Recently in Environment Category

"The Chamber spent much of its money in 2009 on campaigns that worked -- it scared the Senate away from considering a version of the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade legislation, and an argument can be made that its cutting ads on health care (with money taken from some insurance companies) helped to undercut support for the legislation." You think? In a shape-of-things-to-come moment even before Citizens United goes into effect, the Chamber of Commerce outspent both political parties in 2009.

"According to The Center for Responsive Politics, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and its national subsidiaries spent $144.5 million in 2009, far more than the RNC and more than double the expenditures by the DNC." But corporate spending isn't a problem or anything.

"I know that we haven't agreed on every issue thus far, and there are surely times in the future when we will part ways. But I also know that every American who is sitting here tonight loves this country and wants it to succeed. That must be the starting point for every debate we have in the coming months, and where we return after those debates are done. That is the foundation on which the American people expect us to build common ground."

They do? I thought they expected change we can believe in. But worn-out nods to an elusive, ephemeral, and, given the current GOP, often undesirable bipartisanship does not constitute such. In any event, so concluded the President's State of the Union address last Thursday. This is old news at this point, so I'll keep it brief. Suffice to say, while it got better as it went along, I thought the speech was merely ok, and often troubling. Throughout the evening, the president's remarks had that excessively-poll-tested, small-bore feel that conjured up grim odors of 1995 and 1996. Throw on a flannel and fire up the Pulp Fiction soundtrack, y'all: One year into the Obama era, are we already back to V-chips and school uniforms?

Part of the president's problem is that the Senate is looking like the elephant's graveyard of progressive-minded legislation right now. The president called for an energy reform bill. The House went out on a limb to pass one last June. The president called for a financial reform bill. The House passed one in December. The president called for a new jobs bill. The House also passed one in December. All of these bills, and many, many others, are languishing in the Senate right now, as Sen. Reid and others try to figure out how to somehow get something -- anything! -- passed with a larger majority than Dubya ever enjoyed.

The Senate issue aside, there were other problems in the President's speech, including far too many nods and feints in the direction of ridiculous deficit peacocks like Judd Gregg and Evan Bayh. First off, at the risk of sounding like Dick Cheney, I tend to think that deficits are troubling, but, even in the best of times, they shouldn't really be the foremost driving concern of our government policy. If we run a deficit to invest in education now, we'll save money down the road and improve Americans' quality-of-life to boot. (Put in somewhat ugly fashion, it's invest in schools now or prisons later.)

And that being said, right now is emphatically not the best of times. We know exactly what happens when you cut spending too quickly after a virulent recession -- It was called the 1937 Roosevelt recession, and it would be flagrantly idiotic to repeat it. Just because the GOP doesn't seem to understand basic Keynesian economics doesn't mean we should follow them down the rabbit hole of flat-earth thinking, just so we can look bipartisan.

No, the problem with deficits isn't necessarily the running of a deficit. It's the running-up of massive deficits for patently stupid reasons -- like, say, prosecuting a war of choice in Iraq, or doling out excessive tax breaks to multi-millionaires. And that's why some of the President's nods in that direction were so irritating last Thursday. Calling for a spending freeze on discretionary spending, without touching the exorbitant "security-related" budget (cute euphemism, that), is kabuki theater at best. And at worst, you're balancing the books at the expense of our most vulnerable citizens. (I tend to agree with Candidate Obama on this issue anyway.)

Similarly, this deficit commission which the president plans to foist on Congress by executive order after the Senate killed it, is, again, at best kabuki theater and at worst trouble. It's clear to everyone involved that the entire point of this commission is CYA: i.e, to create political cover for raids on entitlement spending, while once again ignoring the grotesquely swollen defense budget. (Altho', to be fair, Secretary Gates has at least tried to rein in growth in this sector.) In other words, this commission will basically just be a chance for deficit peacocks to pretend they're Serious People and "make tough decisions," while in fact the one really tough idea that actually needs to be tackled -- reining in defense spending -- will be completely avoided.

In any event, all this discussion of the deficit ignores the larger problem. Obviously, one of the president's biggest charges coming into office was to restore economic sanity after eight years of Dubyaite excess. That being said, people were not looking to President Obama for this sort of deficit tsk-tsking and small-bore, fiddling around the margins. You'd think we Dems would have learned this by now. But curling up into a fetal position and mouthing moderate GOP-lite bromides will not stop the Republicans from kicking us, ever.

We have a Democratic president, an 18-seat majority in the Senate, and a 79-seat majority in the House. In short, we Dems need to keep thinking big or we will pay dearly at the polls this November. Perhaps the dysfunction of the Senate is the central problem Obama faces right now, but his speech nonetheless suggests that we're getting dangerously close to Eisenhower Republican territory now, and not even in the good "the military-industrial complex is completely frakked" kinda way. Without vision, the people perish. So too will our party, if we keep up with this thin gruel, triangulation schtick. At the advice of the careerist DLC-types over the years, we have tried this path several times over -- Put simply, it does not work.

"According to the board, the looming dangers included: the perils of 27,000 nuclear weapons, 2,000 of them ready to launch within minutes; and the destruction of human habitats from climate change." Paging Dr. Manhattan: Tomorrow at 3pm, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists will move the minute hand on the Doomsday Clock, currently set (since 2007) at five minutes to midnight. (The official site is here.)

No word yet on which way we're headed, but I presume they wouldn't be going to all this media-event trouble if the news is good. Update: I stand corrected. We're at six minutes to midnight now. Smoke 'em if you got 'em.

"In a period ranging from a few months to two years, the scientists say that 90% of the water was transferred into the basin. 'This extremely abrupt flood may have involved peak rates of sea level rise in the Mediterranean of more than 10m per day,' he and his colleagues wrote in the Nature paper." A new study suggests that, over five million years ago and with an event called the Zanclean flood, the Mediterranean Sea may have been re-formed in as little as two years. "The team estimates the peak flow to have been around 1000 times higher than the present Amazon river at its highest rate."

Coincidentally, two years is about as long as it takes to read Ferdinand Braudel's seminal two-part history of the Mediterranean. Cut to the chase, man!

"One of the bill's co-sponsors, Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), said: 'The American people wanted change in our energy and climate policy. And this is the change that the people are overwhelmingly asking for.' He called it 'the most important energy and environment bill in the history of our country.'" After much wrangling and a half-hearted GOP attempt at filibuster (which is only a prerogative of the Senate), the House passes the Waxman-Markey climate bill, 219-212. (Eight Republicans voted for it, 44 Dems opposed.) The "cap-and-trade" bill "would establish national limits on greenhouse gases, create a complex trading system for emission permits and provide incentives to alter how individuals and corporations use energy." [Key provisions.]

There is some concern that the bill has been watered down too much out of political necessity: "While the bill's targets may seem dramatic, they are in fact less than what the science tells us is required to avoid catastrophic warming. The 2020 target in particular is far too weak and quite easy and cheap for the country to meet with efficiency, conservation, renewables and fuel-switching from coal to natural gas."

Still, environmentalists remain hopeful. "It is worth noting that the original Clean Air Act -- first passed in 1963 -- also didn't do enough and was subsequently strengthened many times." And, while the bill -- which (sigh) gives away 85% of the new emission allowances (the heart of the "cap-and-trade" market hopefully soon to emerge) to interested parties -- looks to "set off a lobbying feeding frenzy," groups like the NRDC seem to agree that "[t]his is the best bill that can actually get through committee."

Of course, now the bill has to get through the Senate, where the usual lions lie in wait. ""Senator Inhofe of Oklahoma said 'It doesn't matter,' he declared flatly, 'because we'll kill it in the Senate anyway.'" And even some Dems are fatalistic about its prospects. "Mississippi Rep. Gene Taylor (D) voted against the measure that he says will die in the Senate. 'A lot of people walked the plank on a bill that will never become law,' Taylor told The Hill after the gavel came down." Looks like Sen. Reid has his work cut out for him.

Well, that's just, like, your opinion, man: By way of a high school chum, the Coen Brothers try their hand at muckraking in a new spot against "clean" coal. "The Reality Coalition promises a whole series of Coen brothers ads -- which were actually designed and produced by Crispin Porter + Bogusky, the Boulder, Colo., agency behind the "Truth" anti-tobacco campaign." Have fun, guys, but please don't quit your day jobs.

So, as you likely heard, John McCain recently took time off from pretending to be Mr. Environment to join Dubya in calling for the resumption of offshore drilling (thus prompting his possible No. 2, Florida Governor Charlie Crist, to also rethink the issue.) As many writers have pointed out, this just so happens to be a switch from what he said three weeks earlier, in keeping with McCain's usual m.o.

Well, the environmental consequences notwithstanding, TIME's Bryan Walsh asks the pertinent question: "Will more drilling mean cheaper gas?" Nope. "Even if tomorrow we opened up every square mile of the outer Continental Shelf to offshore rigs, even if we drilled the entire state of Alaska and pulled new refineries out of thin air, the impact on gas prices would be minimal and delayed at best. A 2004 study by the government's Energy Information Administration (EIA) found that drilling in ANWR would trim the price of gas by 3.5 cents a gallon by 2027." In other words, this is the gas tax holiday all over again. (TIME link via Dangerous Meta.)

"Wind turbines were once a marginal form of electrical generation. But amid rising concern about greenhouse gases from coal-burning power plants, wind power is booming. Installed wind capacity in the United States grew 45 percent last year, albeit from a small base, and a comparable increase is expected this year." Forget the black gold. According to the NYT, Texas is the new capital of wind power. It drinks YOUR milkshake.

"'There’s a growing sense, a growing probability, that the next administration could be Democratic,' said Craig L. Fuller, executive vice president of Apco Worldwide, a lobbying and public relations firm, who was a White House official in the Reagan administration. 'Corporate executives, trade associations and lobbying firms have begun to recalibrate their strategies.'" As a Democratic presidency in 2008 looks increasingly likely, business lobbyists scramble for deals under Dubya. "Few industries have more cause for concern than drug companies, which have been a favorite target of Democrats. Republicans run the Washington offices of most major drug companies, and a former Republican House member, Billy Tauzin, is president of their trade association, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America." Well, for them to be really concerned, we Dems have to show more backbone in the face of lobbyists than we have thus far in this Congress. And, as Simon Lazarus recently pointed out anew in The Prospect, no matter who wins in 2008, corporate lobbyists will still have the Roberts Court to back their play for some time to come.

"Today the Australian people have decided that we as a nation will move forward." Dubya loses an important conservative ally on the international front as long-standing Australian PM John Howard is voted out of office, to be replaced by Kevin Rudd of the Labor Party. "Rudd, a Chinese-speaking former diplomat, has also promised to sign the Kyoto Protocol on global warming, leaving the U.S. as the only industrialized country not to have joined it...Rudd promised to pull Australia's 550 combat troops from Iraq in a phased withdrawal, and to quickly sign Kyoto. Howard had rejected withdrawal plans for Australia's troops in Iraq, and refused to ratify the pact on reducing greenhouse gas emissions." Ozzie ozzie ozzie! Welcome back to the reality-based community, y'all (and here's hoping we catch up with you next year.)

So, as you probably know, the Nobel prizes, that century-long boon from a notorious arms manufacturer's deathbed pangs of guilt, were announced over the past few days. As the surprise winner of the literature prize, Doris Lessing, best known for The Golden Notebook. (Profoundly ungracious about the news was lit-critic Harold Bloom: "Although Ms. Lessing at the beginning of her writing career had a few admirable qualities, I find her work for the past 15 years quite unreadable...fourth-rate science fiction." Snob much, Prof. Bloom?) And, following in the footsteps of such well-regarded peacemongers as Charles Dawes, Henry Kissinger, Yasser Arafat, and, of course, the inventor of dynamite himself, the Nobel Peace Prize goes to Al Gore, for his work in emphasizing the imminent catastrophe threatened by global climate change. "I want this prize to have everyone...every human being, asking what they should do." Well, congratulations on the win, Mr. Vice-President. Hopefully, this will further encourage America and the world community to get serious about global warming. But please -- please -- don't run.

Some good news on the domestic policy front: Pushed forward by a veto-proof majority in Congress, Bush signs a Democratic Pell Grant increase into law. "The increase in financial aid is designed to come from cuts in subsidies that the government makes to banks, totaling roughly $20 billion...Bush at one point threatened to veto the bill on grounds that it included hidden costs and was an expensive expansion of federal programs." In addition, an expansion of the State Child Health Insurance Program is now on Dubya's desk after passing the Senate 69-30 and House 265-159, and also looks to become law despite the White House's original opposition. "Bush and GOP leaders said the measure would push children already covered by private health insurance into publicly financed health care, while creating an 'entitlement' whose costs ultimately would outstrip the money raised by the bill's 61-cent increase in the federal tobacco tax. But Republican opposition is increasingly isolated."

And if passage of affordable college education and child health care bills by Dubya -- however reluctantly -- isn't through the looking glass enough for ya, check this out: "The world must cut emissions or sacrifice the planet, Condoleezza Rice, U.S. Secretary of State, told a meeting of governments on Thursday, in the most strongly worded statement on global warming yet made by the US administration....Her words reflected how far US rhetoric on climate change has moved in the past six months."

Update: Ah, there's the Dubya we know and...know. Despite its bipartisan backing, Bush vetoes the child health insurance bill, arguing that it was an attempt to "federalize" medicine. "'I think that this is probably the most inexplicable veto in the history of the country. It is incomprehensible. It is intolerable. It's unacceptable,' said Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Massachusetts, who pleaded with Republicans to help overturn the veto."

"Ugliness is so grim. A little beauty, something that is lovely, I think, can help create harmony which will lessen tensions." Lady Bird Johnson, 1912-2007. (Reminiscences.)

"EPA has offered no reasoned explanation for its refusal to decide whether greenhouse gases cause or contribute to climate change." By a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court determines that the Dubya EPA violated the Clean Air Act when it refused to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, thus hopefully setting the stage for an (admittedly unlikely) reevaluation of global warming by the executive branch. "Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote one dissent, which was joined by Justices Samuel A. Alito Jr., Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas." Yep, the usual suspects.

In honor of the new year, and since I spend so much time berating him and his historically terrible administration around here, two holiday tips of the hat to, of all people, Dubya. On his watch, the president has "established the world's largest sweep of federally protected ocean" and tripled humanitarian and development aid to Africa. Hey, even a stopped clock is right twice a day.

The source of that Hawaii link above deserves its own posting: DISCOVER magazine presents the Top 100 science stories of 2006.

In related news, as the battle for control of the House tightens, the GOP's K-Street cronies find they've been put on hold to make way for terror terror terror schtick. "This bottleneck has disappointed and angered organizations that have worked closely with the GOP and have won many legislative benefits. Oil and gas producers, for instance, had high hopes of adding to their legislative gains the opening of drilling on the Outer Continental Shelf."

And, while I'm snarfing links from other blogs, two choice entries from PlasticBag: (1) A rather lame "amateur" anti-Gore YouTube video turns out to be the work of GOP agit-prop artists, likely at the behest of Exxon; and (2) to keep up with the times, everyone's favorite real estate robber baron simulation, Monopoly, is forsaking the multicolored cash for debit cards. "It is inserted into an electronic machine where the banker taps in cardholders' earnings and payments."

"You have an innovator and a world business leader -- the combination of the two making such a huge personal investment of time and wealth, it does raise the bar and raise the profile of philanthropy.." A tip of the hat to Warren Buffett for his recent decision to turn his considerable assets to philanthropy and help the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation better our world. "The foundation, already the nation's largest with a $30 billion endowment that has largely come from Bill Gates, will hand out more per year than the gross domestic product of nearly 40 countries, including Mongolia, Togo and Zimbabwe."

"'Everybody in the conservation community was surprised. This was not expected,' said Dr. Dennis Heinemann, senior scientist for the Ocean Conservancy." Don't look now, but Dubya may actually have done something laudable for once: namely, he has declared the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands a national monument, "securing strong and immediate ecological protections from the federal government" for the region. "'It's the single largest act of ocean conservation in history,' said Conrad Lautenbacher, NOAA administrator. 'It's a large milestone.'"

"I believe that the government that governs best is a government that governs least, and by these standards we have set up a fabulous government in Iraq." In a must-watch (or at least must-read) event, the inimitable Stephen Colbert took it to Dubya hard at last night's White House Correspondent's dinner, and Bush, according to press reports, was not amused. Great stuff throughout:

* "I believe in pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps. I believe it is possible -- I saw this guy do it once in Cirque du Soleil. It was magical. And though I am a committed Christian, I believe that everyone has the right to their own religion, be it Hindu, Jewish or Muslim. I believe our infinite paths to accepting Jesus Christ as your personal savior."

* "Now, I know there's some polls out there saying this man has a 32% approval rating. But guys like us, we don't pay attention to the polls. We know that polls are just a collection of statistics that reflect what people are thinking in 'reality.' And reality has a well-known liberal bias...Sir pay no attention to the people who say the glass is half empty, because 32% means it's 2/3 empty. There's still some liquid in that glass is my point, but I wouldn't drink it. The last third is usually backwash."

* "I stand by this man. I stand by this man because he stands for things. Not only for things, he stands on things. Things like aircraft carriers and rubble and recently flooded city squares. And that sends a strong message, that no matter what happens to America, she will always rebound with the most powerfully staged photo ops in the world."

* "I'm sorry, but this reading initiative. I've never been a fan of books. I don't trust them. They're all fact, no heart. I mean, they're elitist telling us what is or isn't true, what did or didn't happen. What's Britannica to tell me the Panama Canal was built in 1914. If I want to say it was built in 1941, that's my right as an American. I'm with the president, let history decide what did or did not happen. The greatest thing about this man is he's steady. You know where he stands. He believes the same thing Wednesday, that he believed on Monday, no matter what happened Tuesday."

* "But the rest of you, what are you thinking, reporting on N.S.A. wiretapping or secret prisons in Eastern Europe? Those things are secret for a very important reason, they're superdepressing. And if that's your goal, well, misery accomplished. Over the last five years you people were so good over tax cuts, W.M.D. intelligence, the effect of global warming. We Americans didn't want to know, and you had the courtesy not to try to find out. Those were good times, as far as we knew."

* "But, listen, let's review the rules. Here's how it works. The President makes decisions, he's the decider. The Press Secretary announces those decisions, and you people of the press type those decisions down. Make, announce, type. Put them through a spell check and go home. Get to know your family again. Make love to your wife. Write that novel you got kicking around in your head. You know, the one about the intrepid Washington reporter with the courage to stand up to the administration. You know, fiction."

* "I mean, nothing satisfies you. Everybody asks for personnel changes. So the White House has personnel changes. Then you write they're just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. First of all, that is a terrible metaphor. This administration is not sinking. This administration is soaring. If anything, they are rearranging the deck chairs on the Hindenburg."

* "See who we've got here tonight. General Mowsly, Air Force Chief of Staff. General Peter Pace. They still support Rumsfeld. You guys aren't retired yet, right? Right, they still support Rumsfeld."

* "Jesse Jackson is here. I had him on the show. Very interesting and challenging interview. You can ask him anything, but he's going to say what he wants at the pace that he wants. It's like boxing a glacier. Enjoy that metaphor, because your grandchildren will have no idea what a glacier is." (Note: YouTube has smaller clips, too.)

"Nobody's happy with gasoline prices being where they are." As GOP congressional leaders experience buyer's remorse over the oil industry tax breaks they passed last year, Jacob Weisberg (who, it should be noted, could take the Metro to work if so desired) argues the virtues of more expensive gasoline: "To be sure, oil at $70 a barrel causes hardships for working people and delights some of the world's worst dictators. But cheap gasoline imposes its own costs on society: greenhouse gas emissions, air pollution and its attendant health risks, traffic congestion, and accidents...Sustained high prices will bring about behavioral and political changes: energy conservation, public transportation, less exurban sprawl, and eventually the economic viability of alternative fuel sources such as biomass, fuel cells, wind, and solar power, which may one day undermine the power of the oil oligarchs. Are politicians too stupid to understand this, or just smart enough not to say it aloud?"

"'In 1906, San Francisco was the largest city west of the Rockies. We had 400,000 people in the city,' Eisner said. 'Today we have 7 million in the Bay Area. And the consequences of a disaster of this magnitude in an urban area are significant.'" On the eve of tomorrow's centennial of the great San Francisco earthquake, a new study suggests another Big One would mean a Katrina-level disaster for the Bay Area. "Seismologists generally agree that a repeat of a 1906-size earthquake is inevitable, though when and where along the fault are unknown. In 2002, the U.S. Geological Survey reported a 62 percent chance of a magnitude-6.7 earthquake or greater hitting the Bay Area within 30 years." And, in a related story, historians look for lessons for post-Katrina New Orleans amid the rubble of 1906.

The WP files another dispatch regarding Dubya's war on science: "Employees and contractors working for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, along with a U.S. Geological Survey scientist working at an NOAA lab, said in interviews that over the past year administration officials have chastised them for speaking on policy questions; removed references to global warming from their reports, news releases and conference Web sites; investigated news leaks; and sometimes urged them to stop speaking to the media altogether. Their accounts indicate that the ideological battle over climate-change research, which first came to light at NASA, is being fought in other federal science agencies as well."

Ostensibly to "catch her breath," Interior Secretary Gail Norton resigns from the Cabinet, effective at the end of the month. Besides opening federal lands for oil drilling whenever possible, Norton's office also appears to have traded access for bribes from Casino Jack, through aide Italia Federici. "Abramoff boasted in e-mails of having an inside track in Norton's department. Norton posed for a photograph with Abramoff in her office in 2002."

Need a job? Just get in-between Dubya and his new talking points. "The Energy Department said it has come up with $5 million to immediately restore jobs cut at a renewable energy laboratory President George W. Bush will visit on Tuesday, avoiding a potentially embarrassing moment as the president promotes his energy plan."

The continuing probe into the Abramoff morass yields up more possible quid pro quo corruption, this time between mining firm lobbyist Duane Gibson and GOP Congressman Richard Pombo (R-CA). "Last fall, Rep. Richard W. Pombo (R-Tracy), chairman of the House Resources Committee, attached an amendment to a budget bill -- without hearings or floor debate -- that would have opened national forest and other public land to mining...Three months before Pombo inserted the amendment, Gibson and his lobbying firm had a $1,000-a-head fundraiser for the congressman." As for Gibson, he -- as you might expect -- is a real class act: "In 2000, he was part of the so-called Brooks Brothers Riot in which young Republicans descended on the Miami-Dade County polling headquarters in Florida during the presidential recount, chanting 'Stop the fraud!'"

"The legislation would allow states to impose new fees on Medicaid recipients, cut federal child support enforcement funds, impose new work requirements on state welfare programs and squeeze student lenders." Although a tie-breaking vote by Cheney got the deficit bill passed -- meaning people on Medicaid, welfare recipients, and students with loans will soon be paying for Dubya's millionaire tax breaks -- the Dems do succeed in beating back ANWR drilling, much to the chagrin of Ted Stevens, who gambled that the Senate wouldn't vote down a defense bill.

Off again, on again: Along with a smattering of Operation Offset-type cuts (particularly with regard to student loans), "Bridge to Nowhere" Ted Stevens and the GOP attach ANWR drilling to a fiscal defense bill, in effect daring the Dems to vote against supporting the troops. Is this ANWR's last stand? Update: Senate Dems ready for a fight.

Shunned by Dubya and spurred on by Bill Clinton, the rest of the world comes together to limit greenhouse gases and extend the Kyoto treaty. "Brushing aside the Bush administration's fierce protests, all the industrialized nations except the United States and Australia were near an agreement Friday night to embark on a new round of formal talks aimed at setting new mandatory limits on greenhouse gas emissions after 2012, when the existing pact known as the Kyoto Protocol expires."

After some balking by GOP moderates -- and a surprising defeat on a spending bill -- yesterday, the House manages to pass their budget. Still, "Republicans salvaged the win this time only by jettisoning one of President Bush's top domestic priorities, opening Alaska's National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling, then trimming planned cuts to food stamps, Medicaid and student lunch programs." And, on the Senate side, GOP moderates not only joined Dems in preventing the renewal of Dubya's capital gains and dividend tax cuts, but raised taxes on oil companies (which, of course, may prompt a Dubya veto.) Sure, there's still a lot of lousy stuff in these bills, but it's nice to see some of the central premises of Dubyanomics -- soak-the-poor, cut the rich a break, a free ride for Big Oil -- fall apart in a GOP-controlled Congress.

Well, I guess that explains why the GOP didn't swear 'em in. The Post obtains a smoking gun document that proves, contrary to their statements last week, big-time oil executives met with Cheney's energy task force to determine the nation's energy policy in 2001. No big surprise there -- While Cheney has been trying to hide records of the meetings for years, we've known that 62 of 63 members of the task force had ties to the coal, nuclear, or oil industries, with nary an environmental group in sight. Plus, it was clear at the time that the final energy plan was tailored by Enron for Enron, and their ilk. Still, this does mean that Big Oil lied bald-faced to Congress (and specifically Sen. Frank Lautenberg, who asked them about this directly.) And, while perjury's not on the table, "a person can be fined or imprisoned for up to five years for making 'any materially false, fictitious or fraudulent statement or representation' to Congress."

Just as it seemed the Senate had decided its fate, ANWR gets a reprieve, thanks to House GOP moderates forcing the removal of arctic drilling from the budget bill. And it gets worse for the rabid right-wing: Not only are the same GOP moderates balking at some of the draconian cuts in this budget, but key Senators are now turning against extending Dubya's millionaire tax breaks. Olympia Snowe (R-ME) has already registered her disapproval, and George Voinovich (R-OH) says: "I do not know how anyone can say with a straight face that when we voted to cut spending last week to help achieve deficit reductions we can now then turn around two weeks later to provide tax cuts that exceed the reduction in spending...That is beyond me, and I am sure the American people." Update: The House GOP are forced to punt 'til next week, as they try to gather the requisite votes.

"Using backdoor tactics to destroy America's last great wild frontier will not solve our nation's energy problems and will do nothing to lower skyrocketing gas prices." And yet, by a 51-48 vote, the Senate refused to remove ANWR drilling from an upcoming budget bill (which cannot be filibustered), making it increasingly likely that oil derricks will be populating the Alaskan wilderness in very short order.

Speaking of oil, today the Dubya administration came out against a plan put forth by Republican Charles Grassley "that oil companies donate some of their record profits to a federal fund to help poor Americans pay winter heating bills." So, yet again, Dubya puts the profit margin of his corporate cronies over the welfare of struggling people...one more reason why America has given up on this president.

"Earth, that living, seething, often inhospitable and not altogether intelligently designed thing, has again shrugged, and tens of thousands of Pakistanis are dead...Americans reeling from Hurricane Katrina, and warned of scores of millions of potential deaths from avian flu, have a vague feeling -- never mind the disturbing rest of the news -- of pervasive menace from things out of control. Too vague, according to Simon Winchester." In light of the horrifying calamity in Pakistan this past weekend (as well as Katrina and the tsunami), George Will peruses Simon Winchester's new book on the San Francisco earthquake of 1906.

Clearly missing the good ole days of business-as-usual, the GOP Congress will sidestep Katrina-related matters next week to fast-track instead a plan to gut the Endangered Species Act. The proposed GOP bill "would make it more difficult for the federal government to set aside land it deems crucial to the health of endangered species...[and] also increase the obligation of government agencies to tell landowners quickly if the law limits their development options, and to compensate them." Update: The bill makes it out of committee.

"With the midterm congressional elections 14 months away, both parties see high stakes in where blame will eventually fall for the government's lagging response to Katrina. Yesterday, congressional Republicans tried to get a head start, announcing the formation of an investigative commission that they can control. They rejected Democratic appeals to model the panel after the Sept. 11 commission, which was made up of non-lawmakers and was equally balanced between Republicans and Democrats." Continuing their attempts to shield Dubya (and themselves) from the effects of Hurricane Katrina, the congressional GOP set up a dummy commission to get to the bottom of absolutely nothing, just the way they want it.

By way of Breaching the Web and Medley, the Hurricane Katrina timeline. Think My Pet Goat extended over several days. Nevertheless, the GOP is rallying around Dubya: "Just 17 percent of Democrats said they approved of the way Bush was handling the Katrina crisis while 74 percent of Republicans said they approved." Update: Out of sight, out of mind? Update 2: The Post's Terry Neal has more. Update 3: The government backs down on the media blackout after threat of a lawsuit by CNN.

To be honest, I've only had one eye on the news the past few days, as I've been busy relocating back to NYC. But what I have seen...oh my word. While the world looks on with a mix of horror, sympathy, and schadenfreude, New Orleans has fallen into almost-total anarchy. Other bloggers have been keeping up with the madness much better than I, so I'll defer to them: As I noted earlier, Looka and Ed Rants are both doing a particularly good job covering the catastrophe, and Breaching the Web and Medley, among others, have ably drawn attention to both the Dubya administration's culpability for the extent of this crisis and its grotesquely inappropriate and insufficient response. I assumed I couldn't think any less of Dubya and his cronies after four years, but watching their sneering at desperate people, their mealy-mouthed evasiveness, and, most of all, their sheer, blatant incompetence -- while Americans are suffering and dying in their homes -- it's disgusting. They've been exposed before all as pathetic, self-absorbed fuck-ups...at the cost of hundreds to thousands of lives and one great American city. Update: Also, by way of Booknotes, Wesley Clark weighs in on Dubya's failure.

"In 2001, FEMA warned that a hurricane striking New Orleans was one of the three most likely disasters in the U.S. But the Bush administration cut New Orleans flood control funding by 44 percent to pay for the Iraq war." Citing domestic budget cuts and Dubya's disastrous wetlands policies, among other things, Sidney Blumenthal makes a compelling case that the tremendous devastation wrought by Katrina "may not entirely be the result of an act of nature."

Bush's poll numbers, low since early summer, just keep on plummeting and might soon reach Carter-like proportions. Somehow, I don't think calling the Iraq War the moral equivalent of WWII is going to stem the tide. Nor, I'll hazard, will his making it easier for his corporate cronies to pollute at will. But hey, keep trying, guys. Update: Slate's Fred Kaplan blows further holes in the WWII analogy.

"This is a war of the unknown warriors; but let all strive without failing in faith or in duty." Only a day after Olympic euphoria, London suffers its worst attack since the Blitz, resulting in 38 dead and 700 wounded. Many condolences to the people of London and the families of the fallen, and I hope these cowardly and reprehensible bombings won't overly divert Tony Blair and the G8 from their larger agenda (even if Dubya refuses to play ball on global warming.)

In an attempt to raise his domestic agenda from the dead, Dubya sings the praises of nuclear power. I guess Montgomery Burns' check must've cleared.

Here's Dubya's head-in-the-sand environmental policy in a nutshell: The NYT discovers the White House has Philip Cooney, a former oil industry hack, rewriting climate reports to cast doubt on global warming. "Before going to the White House in 2001, he was the 'climate team leader' and a lobbyist at the American Petroleum Institute, the largest trade group representing the interests of the oil industry. A lawyer with a bachelor's degree in economics, he has no scientific training."

"What happens when you detonate a spherical metal honeycomb over five hundred miles wide just above the atmosphere of a habitable world? Regardless of specifics, the world won't remain habitable for long." Also found last night while perusing Star Wars sites, this technical commentary delves into the unwitting and horrifying environmental disaster precipitated by the Rebel Alliance upon the forest moon of Endor, as a result of the events depicted in Return of the Jedi (Another SW movie, as it turns out, that I went in massively spoiled for -- I was living in Belgium at the time, and it didn't open there until well after the US release.)

While the GOP may have bent the rules to facilitate passage of the ANWR drilling bill (set for a vote today), it appears they face a Senate shutdown by the Dems if they keep pressing on Dubya's wacko judicial appointees. And why not? Dubya has revealed he's not going to relent on Social Security PSAs, despite their unpopularity, and he continues to appoint controversial right-wing neocons like Paul Wolfowitz to top positions (in this case, the World Bank.) If Dubya and the Right don't want to compromise, then we Dems shouldn't play ball. It's 1993 all over again. (That being said, it's probably wise of Reid to keep legislation "supporting our troops" out of the boycott...FOX News would have a field day with that one.) Update: By a 51-49 vote, the Senate opens ANWR to drilling, with Dems Daniel Akaka, (D-HI), Daniel Inouye (D-HI), and Mary Landrieu (D-LA) putting the GOP over the top.

Update 2: Slate's Fred Kaplan has more on the Wolfowitz pick.


Update 3: Conservative George Will warns against GOP tampering with the filibuster rule.

A federal judge dismisses a case brought against chemical companies by Vietnamese plaintiffs for the manufacture of Agent Orange during the Vietnam War. I'm torn on this one. While the fact that the companies settled a similar lawsuit by American veterans for $180 million makes them seem rather shady, I think their reasoning is probably sound -- the decision for the defoliant's use was ultimately made by the US Government. (If it can be proven that these companies covered up the harmful side effects of Agent Orange to the US, then the government should be bringing the suit against them -- either way, though, it seems to me the responsibility for deployment of Agent Orange rests in Washington.)

As Dangerous Meta similarly noted, Judge Weinstein's argument that Agent Orange wouldn't be included in the Geneva prohibition against chemical weapons seems like a reach. "'The prohibition extended only to gases deployed for their asphyxiating or toxic effects on man,' said the decision...'not to herbicides designed to affect plants that may have unintended harmful side-effects on people.'" Hmmm...so long as side-effects of a given chemical are "unintended" (which itself is an open question regarding Agent Orange), it can be used in the field? That opens the door to a lot of horrible and underhanded trickery in wartime. Despite what some Dubya-appointed freakshows might think, we should be trying to make the international restriction against chemical weapons more, not less, stringent.

In a nod to her husband's V-Chip triangulation strategy of 1996, Senator Hillary Clinton joins perennial bluenoses Joe Lieberman (D-CT) and Rick Santorum (R-PA) in calling for a new ratings system for television, video games, and the like. Ok, fine, if this helps Sen. Clinton gain cred with Bush-leaning soccer moms, so be it...a uniform ratings system isn't the end of the world. But I'd be more heartened if Hillary spent less time trying on the moralistic protective camouflage of the GOP and more time articulating the differences between the Democratic and GOP conceptions of "moral values."

For example, Republicans love to throw the Bible around. Well, last I checked, the New Testament has more to say about compassion, tolerance, the hypocrisy of self-appointed moral arbiters, and the excesses of the wealthy than it does to recommend the small-minded bigotry and pro-corporate, devil-take-the-hindmost avarice of today's Republican party. The Dems would do well in 2006 and beyond to draw attention to these huge shortfalls in GOP "values," rather than rush to appropriate their shallow, scapegoating dramaturgy. (In fact, perhaps they should take a page from groups like the surging evangelical-environmental movement.)

The old world will burn in the fires of industry...At Dubya's behest and through a "backdoor maneuver," Republicans on the Senate Budget Committee pave the way anew for oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (namely, by forbidding Democratic filibusters on the issue.) Give 'em credit, I guess...the GOP's pro-industry stooges seem to be pushing forward on every lousy idea of theirs that failed during Dubya's first term. Well, at least "Clear Skies" went down and the Dubya tax cuts are being rethought.

Content to play the iconoclast again now that election 2004 is over, John McCain calls out the Bush administration on global warming. Too little, too late, Mr. Senator...given the water you carried for the Bushies this last cycle, your free-fall on the Murphometer at this point looks permanent.

Hope is on the...wait, what's this? Oops, sorry about that. Turns out Hope took a wrong turn and got lost somewhere back there in Idiotville. Welcome to Despairtown, baby.

So, that's that, then...the Idiot Wind blows anew. The American electorate has spoken and -- despite all the shadiness and incompetence of the past four years -- has given Dubya and his cronies the imprimatur to go hog-wild. 51-48%...this is pretty much a mandate, folks. (Big of those Red Staters to ensure that we will be woefully unprepared for the next terrorist attack on a Blue State.) Y'know, H.L. Mencken's whole Tyranny of the Booboisie schtick has always grated on my lefty sensibilities, but at this point I have to admit he may have been on to something.

Ugh. I'm too young to remember 1984 very well, but I'm curious as to how last night and this morning compared for America's Left. (I've since been reminded by several people I trust that 1968 and 1972 were much more grievous blows.) Thing is, 2004 started out with such promise over here. But, right around the time I ended up on crutches in May, events personal and political took a nasty turn, and the past few months have been some of the most dismal I can remember. Now, it seems, I may just look back on this time as relatively calm and worry-free.

But, ok, enough wallowing...let's start taking it frame-by-frame. Given the war, the economy, and Dubya's obvious incompetence, how on Earth did we lose this election? Well, give credit where credit is due...all this exit-talk of "moral values" proves that Karl Rove pulled off his gambit: He got the extra 4 million evangelical votes he was targeting, partly, it seems, by judiciously invoking rampant anti-gay hysteria. Yet, for some reason or another -- a lousy ground game, perhaps? -- the Dems inexplicably didn't counter with extra votes of our own.

Where do we go from here? The Dems are facing an ugly Rule of Four...We lost four seats in the Senate, at least four seats in the House, and likely four seats in the Supreme Court. Whatsmore, we now appear officially dead in the water in the South and Midwest. And, with Kerry and Daschle gone, our standard-bearers now appear to be Hillary Clinton (about whom the country has already made up its mind), John Edwards (whom I still admire, but he couldn't carry his home state), and Barrack Obama (who's probably too inexperienced to make much headway in 2008.)

Obviously, it's now well past time for the serious party overhaul we should've began last cycle, when Al Gore had an election stolen from him that he should have won hands down. Daschle & Gephardt are already in the dustbin of history, and Terry McAuliffe should probably follow them there. I for one don't think Howard Dean was or is the answer, but he's one of the only people injecting new blood and enthusiasm into the party right now, so he should have a seat at the table. Right now, I think Edwardsian populism is our strongest ideological card, but as I said, it didn't seem to make much headway last night.

Silver lining? Yeah, right. Well, as this Washington Monthly forum noted in September, second terms are notoriously scandal-prone (Watergate, Iran-Contra, Monica), partly out of press boredom, and Dubya's ilk seem particularly scandal-worthy...perhaps we'll finally hear a little more about Halliburton. I'm sure there'll be no shortage of horrifying policy decisions emanating from this administration that'll keep lefty blogs like this one in business. And, on a purely selfish note, my likely dissertation topic on the fortunes of progressivism in the twenties is now seeming much more sexy in the wake of last night's 1928-like cultural divide. Of course, none of these are really any consolation at all.

At any rate, I generally believe that America tends to get the president it deserves. So, God help us, we've brought this upon ourselves. And now, for we 48%, the hard work begins...we have to lick our wounds, get our act together, and figure out how we can best combat the rightward drift that's afflicting our nation. Alas, I fear Dubya will do much of the heavy lifting for us, by running the nation further into the ground over the next four years. Still, we gotta keep on keeping on, y'all. I do not believe this darkness will endure.

An hour after tonight's town hall debate in St. Louis, the immediate spin seems to be that it was a draw, mainly because Dubya didn't scowl and sputter to the extent he did last time around. (The "soft bigotry of low expectations" strikes again.) But it must be a Two Americas thing, 'cause that's not the debate I saw...most of the time I was waiting for Rove and Cheney to run on stage, hold a light to Dubya's eyes, and squirt some water in his mouth. As before, John Kerry radiated calm, determination, and a quick, roving intelligence. In a word, leadership. Dubya, on the other hand, was once again all hat and no cattle, trying to shirk, smirk, weasel, bluster, and lie his way through the proceedings. "Flip-flopper," "global test," tax-and-spend, etc...Dubya sought to evade every single question about his dismal record with a insult or a threat, even going so far as to throw around "Liberal" desperately, a word still verboten since his Daddy ran it through the mud in '88.

Kerry's been surging since last Thursday, and I expect it'll continue after tonight. But I confess, I really can't wrap my mind around how anyone could have watched tonight's event and think Bush would be the better choice between these two men. With the possible exception of the canned Red Sox quip, there wasn't a moment when Kerry didn't seem presidential and didn't hold the upper hand. And, as for Dubya...based on tonight, I wouldn't trust this guy to run the local chapter of the Elks, much less the Oval Office. No mistakes made at all, Mr. President? Who wants a President so blatantly unreflective about life-and-death decisions? I mean, he could have at least tried to look one up on the Internets. Would forgetting about your timber company count as a mistake?

That being said, I think we can all breathe a sigh of relief that, when considering the inevitable Supreme Court appointments over the next four years, Dubya has at least promised not to overturn Dred Scott v. Sandford. Phew! Say what you will about Dubya's godawful judicial nominees, at least we know they'll hold up the Thirteenth Amendment. (Civil rights and civil liberties, of course, are another matter...) Update: Ok, now I get it. It was a coded pro-life message to the right-wing fundies. (Via Blivet.) Update 2: Tim Noah talks more about Dred.

"'Science counts, and it has not counted sufficiently in this administration.'" The NYT reports on the birth of the bipartisan group Scientists and Engineers for Change (covered yesterday at Medley.)

"In recent weeks, federal agencies across the vast Washington bureaucracy have delayed completion of a range of proposed regulations from food safety and the environment to corporate governance and telecommunications policy until after Election Day, when regulatory action may be more politically palatable." Apparently, the Bushies have prepared an onslaught of awful legislation that they're hiding from us until November 3. While this tends to happen every to some extent every election year, notes Consumers Union director Gene Kimmelman, "'[w]hat is unusual this time...is the clear pattern of holding back regulatory decisions that will benefit the largest industry players and will drive up prices and market place risks for consumers, ranging from telephones to drugs to the risks of contaminants of food. The pattern of slow rolling will ultimately benefit the largest players and hit consumers in the pocketbook.'" Oh, swell.

"The last sanctuary of the West Douglas wild horse herd is a desolate, forbidding place, which is just how the horses like it...Now, even this refuge may soon be lost. The U.S. Interior Department, which has leased 93 percent of the horses' preserve to energy companies, recently unveiled plans for evicting the entire herd. Under the proposal, the animals will be rounded up using nets and tranquilizer darts and then hauled away for adoption. The reason cited: Wild horses are incompatible with the region's intensive gas production." As in the NYT ten days ago, the Post checks out Dubya's terrible environmental record, with specific attention to the West, which is being cut, drained, mined, and refined away in order to secure extra energy profits for Dubya's corporate cronies. The party of TR? Not bloody likely.

"I expect the Bush administration will go down in history as the greatest disaster for public health and the environment in the history of the United States." Senator James Jeffords (I-VT) -- and the NY Times -- review Dubya's dismal environmental record. This piece bends over backwards to be charitable to the Dubya EPA, yet even here it's hard not to notice that George W. Bush's America increasingly has a sickly, charred smell to it.

As they do with all potentially threatening data, the Dubya White House tries to sweep global warming under the rug by removing key portions of the EPA's "State of the Environment" report. "The editing eliminated references to many studies concluding that warming is at least partly caused by rising concentrations of smokestack and tail-pipe emissions and could threaten health and ecosystems...In its place, administration officials added a reference to a new study, partly financed by the American Petroleum Institute, questioning that conclusion." Brilliant. Perhaps I should add the Bugblatter Beast of Traal to Dubya's advisor pic, since it seems to be his MO they're constantly following in these cases.

The Old World will burn in the fires of Industry...and yet, concerned about GOP vulnerability in the suburbs, Frank Luntz is now advocating a kindler, gentler environmental message for Republican candidates, including Orwellian substitutions of "conservationist" and "climate change" for "environmentalist" and "global warming" respectively. Well, dang, now that they put it like that, I feel much more at ease about the GOP cutting down trees and drilling up Alaska.

According to Slate writer Douglas Gantenbein, Dubya's recent forest bill isn't only bad for the environment - it's lousy business, even for the timber industry.

Joyously relishing in the lack of Democratic resistance, the Dubya administration eases logging rules at the expense of the environment. O Treebeard where art thou?