I forgot about it, so I guess I will watch the west coast feed.
Going to see Dark Knight tomorrow.
by John Cole| 37 Comments
This post is in: Movies
I forgot about it, so I guess I will watch the west coast feed.
Going to see Dark Knight tomorrow.
This post is in: Open Threads
A picture of sunny Centennial Olympic Park, taken yesterday.
Even 3 months after the tornado, the Westin still hasn’t replaced the windows.
by John Cole| 71 Comments
This post is in: Previous Site Maintenance
I think I am going to aspire to a career in hand modeling.
And my mom and dad sent me this picture of a chipmunk who just couldn’t leave the bird feeder alone. Glad mom was able to get a picture:
This post is in: Election 2008, Republican Stupidity
Judging from the comments on the last post, I gather that most of you have read this by now, but it is simply one of the best op-eds I’ve read in awhile. Frank Rich tears McCain a new one…
“In a time of war,” Mr. McCain said last week, “the commander in chief doesn’t get a learning curve.” Fair enough, but he imparted this wisdom in a speech that was almost a year behind Mr. Obama in recognizing Afghanistan as the central front in the war against Al Qaeda. Given that it took the deadliest Taliban suicide bombing in Kabul since 9/11 to get Mr. McCain’s attention, you have to wonder if even General Custer’s learning curve was faster than his.
*********
Mr. McCain made a big show of banishing Mr. Gramm after his whining “gaffe,” but it’s surely at most a temporary suspension. When the candidate said back in January that there’s nobody he knows who is stronger on economic issues than his old Senate pal, he was telling the truth. Left to his own devices — or those of his new No. 1 economic surrogate, Carly Fiorina — Mr. McCain is clueless.
Awesome. And I love the term, “fiscal flatulence.”
This post is in: Previous Site Maintenance
Shit happens on Saturday, too. Do tell.
by John Cole| 96 Comments
This post is in: Science & Technology, Assholes
Is our media. Today’s evidence is this Michael Gerson op-ed, in which he opens with a story about the endangered polar bears, threatened by climate change, and informs us that their worst enemy is… environmental activists:
Once, the main threat to these creatures came from hunters who lived in lonely shacks and set traps along the ocean shore. Now a threat comes from an unexpected source: elements of the environmental movement, whose political blindness and ideological baggage may undermine efforts to reduce the role of carbon in the global economy.
***Some Republicans and conservatives are prone to an ideologically motivated skepticism. On AM talk radio, where scientific standards are not particularly high, the attitude seems to be: “If Al Gore is upset about carbon, we must need more of it.” Gore’s partisan, conspiratorial anger is annoying, yet not particularly relevant to the science of this issue.
This points, however, to a broader problem. Any legislation ambitious enough to cut carbon emissions significantly and encourage new energy technologies will require a broad political and social consensus. Nothing this complex and expensive gets done on a party-line vote. Yet many environmental leaders seem unpracticed at coalition-building. They tend to be conventionally, if not radically, liberal. They sometimes express a deep distrust for capitalism and hostility to the extractive industries. Their political strategy consists mainly of the election of Democrats. Most Republican environmental efforts are quickly pronounced “too little, too late.”
Got it? Environmental activists are to blame for not working enough with the people who oppose them, denounce them, mock them, work openly to sabotage their efforts, and have created a cottage industry creating and spreading pseudo-scientific babble.
What twisted bastard at the Washington Post reviews these op-eds and thinks they are worth printing? What kind of jackass believes the real problem regarding the environment is the environmental movement, and not James Inhofe. This is like blaming doctors for not being willing enough to work with the tobacco industry to prevent cancer.
I don’t know why anyone reads the Washington Post op-ed pages anymore. Just a disgrace.
by John Cole| 29 Comments
This post is in: Previous Site Maintenance
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