The Right Call
Blue Texan at Firedoglake had this comment on John McCain’s truly mind-boggling statement Monday that even in retrospect he would still have voted to authorize the war, as he did in 2002.
Yeah, get a clue you two-thirds of America who’ve concluded the war was a mistake in light of no WMDs, no ties to al-Qaeda, 4100 Americans dead, 29,000 wounded, several hundred thousand Iraqis killed, an emboldened Iran, a resurgent Taliban in Pakistan, Afghanistan collapsing, bin Laden at large, anti-Americanism at an all-time high, and $4.00 gasoline — all at a price tag of 2 trillion dollars. There’s no question it was the right call.
The following item is lifted from Jonathan Schwartz at This Modern World:
Yikes
June 27th, 2008
The North Pole may be briefly ice-free by September as global warming melts away Arctic sea ice, according to scientists from the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado.
Obama and congressional Democrats support Warrantless wiretapping and forgiveness (without trial) of telecom company crimes
June 20, 2008
See Glenn Greenwald for the story.
Holocene Epoch Ends
June 6, 2008
That’s the unanimous conclusion of the Stratigraphy Commission of the Geological Society of London, the world’s oldest and stodgiest association of Earth scientists. According to Mike Davis:
the members of the commission adduced “robust evidence that the Holocene epoch — the interglacial span of unusually stable climate that has allowed the rapid evolution of agriculture and urban civilization — has ended and that the Earth has entered “a stratigraphic interval without close parallel in the last several million years.”
Highlights of the story:
Coal production, especially, is undergoing a dramatic renaissance, as the nineteenth century has returned to haunt the twenty-first century. Hundreds of thousands of miners are now working under conditions that would have appalled Charles Dickens, extracting the dirty mineral that allows China to open two new coal-fueled power stations every week. Meanwhile, the total consumption of fossil fuels is predicted to increase at least 55% over the next generation, with international oil exports doubling in volume.
The United Nations Development Program, which has made its own study of sustainable energy goals, warns that it will require “a 50 percent cut in greenhouse gas emissions worldwide by 2050 against 1990 levels” to keep humanity outside the red zone of runaway warming (usually defined as a greater than two degrees centigrade increase this century). Yet the International Energy Agency predicts that, in all likelihood, such emissions will actually increase in this period by nearly 100% — enough greenhouse gas to propel us past several critical tipping points.
Even while higher energy prices are pushing SUVs towards extinction and attracting more venture capital to renewable energy, they are also opening the Pandora’s box of the crudest of crude oil production from Canadian tar sands and Venezuelan heavy oil.
Do Your Part!
June 12
The Doom Institute and its affiliated Doom Clubs throughout the free world endorsed the visionary Carbon Belch Day.
“We call on doomers everywhere to Take the Pledge. ‘Yes, I’ll increase my CO2 output on June 12!’
“The good people at Carbon Belch have some simple things you can do to help the cause on that day. Drive more. Turn down your air conditioning 5 degrees. Don’t recycle newspapers for one day. Do a partial load of laundry. Don’t bring your own shopping bags to the supermarket.” Dr. Doom
All right!
May 29, 2008
During a fund-raiser in Denver, Obama — a former constitutional law professor at the University of Chicago Law School — was asked what he hoped to accomplish during his first 100 days in office.
“I would call my attorney general in and review every single executive order issued by George Bush and overturn those laws or executive decisions that I feel violate the constitution,” said Obama
The story here.
Update: But will he overturn the FISA bill allowing warrantless surveillance and immunizing the telecom companies immunity from their crimes that Obama himself supports?