During an interview on NPR today, Al Gore discusses the Bush Administration’s “arrogation of authority,” and calling the approval of torture use “obscene.”
Transcript at Think Progess
Pretty much sums it up I would say.
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WTF got Laura Bush’s undies all ruffled that she felt compelled to kick Burma’s/Myanmar’s government in the nuts? There is a time and place for everything, and Laura Bush obviously got that rule all messed up when she decided to criticize Myanmar’s government while they are still reeling from the deadly effects of the cyclone that leveled their country four days ago.
The latest estimates coming out of the country say that 22,000 people lost their lives, 41,000 are missing, and possibly 1 million are left homeless. A human tragedy situation of epic proportions are left in the cyclone’s wake, but instead of the First Lady showing compassion, she rather takes the opportunity to insult the leader’s of Myanmar by blaming them for the high death toll.
Did Jenna put her foot down and not let her mother get her way while making final preparations for the wedding, so she felt compelled to lash out at somebody?
Taking this opportunity to politicize a natural disaster, with so many lives being effected just shows how out of touch she is with everything outside of her personal little world! Disgusting display of “I am First Lady, hear me roar” rhetoric! She proved that she was way out of touch with the people of New Orleans after the Katrina catastrophe. So why did she feel it was necessary to prove it again?
Take your medication Laura, soon all will be perfect in your world again! You husband does a fine job of embarrassing this country on his own, he doesn’t need your help!
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In another of President Bush’s benchmarks he’s setting for all those who come after him, he’s once again raising the bar of the “disapproval” poll. Almost as if he’s sticking a finger out and daring, just daring another President to come close to his approval ratings, he continues his descent into the annals of history.
In a recent CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey released today, it indicates that 71% of Americans disapprove of how Bush is handling his job as president. 71%, now that’s a record! No other president in history has ever gotten lower ratings than 70%.
CNN political analyst Bill Schneider sums it all up with one word,”bad.”
“Support for the war, the assessment of the economy and approval of Mr. Bush are all about the same — bad.”
I just wonder if every night, after his bedtime story and glass of warm milk, Laura tucks him in and whispers “Don’t worry George, you’re doin’ a heckuva job. How else could this man continue to want to show his face in public?
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Ask Vice President Dick Cheney what a “No Wake Zone” is, and he’ll probably tell you it’s between the hours of 10 AM and 3 PM when he’s having his daily nap. But when he’s not napping he is studying scientific data on how not to protect whales. And as we all know very well, Cheney works from facts, more facts and nothing but the facts.
So it should come as no surprise that Cheney is preventing the implementation of rules to protect the endangered right whale. In a letter from Henry Waxman to the White House today, he urged the administration to quit delaying the rules which would restrict the speed of ships near American ports, thus lessening the likelyhood of collisions between the vessels and the whales. According to NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration), faster moving ships are more likely to hit the whales, causing injury or death.
But according to Vice President Dick Cheney’s office, that is not true, which has resulted in the delay of approving NOAA’s recommendations. Cheney’s office states:
Another internal document shows that the officials working for the Vice President also raised spurious objections to the science. According to this document, the Vice President’s staff “contends that we have no evidence (i.e., hard data) that lowering the speeds of ‘large ships’ will actually make a difference.” NOAA rejected these objections, writing that both a statistical analysis of ship strike records and the peer-reviewed literature justified the final rule. In its response to the objections from the Vice President’s staff, NOAA reported that there is “no basis to overturn our previous conclusion that imposing a speed limit on large vessels would be beneficial to whales.”
Bottom line is, who would be better to listen to regarding the benefits to right whales of lowering the speed of ships near US ports, NOAA, or the Vice President? I’m thinking NOAA knows a hell of a lot more about the situation than Cheney does.
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President Bush wants to cross one last thing off his “To Do List” before he retires from the Oval Office. His list of conquests is a long one, but one thing still remains, and that is to keep his promise of opening up the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge for oil exploration and drilling.
During a duck and dodge session today in the Rose Garden, Bush accused Congress of blocking his proposals to deal with rising gas prices. Lacking any ideas from himself on how to tackle the problem, he said he was “open to any ideas.” Its funny that he would ask for ideas, because I highly doubt he would listen to them anyway, because he already has an idea. An idea that he, and his oil buddies thought of long long ago, and that is to punch holes all over the ANWR looking for gushers.
“If there was a magic wand to wave, I’d be waving it, of course. But there is no magic wand to wave right now. It took us a while to get to this fix.”
So in other words, Bush’s magic wand lies somewhere in the ANWR, and he wants to put a ‘fellowship of the wand’ together to go look for it! The Fellowship of course will be headed by himself, along with the energy companies that took part in Gollum’s Cheney’s secretive task force.
Bush declared that there is inadequate oil output which is not keeping up with the demand for oil is the cause of rising prices at the pumps, and that opening the ANWR to exploration would solve the problem lickity split!
“We should have been exploring for oil and gas in ANWR. But, no, we made the decision and our Congress kept preventing us from opening up new areas to explore in environmentally friendly ways and now we’re becoming, as a result, more and more dependent on foreign sources of oil.”
First of all, we have been dependent on foreign sources of oil for a long time now, and until we as a people reduce our need/usage of oil, we will always be dependent on foreign sources of oil.
Here’s what the Energy Information Administration has to say about drilling in the ANWR. They estimated that if Congress had cleared Bush’s ANWR drilling plan the oil would have been available to refiners in 2011, but only at a small volume of 40,000 barrels a day — a drop in the bucket compared with the 20.6 million barrels the U.S. consumes daily. Even then they say, that by 2020 at peak production the fields in the ANWR could have potentially added 780,000 barrels a day to U.S. crude oil output.
Bottom line is, as long as we keep consuming 20.6 million barrels of oil a day, we will continue to pay through the nose for it. Even if ANWR is opened up for exploitation by the ‘Fellowship’ it’s piddly contribution to the bucket will have minimal impact on the price of oil.
Even experts agree that Bush is wrong in his claims that the reason for the skyrocketing fuel cost you and I must pay is inadequate production. David Weiss, an energy expert at the Center for American Progress sums it up nicely:
“A cheap dollar, high demand from China and India, and speculators driving the price up. Drilling and sullying the Arctic would not address any of these causes of high oil prices.”
So Bush’s claims that ‘environmentally friendly’ (if there is such a thing) oil exploration and drilling in the ANWR will be a long term solution to the county’s energy problems, is just flat out false. Drilling in the ANWR will however make good on his promise to the big oil companies, which in turn will make the “Fellowship’s” profit margins look real good for many years to come.
The only long term solution to our energy problems, are looking for ways to become less dependent on oil, regardless if it comes form our backyard or the Saudi’s.
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