President Bush mentioned climate change during his State of the Union this week, but his almost-in-passing mention of the topic and the vague proposals he made to address the crisis aren’t carrying much weight with environmental groups:

“Wrongheaded approaches would prove counter-productive - we could end up with somewhat more efficient vehicles running on much dirtier fuels that further accelerate global warming,” said Frances Beinecke, the president of the Natural Resources Defence Council. “Turning coal into liquid transportation fuel, for instance, would generate nearly twice the amount of global-warming pollution that today’s petroleum-based fuels do.

Read the entire article here.

[photopress:hagel.jpg,full,pp_image]It doesn’t appear that the President’s State of the Union address convinced many people to follow him down the path of escalation in Iraq. Republican Senator Chuck Hagel is only the most visible of the many members of Congress who are lining up to oppose the troop increase.

In the first step toward what some believe could eventually lead to a constitutional crisis, a key Congressional committee approved a non-binding resolution here Wednesday formally dissenting from President George W. Bush’s plan to send some 21,000 more troops to Iraq.

The 12-9 vote in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which came less than 14 hours after Bush appealed in his State of the Union address for Congress to give his plan “a chance to work”, sets the stage for a broader debate next week when a majority of the full Senate is also expected to voice its disapproval of the president’s course, albeit possibly in a somewhat milder form.

Read the entire story here.

What have you done today to reduce your carbon footprint.  According to Nigel Pollitt most of us talk a good game but when it comes to reducing our contributions to global warming, we don’t actually do much.

But we, in our homes and on holiday, go on as before. The friend who raved about the Al Gore film whacks up the heat and wears a T-shirt indoors. I bang on about halogen downlights but do nothing about the picturesque but colossally leaky wooden sash windows in my picturesque but colossally leaky Victorian house. If my 1880s stained glass was under threat, I’d get a handgun. What’s going on?

Read the entire story here.

http://www.commondreams.org/views07/0124-21.htm

http://www.commondreams.org/views07/0124-29.htm

http://www.commondreams.org/views07/0124-31.htm

The nation’s top prosecutor has set himself at odds with Prime Minister Tony Blair’s government, saying the “war on terror” does not exist and urging restraint on laws threatening human rights.

Read more… http://www.commondreams.org/headlines07/0124-09.htm

WASHINGTON - A bipartisan group of senators introduced legislation Tuesday aimed at preventing American companies from profiting from the use of foreign sweatshops and other unfair labor practices abroad.

Read more… http://www.commondreams.org/headlines07/0124-05.htm

[photopress:cheney_1_1_2_3_4.jpg,full,pp_image]President Bush likes to talk about bold initiatives but seldom follows through (remember the plan to send people to Mars?) and tonight during the State of the Union I think we got a glimpse at how unserious his administration is about some of what he promised. The President had just called for a 20% reduction in consumption of gasoline by 2020. The expression on Dick Cheney’s face was priceless, and it could have only meant “Right. Like we really plan to have anything to do with that.”

Watch the video:

Who decides where the camera is pointing, anyway? Whoever it was thought it would be funny to catch John McCain looking like he was asleep:

[photopress:webb.jpg,full,pp_image]I suppose there are moments in the President’s speech that should be judged significant:  his mention of global warming and a balanced budget as if he really believed in those things, for example.  But the speech seemed artificial and the president distant.  It was only when newly minted Sen. Jim Webb came on to give the Democratic response did you feel that you were listening to someone who not only understood the problems that confront us, but actually connected with those of us who don’t live in a cocoon of wealth and privilege.

In talking about the economy Webb mentioned the record highs of the stock market, but, he said “these benefits are not being fairly shared.”  The average CEO, he pointed out, makes in a day what it takes the average worker over a year to earn.

This is not chest-thumping populism or class warfare.  This is a politician recognizing and having the courage to talk about one of the fundamental problems of our society.  The growing gap between the wealthy and everyone else, between the privileged and the underprivileged is, more than anything else, what betrays the true spirit of this country.

Webb also gave us one of the most straightforward and compelling indictments of this President’s reckless and incompetent war in Iraq. He had just shown the picture of his father, who had served in the military during the Berlin airlift.  It was a picture, Webb said, that he took to bed every night as a boy while his father was deployed overseas.

Watch what he said next:

by Jim Lobe - Inter Press Service

Despite two years of a concentrated effort by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and her public diplomacy major- doma Karen Hughes to boost Washington’s global image, more people around the world have an unfavourable opinion of U.S. policies than at any time in recent memory, according to a new BBC poll released here Monday.

Read more… http://www.commondreams.org/headlines07/0123-04.htm

by the Associated Press

Democratic lawmakers who stray too far from the party line could find themselves facing primary opponents financed by unions, trial lawyers and political activists eager to put the new congressional majority to the test.

Read more… http://www.commondreams.org/headlines07/0123-05.htm

The revelation by Larry Wilkerson, Colin Powell’s former Chief of Staff, that in 2003 Iran offered much of what the US is now demanding but was turned down by Vice President Cheney has become a hot news story. What’s amazing to me is not that Cheney and the neocons would put their own, twisted vision of a New World Order above the interests of peace and diplomacy–I’m not that naive–but that this is a news story now.

[photopress:wilkerson.jpg,full,pp_image] Wilkerson was talking about this nearly a year ago–in March of 2006–and it was being reported. Granted, there weren’t a lot of people on the story then, but it was out there. The Inter Press Service reported on his comments, for example. And I even stumbled upon the story in the course of doing my radio show (previous life.)

I had a chance to have a long chat with Wilkerson about Powell, the Bush Administration and his professional life last fall. You can listen to the whole interview here (it’s about twenty minutes long) or if you want to get right to a money quote, listen to his assessment of the Bush Administration’s handling of national security issues (hint: no gold stars are involved.)

Update: I just got an email from Wilkerson and he said he thinks the reason the story may have taken this time around is the spin the journalist who reported for the BBC put on it, making it seem like Iran was a little closer to an agreement than they really were.  But, he also didn’t understand why it’s news now:  “I agree with you and was somewhat perplexed myself that there is so much interest when the story is quite old.”

[photopress:sad_bush2.jpg,full,pp_image]It’s pretty amazing, really, how quickly we’ve passed the tipping point on global warming. There are a few climate change skeptics left–Rush Limbaugh and Sen. James Inhofe, for example–but for the most part business, government and the public have seen one too many pictures of an ice shelf collapse to doubt that it’s for real.

(The influential Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is set to release it’s newest report on global warming in about a week, and it’s conservative forecast is that we’re really screwed.) Read more

I can think of no other statement by an elected official that better sums up the shame and dishonor that the Bush administration’s treatment of “detainees” brings on the US than this simple phrase from Sen. Patrick Leahy yesterday: “It is beneath the dignity of this country.”

Leahy was giving it good to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, and the case in point was that of Maher Arar, a joint Canadian-Syrian citizen, who was snatched while passing through JFK in 2002. He was immediately sent to Syria for “questioning.” Needless to say, he wasn’t given the opportunity to speak to a lawyer or know what (if any) charges or evidence there was against him.

Read more

[photopress:barry.jpg,full,pp_image]A handful of (retired) generals trudged up Capital Hill yesterday to offer their assesment of the President’s plan to escalate the war in Iraq. All but one of them unequivocally slammed the proposal, using words like “too little, too late” and “a fool’s errand.”

(Retired Lt. General William Odom was one of those to testify, making the very important point that the chief beneficiary of the war has been al Qaeda and not the US. It’s exactly the point he made to me in an interview last summer–you can listen to it here.)

Despite the admonotion from Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel that we don’t live in a monarchy, the Administration continues to insist Congress doesn’t have a say in the decision to escalate the war. Senator Chris Dodd begs to differ, and has introduced a bill requiring the President to get authorization from Congress before sending more troops. His argument is that the war as it exists today doesn’t resemble the war that Congress authorized in 2002. (Let’s see: In 2002 the resolution authorized President Bush to use force to make Saddam Hussein honor UN resolutions requiring him to give up WMDs. Saddam is dead and there are no WMDs. Sure looks like Dodd has a point.)

Here’s a sample of what the Generals said on the Hill.

[photopress:microscope_1.jpg,full,pp_image]President Bush gets a look at his latest poll numbers.

[photopress:broccoli.jpg,full,pp_image]Writing in the Baltimore Sun, Courtney Martin cautions against taking the comedy of the Daily Show and Saturday Night Live too seriously. Fun and games are all well and good, she says, but seems to be worried that parody and laughter provides a release of the frustration that we would otherwise put into effecting change.

But like comfort food consumed night after night in place of broccoli, we are gorging ourselves on what feels good instead of processing what feels so bad - and doing something about it.

Read more

Steve Anderson sent me his wrap up of the 2007 NCMR:

In my report on the 2005 National Conference for Media Reform for Rabble.ca, I noted that media reformers were preparing for what they called ‘the perfect storm’. By ‘the perfect storm’ they were referring to the impending future when the FCC and congress make crucial decisions about the future of the media, specifically in relation to the Internet. It was expected that the huge telecommunications lobby would aggressively push to sway these decisions to their favour, whilst the public (rallied by media reform groups and independent media) would be evermore informed and engaged in media issues. This amounts to what Robert McChesney called, “a moment of danger and a moment of spectacular opportunity.”

The perfect storm is now upon us and it was evident with the explosive atmosphere of the 2007 National Conference for Media Reform that took place in Memphis Tennessee January 12-14. Media activists, educators, journalists, policymakers and concerned citizens from many countries, and nearly every state in the U.S. attended the National Conference for Media Reform, an event that aimed to move media issues to the forefront of public discourse in the United States.

Read more

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