Author: Trish

When Will Bush Wake Up on Global Warming? Stardate Unknown

Trish

“The market-based approach seems to work.” — White House Spokesperson Tony Snow, commenting on the anti-strategy employed so far by the Bush Administration to fight global warming, which has brought natural systems around the world to the brink of collapse.

Remember the Star Trek episode where the Enterprise crew is in an alternate universe and everyone is lusty and mean, wears midriff t-shirts, and Spock has a beard?

Is Tony Snow living there? Because back here in this universe, I cannot conceive how anyone could look at the market-based approach to global warming and see something that comes anywhere close to “working.”

Stand By for Change of Subject

Trish

ABC is reporting that Bush will speak at 1:25 p.m. EST, imploring Congress to implement his stupid, corn-fed, greenhouse gas belching, Big Ag buddies enriching, global warming worsening energy plan that no one paid any attention to during his State of the Union address because it does absolutely nothing to fix the problem.

But hey, maybe it will get people to focus less on his endless failings, his neocon attempts to overthrow our republic, and his incitement of the world’s animosity toward each and every one of us.

Or not.

Retired Generals’ Ads Might Be Last Straw on Iraq

Trish

If Bush means what he says about listening to the military, a series of ads featuring retired generals should produce critical mass on Iraq. Brought to us by Vote Vets, the first spot features former Iraq commander Maj. Gen. John Batiste.

Our ads are airing in states and districts of those Members of Congress who are very close to breaking with the President on Iraq, and joining the troops and American people…Mentioning them by name at the end, the local spots will call on them to “Protect America, Not George Bush.”

Batiste comes right out and says he left the armed forces in protest over Bush putting service members at risk for a failed strategy.

Following is a list of the elected officials the ads are aimed at. If one of them belongs to you, remember that nothing makes an impression on a public servant like a call from the folks back home.

They are:

Sen. Susan Collins, Maine
Sen. John Sununu, N.H.
Sen. John Warner, Virg.
Sen. Norm Coleman, Minn.

Rep, Mary Bono, Palm Springs, Calif.
Rep. Phil English, Erie, Penn.
Rep. John “Randy” Kuhl, Bath, N.Y.
Rep. Jim Walsh, Syracuse, N.Y.
Rep. Heather Wilson, Santa Fe, N.M.
Rep. Jo Ann Emerson, Springfield, Mo.
Rep. Tim Johnson, Urbana, Ill.
Rep. Mike Rogers, Brighton, Mich.
Rep. Fred Upton, Kalamazoo, Mich.
Rep. Mike Castle, Wilmington, Del.

Future ads will feature Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton and our personal favorite, Gen. Wesley Clark. Pony up some bucks, if you can, so the spots can be run nationwide.

First Day of Hurricane Season — Three Weeks Early

Trish


By all indications, 2007 will be the year frogs rain down from the sky and sinkholes swallow the Rockies.

My area is under a tropical storm watch. The first named storm of the season is here. She is Tropical Storm Andrea, with top sustained winds of 45 mph. This is huge.

For those of you who don’t know the dates of hurricane season like you know your own phone number, it’s June 1 through Nov. 30.

June 1 — as in three weeks from now — is the official start. The earliest hurricane in our country’s history was Alma, which hit the Florida panhandle on June 9, 1966.

But don’t worry, the federal government is on it. They will release their predictions for the 2007 hurricane season on May 22. I wonder if they’ll predict the season will start on May 9.

By the time they release their forecast, we will have probably had two more storms, four or five more tornados, and the Georgia wildfires will have spread to Washington, D.C. where Bush will give a speech about how it would adversely affect the economy if we were to try to do anything about global warming.

Spoiling Everything Else Just to Use More Energy

Trish

The Sierra Club is reporting even more depressing news on a day that included the devastation of honeybees and no end to problems with the nation’s food supply.

Get a load of this:

Have any doubts about the motivation for this treachery? It doesn’t apply to Texas. Nuff said.

Jaws dropped last week when the DOE proposed its first two so-called “National Interest Electric Transmission Corridors.” They covered the entirety of [Maryland, Delaware, and New Jersey] and vast swaths of southern California, Arizona, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Virginia, and New York. Under everyone’s favorite bill, the Energy Policy Act of the 2005, the DOE can designate such corridors for new pipelines and powerlines. And if local or state officials want to protect their wilderness area, wetland, tribal burial ground, or Civil War battlefield — TOO BAD! The federal government can approve transmission lines over local objection and even if they conflict with other federal laws, such as the National Environmental Policy Act.

Best of all, once they’re approved, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has been granted sweeping powers of eminent domain. So FERC can then swoop in, take your property from you, and turn it over Energy Company X so they can pad their bottom line.

Have any doubts about the motivation for this treachery? Wait, there’s more.

This provision of EPACT 2005 — never debated on the floor of the House — does include one Texas-sized loophole. As in, the whole state of Texas is excluded from this vast and likely unconstitutional power grab by the federal government.

Nuff said.

Folks Who Brought Us Walter Reed Scandal Take Huge Bonuses for Being Loyal to Bush

Trish

At the Veteran’s Administration, it pays to support your president. Literally.

The GAO determined the VA used misleading accounting and claimed false savings of more than $1.3 billion, apparently because President Bush was not willing, at the time, to ask Congress for more money

By lying about their budget, doling out care so bad it risked the lives of wounded veterans, and presiding over rat-infested hellholes, the guys and gals who run the V.A. took the biggest “performance payments” of anyone in civil service.

The list of bonuses to senior career officials at the Veterans Affairs Department in 2006… documents a generous package of more than $3.8 million in payments by a financially strapped agency straining to help care for thousands of injured veterans returning home from Iraq and Afghanistan.

Among those receiving payments were a deputy assistant secretary and several regional directors who crafted the VA’s flawed budget for 2005 based on misleading accounting. They received performance payments up to $33,000 each, a figure equal to about 20 percent of their annual salaries.

Also receiving a top bonus was the deputy undersecretary for benefits, who helps manage a disability claims system that has a backlog of cases and delays averaging 177 days in getting benefits to injured veterans.

The bonuses were awarded even after government investigators had determined the VA repeatedly miscalculated if not deliberately misled taxpayers with questionable methods used to justify Bush administration cuts to health care amid a burgeoning Iraq war.

Ever idly wondered what selling your soul feels like? Just ask the V.A. They sold theirs to Bush.

In July 2005, the VA stunned Congress by suddenly announcing it faced a $1 billion shortfall after failing to take into account the additional cost of caring for veterans injured in Iraq and Afghanistan…

The investigative arm of Congress, the Government Accountability Office, determined the VA had used misleading accounting methods and claimed false savings of more than $1.3 billion, apparently because President Bush was not willing, at the time, to ask Congress for more money.

V.A. officials based in Washington D.C. got the biggest checks, triggering the Senate Chair of the Veteran’s Affairs Committee, Daniel Akaka (D-Hawaii) to ask what’s up with that. Smells like cronyism to me.

After six years of Bush, the big surprise is that we can still be surprised at his administration’s blatant raiding of the public till. After all, this is small potatoes compared to the rip-off which is private contracting. But still.

Steve Ellis, vice president of Taxpayers for Common Sense, said the VA bonuses appeared to reflect a trend in government where performance bonuses were increasingly used to reward loyal associates and longtime employees…

“Simply put, people who nearly shortchanged our veterans shouldn’t get a bonus check at the end of the year,” he said.

Lawyer Won’t Even Tell ABC His Client’s Name So They Can NOT Link It to D.C. Madam

Trish

Now that’s keeping a secret!

A lawyer with “good reason” to suspect his client will appear on the D.C. Madam’s list has contacted ABC News to keep them from revealing the client’s identity.

But his client’s name is so secret, he didn’t even tell ABC. Wha?

In a letter to ABC News, Steven Salky of Zuckerman Spaeder in Washington, D.C., said he has “reason to believe” that his client might be named in this Friday’s “20/20” report about the alleged prostitution ring.

But Salky did not identify who his client is.

Jeane Palfrey, the so-called “D.C. Madam,” is pulling a Jack Abramoff and spilling her guts so she won’t be the only one in jail for breaking the law. She is also suing former employees who engaged in real sex, as opposed to the “fantasy sex” she says her business offered and that all her clients claim to have purchased.

Whoever the mystery man is, he must be really, really impotent. Sorry, I meant he must be “important,” if his lawyer is trying that hard to keep him out of the public mud.

Maybe ABC can hire Miss Cleo to figure out who the client is so they can comply with the lawyer’s request. Or to be safe, just not mention the name of any Republicans known to be flaming hypocrites. On second thought, calling Miss Cleo would probably be more realistic.

No Offense? Not Anymore

Trish

A lot of us have gotten lessons lately in how easy it’s become to offend.

An entertainment reporter for Jacksonville’s WJXT Channel 4, John Citrone, was recently fired* ala Don Imus. He joked on the air about something profoundly unfunny — runaway wildfires in South Georgia.

“Do we really care if Georgia burns?” he asked.

Being offended has become a national pastime.

Fair question* but as Citrone’s editor at Folio, the independent weekly he also writes for and that stands by him, pointed out in an editorial entitled, “Playing With Fire,” the columnist lacked a sense of timing.

“…the formula for comedy is tragedy plus time. And the exact moment when homes are engulfed in flames and people are being evacuated isn’t the time. For the people involved, it may never be the time.”

In calling the T.V. station which aired Citrone’s segment of early morning entertainment news to express their outrage, Georgians said what really burned their biscuit* was the tone of the Florida coverage. Reports centered on the effects of smoke blown two hours southeast into Jacksonville, which produced asthma attacks and watery eyes. And while these conditions are bad, they are not exactly up there with having to throw the kids in the car and run for your life before a wall of fire.

“Did we get some smoke on you?” the Georgians asked. “Well excuuuse me!”

And yet…It is human nature to make light of terrible situations, even really terrible ones, like losing basketball tournaments and fighting wildfire.*

Florida had its own bout with wildfire almost 10 years ago, and no one who lived through it has forgotten the choking ash, the constant prayers for rain, and the fear that losing everything in a wanton inferno is very close at hand. We don’t wish such things on our worst enemies.

We also don’t stop making bad jokes about it. Palm Coast, south of me in Flagler County and especially hard-hit in ’99, will forever be known to long-time residents as Palm Toast.*

I found out for myself recently how very fragile people’s feelings are with regard to diet. Take it from me and don’t go there.

I think it was right to speak out against Don Imus calling females athletes “nappy-headed hos.” I said so in this very format. I think it was right for Georgians to call foul when Citrone maligned their plight. And I think it’s good to articulate our culinary preferences.

But I think we need to lighten up too. We are too quick to rant and rave and shout each other out, going for the kill. We have become a nation of Bill O’Reillys and Al Sharptons and all it gets us is further apart. Being offended has become a national pastime. And as Imus and Citrone found out, there is no forgiveness. Apologies are no longer accepted.

* I sincerely apologize for my inappropriate and insensitive use of humor to convey any concept in a way that was offensive to some or all readers and promise to do better from now on.