The Next Hurrah

Wednesday open thread, brush clearing edition

Yes, Bush is on vacation... for the 49th time. I pay taxes so this guy can have a salary? He doesn't even work!

President Bush is getting the kind of break most Americans can only dream of: nearly five weeks away from the office, loaded with vacation time.

The president departed yesterday for his longest stretch yet away from the White House, arriving at his Crawford ranch in the evening for a round of clearing brush, visiting with family and friends, and tending to some outside-the-Beltway politics. It is the longest presidential retreat in at least 36 years.

The August getaway is Bush's 49th trip to his cherished ranch since taking office and the 319th day that Bush has spent, entirely or partially, in Crawford — nearly 20 percent of his presidency to date, according to Mark Knoller, a CBS Radio reporter known for keeping better records of the president's travel than the White House itself. Weekends and holidays at Camp David or at his parents' compound in Kennebunkport, Maine, bump up the proportion of Bush's time away from Washington even further.

Bush always claims these are "working vacations". So does that mean that 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue is Bush's actual vacation home?

Here's your open thread. What's new in your world? Vacation? Work? News?

Wanted: diplomat. No qualifications needed. Just send money.

by Plutonium Page

Last week, the Bush administration announced the nomination of California billionaire Roland Arnall as the U.S. ambassador to the Netherlands. So who is this guy? Why did Bush choose him?

Well, let's take a look at Dutch news, first. There will probably be a more detailed article in de Volkskrant (a Dutch newspaper) soon, but here's the translation of a brief online news update:

The intended ambassador for the US in the Netherlands, Arnall, has been sued in the US by customers of his mortgage company. The customers demand money, because Arnalls company provided them with loans they could not afford, and with a higher interest rate than was agreed upon.

Tens of thousands of Americans in 30 states started proceedings against Arnalls company, Ameriquest.

The 65-year old billionaire is a friend of president Bush, and put a lot of money in his election campaign. The senate must still approve his appointment.

Well, that gets right to the point. What are this guy's qualifications?

What's the real global threat? Not terrorism.

by Plutonium Page

Look to the Arctic to see the effects of the real global threat: climate change.

The following images were generated by the NASA - Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio. They illustrate the receding ice in Greenland. Click each image to enlarge it.

From left to right: color scale (cm/year receding), and the east coast of Greenland.

Now, courtesy of the ASTER science team/U. of Maine, this is the Kangerdlugssuaq glacier in Greenland. It is moving three times faster than it was in 1996, because it is melting. The dotted yellow line is where the glacier ends today.

And now for a story to go with the pictures. It has to do with those damned Greenpeace terrorists, and what they've been up to. Their latest act of terrorism: a trip to the Arctic, accompanied by scientists from the U. of Maine Climate Change Institute, to determine how fast some of the glaciers are melting.

Wednesday open thread: Big Sky edition

Regarding those who say he might run for president in 2008, Montana governor Brian Schweitzer says "these people are kooky":

Gov. Brian Schweitzer sits in his Capitol office, scanning a recent Roll Call article in which pundits float his name as a possible presidential contender. They say the "rancher-politician from Big Sky Country" might be the Democrats' "best shot to take back the White House." Schweitzer tosses the article aside. "These people are kooky," he says.

[snip]

"He is no-nonsense. He understands fiscal concerns," said Howard Dean, Democratic National Committee chairman. "He has a winning formula for Democrats. He is an example of how you win elections in the West."

Schweitzer had certain built-in advantages in 2004: He ran as a centrist against a weaker Republican candidate, and he followed a very unpopular outgoing GOP governor. But political observers also see a lot of charisma.

Two quotes that I love:

He recently compared President Bush's pitch for changing Social Security to a livestock auction selling bum beef, and he said this of the way the nation's capital works: "If I stay in Washington for more than 72 hours, I have to bathe myself in the same stuff I use when my dog gets into a fight with a skunk."

And finally (link inserted by me):

Roll Call, the Capitol Hill newspaper, recently referred to Schweitzer as a "blunt-speaking, gun-toting, scotch-swilling governor" — the last a reference to news photos of him downing a shot at the reopening of a landmark bar in Butte.

That's my kind of governor.

So, what's on your mind today?

Your Sunday open thread: scam spam edition

Anyone who's ever used e-mail knows all about spam. Many of us have learned how to use a spam filter; however, if you're like my brother, you have no idea how to set up even the simplest one, and you just end up swearing every time you open your e-mail.

Even my brother knows not to fall for a suspicious-sounding offer in e-mail from someone he's never heard of, though (he may be computer-clueless, but he's pretty shrewd otherwise).

Well, witness exactly how bad a Nigerian 419 scam can be. I don't know if this was the result of an e-mail, but the story reads the same:

A court in Nigeria has sentenced a woman to two and a half years in prison for her part in the country's biggest ever international fraud case.

Amaka Anajemba admitted helping her late husband to persuade an employee of a Brazilian bank to transfer millions of dollars into overseas accounts.

Banco Noroeste lost $242m through the latter half of the 1990s.

The court ordered Anajemba to surrender her houses in Nigeria, the US, UK and Switzerland to help repay the money.

[snip]

She was convicted of convincing a senior official at Banco Noroeste, based in Sao Paulo, to siphon off the hundreds of millions of dollars in exchange for a promised $13m kickback on a fictitious contract for an airport in the Nigerian capital, Abuja.

$242 million?!? That's pretty bad.

More on e-mail scams at www.scamorama.com. There's some pretty useful stuff there, and some amusing things as well.

Alrighty, then. What's new in your part of the world?

Women's rights, SCOTUS, and birth control

by Plutonium Page

We're all very concerned, and rightly so, that Bush's SCOTUS choice will be rabidly anti-abortion, and hence will be in favor of overturning Roe v. Wade.

But what about birth control?

Well, I'll get right to the point.

What do you know about the Griswold v. Conneticutt decision? The SCOTUS ruled on it in 1965, and I am ashamed to say that I didn't know anything until I read this:

The Griswold v. Connecticut decision protects the right of married women to practice contraception and to secure access to legal and reliable reproductive-health services. It later provided the foundation for expanding privacy protections to encompass abortion. And those are two of the critical protections now endangered by the potential change of just one justice in the U.S. Supreme Court.

The story of Griswold begins in 1961, when Estelle, then executive director of the Planned Parenthood League of Connecticut, and Dr. C. Lee Buxton of Yale University’s Medical School opened a small birth-control clinic in downtown New Haven, Conn. They intended to challenge the validity of the state’s official ban on birth control, and indeed, nine days later, they were arrested for dispensing contraceptives to a married couple. A month later they were convicted and fined $100 each.

Arrested for dispensing birth control - amazing. It's hard to imagine.

Rep. Joe Barton, 'anti-climate-change fundamentalist'

by Plutonium Page

Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) doesn't have much in his background that qualifies him as a critic on climate science studies... not unless you count the fact that he has received substantial donations from the global warming industry oil and natural gas industry.

So, Rep. Barton's in the pocket of the energy lobby, and you have to wonder if that plays any part in his recent participation in the GOP war on science:

In what observers are calling an unprecedented request, a member of the U.S. Congress has asked prominent researchers for all the raw data underpinning an influential historical study that shows that the earth’s climate has been warming dramatically since 1900.

In a letter dated June 23 and sent to three scientists, Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) charges that other researchers have found methodological flaws and data errors in their study, which has become known as the hockey-stick paper. Barton also asserts that the researchers have failed to share their raw data and the computer code used in the analysis.

However, scientists familiar with the research say that the hockey-stick paper has already stood up to intense scientific scrutiny and that the raw data are already available. They say that the request is simply politics and is meant to intimidate climate scientists from further linking global warming to human activity.

This makes me want to scream. Who the hell does this asshat think he is? Oh yeah. He's a Republican congressman. Never mind, my mistake. Sorry about that.

Anyway, look below the fold for more on hockey sticks, Barton, and blatant intimidation tactics.

Commemorating the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior

by Plutonium Page

Between 1966 and 1990, the French conducted 115 underground nuclear tests on the Moruroa and Fangtaufa atolls in the South Pacific. The testing resulted in an incredible amount of environmental damage, including leakage of radionuclides into the ocean after several accidents, and complete destruction of parts of each of the atolls.

Greenpeace was among the many anti-nuclear activists protesting the French underground testing in the South Pacific. In June 1985, they planned to participate in a "peace flotilla" to Moruroa, as part of a protest of the French underground nuclear tests, sailing their ship, the Rainbow Warrior. They knew they would possibly face opposition from the French Navy. No one could have predicted the nightmare they were about to face.

From the Greenpeace website:

Dishevelled, and numb with shock, the crew of the Rainbow Warrior stood, staring into the dark waters of Marsden Wharf, the smallest of three commercial piers piercing Auckland's Waitemata Harbour. Before them, lying crippled and half submerged in the water was the Warrior - their home and an international symbol of peace.

Several hours, but what felt like a lifetime, earlier there had been an explosion. Some had been stirred from sleep by a dull, muffled thud, as though something heavy had been dropped on the deck above. Those still awake, and clustered around the small mess room table, were suddenly plunged into darkness.

Everything happened at once. The steady drone of the generator, that formed a constant backdrop to life on board, ceased abruptly, the darkness was marginally lifted by the eerie glow of the emergency lights, the moment of silence was almost instantly replaced with the sharp crack of breaking glass and the sudden ferocious roar of water. Their immediate thought had been that something, possibly a tug, had hit them.

Two minutes later a second explosion: a flash of blue light streaked through the cloudy waters around the ship. Those already on deck scrambled up the ladder or leaped to safety on the wharf. In a matter of minutes they watched as the twin steel masts of the ship tilted towards them.

The Auckland police found that two high explosive devices had been attached to the hull of the Warrior. Photographer Fernando Pereira was killed; the rest of the crew survived.

The Next Open Thread

Not that the Clean Air Act is worth much anyway, but major applause to Greenpeace for being their badass obnoxious selves:

Last year, Greenpeace activists turned world attention on a dirty little secret: coal-burning power plants were getting away with murder. Six activists risked their lives to expose the truth when they climbed a 700-foot smokestack in Pennsylvania - the heart of coal country. Their aim was to bring attention to the dangers of a dirty power plant and to protest President Bush's energy plan. Now, a year after our protest, five states have accomplished what Bush refused to do: file a federal lawsuit against corporate polluters for violations of the Clean Air Act.

One of their ships, the Esperanza, is docked here in Amsterdam until Sunday. They're having an "open ship", so I think I'll check it out.

Also on the European front, Fabulous Tony Blair is thrilled. Looks like London will host the 2012 Olympic Games. Paris was a contender, but it must have been Chirac's comments about British food that was the deciding factor. (For the snark-impaired, that comment was SNARK.)

Finally, remember that f**king Sasser worm? The "introvert" (read: sociopathic nerd from hell) kid who wrote it is finally in court. Here's some irony:

In the meantime Mr Jaschan [the evil worm writer] has been working for a computer firm that specialises in protecting computers from viruses.

So, there you go.

Have at it. What's new in your world?

Since when did the Bush administration care about global warming?

by Plutonium Page

To put it simply, what the hell? From the Guardian:

A historic deal on climate change which would see the US sign up to cut greenhouse gas emissions was last night emerging after a day of frantic negotiations ahead of the G8 summit.

The draft text hammered out by officials meeting in London is expected to pledge the world's richest countries to wean themselves off fossil fuels - not just to save the planet, but to prevent a worldwide energy crisis.

An action plan to be unveiled at the Gleneagles summit this week will centre on a package to clean up land and air transport, and provide green technology to developing countries through a deal brokered by the World Bank.

The first hope of a breakthrough came yesterday as the White House finally conceded that human activity was at least the partial cause of global warming.