November 14th, 2008 By SHAUN MULLEN, TMV Columnist
GEORGE WALKER BUSH: THEN AND NOW
I had long planned to post an abridged text of George Bush’s 2000 Republican National Convention acceptance speech closer to Inauguration Day and compare his words with his deeds, but the post-mortems already are flying fast and furious. This includes a lot of revisionist clap-trap from conservative bloggers whose heads remain firmly up their backsides, including drivel to the effect that because Bush “is a kind and decent man” the excesses and failures of the last eight years should be overlooked if not excused.
I happened to be in the hall when Bush accepted the nomination that steamy August night in Philadelphia and was horrified not just by the vacuity of his words but the knowledge that up on the podium was a resume without a man into which every neoconservative and other Republican with a burr in their saddle would pour their pet animosities, causes and policies.
It was going to be rocky four or eight years, but no one could have foreseen the scope and magnitude of the Bush administration’s epic failures, including its inability to confront every major crisis on its watch.
Following are excerpts from the speech in italics and what has transpired:
November 10th, 2008 By MICHAEL STICKINGS, Assistant Editor
In addition to Frank Rich’s fine NYT column, about which I wrote here, there was a lot of good stuff to read yesterday — and reading was what I was doing to try to to take my mind off the Steelers’ loss to the Colts, a game they should have won but let slip away. (I’m looking at you, Big Ben. Thanks for the interceptions, the first two at terrible times in the game. And thanks also to Bruce Ariens, offensive coordinator, for those predictable and uninspired play calls when the Steelers had the ball at Indy’s one-yard line in the fourth quarter. This hasn’t been a great year for you, but come on. A little creativity might have worked better than pounding Mewelde into a stacked D-line again and again.) I’ve been bitter and deflated all day.
Anyway… here are a couple of recommendations:
1) Al Gore: “The Climate for Change” (The New York Times), which includes “a five-part plan to repower America with a commitment to producing 100 percent of our electricity from carbon-free sources within 10 years. It is a plan that would simultaneously move us toward solutions to the climate crisis and the economic crisis — and create millions of new jobs that cannot be outsourced.”
2) Ryan Lizza: “Battle Plans” (The New Yorker), a report on how “Obama’s strategy worked, with only minor alterations, throughout the campaign.”
Need more? Have a hankering for some right-wing nonsense? Well, check out P.J. O’Rourke’s “We Blew It” at The Weekly Standard. Read the rest of this entry »
Just for the sake of levity, I’d like to post links to some of the 50-odd stories WORLDMEETS.US has posted about the U.S. election from around the world in the past 72 hours:
“The global financial crisis has served to mask the historic magnitude of November 4th. On that day, the American presidential election will be held - but not just for the citizens of the United States. It will concern all continents, all peoples, all cultures, all races; it will be, in a way, a planetary election. … Of course, there’s the Obama phenomenon. And even if the Senator from Illinois is far from being promised a victory at the polls, his status as the favorite is in itself an extraordinary sign. A Black [man] at the doors of the White House! The world’s leading nation ready to entrust itself to a president from its minority population! Who would have bet a dollar on such a scenario only twelve months ago? …
“What if this crisis was just a prelude - a precursor to a much greater threat - one that could possibly cost millions of lives? The current economic crises was based on the idea that we can live and consume based on credit - and the belief that we can continue to do so unabated as long as we steadfastly ignore the facts and spread the risks widely enough. That idea didn’t fly. Yet its seems that humanity still seems to believe that the things that have failed in the monetary economy, will, in the long run, still apply to the material reality of our world. Quite simply, because nature will not present us with a bill for the resources upon which we depend for our very survival.”
“The fact that during the current U.S. election campaign, this insane exploitation of nature has been combined with the dim-witted rejection of scientific evidence being propagated by promoters of one side (of course, by the “Christian” Republican side) is actually quite logical. It’s no coincidence that it is precisely those people who have paved the way for the economic collapse that are still of the opinion that as long as we pray hard enough, everything is possible. But no prayer or contingency plan will contain an ecological collapse once it begins.”
October 12th, 2008 By JOE WINDISH, Technology Editor
In a long and serious article on food policy in today’s NYTimes Magazine, Michael Pollan writes that the era of cheap and abundant food is coming to a close. He says the next American president, no matter which man is elected, is going to find that the health of our nation’s food system is a critical issue of national security.
His argument is that, unless we address the industrial food system, we will not be able to make significant progress resolving the three main issues of our day — health care, energy independence and climate change:
Energy Independence:
After cars, the food system uses more fossil fuel than any other sector of the economy — 19 percent. And while the experts disagree about the exact amount, the way we feed ourselves contributes more greenhouse gases to the atmosphere than anything else we do — as much as 37 percent, according to one study. Whenever farmers clear land for crops and till the soil, large quantities of carbon are released into the air. But the 20th-century industrialization of agriculture has increased the amount of greenhouse gases emitted by the food system by an order of magnitude; chemical fertilizers (made from natural gas), pesticides (made from petroleum), farm machinery, modern food processing and packaging and transportation have together transformed a system that in 1940 produced 2.3 calories of food energy for every calorie of fossil-fuel energy it used into one that now takes 10 calories of fossil-fuel energy to produce a single calorie of modern supermarket food. Put another way, when we eat from the industrial-food system, we are eating oil and spewing greenhouse gases.
October 12th, 2008 By SWARAAJ CHAUHAN, International Columnist
Time magazine deserves praise for bringing out a special edition devoted to the unsung heroes who are plodding on despite the climate of gloom and doom and, through personal example, carrying on a crusade to save the planet.
The magazine states: “Because solutions do exist — and there are those who are leading us to them. Some are activists like Brazil’s Marina Silva, the godmother of the rain forest, and some are scientists like Germany’s Joachim Luther, the godfather of solar power.
“Some are celebrities like Arnold Schwarzenegger, the green Governor of California, and some are obscure like Mohammed Dilawar, the conservationist who guards against the fall of the sparrow.
“Some are financiers, like John Doerr, the billionaire venture capitalist now funding green projects, and some are holy men like Balbir Singh Seechewal, the Sikh who cleans the corrupted rivers of India. What they have in common is the passion and resourcefulness to confront the threats facing the earth…. (See here…)
“The Austrian bodybuilder turned Hollywood action hero turned California Governor was always an unlikely eco-freak, with his five Hummers and his conspicuous delight in conspicuous consumption.
“But…while President Bush has sat out climate change, denying the problem in his first term and avoiding it in his second, Schwarzenegger has signed agreements with Canada, Mexico and the United Nations encouraging cooperation on clean technology, while pushing greenhouse-gas reductions at home. More here…
October 11th, 2008 By SWARAAJ CHAUHAN, International Columnist
Recently I was served a kangaroo dish by my daughter at her home in Adelaide, the capital of South Australia. It so happens that the fascinating kangaroo is the national animal of Australia and finds a place of honour on the country’s coat of arms.
On seeing my raised eyebrows, my son-in-law explained: “Don’t worry dad, we are also serving a national cause by opting for a kangaroo dish. It seems that the government would soon be encouraging Australians to have more kangaroo meat instead of cattle and sheep.”
And so it seems. Professor Ross Garnaut, Australian government’s top climate change adviser, has in a major repo
