Certain Phenomena

/ Creeds, Miscellaneous

“When you come across something like this, it is hard to remain clam and refrain from contemplating people’s ignorance”: Woman pregnant for forty-six years. Woman with fetus in heart forever. “Indeed, circular patterns of concentrated light have been seen to glow on buildings across the northeastern United States and beyond.” “Please Click On His Payment to visit my other pages” (like The Jesus Slide Show). “Without presenting any evidence whatsoever that what he says is correct, Volpe has informed his students that . . . evolution is a fact.”

Colored Vehicles

/ Transportation

Blue bus. White bike. Brown car. Red auto. Black bicycle. Yellow scooter. Orange truck. Yellow bus: “Managing and Promotion Celebrities Mannequins since 1986.” Green airplane. Gray ship. Rose cart. Black helicopter. Blue motorcycle: “Focuses on integrating customized off-the-shelf solutions often using the best-of-breed technologies to create ‘hybrid’ systems, that in many cases meet and exceed the capabilities of high-end proprietary technologies for small to mid-sized businesses.”

Weblogs

/ Computing, Media, Photography, Places, Politics, Weblogs

The Index of Political Blogs. Christopher Ian Applegate’s qwghlm.co.uk. Xogij.blogs.com. Alternative Hippopotamus. Spy Blog: “This United Kingdom based blog attempts to draw public attention to, and comments on, some of the current trends in ever cheaper and more widespread surveillance technology being deployed to satisfy the rapacious demand by state and corporate bureaucracies and criminals for your private details, and the technological ignorance of our politicians and civil servants who frame our legal systems.” Newspaper corrections examined at Regret the Error. The Observer Blog. Wind Rose Hotel: Mostly in Italian, with links to other Italian weblogs. Halfway Down the Danube: posts from Bucharest. We Make Money Not Art. Silt3. A collection of Microsoft Excel weblogs: Andrew’s Excel Tips, Automate Excel, Colo’s Excel Junk Room, Dick’s Daily Dose of Excel, Excel Pragma, J-Walk, The Planning Deskbook, van Gelder. R. Robot, the self-writing weblog. Bighappyfunhouse: excellent found photos.

Poll

/ Politics

“Forty-nine percent of 1,007 adult Americans said in phone interviews they believe Bush is a “uniter,” according to the CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll released Wednesday. Another 49 percent called him a “divider,” and 2 percent had no opinion” — CNN, 1/19/2005.

Bush and the Environment: Four More Years

/ Environment, GW Bush Admin, Politics


"Environmentalists See Trouble Ahead" -- John Heilprin (AP) in The Washington Post, 11/30/04:

WASHINGTON - Environmentalists see some of their worst fears playing out as President Bush moves to cement a second-term agenda that includes getting more timber, oil and gas from public lands and relying on the market rather than regulation to curb pollution.

Bush's top energy priority - opening an Alaska wildlife refuge to oil drilling - is shaping up as an early test of GOP gains in Congress.

"This is going to be a definitional battle, and we're ready," said Deb Callahan, president of the League of Conservation Voters.

Though the election didn't emphasize such issues, administration officials believe the results validated their belief that many environmental decisions are better made by the marketplace, landowners and state and local governments.

James Connaughton, chairman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, said the administration will continue a "partnership with the oil and gas sector" but also will work with conservation organizations - as long as they are "willing to engage constructively on defining priorities and practices in domestic production."

Bush's environmental priority is to rewrite the Clean Air Act to set annual nationwide limits on three major air pollutants from power plants and to allow marketplace trading of pollution rights rather than regulation to meet those goals.

He does not plan to change his mind on his rejection of the Kyoto international climate treaty that would impose mandatory caps on carbon dioxide emissions. "Kyoto's unworkable," Connaughton said. . . .

Republicans in Congress plan to re-examine other landmark 1970s laws: the Endangered Species Act protecting rare plant and animal species and their habitats, and the National Environmental Policy Act that requires the government to judge beforehand if actions might damage natural resources.

One area where environmentalists and the White House could find agreement is ocean issues. The administration is looking at setting catch quotas for individual fish species, new protections for fragile coral reefs and ecosystem-based management of rivers and streams, Connaughton said.

Some huge regional issues also will get attention. They include restoring the Florida Everglades, aiding the recovery of Pacific Northwest salmon, improving water quality in the Great Lakes and dealing with drought in the West and coastal erosion in Louisiana.

The administration put off until after the election a final decision on a plan to allow road building and logging on 58 million acres of remote forests where both are now banned.

Interior Secretary Gale Norton's agency is rewriting 162 plans for managing about one of every 10 acres in the United States. The decisions will affect whether wildlife protections or new oil and gas drilling projects are favored. Norton wants to give local governments more say.

One-Twelfth of an Iraqi

/ Iraq


"Flooding the Zone" -- George Saunders in The New Yorker, 12/6/04 (accessed 11/30/04):

There are approximately twenty-five million Iraqis in Iraq. There are approximately three hundred million Americans in America. This means that there are approximately twelve Americans for every Iraqi. This means that, if we all go, each American will be responsible for one-twelfth of an Iraqi. An Iraqi family of five will thus be attended by sixty Americans. We will come, this second wave of three hundred million of us, unarmed. We will bring nothing but ourselves. We will simply show up, saying, “What would you like for dinner?” While we cook, our Iraqis can just relax. God knows they have had a terrible couple of years. We will encourage them to sit on their couches, if they still have couches, while we clean up after dinner. We will bring them coffee, tea, dessert, whatever they like. All these months, we have winced from over here, imagining their pain. Once we are there, we will do what we can to say, “We like you, and want the best for you. We’re sorry. This was not what we intended. No matter what it might have looked like to you, we have always wished you well.”

After dinner, our Iraqis will smile, whispering among themselves. “Not so bad, these unarmed ones,” they will say. “That coffee was super.”

Congress Is Busted

/ Conduct, GW Bush Admin, Politics


"Hastert Launches a Partisan Policy" -- Charles Babington in The Washington Post, 11/27/04:

In scuttling major intelligence legislation that he, the president and most lawmakers supported, Speaker J. Dennis Hastert last week enunciated a policy in which Congress will pass bills only if most House Republicans back them, regardless of how many Democrats favor them.

Hastert's position, which is drawing fire from Democrats and some outside groups, is the latest step in a decade-long process of limiting Democrats' influence and running the House virtually as a one-party institution. Republicans earlier barred House Democrats from helping to draft major bills such as the 2003 Medicare revision and this year's intelligence package. Hastert (R-Ill.) now says such bills will reach the House floor, after negotiations with the Senate, only if "the majority of the majority" supports them.

Senators from both parties, leaders of the Sept. 11 commission and others have sharply criticized the policy. The long-debated intelligence bill would now be law, they say, if Hastert and his lieutenants had been humble enough to let a high-profile measure pass with most votes coming from the minority party.

That is what Democrats did in 1993, when most House Democrats opposed the North American Free Trade Agreement. President Bill Clinton backed NAFTA, and leaders of the Democratic-controlled House allowed it to come to a vote. The trade pact passed because of heavy GOP support, with 102 Democrats voting for it and 156 voting against. Newt Gingrich of Georgia, the House GOP leader at the time, declared: "This is a vote for history, larger than politics . . . larger than personal ego."

Such bipartisan spirit in the Capitol now seems a faint echo. Citing the increased marginalization of Democrats as House bills are drafted and brought to the floor, Rep. David E. Price (D-N.C.) said, "It's a set of rules and practices which the Republicans have taken to new extremes."

No Intelligence Reform Bill

/ Conduct, GW Bush Admin, Politics


"Intelligence Overhaul Bill Blocked" -- Charles Babington and Walter Pincus in The Washington Post, 11/21/04:

Long-debated legislation to dramatically reshape the nation's intelligence community collapsed in the House yesterday, as conservative Republicans refused to embrace a compromise because they said it could reduce military control over battlefield intelligence and failed to crack down on illegal immigrants.

The impasse, which caught congressional leaders by surprise, was a blow to President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) and others who had personally asked House conservatives to accept the measure proposed by House-Senate negotiators early yesterday. It also marked a major setback for the Sept. 11 commission -- whose July report triggered a drive toward overhauling the nation's intelligence operations -- and for many relatives of victims of the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

The sidetracked bill would have created a director of national intelligence and a counterterrorism center, along with scores of other changes to the nation's approach to gathering intelligence and battling terrorism. The measure would have given the new intelligence chief authority to set priorities for the Central Intelligence Agency and 14 other agencies that gather intelligence, including several at the Defense Department. Hastert refused to call the proposal dead, saying Congress may reconvene Dec. 6 to try again, although lawmakers had planned to close out the 108th Congress this weekend.

Even some key Republicans, however, said prospects appear slim for producing a compromise that the House and Senate can pass. "I don't now see a process for which we can get this done in the next few weeks," said Rep. Peter Hoekstra (Mich.), chairman of the House intelligence committee and the House's top GOP negotiator.

Rep. Jane Harman (Calif.), the committee's top Democrat, said, "I think those who are vehemently opposed are not going to come around." She said it is up to Bush, Hastert and other GOP leaders to overcome the House conservatives' resistance. If a bill is not enacted by year's end, efforts would have to start anew in the 109th Congress that convenes in January.

The Republican Spending Bill

/ Conduct, Politics


"$388 Billion Bill Is Show of GOP Power" -- Alan Fram in The Chicago Sun-Times, 11/21/04:

WASHINGTON -- Republicans whisked a $388 billion spending bill through Congress on Saturday, a mammoth measure that underscores the dominance of deficit politics by curbing dollars for everything from education to environmental cleanups.

The House approved the measure 344-51 margin, while Senate passage was by 65-30. . . .

From its tight domestic spending to the Democratic-backed provisions on overtime and other issues that were dropped, the bill is a monument to the GOP's raw power controlling the White House and Congress.

Even Bush's initiatives were not immune to cuts as the bill's GOP chief authors heeded his demands to control spending. His request for development of new nuclear weapons was rejected; his budget for the AmeriCorps volunteer program was sliced 12 percent, and the $2.5 billion he wanted to aid countries adopting democratic practices was slashed by $1 billion.

Passage would crown the lame-duck session of Congress, which began Tuesday. Lawmakers hoped to leave town for the year Saturday night, but Senate delays on the spending bill and the collapse of bargaining over a measure reorganizing U.S. intelligence agencies left timing in doubt.

Also enacted during the post-election session was an $800 billion increase in the government's borrowing limit. The measure was yet another testament to record annual deficits, which reached $413 billion last year and are expected to climb indefinitely.

Congress made it a little easier for hospitals, insurers and other to refuse to provide or cover abortions. A provision in the bill would block any of the measure's money from going to federal, state or local agencies that act against health care providers and insurers because they don't provide abortions, make abortion referrals or cover them.