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Sunday, February 4, 2007
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Andrew Sullivan, on the report that the AEI was trying to bribe scientists, "The full text can be read here. I see nothing wrong with it."
"2008 pres"
10:06:34 AM 
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Citizen Boo: "Every once in a while, a piece of art sticks to something inside of you -- defining something that you've been trying to express but couldn't. This video, Radiohead and Unkle's Rabbit In Your Headlights is so powerful that I've blogged it twice before. Enjoy it for the weekend entry ... become inspired, stand up, then fight like hell for what you believe in."
"2008 pres"
10:00:50 AM
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Political Wire: "From a new American Research Group poll in Iowa: In the Democratic presidential race, Sen. Hillary Clinton leads among likely Iowa caucus voters with 35%, followed by John Edwards at 18%, Sen. Barack Obama at 14% and Tom Vilsack at 12%. On the Republican side, Rudy Giuliani leads with 28%, followed by Sen. John McCain at 22%, Newt Gingrich at 16% and Mitt Romney at 11%."
Captain's Quarters: "Giuliani has hinted that he would nominate jurists in the mold of Antonin Scalia and John Roberts. Today, at a visit with the South Carolina GOP Executive Committee, an audience member pressed him for his position."
"2008 pres"
9:54:48 AM
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Captain's Quarters: "Britain's latest success against radical Islamist terror may have heralded the beginning of a major offensive by al-Qaeda against the West. Cells in the UK have received instructions to start kidnapping victims, make tapes of them pleading for their lives, and behead them."
"2008 pres"
9:45:47 AM
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The Denver Post took some time to look at Friday's report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change from a Colorado perspective. From the article, "Colorado's average temperature could heat up by 7 or 8 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the century, according to a U.N. climate change report released in part last week. 'That's considerable warming, and it could conceivably be quite a bit greater than that,' said Linda Mearns, a climate researcher with the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder. It'll almost certainly get warmer in the Southwest, Mearns said, and Colorado's mountain snowpacks along with those across the West will continue to thin. Spring's melt season may end several weeks earlier by 2100, said Mearns, a co-author of the report. The Western forecast bodes poorly for water managers and those using the mountains for recreation, she said. 'We'll be saying 'The National Park formally known as Glacier,' Mearns said."
The Post article has links to the IPCC report, video and slide show. (The weblog philosophy of sending people away so they'll come back.)
"colorado water"
9:25:24 AM
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Funding sources for healthcare and scientific research have been severely curtailed over the last few years, according to the Denver Post. From the article, "Since 2004, researchers looking for treatments for cancer, heart disease and other ailments have found it harder and harder to get NIH funding as the agency's budget has stagnated. This year's proposed NIH budget, according to a House Appropriations Committee spokesman, is $28.9 billion, just a 2.2 percent increase and less than the rate of inflation. The result is more researchers clamoring for a limited pool of money and more scientists - especially those just starting their careers - shut out of federal research dollars. 'You lose a generation of scientists,' said Dr. Elias Zerhouni, the NIH director. 'They can't stay; they leave science.'"
Market driven (private) healthcare research is largely driven by finding chemicals that can be patented and these are seldom low cost or natural. There is no market apparatus that will fund promising research in areas that may not lead to profit. Is there a way to fund Open Source solutions in healthcare and science?
"2008 pres"
9:16:49 AM
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Here's a call to action for environmentalists from Jeffrey St. Clair in Counter Punch. He writes, "A kind of political narcolepsy has settled over the American environmental movement. Call it eco-ennui. You may know the feeling: restlessness, lack of direction, evaporating budgets, diminished expectations, a simmering discontent. The affliction appears acute, possibly systemic. Unfortunately, the antidote isn't as simple as merely filing a new lawsuit in the morning or skipping that PowerPoint presentation to join a road blockade for the day. No, something much deeper may be called for: a rebellion of the heart. Just like in the good old days, not that long ago. What is it, precisely, that's going on? Was the environmental movement bewitched by eight years of Bruce Babbitt and Al Gore? Did it suffer an allergic reaction to the New Order of Things? Are we simply adrift in a brief lacuna in the evolution of the conservation movement, one of those Gouldian (Stephen Jay) pauses before a new creative eruption?...
Read the whole rant - it's pretty good actually. Many of us will get new additions to our reading list.
"2008 pres"
8:53:00 AM
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From the Glenwood Springs Independent "reg", "About 30 people turned out for a showing of the film, A Land Out of Time, at the Glenwood Springs Community Center Wednesday evening. Directed and co-produced by Aspen native Mark Harvey with Laurel Garrett, it follows the stories of ranchers, conservationists and passionate lovers of the West in Wyoming, Montana, New Mexico, and close to home in western Garfield County, who have seen the effects of oil and gas drilling on their land. New Mexico ranchers Tweeti and Linn Blancett spoke about selling the ranch that's been in the family for six generations. They talked of losing cows to poisoned water from the gas drilling and seeing their land increasingly cut up by rigs so there isn't enough room for their cattle to graze. Rifle hunting guide Keith Goddard spoke about the loss of the Roan Plateau to oil and gas drilling and how that has brought together folks who had previously been on opposite sides of the table. 'Not too long ago you couldn't get me in the same room with environmentalists,' he said. Now that's changed. 'Sooner or later we'll have to band together to get what we want.'"
"2008 pres"
8:36:19 AM
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U.S. Congressman Tom Tancredo was stumping in Iowa yesterday, according to the Des Moines Register. From the article, "Saying that illegal immigration has diluted the country's patriotism, Colorado Rep. Tom Tancredo advocated that border security be the nation's top priority. He spoke during a visit Saturday with supporters in western Iowa. The Republican presidential candidate spoke to about 60 people Saturday afternoon at the Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 737 hall in Council Bluffs. He also visited Sioux City...
"'We have a cult of multiculturalism. This is what permeates our society,' he said. Immigrants who come to the United States but refuse to assimilate by learning the language and following the laws water down what it means to be an American, he said. 'It's a cultural, political, linguistic tower of Babel,' he said. He favors eliminating incentives for immigrants to come to the United States and reducing the number of legal immigrants. The nation should enforce its immigration laws by building a fence along the border with Mexico, deporting illegal immigrants and going after companies that hire them for cheap labor, he said. He cited the Dec. 12 raids on the Swift & Co. meat processing plants in which Immigration and Customs Enforcement netted 1,300 people, including almost 100 workers from the plant in Marshalltown. 'Amazingly, miraculously, all plants are operating. They're right at capacity again,' said Tancredo. The congressman said he didn't know who Swift hired to replace the deported workers. 'But are there Americans who would work there? You be there are,' he said."
"2008 pres"
7:42:50 AM
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© Copyright 2009 John Orr.
Last update: 3/15/09; 12:33:04 PM.
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