Coyote Gulch

Sunday, June 26, 2005

Global Warming
Guardian Unlimited: "It was a strange winter in Ellsworth County, Kansas. Sitting bang in the middle of the American great plains, the usual weather pattern is straightforward: the summers are unbearably hot; the winters vicious and long. But not this year. Staring out over her rolling fields of corn, Anita Hoffhines was puzzled. There had been no real need this winter for her family's ample supply of snow shovels. The vast drifts of snow that bury the prairies for months on end had not come. 'The climate is getting warmer. You can just feel it,' she says. Even here, in America's small-town heartland, where the politics are red and the cars are huge, everyone is talking about global warming..."
"There are also high-profile deniers of climate change in popular culture. Michael Crichton, author of Jurassic Park, attacked the environmental movement in his latest book, State of Fear. Crichton portrayed climate change as being vastly exaggerated by self-serving scientists. The real threat to the earth were environmentalists, not greenhouse gases, he said. The book was a bestseller."
Coyote Gulch maintains that Crichton's point was that we need to do the science. Write the scientific tests. Run 'em over and over. Thanks to Howling At A Waning Moon for the link.
Here's a link to a draft Brian Schweitzer for President website. Thanks to the Western Democrat for the link.
Category: 2008 Presidential Election
5:40:23 PM

Immigration
Here's an opinion piece from the Denver Post arguing in favor of the Secure America and Orderly Immigration Act of 2005 [June 26, 2005, "Immigration bill promising"]. According to the article, "The bill would: Create a national strategy for border security; Allow undocumented immigrants to stay in the country for up to six years; Reduce backlogs in family- based immigration; Establish a new visa program for essential workers; Protect against immigration fraud; and Provide incentives for workers to return home."
Styguis: "Taegan Goddard on why Republicans are better at getting away with dog whistle campaign tactics, points to a great CQ column."
Oval Office 2008: "You might think that fighting poverty is a pretty solid liberal cause, but it's a cause that may require some counter-intuitive solutions which may not go down well with the political left. And that's problem if you're going to campaign on poverty, but you need the political left to help get you nominated for president. This is all in the view of Des Moines Register columnist David Yepsen, who describes it as the dilemma facing John Edwards.
The Moderate Voice: "Quotes of the day on Karl Rove."
Stygius: "Polling of American disenchantment with Iraq evoke the myth that the American attention span won't permit a long project that involves American casualties. Thus, some -- like the Out of Iraq Caucus -- feel increasingly emboldened to argue for either a drawdown or withdrawal of American forces, often dressing it up in calls for a specific timetable. This is not only strategic lunacy, it is politically short-sighted. Others rail against media manipulation as the source of this perception, urging complicity with administration rhetoric and occasionally outright delusion. Both of these approaches misdiagnose America's public perception, their respective diagnoses based on this same, condescending myth. Ivo Daadler, on the other hand, gets it right while criticizing David Brooks' latest. It's not about defeatism. The anxiety is not about Iraq in and of itself, but rather the Bush Administration's eroding credibility and unwillingness to play it straight. In effect, it's about leadership."
Oliver Willis: "The Rove speech blaming everything on liberals is a classic 'look over here' ploy. I don't think progressives should allow such smears to go without response, but in our responses we must make clear that this is Bush and the Republicans dividing us in order to cover up their failures in the War in Iraq and the War on Terror."
Category: 2008 Presidential Election
7:48:48 AM