“The Post-American World” May 7, 2008
Posted by Vincent in Politics, Random.add a comment
In the absence of something more original to post, here’s a link to a very interesting article in Newsweek: http://www.newsweek.com/id/135380
Read it! — it’s a good global perspective on the modern world, not something you get much with CNN or the like.
Economist: Wright’s wrongs May 1, 2008
Posted by Vincent in Politics.add a comment
As usual, a thoughtful analysis by The Economist. An excerpt from the article:
AFTER he became notorious as the man who urged God to damn America, Jeremiah Wright claims he wrestled with two impulses. The first was to heed the proverb: “It is better to be quiet and be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.” The second was to “come across the room” and fight back. Mr Wright’s decision to come across the room with his mouth wide open is proving a disaster for all concerned.
Mr Wright, who was Barack Obama’s pastor for 20 years, has reason to be angry about the way he has been caricatured. The video clips that made him famous represent mere seconds of the thousands of hours he has spent preaching (207,792 minutes on Sunday mornings alone, according to his church, the Trinity United Church of Christ). Mr Wright volunteered to serve in Vietnam and spent six years in the armed forces. That, as he pointed out, is six years longer than Dick Cheney.
Economist: The hypocrites’ club March 15, 2008
Posted by Vincent in Politics.add a comment
Excerpt from the article:
ELIOT SPITZER is a hard man to defend. He was the most self-righteous politician in America—which is saying something—and an arrogant bully with it. If anybody deserves the opprobrium that is being poured on his head this week, following the New York Times’s revelation that he has a taste for expensive prostitutes, then it is Mr Spitzer.
[...] But distaste for Mr Spitzer—or keen pleasure in seeing a hypocrite hoist with his own petard—should blind no one to the fact that the whole affair is a crock of nonsense. What business is it of the federal government what Mr Spitzer got up to in Room 871 of the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, DC?
Rule to Expand Mountaintop Coal Mining August 23, 2007
Posted by Vincent in Life, Politics.add a comment
From the New York Times (thanks to Patrick):
“WASHINGTON, Aug. 22 — The Bush administration is set to issue a regulation on Friday that would enshrine the coal mining practice of mountaintop removal. The technique involves blasting off the tops of mountains and dumping the rubble into valleys and streams.
It has been used in Appalachian coal country for 20 years under a cloud of legal and regulatory confusion.
The new rule would allow the practice to continue and expand, providing only that mine operators minimize the debris and cause the least environmental harm, although those terms are not clearly defined and to some extent merely restate existing law. . .”
See the full article here.
Mountaintop removal mining is probably the most environmentally destructive way to obtain energy; companies destroy entire mountaintops and fill in valleys and streams in the remotest parts of Appalachia where the people are often too poor and underrepresented to stick up for themselves. The coal companies get away with this by ignoring laws or helping to ensure that environmental regulations are weak and nonexistent, but now the Bush administration is set to put the law on their side.
More about mountaintop removal here or see what you can do about it at sites like this one.
