Kung University in Tainan said enough of the whale remained to allow for an examination by marine biologists.
Once moved to a nearby nature preserve, the male specimen -- the largest whale ever recorded in Taiwan -- drew the attention of locals because of its large penis, measured at some five feet, the Taipei Times reported.
"More than 100 Tainan city residents, mostly men, have reportedly gone to see the corpse to 'experience' the size of its penis," the newspaper reported.
Reuters contributed to this report.
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/4096586/
(as to why I chose to include this tasty little item with the other news stories I've just posted, well, to steal a quote from dubya's papa H.W., "nah gunn dwit" . . . though I will say that this is an instance where it is worth the while to click on the link to, um, see the original story)
Army eyes troops in Iraq through 2006
Top general says service is making plans for that possibility
The Associated Press
Updated: 8:40 p.m. ET Jan. 28, 2004
WASHINGTON - The U.S. Army’s top general said Wednesday he is planning for the possibility that the Army may be required to keep tens of thousands of soldiers in Iraq through 2006.
Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker, the Army chief of staff, told the House Armed Services Committee that “for planning purposes” he has ordered his staff to consider how the Army would replace the force that is now rotating into Iraq with another force of similar size in 2005 — and again in 2006.
The decision about when to end the U.S. military presence in Iraq will be made by President George W. Bush and his national security aides, in consultation with American commanders in Iraq. As a service chief, Schoomaker’s role is to ensure that soldiers are trained and equipped for any mission the president requires.
Of the approximately 105,000 troops going to Iraq this winter and spring to replace the 130,000 who have been there since the start of the war, about 80,000 are Army soldiers. The replacement force, which includes 25,000 Marines, is scheduled to spend a full year in Iraq.
Army officials have said that planning for the 2005 rotation of forces into Iraq will begin in February.
The requirement for large numbers of ground forces in Iraq has stretched the Army, which also has major commitments in Afghanistan, South Korea and the Balkans. Schoomaker said the Army has used emergency authority to go beyond the limit set by Congress on the number of soldiers who can be in uniform. He said the Army now is about 11,000 soldiers above the 482,400 limit.
Exceeding troop limits
Schoomaker also said Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has authorized the Army to temporarily exceed the limit by as much as 30,000.
But Schoomaker said he was opposed to Congress passing legislation to permanently expand the size of the Army, mainly because it would be too costly.
“I’m adamant that that is not the way to go,” the Army chief said.
Members of the House panel expressed surprise that Rumsfeld had agreed that the Army needed as many as 30,000 more soldiers, since he has publicly opposed a legislative move to expand the service.
Rep. Ellen O. Tauscher said it sounded as if Rumsfeld was accomplishing through the use of his own executive powers the troop increase that he had resisted in Congress.
Concern over stretched Army
Rep. Ike Skelton, the ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, said he was concerned that the requirement for large numbers of troops in Iraq and Afghanistan may break the Army.
“This does not mean we should pull back from our commitments,” Skelton said. “We can’t unring the bell. We’re there. We’ve got to win. We’ve got to stabilize that country,” he said of Iraq. “We cannot afford that to evolve into a civil war.”
Even while the Iraq war continues, the Pentagon is planning a new offensive in the two-year-old Afghanistan campaign to try to stop remnants of the Taliban regime and the al-Qaida terrorist network, officials said Wednesday.
Orders have been issued to prepare equipment and supplies, though the operation will not necessarily require additional troops in the region, where about 11,000 Americans are still deployed, a defense official said on condition of anonymity.
© 2004 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/4090668/
Rice rejects calls for outside probe of Iraq intelligence
Security adviser admits some prewar data flawed
REUTERS
Updated: 3:52 p.m. ET Jan. 29, 2004
WASHINGTON - President Bush’s national security adviser acknowledged Thursday that some prewar intelligence about Iraq was flawed but brushed aside calls for an independent investigation.
Condoleezza Rice, in a series of television interviews, defended Bush’s decision to go to war and said the United States may never learn the whole truth about Iraq’s weapons capabilities because of looting, which U.S. forces failed to stop immediately after the invasion.
While she defended the intelligence community, Rice said on CBS’s “Early Show”: “I think that what we have is evidence that there are differences between what we knew going in and what we found on the ground.”
But she added: “That’s not surprising in a country that was as closed and secretive as Iraq, a country that was doing everything that it could to deceive the United Nations, to deceive the world.”
“When you are dealing with secretive regimes that want to deceive, you’re never going to be able to be positive” about intelligence, Rice said on NBC’s “Today” show.
She said the U.S. team hunting for Iraq’s weapons would “gather all of the facts that we possibly can,” leaving open the possibility that its findings might be inconclusive.
She put the blame for any gaps on looters and former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, who she said was so secretive that “he allowed the world to continue to wonder” what weapons he still had.
Critics say the administration did little to secure sensitive sites immediately after the invasion, undercutting efforts to find the alleged weapons at the center of Bush’s case for going to war.
‘Unresolved ambiguity’
David Kay, who had led the U.S. team hunting for Iraq’s weapons, warned Wednesday of an “unresolved ambiguity” about Saddam’s weapons capabilities because of the looting of documents, laboratories and military bases.
“A lot of that traces to the failure on April 9th to establish immediately physical security in Iraq,” he told Congress.
Kay said he would support an independent investigation into the intelligence the White House used to justify going to war after concluding that it was highly unlikely that Iraq had large stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction, as stated repeatedly by Bush and his top aides before launching the invasion.
But Rice said on NBC that the intelligence community had already launched its own investigation — “a kind of audit of what was known going in and what was found when they got there.”
A CIA official said the investigation, headed by Richard Kerr, a former CIA deputy director, was still under way.
Rice said Kay had raised “some questions that we will want to answer.” But she said on ABC’s “Good Morning America”: “We will never know fully because a lot of looting took place before our armed forces could secure various areas.”
Rice said the administration wanted to get all the facts to compare what the White House thought would be found in Iraq and what was actually found.
“Nobody will want to know better and more about what we found when we got to Iraq than this president and the administration,” she said.
Whatever the outcome, Rice said, the administration would not change its position that Saddam had to go.
“The judgment is going to be the same: This is a dangerous man in a dangerous part of the world, and it was time to do something about this threat,” she said.
Copyright 2004 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/4049012/
White House raising Medicare bill by a third
Bush’s new budget predicts record half-trillion-dollar deficit
The Associated Press
Updated: 2:37 p.m. ET Jan. 29, 2004
WASHINGTON - President Bush’s new budget will project that the just-enacted prescription drug program and Medicare overhaul will cost a third more than previously estimated and will predict a record deficit exceeding $500 billion for this year, congressional aides said Thursday.
Instead of a $400 billion 10-year price tag, Bush’s 2005 budget will estimate the Medicare bill’s cost at $540 billion, aides said on condition of anonymity. Bush is to submit by Monday a federal budget for the fiscal year 2005, which starts Oct. 1.
The budget will also estimate this year’s budget deficit at $520 billion, the sources said. That would greatly surpass the $375 billion shortfall of last year, the highest deficit ever in dollar terms.
As recently as Monday, the Congressional Budget Office, Congress’ nonpartisan fiscal analyst, projected that this year’s red ink would total $477 billion.
Bush just signed the Medicare measure into law last month. While it was moving through Congress, Bush, White House officials and congressional Republican leaders had reassured doubting conservatives that the costs would stay within the $400 billion estimate.
Some conservatives voted against the legislation anyway, and many of them are already angry that Bush has presided over excessive increases in spending and budget deficits.
“I’m not the least bit surprised,” said conservative Rep. John Shadegg, R-Ariz., who voted against the Medicare bill in November and who said he had heard that the cost estimate would rise. “Historically, our estimates of what these programs will cost have been so far off as to be meaningless.”
Chad Kolton, a spokesman for the White House Office of Management and Budget, would not comment on the Medicare figures. But an administration official acknowledged on condition of anonymity that the estimate would rise to nearly $540 billion.
“Both numbers provide what you can call a reasonable range of possible future costs for Medicare,” the official said. “These are complex estimates, based on hundreds of individual programs, decisions and potential actions over an extended period of time.”
The CBO estimated the 10-year cost of the bill at $395 billion. Administration officials repeatedly stood by the $400 billion figure, which Bush had included in the budget he proposed last February.
Election-year impact
The new estimate comes as Bush braces for a difficult election-season fight with Congress over spending — after a budget year that he can hardly expect to top.
Although Bush sends his 2005 budget to Congress next week, lawmakers only last week completed their spending work for 2004. That process saw Bush win virtually all his major priorities, including a tax cut, new Medicare prescription drug coverage, funds to fight a war with Iraq and overall spending restraint.
“He wanted a carpet that looked like X, and generally speaking he got a carpet that looked like X,” said Richard Kogan, who analyzes the budget for the liberal Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
The Republican-run Congress avoided overt clashes with Bush but did not roll over completely.
Lawmakers trimmed his defense plans while boosting funds for highways, Amtrak and veterans. They ignored Bush’s plan to make tax cuts permanent, scaled back his proposal to stop taxing corporate dividends, derailed his energy bill and added thousands of home-district projects to spending measures.
Even so, the results were a far cry from the “dead on arrival” label applied to the spending blueprints of some of Bush’s recent predecessors. Democrats and moderate Republicans often gave that assessment to plans written by Presidents George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan, who were forced to accept both tax and spending increases.
On the other hand, despite the Republican takeover of Congress two years into his tenure, President Bill Clinton won frequent spending concessions from lawmakers wary of battling him. Bush has followed a similar pattern.
“It would be hard to say he’s not getting what he wants,” said Stan Collender, , a senior vice president who follows the budget for the accounting firm Fleischman-Hillard.
Bush has yet to cast a veto after three years in office. He often uses the threat of a veto to get his way, issuing 19 as Congress considered the 13 annual spending bills for this year. In the end, lawmakers dropped challenges on such issues as administration plans to change overtime pay rules and divert more government work to private contractors.
Major priorities Bush proposed last year included:
--Tax reductions of $1.3 trillion over 10 years. The bill he signed had $330 billion in tax cuts. That number is expected to grow should lawmakers, as anticipated, make some of its temporary reductions permanent. Congress added $20 billion he did not seek for financially strapped states.
--$400 billion over a decade for revamping Medicare and adding prescription drug coverage. Bush last month signed a bill resembling his proposal.
--$87 billion this year for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, $500 million less than he got. The final bill gave him $1.7 billion less than the $18.6 billion he wanted to rebuild Iraq and less flexibility than he wanted for controlling the money.
© 2004 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/4098618/
Bush would veto trims in Patriot Act
Ashcroft says changes would undermine war on terrorism
The Associated Press
Updated: 1:21 p.m. ET Jan. 29, 2004
WASHINGTON - The Bush administration issued a veto threat Thursday against legislation that would scale back key parts of the anti-terrorism Patriot Act.
In a letter to Senate leaders, Attorney General John Ashcroft said the changes contemplated by the Security and Freedom Ensured Act, or SAFE, would “undermine our ongoing campaign to detect and prevent catastrophic terrorist attacks.”
If the bill reaches President Bush’s desk in its current form, Ashcroft said, “the president’s senior advisers will recommend that it be vetoed.”
The threat comes a week after Bush, in his State of the Union address, called for Congress to reauthorize the Patriot Act before it expires in 2005. The law, which was passed shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, expanded the government’s wiretap and other surveillance authority, removed barriers between FBI and CIA information-sharing and provided more tools for terror finance investigations.
Civil liberties groups and some lawmakers, including Republicans, believe the act goes too far and endangers the privacy of innocent citizens.
‘Sneak and peek’ warrants criticized
The SAFE Act, which has not yet had a hearing in either the House or the Senate, was introduced last fall by Sens. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, and Dick Durbin, D-Ill., and other lawmakers of both parties.
In a statement at the time, Craig said the bill was a “measured” response to concerns that the Patriot Act threatened civil liberties and privacy rights.
“This legislation intends to ensure the liberties of law-abiding individuals are protected in our nation’s fight against terrorism, without in any way impeding that fight,” Craig said.
The bill would modify so-called “sneak and peek” search warrants that allow for delayed notification of the target of the search. In addition, warrants for roving wiretaps used to monitor a suspect’s multiple cellular telephones would have to make sure the target was present at the site being wiretapped before information could be collected.
The legislation also would reinstate standards in place before the Patriot Act was passed regarding library records by forcing the FBI to show that it had reason to believe that the person involved was a suspected terrorist or spy. In addition, the bill would impose expiration dates on nationwide search warrants and other provisions of the Patriot Act, providing for congressional review.
Ashcroft, who last year embarked on a national speaking tour in support of the Patriot Act, said the legislation would “make it even more difficult to mount an effective anti-terror campaign than it was before the Patriot Act was passed.”
© 2004 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/4079785/
My Dime -- dubya and asscrack have also administratively put into effect most of the worst of what was proposed in that "Patriot Act II" which (their own Republican) Congress refused to even to consider, notwithstanding asscrack's road trip to lecture us all about how "we" (as in, "what you mean 'we', kimosabe?") can't afford even what is left of our inconvenient rights and liberties after the original "Patriot Act" . . . "outrageous" doesn't even begin to cover what's going on . . .
Bush Pursues Big-Gov Nanny State
Wednesday, January 28, 2004
By Radley Balko
In Time magazine this week, conservative pundit and blogger extraordinaire Andrew Sullivan penned an excellent column on the nanny-state policies of President Bush.
Sullivan rattled off a litany of domestic micro-government programs (search) supported and proposed by the president, which aim to use the power of federal purse strings to manipulate even the most mundane decisions we make about our lives.
Sullivan is a savvy writer and an astute political observer, and his observations about Bush are dead-on, save for one important point:
Sullivan claims in his essay that while President Bush’s foreign policy is decidedly pro-freedom, that same sense of liberty curiously stops at American shores, where the president endorses a conservative form of the big-government nanny state (search).
But according to University of Alabama Professor David Beito, the contrast between the Bush administation's domestic and foreign policies is is not unusual. Governments that go to war almost always flex muscle at home.
It should serve as a caution to conservatives, libertarians and limited government advocates that if history is any indicator, governments that pursue an aggressive, grandiose foreign policy have never held the limited government line at home.
This makes sense if you think about it. If one is to believe that the U.S. military or the U.S. State Department can construct free, dynamic societies from the rubble of nations with no history or tradition of liberal institutions, it isn’t such a leap to think that the U.S. government can likewise run an efficient prescription drug program, welfare system, or job training program here at home.
Early 20th century journalist and World War I protester Randolph Bourne famously wrote that “war is the health of the state.” The reason why politicians declare “war” on intangibles like drugs or poverty is because a “war” mentality implies that the problem in question is so serious that the traditional rules of interaction between the governing and the governed need to be suspended. The greatest periods of growth of federal power in American history have come in wartime, or in crises like the Great Depression. These expansions are nearly always justified under the premise that national crises require more state power. They’re always sold to the people on the promise that the power requested will only be temporary, or limited to certain circumstances (see the PATRIOT Act, for example).
Of course, the powers are almost never temporary or limited. Instead, government retains its new powers once we find peace, usually finds new ways to use them, then asks for more at the onset of the next war, a phenomenon historian Robert Higgs calls “the ratchet effect.”
Rent control, corporate welfare, the income tax and income tax withholding are just a few of the new powers the state assumed in a time of war or crisis on an allegedly temporary basis, but never gave back. The crisis of the Great Depression caused a massive expansion of supposedly temporary federal power that still drags on the economy today.
Getting back to the present, the very mindset that deems it appropriate for the United States to have troops in over 120 countries, as is currently the case, is a mindset wholly inconsistent with the notion of “limited government” -- at home or abroad. It’s simply not realistic to assume that the same government which feels the need to exert its influence all over the globe will, at the same time, voluntarily restrain its influence at home.
The nation-building efforts we’ve undertaken in Iraq and Afghanistan -- and could potentially undertake elsewhere -- also give rhetorical fuel to advocates of more socialist government at home. In the coming years, expect to hear questions like,”why are we building schools in Iraq when our city schools are so dilapidated,” or, “shouldn’t we make sure all Americans have health insurance before we start paying for health care for Iraqis?”
There are of course times when military action and the use of force are necessary to defend the sovereignty and security of the United States. Of course any act of war, necessary or otherwise, by definition requires a forfeiture of freedom from those of us in whose name the war is being waged.
But we should be wary and vigilant about keeping that forfeiture of liberty as limited in scope as possible. We should also choose our wars carefully and cautiously, with the understanding that every military endeavor means considerable sacrifice at home, a sacrifice that’s usually permanent. And we shouldn’t be surprised when wars abroad effect big government here in the States, even government not directly related to war.
History shows that’s always been the case.
Radley Balko is a freelance writer and publishes a weblog at TheAgitator.com.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,109766,00.html
rooster -- nowhere moreso than in positions of national leadership, what matters in any given instance is whether a person is the right person for the position, regardless of race (I thought you far-right types liked to stand behind that principle -- or is that only when it suits your agenda of the moment? -- or is it instead that only you far-right types are allowed to stand behind that principle?)
for one particularly glaring case-in-point: in the legal landscape in general, and in particular in the landscape of persons who have served as Justices of the Supreme Court, Clarence Thomas, to put it bluntly but also very accurately, is a moron, quite possibly the least-qualified Justice of any persuasion to ever sit on the Supreme Court, who just happens to also be a far-right extremist (which of course is the real reason he, rather than any of the many far better qualified and far more experienced black lawyers then available, was nominated), notable primarily for nothing whatsoever more substantial in his entire life than his history of kissing the butts of non-black and all-too-often undeniably racist far-right types to get ahead in his life -- it was an insult to the Supreme Court and to all Americans (not just to black Americans) for Clarence Thomas to be put on the Supreme Court, only made worse by the rank disingenuousness inherent in the fact that he was 'slotted' as the 'black' replacement for Thurgood Marshall, who indeed was the first black Justice but much more to the point was an undeniably outstanding Justice who, it just happened, proved once and for all that a black person could not only serve acceptably on the Supreme Court, but could -- and did, for more than 20 years -- serve with great distinction on the Supreme Court
http://chnm.gmu.edu/courses/122/hill/marshall.htm
geez louise, rooster -- that may well be the single most ridiculous, most laughable post I've ever seen anyone make on any board (and believe me, THAT is saying something) -- I mean, WOW . . . truly impressive (though undoubtedly not in the way you intended) . . .
spree -- I'm in TX (did everything I could to warn anyone who'd listen about dubya before the last election -- he was a very bad joke here as guvnuh, imo) -- and yeah it's time I finally ante up for Kerry; wanted to see him get through the chaos and confusion of the initial contests and still be in the thick of things, he's done that so my $2k (that is the limit, right?) goes out today -- wouldn't it be a kick to see a close race between dubya and Kerry for TX? I won't go so far as to predict THAT, but I will be voting, as I always do, and we'll just have to see . . .
art and spree and all -- and not that this should matter at all to anybody else's opinion -- but for the record I also am a Kerry supporter, and have been since he declared
why, our tutti-frutti AG, of course (who for example considers any form of dancing 'the devil's palsy')
zitboy --
as for your first comment, we're close enough to agreeing -- fine
as for your second comment -- I'm in Texas; re no more ice ages -- you have grossly over-extended yourself
as for your (pending) third and last comment -- the founders were deists (not Christians), and understood properly in historical context their references to our rights coming from god were intended to distinguish this nation from the English notion that all rights derived from the King; this nation, with its constitutional rejection of any state religion, was indeed explicitly secular from the beginning, period
rooster -- the truth, which you evidently just cannot handle, is that the people you attempt to dismiss as having short attention spans (we know who we are) in fact have quite adequate attention spans, and in fact are having problems with dubya, Halliburton-boy, rummy, asscrack and company precisely because we are paying attention and are remembering, not only what has been and continues to be said, but also what has been and continues to be done -- for but one utterly outrageous example, the absolutely unprecedented in our entire history (and mind-bogglingly un-noted and unprotested by our media) outright ban by this administration of any press coverage whatsoever of the ongoing returns home of our real "REAL men" and women who continue to be wounded and die abroad obeying this administration's orders . . .
rooster -- thank you for your deep thoughts -- here's a different view that a person could have, and that (for some reason or other) some people in fact do have:
absent another stolen election (which likely will not be a workable option this year because the vote this year will not be nearly as close as it was in 2000), the only way dubya will still be in power one year from now is if, before the election, those who run dubya determine that it is appropriate, in the context of their broader interests in general and to their ongoing war on our individual rights and liberties in particular (or as it would be put to us, essential to protecting our national security interests and saving us all from something just awful), for dubya, assisted by asscrack (and also by rummy, who among his other brand-new domestic duties would be busily overseeing the brand-new draft instituted to fill the millions of brand-new openings in his brand-new Federal homeland surveillance and military police authority), to (a) declare an initially purportedly temporary regime of Federal martial law (a very compassionately conservative regime of Federal martial law, no doubt) intended and designed from its very beginning to be permanent, and accordingly also to (b) suspend, and ultimately revoke and repeal, the Constitution and any and all other Federal, state and local law, in particular all individual rights and liberties including all elections, that may be inconsistent with or otherwise inconvenient to the unfettered establishment, consolidation and maintenance of such regime of Federal martial law, correspondingly rendering powerless and meaningless any and all Federal, state and local courts, legislatures and other bodies and agencies that are not immediately either disbanded outright or directly taken over by and/or subsumed under the brand-new Federal homeland surveillance and military police authority -- it is a simple-enough recipe, after all; just take any old genuinely terrifying and sufficiently plausible claimed pretext for such an initially purportedly temporary regime of Federal martial law (whether the claimed pretext is real to any extent, or is instead fabricated entirely from whole cloth, being of no consequence so long as the claimed pretext is indeed genuinely terrifying and sufficiently plausible) and vigorously whip that claimed pretext into the populace until the populace is beaten into such a frothy pulp of fear and/or other acquiescence and resignation as to accept (and even demand) such an initially purportedly temporary regime of Federal martial law as necessary and inevitable (and even desirable), then quickly fold in that one decisive executive order delivering the coup de grâce that ends the life of our nation as history's first great constitutional republic, and voilà! . . .
isn't this scenario absolutely and totally preposterous?
well, it certainly ought to be -- but considering various actions already taken by dubya, Halliburton-boy, rummy, asscrack and company, and the utter contempt for the Constitution and the sheer unabashed impunity they have so consistently displayed in taking those actions, . . .
isn't this scenario factually impossible?
no, not at all -- to the contrary, recalling statements made long ago, by certain of those who created this constitutional republic, to the effect that 'eternal vigilance is the price of liberty' and 'those who would trade freedom for security deserve, and will have, neither' -- this sort of scenario has been a fundamental risk that the citizens of this nation have inherently always faced since our forebears declared their principled rejection of and independence from the Crown's ideologically theocratic and factually plutocratic oppression and, to replace that ideology and oppression, created instead this first constitutional republic based above all on the rights and liberties of the individual; and this sort of scenario will continue to be a fundamental risk that we will inherently face every new day going forward that we continue to keep this first great constitutional republic of ours alive as such . . .
yo rooster, boy you sure do tickle yourself going off half-cocked like that, don't ya?
whether or not global warming is real (where it is becoming increasingly difficult to dispute that it indeed is real, at least as some sort of short-term phenomenon) -- and if global warming is real, whether or not human activity is the sole cause of or even a significant factor in causing the warming (I remain doubtful as to how significant a factor human activity could be, in particular where, for example and interestingly enough, other planets including Mars and Pluto apparently are [also] warming at this time) -- the changes taking place in the Gulf Stream are real; and those changes are consistent with a warming scenario, including the one described in the article I posted, and for that matter also including the similar but broader scenario where the warming, via effects such as are now being seen in the Gulf Stream, actually triggers not just one or a couple of regional flips into one or a couple of relatively short-duration regional ice ages, but instead, cumulatively and ultimately, triggers a complete global flip into the next global ice age (for which, by the way, we may already be somewhat overdue; and which, by the way, will almost certainly last for many thousands, if not tens of thousands, of years once it does begin -- as someday it will, whenever that someday turns out to be be) (this latter, broader scenario, to my genuine chagrin and concern, being the one I currently find most intriguing)
also, fyi -- I am an independent, not a liberal -- although, if by "liberal" you mean one who is not a simple and closed-minded ideologue fanatically enslaved to the vision and agenda that some, notably dubya and Halliburton-boy and rummy and asscrack and the rest of that unholy gang, clearly have and are relentlessly pursuing (and are constantly seeking to justify, indeed to ram down our throats, by invoking their very own versions of god and of good and evil), said vision and agenda being to turn (a) our truly great and from the beginning explicitly secular nation, built above all on a foundation of individual rights and liberties, into (b) some sort of "perfect"-ly unfree high-tech nightmare of a neo-fascist plutocracy that, in unprincipled pursuit of its plutocrats' very private interests, chokes off its own citizen's rights and liberties and parades about the world as an arrogant and ultimately out-of-control and self-destructive superpower, all the while wearing and lording both over others and over its own citizens the authoritarian and obscenely disingenuous holier-than-thou guise of a Christian fundamentalist theocracy, then I will wear your "liberal" label -- anytime, anywhere, and proudly
Those in the Northeast should take note -- the Gulf Stream shutting down would lead to significant cooling there, as well as in (e.g.) the U.K. -- and yes, this absolutely is real:
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/environment/story.jsp?story=484490
Global warming will plunge Britain into new ice age 'within decades'
By Geoffrey Lean, Environment Editor
25 January 2004
Britain is likely to be plunged into an ice age within our lifetime by global warming, new research suggests.
A study, which is being taken seriously by top government scientists, has uncovered a change "of remarkable amplitude" in the circulation of the waters of the North Atlantic.
Similar events in pre-history are known to have caused sudden "flips" of the climate, bringing ice ages to northern Europe within a few decades. The development - described as "the largest and most dramatic oceanic change ever measured in the era of modern instruments", by the US Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, which led the research - threatens to turn off the Gulf Stream, which keeps Europe's weather mild.
If that happens, Britain and northern Europe are expected to switch abruptly to the climate of Labrador - which is on the same latitude - bringing a nightmare scenario where farmland turns to tundra and winter temperatures drop below -20C. The much-heralded cold snap predicted for the coming week would seem balmy by comparison.
A report by the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme in Sweden - launched by Nobel prize-winner Professor Paul Crutzen and other top scientists - warned last week that pollution threatened to "trigger changes with catastrophic consequences" like these.
Scientists have long expected that global warming could, paradoxically, cause a devastating cooling in Europe by disrupting the Gulf Stream, which brings as much heat to Britain in winter as the sun does: the US National Academy of Sciences has even described such abrupt, dramatic changes as "likely". But until now it has been thought that this would be at least a century away.
The new research, by scientists at the Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Acquaculture Science at Lowestoft and Canada's Bedford Institute of Oceanography, as well as Woods Hole, indicates that this may already be beginning to happen.
Dr Ruth Curry, the study's lead scientist, says: "This has the potential to change the circulation of the ocean significantly in our lifetime. Northern Europe will likely experience a significant cooling."
Robert Gagosian, the director of Woods Hole, considered one of the world's leading oceanographic institutes, said: "We may be approaching a threshold that would shut down [the Gulf Stream] and cause abrupt climate changes.
"Even as the earth as a whole continues to warm gradually, large regions may experience a precipitous and disruptive shift into colder climates." The scientists, who studied the composition of the waters of the Atlantic from Greenland to Tierra del Fuego, found that they have become "very much" saltier in the tropics and subtropics and "very much" fresher towards the poles over the past 50 years.
This is alarming because the Gulf Stream is driven by cold, very salty water sinking in the North Atlantic. This pulls warm surface waters northwards, forming the current.
The change is described as the "fingerprint" of global warming. As the world heats up, more water evaporates from the tropics and falls as rain in temperate and polar regions, making the warm waters saltier and the cold ones fresher. Melting polar ice adds more fresh water.
Ominously, the trend has accelerated since 1990, during which time the 10 hottest years on record have occurred. Many studies have shown that similar changes in the waters of the North Atlantic in geological time have often plunged Europe into an ice age, sometimes bringing the change in as little as a decade.
The National Academy of Sciences says that the jump occurs in the same way as "the slowly increasing pressure of a finger eventually flips a switch and turns on a light". Once the switch has occurred the new, hostile climate, lasts for decades at least, and possibly centuries.
When the Gulf Stream abruptly turned off about 12,700 years ago, it brought about a 1,300-year cold period, known as the Younger Dryas. This froze Britain in continuous permafrost, drove summer temperatures down to 10C and winter ones to -20C, and brought icebergs as far south as Portugal. Europe could not sustain anything like its present population. Droughts struck across the globe, including in Asia, Africa and the American west, as the disruption of the Gulf Stream affected currents worldwide.
Some scientists say that this is the "worst-case scenario" and that the cooling may be less dramatic, with the world's climate "flickering" between colder and warmer states for several decades. But they add that, in practice, this would be almost as catastrophic for agriculture and civilisation.
rooster -- further proof that "we" do not all know what you think "we" do:
(REUTERS) DAVOS-Bush challenged on 'safer America' Union message
By Mark Trevelyan, Security Correspondent
DAVOS, Switzerland, Jan 21 (Reuters) - Security analysts and
a leading human rights campaigner called on Wednesday for a
rethink of the war on terror and challenged President George W.
Bush's assertion that it was making America safer.
Bush devoted much of Tuesday's State of the Union address to
rallying Americans behind the war on terror, telling them the
nation must not falter and leave its work unfinished.
He saluted the hundreds of thousands of U.S. servicemen
deployed across the world and declared, "By bringing hope to the
oppressed and delivering justice to the violent, they are making
America more secure."
But independent analysts at the opening session of the World
Economic Forum in Switzerland said that far from making the
country safer, the war on terror and the invasion of Iraq had
served only to aggravate the dangers.
"No, we are not safer," said Jessica Stern, lecturer in
public policy at Harvard University.
"Going into Iraq in the way we did, without broad
international support, really increased the ability of al Qaeda
and its sympathisers to 'prove' that the objective of the United
States is to humiliate the Islamic world, more than it was to
liberate the Iraqi people."
Gareth Evans, former Australian foreign minister and head of
the International Crisis Group think-tank, said al Qaeda and its
sympathisers had expanded their theatre of operations since the
September 11 attacks to countries including Morocco, Turkey,
Saudi Arabia and Indonesia.
"The unhappy truth is that the net result of the war on
terror, so far at least, has been more war and more terror,"
Evans said.
"In Iraq, the least plausible of all the reasons for going
to war -- terrorism -- has now become the most harrowing of its
consequences."
Security and terrorism are major themes of this year's World
Economic Forum in the Swiss ski resort of Davos, attended by
more than 2,280 participants from 94 countries, including 31
heads of state or government.
Bush, in his speech to Congress, stressed the importance of
U.S. military action, tighter law enforcement and new security
measures such as the requirement on foreign airlines to submit
passenger lists in advance to U.S. authorities.
But participants in the Davos discussion urged more
attention be devoted to tackling underlying grievances, such as
the Arab-Israeli conflict and the unresolved dispute between
India and Pakistan over Kashmir.
Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, said
measures like the detention without trial of more than 600
"enemy combatants" at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, had surrendered
the moral high ground and provided a rallying point for
militants.
"While undoubtedly the Bush administration is leading the
war against terrorism, it -- in an odd way - has also become the
chief recruiter for al Qaeda," he said.
In rare praise for Bush, former Israeli prime minister Ehud
Barak said the president's leadership was helping to bring about
a safer world. The televised image of a docile Saddam Hussein,
submitting to medical checks after his capture, sent a powerful
message to the leaders of Libya, Iran, Syria and North Korea.
But he acknowledged the success of al Qaeda leader Osama bin
Laden, despite the war on terror, in stirring up support in the
Islamic world.
"The real achievement of Osama bin Laden...is that he
ignited the imagination of hundreds of millions in the Arab
world. That's his ultimate weapon. That's what gives him hope
and patience and a kind of evil optimism," Barak said.
((Davos newsroom, mark.trevelyan@reuters.com, editing by Nigel
Stephenson))
REUTERS
*** end of story ***