Thursday, September 21, 2006

Treehugger Bush, Crazy Right-Wing Congress, Iraq Study Group and Bush Sets New Record.


I don't know who he's trying to fool, but the White House has presented us with a long term plan on global warming.

It's not surprising that the Bush plan will rely on big business to come up with new technology and voluntary actions to slow down the emission of greenhouse gases.

Under the Bush plan there would be basically no reductions until 2010. From there the plan the plan stretches over a 100 year time limit. The White House calls this "visionary". The rest of us would consider this as BS.

"This plan was inspired by the President's vision to harness America's strengths
in innovation and technology to transform energy production and use in ways that
significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions over the long term," Bodman said
in a statement. "This strategic plan is unprecedented in its scope and scale and
breaks new ground with its visionary 100-year planning horizon, global
perspective, multilateral research collaborations, and public-private
partnerships."


As proof that this environmental plan is just more of the same old crap, here's what Margo Thorning of ACCF has to say about it.

Margo Thorning, chief economist at the American Council for Capital
Formation, said the plan is "a substantial, credible effort" to address global
warming.

"The technology-based approach is the only way to go, and the
administration's emphasis on that is the right one," said Thorning, whose think
tank accepts money from Exxon Mobil Corp.


The ACCF, or American Council for Capital Formation Center, is a mouthpiece for the major polluters in this country.

This new greener side of the Bush Administration is just a PR stunt. They still do their best to quash all environmental data that doesn't agree with their big polluter approach to clean air.

In February, there were several press reports about the Bush administration
exercising message control on the subject of climate change. The New Republic
cited numerous instances in which top officials at the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration and scientists at the National Hurricane Center
sought to downplay links between more-intense hurricanes and global warming.
NOAA scientist Thomas Knutson told the Wall Street Journal he'd been barred from
speaking to CNBC because his research suggested just such a link.

At the time, Bush administration officials denied that they did any
micromanaging of media requests for interviews. But a large batch of e-mails
obtained by Salon through a Freedom of Information Act request shows that the
White House was, in fact, controlling access to scientists and vetting
reporters. (The e-mails were provided to several members of Congress for
comment; Rep. Henry Waxman's office has now published them here.)


The White House view on the environment and most other things probably comes from their dependence on right-wing lobbyists as the source of information for policy decisions.

Former associates of disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff had dozens of
appointments with Bush administration staff members, according to Secret Service
visitor logs the White House released yesterday to settle a lawsuit by the
Democratic Party and an ethics watchdog group.

White House officials said Norquist, who runs the nonprofit Americans for
Tax Reform, was cleared for 97 visits to the White House complex from 2001 to
this year, half a dozen including Bush. Reed, former executive director of the
Christian Coalition and an unsuccessful candidate for lieutenant governor in
Georgia this year, got 18 meetings, including two events with Bush.


Over in the House, Republican Congressmen are trying their best to show us what a bunch right-wing whackjobs they really are. Is anyone paying attention?

President Bush's supporters in the House narrowly defeated yesterday
efforts to sidetrack his proposal for questioning and prosecuting terrorism
suspects, but the issue continues to divide Congress in its final workdays
before the November elections.

Bush wants legislation that would declare the United States to be in
compliance with the Geneva Conventions if it abides by a federal law's
guidelines regarding the treatment of non-uniformed suspects captured in
wartime.


They would rather spend your tax dollars on putting a wall around the country instead of cracking down on their supporters who hire illegal aliens. They would gladly spend all of our money to save their friends a few bucks.

Boeing proposes to construct a necklace of 1,800 towers equipped with cameras,
sensors and links to sophisticated computers along the nation's vast frontiers
with Mexico and Canada. The Department of Homeland Security is scheduled to
announce Boeing as the winner of the competition today.


They want to limit access to voting for Americans.

"This is what Americans want," said Rep. John Mica (news, bio, voting
record
), R-Fla., "They want safe borders and they want safe ballots."

But Democrats assailed the legislation, saying it could hurt
minorities, the poor and the elderly — groups that tend to vote Democratic — who
might have trouble producing a photo identification.

"This bill is tantamount to a 21st century poll tax," said Democratic
Whip Steny Hoyer, D-Md. "It will disenfranchise large number of legal
voters."


They want the government to be able to spy on you.

Although it may appear as if Congress is about to put restraints on the Bush
administration's wiretapping programs, the three "reform bills" now up for a
vote all paint a deceptive picture of the massive domestic surveillance programs
that the government has up and running. Because several ongoing
invasion-of-privacy lawsuits could expose the extent of the illegal wiretapping,
the administration is seeking via these bills to shunt the lawsuits into a
secret court, where they will die.


And they want to show the world that we are just as crazy and cruel as the other terrorists.

The torture of prisoners is not only illegal under American and
international law it is, put simply, immoral and unjust. It is also un-American.

It is amazing that we are still hung up in a debate over President Bush's
insistence that we bend and break our laws and the Geneva Conventions so that
our agents can do everything short of murder to make a man talk.

The president's bill -- blocked in the Senate by three Republicans who
know war and know the law and know what's right -- would allow Central
Intelligence Agency operatives to subject prisoners to water-boarding, or
near-death by drowning; to being forced to stand for 40 hours at a time; to
sleep deprivation; to being tossed naked into a freezing cold cell for days at a
time.


The congressionally commissioned Iraq Study Group held a press conference to report that it had nothing to report. You tax dollars at work.

If President Bush and the Iraqi government are hoping for some solutions
from the congressionally commissioned Iraq Study Group, they might want to start
thinking about a Plan B.

Former secretary of state James Baker and former congressman Lee
Hamilton (D-Ind.), the study group's co-chairmen, called a briefing yesterday to
give a "progress report" on their activities. A dozen television cameras and
scores of reporters filled the hall -- only to discover that Baker and Hamilton
had revived Jerry Seinfeld's "show about nothing" format.


I'll help them out. The number of Iraqi civilian deaths reached record numbers in July and August. Winning hearts and minds in Iraq.

UNITED NATIONS - The number of Iraqi civilians killed in July and August
hit 6,599, a record-high number that is far greater than initial estimates
suggested, the
United Nations' said Wednesday

1 comment:

  1. Hello Jim and all,

    All three Faiths of Abraham spawn violence and hypocrisy

    Christians and Jews can smugly lecture and chastise Muslims about violence, because followers of Islam are poorer, more oppressed, and thereby forced to defend themselves in cruder fashion. On the other hand, the rich and powerful nations of the west can fund, train, and equip state of the art militaries and intelligence services to do their bidding, by proxy. Likewise, smooth-talking politicians expertly equivocate about acceptable collateral damage to the homes and lives of poor people in other lands. With so many dollars spent, why don’t Muslims and others simply shut up and accept being exploited, oppressed, and massacred for such nobly expressed western ideals?

    Those in representative democracies tout their governments as extensions of the citizenry. Accordingly, so are the militaries, intelligence services, corporations and other proxies used to expand and maintain the Judeo-Christian Empire. By extension, the citizens of western nations are much more responsible for the actions of criminals, killers, and torturers paid for and authorized by democratic institutions than people who live in less democratic nations who have much less control over the actions of their leaders.

    It is undeniable that the Bush administration, its cohorts, and supporters are mostly Christian. Without the blind support of so many Judeo-Christians, the Bush administration would not now be embroiled in the current struggle to retroactively legalize torture, illegal domestic spying, and other crimes. By US law, hiring a proxy to murder or assault someone is still prosecuted as murder and assault. It is undeniable that the militaries and intelligence services of the west that kill and torture at the behest of democratic representatives are hired proxies of Judeo-Christian citizens.

    Regardless of attempts to shift blame, history clearly records the widespread crimes of Christianity. Whether we're talking about the abominations of the Inquisition, Crusades, the greed and genocide of colonizers, slavery in the Americas, or the Bush administration's recent deeds and results, Christianity has always spawned great evil.

    So, the next time any Christian, Jew, or Muslim, whether president, prime minister, religious leader or follower decides to chastise others for their failings, stop to consider that the logs in your own eyes have blinded you to the full truth about all three faiths of Abraham. Religion has utterly failed to solve humanity's problems because it is a strong delusion that spawns error and evil instead. The sheep's clothing of duplicitous ideals is an obvious deception used to hide the truth. Nonetheless, the veil is readily pierced by discerning the fruits of their deeds.

    Here is Wisdom...

    ReplyDelete

I did not mean that Conservatives are generally stupid; I meant, that stupid persons are generally Conservative. I believe that to be so obvious and undeniable a fact that I hardly think any hon. Gentleman will question it.

John Stuart Mill (May 20 1806 – May 8 1873)