The 82nd Rainforest Thread ~

....And we thought the sElection of 2000 was bad! Now with Dubya in office a solid 8 years, how much better are we? All clicked!

Gotta work our butts off for a change we can believe in.

yee-ouch! that last one hurt

Thanks danon.

I heard from ul today. I'm guessing she's still got puter problems.

You and your 300 friends have supported 2,902,347.0 square feet!

Marine Wetlands habitat supported: 213,024.8 square feet.
You have supported: (0.0)
Your 300 friends have supported: (213,024.8)

American Prairie habitat supported: 66,928.5 square feet.
You have supported: (16,528.2)
Your 300 friends have supported: (50,400.3)

Rainforest habitat supported: 2,622,393.7 square feet.
You have supported: (187,897.7)
Your 300 friends have supported: (2,434,496.0)

Beautiful!

Beth, wondering if the balloon people filed a flight plan.


Teeny, no - we are not better as a nation. Fact is, gwb sold us down the river for a few barrels of oil. Now that he's accomplished his goal - he intends destroying what remains of the ocean. sweeps

sue, the Hoyer/bush bill {H.R. 6304} rushed through the House as we speak, will be voted on by the Senate Tuesday.

What the bill does is give immunity to telecommunications corporations for spying on telephone and email conversations and allows the gov carte blanche to wipe its butt on the constitution {again} the Hoyer/Bush FISA deal clears corporations from prosecution, covers gwb's arse, and takes our civil rights to a nuther level, specifically, Americans will no longer have civil rights. H.R. 6304 calls for mass untargeted surveillance. So if some snotnosed young republican listening in on Americans conversations decides whoever may be or could be an enemy of the united states or gwb {in his case everyone} well, there goes the life of riley.

Senate Democrates had better stand together and defeat Hoyer/bush!

Stradee,

I read about that in this afternoon's NYT update. Ugly, ugly collapse of morality and previous positions all around. Done without much, if any, advance notice.

reminding wildclickers that offshore drilling's yet another gwb lie


June 20, 2008

"... the liberty of the Press is called the Palladium of Freedom, which means, in these days, the liberty of being deceived, swindled, and humbugged by the Press and paying hugely for the deception." - Mark Twain, 1870

The Big Pander to Big Oil

It was almost inevitable that a combination of $4-a-gallon gas,
public anxiety and politicians eager to win votes or repair legacies
would produce political pandering on an epic scale. So it has, the
latest instance being President Bush's decision to ask Congress to
end the federal ban on offshore oil and gas drilling along much of
America's continental shelf.

That is worse than a dumb idea. It is cruelly misleading. It will
make only a modest difference, at best, to prices at the pump, and
even then the benefits will be years away. It greatly exaggerates
America's leverage over world oil prices. It is based on dubious
statistics. It diverts the public from the tough decisions that need
to be made about conservation.

There is no doubt that a lot of people have been discomfited and
genuinely hurt by $4-a-gallon gas. But their suffering will not be
relieved by drilling in restricted areas off the coasts of New
Jersey or Virginia or California. The Energy Information
Administration says that even if both coasts were opened, prices
would not begin to drop until 2030. The only real beneficiaries will
be the oil companies that are trying to lock up every last acre of
public land before their friends in power ?- Bush and Vice
Cheney ?- exit the political stage.

The whole scheme is based on a series of fictions that range from
the egregious to the merely annoying. Democratic majority leader,
Senator Harry Reid, noted the worst of these on Wednesday: That a
country that consumes one-quarter of the world's oil supply but owns
only 3 percent of its reserves can drill its way out of any problem ?-
whether it be high prices at the pump or dependence on oil exported
by unstable countries in Persian Gulf. This fiction has been
resisted by Barack Obama but foolishly embraced by John McCain, who
seemed to be making some sense on energy questions until he jumped
aboard the lift-the-ban bandwagon on Tuesday.

A lesser fiction, perpetrated by the oil companies and, to some
extent, by misleading government figures, is that huge deposits of
oil and gas on federal land have been closed off and industry has
had one hand tied behind its back by environmentalists, Democrats
and the offshore protections in place for 25 years.

The numbers suggest otherwise. Of the 36 billion barrels of oil
believed to lie on federal land, mainly in the Rocky Mountain West
and Alaska, almost two-thirds are accessible or will be after
various land-use and environmental reviews. And of the 89 billion
barrels of recoverable oil believed to lie offshore, the federal
Mineral Management Service says fourth-fifths is open to industry,
mostly in the Gulf of Mexico and Alaskan waters.

Clearly, the oil companies are not starved for resources. Further,
they do not seem to be doing nearly as much as they could with the
land to which they've already laid claim. Separate studies by the
House Committee on Natural Resources and the Wilderness Society, a
conservation group, show that roughly three-quarters of the 90
million-plus acres of federal land being leased by the oil companies
onshore and off are not being used to produce energy. That is 68
million acres altogether, among them potentially highly productive
leases in the Gulf of Mexico and Alaska.

With that in mind, four influential House Democrats ?- Edward Markey,
Nick Rahall, Rahm Emanuel and Maurice Hinchey ?- have introduced "use
it or lose it" bills that would force the companies to begin
exploiting the leases they have before getting any more. Companion
bills have been introduced in the Senate, where suspicions also run
high that industry's main objective is to stockpile millions of
additional acres of public land before the Bush administration
leaves town.

This cannot be allowed to happen. The Congressional moratoriums on
offshore drilling were put in place in 1981 and reaffirmed by
subsequent Congresses to protect coastal economies that depend on
clean water and clean coastlines. This was also the essential
purpose of supplemental executive orders, the first of which was
issued by Mr. Bush's father in 1990 after the disastrous Exxon
Valdez oil spill the year before.

Given the huge resources available to the energy industry, there is
no reason to undo these protections now.

America's enviornmental laws are good - but not enforced! Its time the agencies that are supposed to be working to protect the enviornment stop licking gwb's cowcrap boots and DO THIER JOB!

DEMOCRATS - ARE YOU LISTENING???

I agree. Was surprised the damned bill passed committee.

Stradee wrote:



Use it or lose it. They have the resources and are not using them. Stockpiling public land before Bush leaves office? Sounds about right to me.

omg! how did i miss dan's posting!

Hope your day was terrific, Beth!

Late clicks

Super busy day

Salon visit, met a good friend for lunch - good conversation, photos, and great day!











http://rainforest.care2.com/i?p=583091674

Nice to see you are reviewing stuff, Stradee.

How about the Bush's attempt to rob MORE of our Social Security money??

The Congress of the USA has to this date spent about ONE POINT THREE TRILLIAN DOLLARS OF OUR SOCIAL SECURITY MONEY ON PRIVATE PROJECTS.....

Yes, that is trillians of our tax dollars.

Check it out - our congressmen and women are robing us blind in our old age and then trying to pass laws to make us pay more for our retirement.

They are - after all - politicians...... All out to rob us blind.

This year, congress is getting ready to spend abt 230 billion more Social Security dollars on things like "the bridge to no where in Alaska"

They are robbing us and we don't know it because certain rich people control the Nation News services. All of them.

Abt a year ago - Herbert Walker Bush - 'Dubya's Papa was on TV in support of Obama for abt 15 seconds. I actually saw it. He did this. At that time I knew Obama would become the next president of the USA.

After those 15 seconds - there has not been ONE mention of Herbert Walker Bush's backing of Obama - NOT ONE. Since then, Obama has had almost unlimited money to back his run for the nomination.

Now, he has it.

What a SURPRISE.....

After this coming January - Herbert Walker Bush will be enjoying his FOURTH term as president of the USA. And, maybe his FIFTH.

Well, there ya go.

...And us, dear Stradee! I live 4 blocks from the Atlantic, still beautiful, but in trouble, from garbage being illegally dumped, then drifting south, down the Jersey shore. Once a year, the local papers publish, what's washed up, but this is a constant, here; unsanitary and unsafe!

Well, all clicked for Friday and Saturday!

Me Three! Hope you had a Great Day!

Who in the hell else are they going to rob, Dan! Seniors are the clear majority in the United States! So the Senate {not all. thank god we still have some concious lawmakers} fight to keep Social Security and Medicare for the elderly. Our grandkids won't have SS - they won't have Medicare - they won't have health benefits because dungchips managed placing the nation in such horrendous debt - there won't be services available for anyone except the wealthy - if Americans allow gov ineptness to continue.

Hillary Clinton was railroaded out of the race. There isn't any love loss btwn the Clintons and Bushies - so of course sr. endorced Obama. Hand the republican mess over to the Democrats and the republicans go sailing away to whatever country doesn't have extradition.

Articles of impeachement sit in the House, and the dems leagalize bushco's illegal spying - and give immunity to telecommunication companies that didn't have the guts to say NO when asked to read our emails and tap our telephones.

Then funnel billions more tax dollars from Social Security, services for the elderly and poor, the FDA {no, slaughterhouses are not inspected daily, neither is imported meat and produce} by agencies not staffed and funding cut by you know who. Voldermort looks good next to gwb.

Protect gross polluters, corporate animal abusers, oil companies, hired mercenaries disguised as 'security companies' - and above all - cover gwb's arse so he won't spend the rest of his miserable life in jail.


That's politics

Pollution is a terrible problem, Teeny.

Oceans are a disaster - dead zones off the nations coasts, sealife dieing in droves from waterways, lakes and streams polluted with deadly toxins.

Enviornmental laws are not being enforced.

Hope your naked into the world day was good, ehBeth.

sumac, I like that!

~~~

You and your 300 friends have supported 2,902,517.4 square feet!

Marine Wetlands habitat supported: 213,069.3 square feet.
You have supported: (0.0)
Your 300 friends have supported: (213,069.3)

American Prairie habitat supported: 66,935.9 square feet.
You have supported: (16,528.2)
Your 300 friends have supported: (50,407.7)

Rainforest habitat supported: 2,622,512.2 square feet.
You have supported: (187,905.1)
Your 300 friends have supported: (2,434,607.1)

~~~

I'm glad.