When politicians lie, we—the electorate—don’t really mind. It’s something we have sadly become used to, and most of us will probably be pretty surprised to be confronted by a politician without ulterior motives or hidden agendas. We’ve grown to accept that most politicians are in the game to line their own pockets, and as long as we get some return value for our tax money we’ve been willing to accept that. But when politicians lie about issues that affect our daily health, about issues like global warming and pollution, we get pissed off about it.
A newly released report by the Union of Concerned Scientists (20 Nobel laureates and counting) states that “there is a well-established pattern of suppression and distortion of scientific findings by high-ranking Bush administration political appointees across numerous federal agencies. These actions have consequences for human health, public safety, and community well-being.”
Or, as the New York Times put it:
“On global warming alone, the administration belittled, misrepresented, altered or quashed multiple reports suggesting a clear link between greenhouse gas emissions and the burning of fossil fuels like coal and oil. A study detailing the impact of mercury emissions from power plants was sanitized to industry specifications. Another study suggesting that a Congressional clean-air bill would achieve greater pollution reductions than Mr. Bush’s own plan, at approximately the same cost, was withheld. It does not take much effort to find a pattern of suppressing inconvenient facts that might force Mr. Bush’s friends in the oil, gas and coal industries to spend more on pollution control.”
Read the UCS report today, and pass it on: Bush goes home in 2004.
Press Briefing by Scott McClellan:
Q Scott, a couple of questions I have—the records that you handed out today, and other records that exist, indicate that the President did not perform any Guard duty during the months of December 1972, February or March of 1973. I’m wondering if you can tell us where he was during that period. And also, how is it that he managed to not make the medical requirements to remain on active flight duty status?
MR. McCLELLAN: John, the records that you’re pointing to, these records are the payroll records; they’re the point summaries. These records verify that he met the requirements necessary to fulfill his duties. These records—
Q That wasn’t my question, Scott.
MR. McCLELLAN: These payroll records—
Q Scott, that wasn’t my question, and you know it wasn’t my question. Where was he in December of ‘72, February and March of ‘73? And why did he not fulfill the medical requirements to remain on active flight duty status?
MR. McCLELLAN: These records—these records I’m holding here clearly document the President fulfilling his duties in the National Guard. The President was proud of his service. The President—
Q I asked a simple question; how about a simple answer?
Winners of the Guardian’s British Blog Awards for 2003. Some good links in here.
www.guardian.co.uk
“A Savage Season” is a photographic tribute to one of the great American writers of our time, Cormac McCarthy. The beautiful black & white photographs explore the emotional world of McCarthy’s writing, and evoke the atmosphere of his border trilogy (“All the Pretty Horses”, “The Crossing” and “Cities of the Plain”).
www.delcaldo.com
As the world and its mother knows by now, Democratic front-runner (well, today’s front-runner) John Kerry, like many other members of America’s rich and powerful economic elite, is a member of the Yale secret society Skull & Bones. Behind the secret occult mumbo-jumbo lies something less sinister but far more evil: the reality that America is (and has been, for a long time) an oligarchy, a country ruled by this loosely organised elite. You don’t need secret societies or the Eye of Lucifer to do that, just exclusive clubs and men and women willing to shape their moral beliefs to fit the status quo. Will John Kerry be the bullet to stop George W. Bush? He could be. As so many of his supporters have stated, he’s their choice not because they like Kerry, but because he can beat Bush. But will he bring change to the way America is run? Probably not. The poor stay poor, and the rich get richer.
“Looking from the house, my eyes rested on the river. Ah! the hateful, murderous river, so broad and proud and majestically calm, as though it had not bereft me of a friend, and of many faithful souls, and as though we had never heard it rage and whiten with fury, and mock the thunder. What a hypocritical river!” Excerpts from the writings of the nineteenth-century explorer Henry Morton Stanley, written in what would later become the Belgian Congo.
