Tuesday, December 18, 2007
I’m not a Hillary Clinton fan, though she’d be head and shoulders above any of the Republicans. But it’s a mystery to me why so many men in the beltway appear to feel that their manhood is threatened by her candidacy. Sure says more about them than it does about her.
Monday, December 17, 2007
The U.S. just blocked progress on global warming for another two years. Now there’s yet another major threat Bush gets to ignore, and if he can, make even worse:
Seven hundred miles west of Seattle in the Pacific at Ocean Station Papa, a first-of-its-kind buoy is anchored to monitor a looming environmental catastrophe.
Forget about sea levels rising as glaciers and polar ice melt, and increasing water temperatures affecting global weather patterns. As the oceans absorb more and more carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, they’re gradually becoming more acidic.
And some scientists fear that the change may be irreversible.
At risk are sea creatures up and down the food chain, from the tiniest phytoplankton and zooplankton to whales, from squid to salmon to crabs, coral, oysters and clams.
The oceans are already 30 percent more acidic than they were at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, as they absorb 22 tons of carbon dioxide a day. By the end of the century, they could be 150 percent more acidic.
UPDATE: Speaking of global warming, check out this video (via Pharyngula) and pass it on:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mF_anaVcCXg[/youtube]
Monday, December 17, 2007
A commenter on my recent Lieberman post says:
Shouldn’t the veto-proof majority in the CT legislature pass a law for direct election of Senators who resign, instead of Lieberman giving the GOP an appointment by Gov Rell between now and 2009?
An excellent suggestion. One would think that by now even Jim Amann, who actually thinks he has a chance to be governor, would want to head off such an event. But this is Connecticut, and we’re talking about Democrats. No doubt there are some who will still carry water for Lieberman, even though he has repeatedly demonstrated his contempt for them and his party. Still, it’s something worth bringing up with our state representatives and Senators, which I intend to do.
Monday, December 17, 2007
This being a Connecticut blog, and Chris Dodd being the Democratic Senator from Connecticut, it is mandatory that I salute him for his attempt to stop the FISA bill that Harry Reid brought to the floor of the Senate. The Senate invoked cloture, and the filibuster is over. What a leader Harry is. He has been unable to stop a single Republican filibuster, but he had no problem breaking a Democratic filibuster. Maybe that’s because the Republican filibusters were about such trivial things as stopping the war, which hardly matters, while Dodd’s filibuster threatened the interests of important Congressional constituents: large corporations. Needless to say, the interests of the American people, and the mouldy piece of paper known as the Constitution are beside the point.
Here’s the roll of honor of those that voted with Chris:
Russ Feingold
Barbara Boxer
Sherrod Brown
Maria Cantwell
Benjamin L. Cardin
Tom Harkin
John Kerry
Robert Menendez
Ron Wyden of Oregon
All Democrats of course. It’s interesting that there are so many freshmen among the group. Profiles in Courage Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama couldn’t be bothered to lift a finger to try to move either Reid or their fellow Senators to reject this bill, though they all claimed they were against it. Leaders all.
Dodd has done much to redeem Connecticut’s honor, though Lieberman does his best to besmirch it at every turn.
UPDATE: Seems like the New York Times overstated the case. Harry Reid has pulled the bill off the legislative calendar. DODD WINS.
YET ANOTHER UPDATE: Watch Dodd’s closing remarks here.
Sunday, December 16, 2007
This will do McCain no good, but can we at least hope that, come January 2009, with an increased Democratic majority, Reid will tell Lieberman that he has no need of him as chairman of anything?
Sunday, December 16, 2007
Via Atrios, this interesting exchange from one of this morning’s TV shows:
STEPHANOPOULOS: Four years ago, The Des Moines Register picked you. They said, “His time is now,” and it clearly gave a boost to your campaign then. So this endorsement of Hillary Clinton is a blow this morning.
EDWARDS: Oh, I think The Des Moines Register’s a great newspaper with good people. There are good people there. I think it remains to be seen how important it turns out to be, but congratulations to Senator Clinton.
I didn’t consider it a consolation prize. I’m excited about being on the cover of Newsweek. The only thing I would add is, we did have a very serious debate when I was at the editorial board about a really fundamental difference that I have with them, which is, I do believe we have to take on a very serious issue of too much influence of corporate power in Washington and how it affects the public policy in this country.
STEPHANOPOULOS: I wanted to get into that. Because here’s what they said in the editorial this morning. They noted that they endorsed you four years ago, but then they went on to say this: “We too seldom saw the positive optimistic campaign we found appealing in 2004. His harsh anti-corporate rhetoric would make it difficult to work with the business community to forge change.”
How do you answer that charge?
EDWARDS: Well, we just — what I just said. I mean, they have a position. I respectfully disagree with it. I think that if we’re going to have serious change in this country, universal health care, attacking global warming, a tax policy that works for most Americans instead of just a few, a trade policy that creates jobs instead of costing jobs, I mean, all those things are going to require us to have a president of the United States who’s tough and willing to fight these powerful corporate interests that stand between us and the change that we need.
And I think the notion that you can sit at the table and negotiate and compromise, and these powerful interests will give away their power, I think is a fantasy. If it were true, it would have been working over the last few decades. And it does not.
I think we have a huge fight, an epic fight on our hands against those powerful interests, not against politicians. Nobody cares about politicians fighting. But I think we need a president who’s tough enough to take these people on and win, and I’ve been doing it my whole life.
Edwards is the only one talking about this stuff. That means he’s the only one, if elected, who could credibly claim a mandate to take on the corporations, not to mention the fact that he’s the only one who claims to want to do so.
Sunday, December 16, 2007
No posts yesterday, and probably none involving a lot of writing besides this today, because my literary efforts have been confined to, and concentrated on, our yearly Christmas letter.
Every year I pen (what I hope is) a funny Christmas letter. The first year, if memory serves, it was a Doctor Seuss parody. A year or two ago it was in the form of a report from an investigator from Homeland Security. Last year it was a quasi legal brief to Santa, arguing against the delivery of coal. The problem is obvious. Each year there is one less original idea, making it all the harder to come up with a hook on which to hang the letter. Worse, each year I feel compelled to at least try to top last year’s effort. Nor is that the only problem with the Christmas letter genre. Besides being funny, with some sort of originality, it must impart the necessary amount of information about our family. In other words, no matter what the hook, it must be true to the formula. Formulaic originality is not easy. Finally, it cannot be too bizarre, as it goes to some people we don’t know that well, or see that often, and I really don’t want people having serious doubts about my sanity. Better to keep such doubts within the core family group, I always say.
I’ve been working on it for a couple of weeks, but I knew this weekend was crunch time. For good or ill, it’s done for another year, and in relatively good time.
Friday, December 14, 2007
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=veJ2gCSDqhY&feature=related[/youtube]
Friday, December 14, 2007
This is too depressing.
Harry Reid says he is totally powerless to stop a Republican, whack job Tom Coburn, from holding up a bill that would fund a Justice Department Inquiry into civil rights era murders. Why? Because Coburn put a hold on the bill, and there’s simply nothing Reid can do.
On the other hand, Reid becomes a Superman when it comes to dealing with Dodd’s hold on the FISA bill. He’ll ignore the hold and put the Senate Intelligence Committee’s version of the bill to a vote. Somehow there’s a difference between trying to catch criminals and trying to legalize criminality, with legalizing criminality being a higher priority. Is it corruption? Is it cowardice? What is it that compels them to constantly cave to the whims of our boy-dictator?
