"The New York Times public editor accuses the paper of 'stonewalling' him in his attempts to find out more about the decision to report on NSA eavesdropping after at least a year's delay...."
"This is how President Bush takes his message to the people these days: in furtive sneak-attack addresses to closed audiences of elite friendlies at weird early-morning hours. "
"Gunmen raided a house south of Baghdad, killing five Sunni family members, and a roadside bomb in the capital killed two policemen, part of a wave of violence Saturday that claimed 18 lives, authorities said.
A day earlier, two more U.S. soldiers were killed, bringing 2005's American military death toll in Iraq near last year's record level. "
"They don't trust the president's leadership on Social Security and they recognize that his economic policies are not delivering for average working families. They see career professionals bailing out of Cabinet agencies from the Food and Drug Administration to the Environmental Protection Agency because political hacks insist on telling the White House what it wants to hear rather than what science says. And now they feel a chilling sense of executive overreach in domestic spying."
"The Dow's 2005 closing of 10,717 was practically unchanged from the 2000 year-end closing number of 10,787."
"Do what you got to do. "
"The U.S. Family Network, a public advocacy group that operated in the 1990s with close ties to Rep. Tom DeLay and claimed to be a nationwide grass-roots organization, was funded almost entirely by corporations linked to embattled lobbyist Jack Abramoff, according to tax records and former associates of the group.
During its five-year existence, the U.S. Family Network raised $2.5 million but kept its donor list secret. The list, obtained by The Washington Post, shows that $1 million of its revenue came in a single 1998 check from a now-defunct London law firm whose former partners would not identify the money's origins."
"Gov. Bob Taft yesterday appointed three members to the Ohio State University Board of Trustees, filling two of the new seats with political contributors who have donated more than $1.3 million to state Republican candidates and causes."
"In the fine print of its $39.7-billion budget-cutting plan, Congress evidently has identified academically eager teenagers as a drain on the federal purse. What else would explain such a historic cut in student aid?
According to the Congressional Budget Office, fully one-third of the projected savings in the final budget bill would come from reducing college aid. The cut, some $12.7-billion over the next five years, would represent the biggest drop in student aid since passage of the Higher Education Act in 1965."
"New Orleanians seem to understand that the rest of the world has different customs - people buy shrimp with the heads already removed, for example, and are not allowed to stroll down the street with their cocktails in hand.
So some Louisianians thought it unnecessary for the Atlanta police to forbid the tossing of trinkets from floats during a New Orleans-style parade to be held here on New Year's Eve in conjunction with the Sugar Bowl, which was moved to Atlanta because of the hurricane."
"Investigators tried for more than two years to build a case against a prominent West Bend businessman they suspected was seeking out boys for sex but could not produce solid evidence."
"We have become a Nazi monster in the eyes of the whole world-a nation of bullies and bastards who would rather kill than live peacefully. We are not just Whores for power and oil, but killer whores with hate and fear in our hearts. We are human scum, and that is how history will judge us… No redeeming social value. Just whores. Get out of our way, or we’ll kill you.
Well, shit on that dumbness. George W. Bush does not speak for me or my son or my mother or my friends or the people I respect in this world. We didn’t vote for these cheap, greedy little killers who speak for America today- and we will not vote for them again in 2002. Or 2004. Or ever.
Who does vote for these dishonest shitheads? Who among us can be happy and proud of having all this innocent blood on our hands? Who are these swine? These flag-sucking half-wits who get fleeced and fooled by stupid little rich kids like George Bush? They are the same ones who wanted to have Muhammad Ali locked up for refusing to kill “gooks”. They speak for all that is cruel and stupid and vicious in the American character. They are racists and hate mongers among us-they are the Ku Klux Klan. I piss down the throats of these Nazis. And I am too old to worry about whether they like it or not. Fuck them.
– Hunter S. Thompson"
"Roger Toussaint not only got a great deal for his members, but he faced down the city's media without so much as breaking a sweat. The Daily News and Post so miscovered the strike as to be rendered useless to the majority of New Yorkers. They kept looking for a groundswell of anger, when instead, there was a ground swell of support for the union among their public service and priovate industry peers. Did they think Con Ed and Verizon workers were going to turn on their public sector union brothers and sisters?"
"Honestly, it's time for these people to just grow the fuck up. People were having gay sex in Paris in the 20s before you were BORN, Medved, so God, just deal with the fact that someone, somewhere, will always be getting some in a very gay fashion no matter how many angry pearl-clutching reviews you write, no matter how many crocodile tears you shed over OMGWHATEVERWILLWETELL THECHILDREN. No matter how many laws you pass. No matter how many nights you sit up wondering how deep the closet really ought to be. No matter how you try to drive it back to the Victorian age, nobody's gonna stop falling in love and acting on that love because you said anything at all. Of the subset of Americans who would say they're in love, a very small percentage give half a shit what you think, and maybe that's what really bothers you, but I've got friends who can't get each other sick leave because of your insecurities so pardon me if I'm not sympathetic about your tiny penis."
"Gov. Jeb Bush staked out a curious position on a hot-button issue last week: Florida's K-12 science standards need beefing up, he said. But Darwin's theory of evolution should not be part of them."
Joseph Casamento, 80
He was born at 4330 Magazine St., and one could make the argument that only Hurricane Katrina prevented Joseph Casamento from dying at the family restaurant at which he had been a fixture since he was a kid. Instead, Casamento died in a Mississippi motel room where he had evacuated for the storm. For years, Casamento knew only one job, one residence and one place to eat, so dedicated was he to the humble diner known for its tiled floors and oysters -- both of which he tended with care. Said one blogger online: "It killed Joe Casamento to leave the city. Tom Benson acts like it would kill him to stay."
"We hear you all the way over here on the other side of the monitor. WHAT objectivity - especially the 'objectivity' in covering the Iraq war and Bush in general? The media's testicles dropped only recently when polls showed America - DESPITE the rah-rah coverage - had enough of Bush's recklessness.
Give credit to Cindy Sheehan and the 'Holy Shit' coverage of Katrina for waking America up to the dark side of the current White House. But to call all previous reporting 'dispassionate' and 'objective' is a joke we're all too familiar with.
Moreover, it looks like the GOP lost Louisiana. The citizens there have to live with Bush's neglect every day that passes."
"15. Make sure to check with that Yoo guy about that dissolving Congress memo he sent me.
ps. How soon can I do it? Do I need a new war or can I use the old one?"
Hunter S. Thompson
Johnny Carson
Arthur Miller and August Wilson
Richard Pryor
Anne Bancroft
Ossie Davis
R.L. Burnside
Spencer Dryden, 66. Jefferson Airplane's drummer in band's glory years. Jan. 10.
Jim Capaldi, 60. Drummer of British rock group Traffic ("Paper Sun"). Jan. 28.
Keith Knudsen, 56. Doobie Brothers drummer ("Black Water"). Feb. 8.
Chris Curtis, 63. Drummer for British band the Searchers ("Needles and Pins"). Feb. 28.
Johnnie Johnson, 80. Rock 'n' roll pioneer who teamed with Chuck Berry for hits like "Roll Over Beethoven" and "No Particular Place to Go." April 13.
Long John Baldry, 64. British blues legend; helped launch careers of Rod Stewart, the Rolling Stones. July 21.
Well, I'm happy about this one - Myron Floren, 85. Accordion player on "The Lawrence Welk Show." July 23.
Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown, 81. He built a 50-year career playing blues, country, jazz and Cajun music. Sept. 10.
Link Wray, 76. Guitar innovator; inspired such legends as Bruce Springsteen, Pete Townshend. Nov. 5.
Vine Deloria Jr., 72. Author, advocate of American Indian rights ("Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto"). Nov. 13.
Chris Whitley, 45. Chameleon singer-songwriter whooscillated between roots rock 'n' roll, blues and alt-rock. Nov. 20. Lung cancer.
"Very few people wake up in the morning and say, 'I'm going to do some evil today.'
Yeah, I think they believe in what they're doing and that they're going to get seventy virgins after they die -- but, really, who wants seventy virgins? I want eight pros."
"Dennett: Indeed. Humans discovered language -- an explosive acceleration of the powers of minds. Because now you can not just learn from your own experience, but you can learn vicariously from the experience of everybody else. From people that you never met. From ancestors long dead. And human culture itself becomes a profound evolutionary force. That is what gives us an epistemological horizon and which is far, far greater than that of any other species. We are the only species that knows who we are, that knows that we have evolved. Our songs, art, books and religious beliefs are all ultimately a product of evolutionary algorithms. Some find that thrilling, others depressing. "
"Three years ago, President Bush declared that he had 'zero tolerance' for trafficking in humans by the government's overseas contractors, and two years ago Congress mandated a similar policy.
But notwithstanding the president's statement and the congressional edict, the Defense Department has yet to adopt a policy to bar human trafficking."
"AURORA WATCH: A solar wind stream is expected to hit Earth's magnetic field on Dec. 28th or 29th possibly triggering a geomagnetic storm. Northern sky watchers should be alert for auroras."
"Quick -- conjure up an image of Susan Butcher.
Chances are she's kneeling in snow, wearing an unflattering watch cap and examining a husky's paw the way some Alaska women might inspect spring's first rhododendron blossoms.
Or maybe your iconic image has Butcher posed beneath Nome's burled arch and grinning widely, hugging her lead dogs close after the team turned in another first-place finish in the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race. A four-time Iditarod champ, Butcher amassed oodles of those end-of-the-trail snapshots; my favorite is a black-and-white from 1988, the year she notched her third consecutive win -- one of only two mushers in race history to do so."
"Italian officials said the New York-born Schiavelli, 57, died at his home in a village in Sicily after a battle with lung cancer."
"Although federal officials rarely balk at building on Florida wetlands, developers are pressing for state authorities to get the final say for issuing half the permits.
That's because developers believe the state will approve permits much faster than the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the agency that is supposed to protect Florida's swamps and marshes.
If the state does get the final say on permits for projects of 10 acres or fewer - and it could happen next year - it could spell further trouble for Florida's waterways.
State officials dispute that suggestion, but a St. Petersburg Times examination has found that when the state reviews proposals for building on wetlands, it fails to protect against serious water pollution.
The Times found that:
--The state's permitting rules for wiping out wetlands do not require developers to filter out the most common pollutant hurting its waterways.
--The areas of the state suffering from water pollution problems have also lost the most wetlands to urban development.
--State law discourages regulators from calculating the cumulative toll of issuing thousands of wetland permits every year."
Here in pic #2, the J-Man wants to know why in the hell the cheap SideKick didn't buy the premium dog treats instead of the worthless economy dog treats? Well, well, SideKick, not only do you lock your cats in the basement, but now we find out, via the dog treat underground, that you're trying to kill the J-Man with Wal-Mart dog treats. Tisk, tisk, tisk. Watch your back.
"By contrast, Bush's entire presidency is about eking out narrow victories, not about building national consensus. Even when he prevails, Bush wins by manipulation and stealth. His legacy is deepened division and bitterness."
"A pet food company [Diamond, ed.] has advised retailers in more than 20 states to stop selling some of its dog and cat food that may be contaminated with toxic fungus. Several dogs have gotten sick and some have died.
The fungus produces poisonous aflatoxin. Symptoms of aflatoxin poisoning include lethargy, loss of appetite, yellowish eyes and gums, and severe or bloody diarrhea."
"For Nelson and his well-connected partners in Point Bluff LLC, Rep. Don Young's span is in fact a bridge to somewhere: their 60 acres of unobstructed view property on the Point MacKenzie side of Cook Inlet. The land sits directly across from Elmendorf Air Force Base, north of the Anchorage port and downtown."
$172 million award in Wal-Mart case
"A California jury awarded $172 million on Thursday to thousands of employees at Wal-Mart Stores Inc. who claimed they were illegally denied lunch breaks"
"The federal program to help poor families heat their homes got cut to less than half the amount originally promised by Congress, because of a flurry of late-night maneuvers on Wednesday that could leave tens of thousands of New England families struggling with skyrocketing heating bills this winter."
"But Alaska Natives like Gemmill living just south of ANWR fear that opening even the coastal plain to drilling would hurt the Porcupine caribou herd they depend on for their subsistence lifestyle.
Arctic Village, population 146, lies on the southern border of the refuge, far from the proposed drilling sites. But, Gemmill said, the roaming caribou have gone to the coastal plain for thousands of years to calve, and would be disrupted by drilling.
She acknowledges that the fight over ANWR will continue, as it already has for decades. However, she is optimistic the outcome will be the same.
'I think as long as the environmentalists and the Gwich'in keep up the work that they're doing to keep it closed, I think it will just hopefully remain closed,' she said."
"Toga, a 3-month-old jackass penguin, was stolen Saturday from Amazon World on the Isle of Wight in southern England. "
"The prints were made in moist clay near the Willandra Lakes 19,000 to 23,000 years ago, the newspaper reported.... "
"Two officers were fired Wednesday for a beating in the French Quarter shortly after Hurricane Katrina that was photographed and videotaped by The Associated Press. A third officer was suspended."
"The Senate blocked an effort today to use a Pentagon spending bill to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling...."
"Counterterrorism agents at the Federal Bureau of Investigation have conducted numerous surveillance and intelligence-gathering operations that involved, at least indirectly, groups active in causes as diverse as the environment, animal cruelty and poverty relief, newly disclosed agency records show."
"Some 10 days ago, we reported that Bush, angry in a meeting where reauthorization of the Patriot Act was questioned, called the Constitution “just a goddamned piece of paper.”"
"Hundreds of wood-frame canvas canoes today bear the following message, a sort of love poem, written in black ink on the frame. It goes like this: 'Built by Nora & Joe Seliga.'"
"Each spring, like Klondike prospectors looking for the mother lode, the honey hunters go deeply into debt to rent boats for their journey through a vast warren of muddy saltwater rivers and channels that meander around thousands of jungle islands.
They have to stock up on food and supplies for trips that last up to three months. And they have to grease the palms of corrupt forestry officials. The honey hunters wager everything, including their lives, against pirates and the whims of wild animals, including pythons, king cobras, crocodiles and the man-eating Bengal tigers. The lure of liquid gold is stronger than their fears."
"Bolivia's Socialist presidential candidate, Evo Morales, who has promised to become Washington's 'nightmare,' said his victory was assured in Sunday's elections after two independent exit polls showed him with an unexpectedly strong lead."
"A Blade report in October showed that Mr. Bush's top Ohio fund-raisers collected more than $1.2 billion in taxpayers' dollars for their companies and lobbying clients."
"President Bush's corporate champions see the spoils of his administration in coal. And timber. And credit-card payments, Afghan electric lines, Japanese bank transfers, and fake crab.
America's business leaders supplied more than $75 million to return Mr. Bush to the White House last year - and he has paid dividends.
Bush Administration policies, grand and obscure, have financially benefited companies or lobbying clients tied to at least 200 of the President's largest campaign fund-raisers, a Blade investigation has found. Dozens more stand to gain from Bush-backed initiatives that recently passed or await congressional approval.
The investigation examined targeted tax breaks, regulatory changes, pro-business legislation, high-profile salaried appointments, and federal contracts.
Mr. Bush's policies often followed specific requests from his 548 'Pioneers' and 'Rangers,' who each raised at least $100,000 or $200,000 for his 2004 re-election. The help to business fund-raisers sometimes came at the expense of consumers or public health concerns."
"This encapsulates Bush's entire approach to governance. In Bush's view, the president has -- by virtue of holding the office, even without the actual mandate of the voters -- almost godlike powers, able to decide the fate of entire nations by virtue of his election, or in this case, installment by court fiat. (It's becoming clear why they hated Bill Clinton so much -- liberals aren't supposed to possess such power.)
Or, as Bush told Bob Woodward: 'I do not need to explain why I say things. That's the interesting thing about being the President. Maybe somebody needs to explain to me why they say something, but I don't feel like I owe anybody an explanation.'
This approach is clear not merely in such brusque asides as 'Who cares what you think?', but also in the administration's refusal to hand over documents related to Enron and Halliburton's influences in the Oval Office, as well as a host of domestic issues ranging from the environment to economic and tax policies. It also plays a major role in Bush's messianic militarism."
"Mr. Bush's public confirmation Saturday morning of the existence of one of the country's most secret intelligence programs, which had been known to only a select number of his aides, was a rare moment in the presidency. But he linked it with a forceful assertion of his own authority to act without court approval, making it clear that he planned to resist any effort to infringe on his powers."
The obituaries for Gene McCarthy had little relevance to the man I knew and a lot to do with the accepted clichés of journalists. A man who runs for president against an incumbent of his own party is going to have the word “quixotic” glued to his rear end, and a man who doesn’t have the arrogance of a rhino, who actually has a sense of humor about himself, is going to be “diffident.” This is discouraging to the older person. You can work hard all your life and in the end they will get you wrong. It’s merciful that you get to die before you have to chance to read what they say.
Long before McCarthy went to the Chicago convention in 1968, he knew that he had lost the nomination. This offended many of his supporters, who expected him to ride his white horse through the streets. But McCarthy wasn’t that man. He was from small-town Minnesota. And he knew how to count votes. He once said, “One thing about a pig, he thinks he’s warm if his nose is warm. I saw a bunch of pigs one time that had frozen together in a rosette, eachone’s nose tucked under the rump of the one in front. We have a lot of pigs in politics.” He wasn’t one of them. Gene McCarthy wrote a poem that begins with the names of women he knew as a boy—“Mathilda Ophoven, Minnie Quast, Lucinda Nistler, Verena Brixius,” who
Could cook potatoes
Eight ways at least
And believed any illness would yield
To eucalyptus tea, and brandy.
He may have been the last man in American public life to quote from Yeats or Frost and do it because he himself loved the poem and knew it by heart and not because a speechwriter had inserted it in the text. And he found poetry in the names of the old ladies of Watkins, Minn. May God’s eternal light shine upon him.
[Garrison Keillor]
----Why didn't they publicize this BEFORE the last presidential election? That's when we should have been told!!! I'm thinking there was political pressure for the CDC to keep quiet about this.
The Center for Disease Control has issued a warning about a new virulent strain of Sexually Transmitted Disease. The disease is contracted through dangerous and high-risk behavior. The disease is called Gonorrhea Lectim and pronounced "gonna re-elect him." Many victims contracted it in 2004, after having been screwed for the past four years. Cognitive characteristics of individuals infected include: anti-social personality disorders, delusions of grandeur with messianic overtones, extreme cognitive dissonance, inability to incorporate new information, pronounced xenophobia and paranoia, inability to accept responsibility for own actions, cowardice masked by misplaced bravado, uncontrolled facial smirking, ignorance of geography and history, tendencies towards evangelical theocracy, categorical all-or-nothing behavior. Naturalists and ! epidemiologists are amazed at how this destructive disease originated only a few years ago from a bush found in Texas.
"President Bush signed a secret order in 2002 authorizing the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on U.S. citizens and foreign nationals in the United States, despite previous legal prohibitions against such domestic spying, sources with knowledge of the program said last night."
"President Bush yesterday agreed to accept Senator John McCain's bill barring US officials from abusing terrorist suspects, with the White House reversing course after months of resistance when it became clear that its refusal to endorse a torture ban left the president politically isolated."
"The Times said it delayed publication of the report for a year because the White House said it could jeopardize continuing investigations and alert would-be terrorists that they might be under scrutiny. The Times said it omitted information from the story that administration officials argued could be useful to terrorists."
"The Wisconsin State Assembly has approved the concealed weapons bill there, despite the fact that the citizens of Wisconsin, the police officers, and even the Governor of that state know the bill is a terrible idea."
"President Bush said yesterday he is confident that former House majority leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) is innocent of money-laundering charges, as he offered strong support for several top Republicans who have been battered by investigations or by rumors of fading clout inside the White House."
"The zoo, on the northern island of Hokkaido, takes the penguins on strolls from December until April. The first walk of the season was Thursday."
"'I saw this movie (Brokeback Mountain) with my husband earlier this week at the Toronto Film Festival. I didn't think it was good at all. It turns out that this movie is nothing but a perverted gay love story. I didn't know that before we saw it. My husband, on the other hand, couldn't stop raving about how great it was and how it really opened his eyes. Last night, he told me he wanted a divorce, and he was moving in with his best friend Erik. I think this movie turned him gay! I am so upset. He has never indicated anything about being gay, or behaved in a gay manner. When he found out that a friend of ours from church might be gay, we stopped talking with him. That's how straight he was!!! We had a great sex life as well. I know this movie changed him. When is Hollywood going to stop peddling this kind of corrupting perverted garbage? I'm sure this will win an oscar or something and now I have to start my life over because it made my husband turn gay.'"
"...a very interesting tidbit about Rep. Jack Murtha (D-PA) putting the wood to Democrats who are self-servingly trying to undermine their own party."
"Socolow seems to be of two minds. First he deplores the freakshow quality of modern news, but then he criticizes both CBS and Rather for not gorging themselves on hype, overkill and innuendo, leaving them gaunt and starving for both 'ratings and relevance'."
As the kid said, he's easy on the eyes. Yes, it's true, I have a bit of a crush on him myself. I wonder if Vinnie is worried? She sure got around last Sunday night. But for a band like this, it was probably worth it. 
Here, the sober one is with Carl Dufrense. Although he's from Louisiana, he's a Packer fan. A blues playing Packer fan, just what we need this year.
"I hate to tell our esteemed professor of journalism this, but we don't need a cease fire. We need a war. We need the kind of war we should have been getting from 9/12/2001 onward up until this afterfuckingnoon. We need answers, goddammit, about what's happened to our country. A cease fire is pointless if journalism has already surrendered."
"The painting is a 'masterpiece,' said archeologist David Freidel of Southern Methodist University. The scenes 'are executed with the confidence, compositional imagination, and technical perfection of an artist who, while anonymous, must rank with the best the world has ever known.'
The first part of the mural shows the creation of the world. Four figures, all variants of the son of the maize god, set up the physical world.
One stands in water, offering a fish, establishing a watery underworld. A second stands on ground and sacrifices a deer, establishing the land. The third floats in the air, offering a turkey, thereby establishing the sky. The fourth stands in a field of flowers, offering fragrant blossoms, the food of gods, and establishing paradise in the east, where the sun is reborn daily.
The next section shows the maize god crowning himself king of a wooden scaffold, and shows his birth, death and resurrection, bringing sustenance to the world. The final section shows the nearly identical crowning of a human king."
"We are the parade. We are Mardi Gras. We're Whoville, man -- you can take away the beads and the floats and all that crazy stuff, but we're still coming out into the street. Cops or no cops. Post-parade garbage pick-up or no garbage pick-up -- like anyone could tell the friggin' difference!
If you are stuck somewhere else, in some other town, then bring it to them. If you got a job somewhere else now, take off that Tuesday and get all the New Orleanians you know and gather in a park somewhere and cook up a mass of food and put some music on a box and raise a little hell.
And raise a glass to us, brothers and sisters, because we're in here fighting this fight and we'll raise a glass to you because you cannot be here with us and we know you want to. Let the whole damn country hear Al Johnson yelling 'It's Carnival Time' and let them know we're not dead and if we are dying, we're going to pretend like we're not."
"'It disappoints me greatly,' New Orleans City Councilman Jay Batt said Monday after learning about the letter. 'We have made it clear to the White House that Entergy needs federal relief. It shouldn't be on the backs of ratepayers to rebuild the grid in New Orleans.'
The White House letter also runs counter to the commitment made by the president when he addressed the nation on Sept. 15 in front of St. Louis Cathedral, promising the federal government would 'do what it takes' to rebuild New Orleans, said Brian Richardson, spokesman for U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-New Orleans.
'We've yet to see him fulfill that promise. This is one more example,' Richardson said."
"The chief executive officer of electronic voting company Diebold who once famously declared that he would 'deliver' Ohio for President Bush has resigned effective immediately, ...."
"The American ambassador in Iraq said today that more than 100 detainees had been abused in two Iraqi detention facilities, more than had been previously disclosed."
"In his first written interim report on the issue, Mr. Marty said that his investigation so far had 'reinforced the credibility of the allegations concerning the transfer and temporary detention of individuals, without any judicial involvement, in European countries.'
His report, which was presented to the Council's Legal Affairs and Human Rights committee in Paris, also said: 'Legal proceedings in progress in certain countries seemed to indicate that individuals had been abducted and transferred to other countries without respect for any legal standards.'"
"Dr. William McGuire, chairman of the United Health Foundation, said that the slowing rate of improvement should be of concern to everyone. Failure to act will result in preventable misery and unnecessary death from avoidable illness and early deaths."
"'There's widespread agreement that the Great Lakes are under tremendous stress,' said Alfred Beeton of the University of Michigan. 'Toxic substances ... overfishing, invasive species, changes in hydrology affecting rivers -- now we can add the effects of global climate change.
'These have been dealt with individually. What we need to do is look at the ecosystem -- the combination of stresses,' Beeton said. 'Historical sources of stress have combined with new ones and we have arrived at a tipping point. What we mean is that ecosystem changes will occur rapidly and unexpectedly.'
The report emphasized the need for large-scale ecosystem restoration and not piecemeal efforts, coauthor Don Scavia said. Particularly important was preserving or restoring shoreline 'buffer zones,' such as wetlands and lake tributaries to help the lakes heal themselves.
'These are the key areas for filtering the contaminants that enter the lakes. It's also where most of the wildlife habitat is,' Scavia said.
Shoreline pollution that fouls Great Lakes beaches is extending into the middle of some of the five Great Lakes, sudden drops in oxygen levels in the water threaten native species, and native fish have been crowded out by invasive species that have changed the character of the lakes, the scientists added."
"The US has admitted for the first time that it has not given the Red Cross access to all detainees in its custody."
"These events are the all too relevant backdrop for the current round of international climate talks taking place in Montreal. The talks are the first since the Kyoto Protocol entered into force, this past February. Technically, the United States, not being a party to the protocol, will be excluded from many of the sessions in Montreal. But, by virtue of its contribution to climate change—Americans produce nearly a quarter of the world’s greenhouse-gas emissions—it will still have a great deal of influence on what does, and does not, get accomplished there.
When the Bush Administration’s policy on climate change was first articulated by the President, in early 2002, critics described it as a “total charade,” a characterization that, if anything, has come to seem too generous. Stripped down to its essentials, the Administration’s position is that global warming is a problem that either will solve itself or won’t. The White House has consistently opposed taxes or regulations or mandatory caps to reduce, or even just stabilize, greenhouse-gas emissions, advocating instead a purely voluntary approach, under which companies and individuals can choose to cut their CO2 production—that is, if they feel like it. (At the G-8 summit this summer, the President embarrassed British Prime Minister Tony Blair by refusing to accede even to minor modifications in this position.) In Montreal, the Administration’s chief climate negotiator, Harlan Watson, has been touting the efficacy of the voluntary approach, pointing out that between 2000 and 2003 the United States’ carbon-dioxide emissions dropped by .8 per cent. Conveniently left out is the fact that since 2003 they have shot back up again. According to the latest government figures, the country’s CO2 emissions are now three per cent higher than they were three years ago. (The brief dip, it should be noted, had nothing to do with government policy; it was entirely a function of the downturn in the economy.)"
"But the United States defended its policy of investing billions of dollars in cleaner technology to reduce emissions, brushing aside calls for it to commit to long-term U.N. discussions on slowing climate change.
"One size does not fit all," said Paula Dobriansky, the U.S. under secretary for global affairs, who leads the American delegation to the Nov.28-Dec.9 U.N. climate talks in Montreal.
....
"'Climate change is not about bureaucrats scurrying around. It's about people, about families, about children,' said Sheila Watt-Cloutier, an Inuit indigenous leader who says a thaw in the Arctic ice is undermining hunting cultures."
"The scientists say the newly exposed critter, a red-furred creature about the size of a house cat, could be the first new mammal species discovered on the Southeast Asian island in more than a century."
"The new study shows that 5 percent of the human genome is also shared with dogs."
"FOR SOME REASON, Republicans in the Wisconsin Legislature are determined to authorize citizens to pack weapons.
It's lunacy."
"In a major defeat for federal law enforcement, a former college professor and three co-defendants accused of operating a North American front for Palestinian terrorists were acquitted today of a number of the 51 charges against them, and jurors said they were deadlocked on the rest."
"AS WE NEAR the 100-day mark since Hurricane Katrina hit, it's time we ended our national state of denial and abandon New Orleans for good.
We should call it quits not because New Orleans can't be made relatively safe from hurricanes. It can be. And not because to do so is more trouble than it's worth. It's not. Instead, the hammers and brooms and chain saws should all be put away and the city permanently boarded up because the Bush administration has already given New Orleans a quiet kiss of death.
Although he has encouraged city residents to return home and declared 'we will do whatever it takes' to save the city, President Bush last month refused the one thing New Orleans simply cannot live without: a restored network of barrier islands and coastal wetlands.
Katrina destroyed the Big Easy — and future Katrinas will do the same — because 1 million acres of coastal islands and marshland vanished in Louisiana in the last century because of human interference. These land forms served as natural 'speed bumps,' reducing the lethal surge tide of past hurricanes and making New Orleans habitable in the first place. A $14-billion plan to fix this problem — widely viewed as technically sound and supported by environmentalists, oil companies and fishermen alike — has been on the table for years and was pushed forward with greater urgency after Katrina hit. But the Bush administration has turned its back on this plan."
"“This is plain and simple, the NRA versus the lives of our children and our police officers,” he declared."
"Lying for the Lord has its concombinants on the political right. Jerry Falwell has argued for the elimination of all public schools. Nothing wrong with making that argument. But in 1998, when confronted with a quote, he denied making it, and denied having anything to do with the book in which it appeared. It was from a book of transcriptions of his sermons."
