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Tuesday, December 13, 2005
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Kissinger on an exit from Iraq
Henry A. Kissinger: "Since every turning point occurs in some finite time period, a key test of policy-making is when to schedule the seminal decisions. The debate over withdrawal from Iraq hinges on such a question. The administration and its critics seem to agree that the beginning of American withdrawal will mark a turning point. Unresolved are the speed and extent of the drawdown and whether it should be driven by a fixed timetable or by a strategy seeking to shape events." Thanks to The Moderate Voice for the link.
Bull Moose: "The Moose makes a geo-political new years prediction. Unless the world gets serious about the Iranian nuclear threat, Israel will take the matter into its own hands in the coming year. Last week, Mohammed El Baradei, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency sent out the alarm that if Iran resumed its uranium enrichment program it would be only a few months before Iran had the bomb. It appears that the belief that the Teheran mullahs were still a decade away from going nuclear was a wee bit optimistic."
Category: 2008 Presidential Election
8:36:22 PM 
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Initiative overhaul?
Elevated Voices: "I'm inclined to agree with Sen. [Norma] Anderson on this one. The job of government is not to 'implement initiatives' as Campbell says - it is to govern in the best interests of the people. The argument Campbell and his cronies will surely use is that the will of the people is reflected in initiatives, but that doesn't mean we should make it easier for someone to put anything they want on the ballot. Anderson's example of TABOR and Amendment 23 is a good one, because the general public isn't always capable of determining whether one measure will contradict or impede another; that's the job of our elected officials, and that's the way it should stay."
Category: Denver November 2006 Election
7:14:17 AM
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Halley Suitt is dreaming of a White Christmas (in all probability).
7:06:11 AM
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Wasted water
Wasted water from the Colorado River is the subject of this article from the Arizona Republic. From the article, "No matter how many pipelines, pumps and dams Western states build along the Colorado River, billions of gallons of water will never make it to the farms and growing cities that need it. That water instead seeps into the ground through unlined canals and ditches, escapes downstream when users can't take it as planned or is sucked up by trees, bushes and other vegetation along the river's 1,450-mile course. To water managers in the seven river states, that is wasted water. With demand growing and the supply limited, or even shrinking in drought years, the states want to reduce the waste as much as they can. They are studying a range of ideas, from pulling weeds to lining canals, as part of a broader plan to deal with future shortages. Few of the ideas are new or groundbreaking. Lining canals with concrete is one of the easiest ways to conserve water on farms and has been slowly taking place for years. Some smaller farms have converted to more water-efficient operations as well. And losses to invasive plant species have long held the attention of researchers. Until now, most of the remedies to these problems were considered too expensive when weighed against the benefits. But with water supplies continuing to shrink, that equation is changing."
Category: Colorado Water
6:48:22 AM
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Immigration Reform?
State legislators from across the West are in Denver to discuss immigration issues, according to the Denver Post [December 13, 2005, "Immigrants focus of panel"]. From the article, "The bipartisan panel of legislators from Colorado, Arizona, Nevada and Utah say immigration - particularly the flow of undocumented workers - has become one of the public's top concerns, and the group hopes to influence federal solutions. In Colorado, a ballot proposal to limit services to undocumented immigrants is in the works. While there are many points of view on the issue, said Colorado House Speaker Andrew Romanoff, most lawmakers agree they must focus on those who hire undocumented workers...The day-long Regional Conference on Immigration brought experts on immigration issues to the Capitol, including representatives from the Pew Hispanic Center and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The event was coordinated by the National Council of State Legislators."
Here's the coverage from the Rocky Mountain News [December 13, 2005, "Lesson on illegal immigration"].
Here's Part V of the Rocky's series on global warming [December 13, 2005, "Change in the air Part 5: Vital signs"]. They write, "Around the world, scientists are looking for biological red flags, signs that global warming is already affecting high-altitude plants and animals and could imperil fragile mountaintop ecosystems. In the Colorado high country, that work includes studies of three seemingly unrelated phenomena: the shifting hibernation pattern of marmots, subtle changes at the forest tree line, and the chemical fingerprint of mountaintop air molecules trapped in glass flasks. Results from all three research efforts, examined in this special section, suggest that life in the Colorado Rockies is already responding to climate change, though some scientists question the findings."
NewMexiKen: "Best line of the day so far: 'This weekend, a Democratic National Committee task force on presidential primaries and caucuses issued its recommendations for the 2008 calendar. Unfortunately, the group didn't have the power to make the change that would do Democrats the most good, which would be to have the 2008 election right now.'"
Category: 2008 Presidential Election
6:21:34 AM
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© Copyright 2009 John Orr.
Last update: 3/14/09; 7:54:14 PM.
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