I'm just the guy that can't stand cant. ___________

 
THE STUDENT PRESIDENT: President Bush was a bit off the mark when he said he would be the education president.

It turns out that Bush is really the student president, given his tactic of “studying” problems – such as stem cell research – as a way of pretending to be concerned about problems without doing anything to upset his right wing backers.

The Self Made Pundit has already mocked Bush in our Nov. 13 post for using this tactic of calling for more research as a way of avoiding tackling the ever growing problem of global warming.

The cause for that derision was a New York Times report that Bush was recycling his father’s environmental plans and calling for four more years of research into the causes of global warming rather than taking more immediate steps to address this impending global catastrophe. The Self Made Pundit was outraged (though hardly surprised) that Bush was cynically calling for years of research as a way of feigning interest in the potentially disastrous problem of global warming while doing nothing to disturb his corporate backers.

Perhaps we were too harsh at that time in criticizing Bush for calling for four more years of research before taking action. After all, given the Bush administration’s ties to energy industries, the proposal could have been far worse. For example, the administration could have proposed studying the problem of global warming for another 10 years – not jut four – before taking any action.

Unfortunately, Bush too apparently realized that his environmental approach could have been far worse, and has decided to go for it. Bush is now calling for 10 years of research before taking any meaningful action on global warning. As The New York Times reports today:

On Tuesday, the Bush administration convenes a three-day meeting here to set its new agenda for research on climate change. But many climate experts who will attend say talking about more research will simply delay decisions that need to be made now to avert serious harm from global warming.

President Bush has called for a decade of research before anything beyond voluntary measures is used to stem tailpipe and smokestack emissions of heat-trapping gases that scientists say are contributing to global warming.

....

But many climate experts say the perennial need for more study can no longer justify further delays in emission cuts.

"Waiting 10 years to decide is itself a decision which may remove from the table certain options for stabilizing concentrations later," said Dr. Michael Oppenheimer, a professor of geosciences at Princeton.

For example, under today's rate of emissions growth, he and other experts say that certain losses are already probable, including dwindling of snow-dependent water supplies and global die-offs of vulnerable ecosystems like coral reefs, alpine meadows and certain coastal marshes.

....

If greenhouse gas concentrations double, climate experts expect substantial disruptions of ecosystems and water supplies, coastal damage as sea levels rise and intensified drought and downpour cycles. Even more calamitous surprises could lie in store, including disruptions in the Atlantic Ocean currents that help warm Europe.

The experts concede that they cannot say exactly what may happen, or when. Also, changes will probably occur slowly — sea levels rising by millimeters a year, say — so there will be no one event to prompt people to choose a fuel-saving hybrid car over a gas-guzzling S.U.V.

But the warming will have enormous momentum, they say. Unlike soot or sulfur pollution, which falls out of the atmosphere within days or weeks, molecules of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases can circulate for a century or more.

Similarly, the toxic effects of the Bush administration’s cynically negligent inaction on global warming will continue to harm the environment for decades to come.
posted by Gary at 10:25 AM

 
THE KURTZ AWARD FOR UNINTENTIONAL IRONY GOES TO ...: The Washington Post’s media critic Howard Kurtz deserves some kind of an award for his journalistic achievements. It cannot be easy to write media criticism that manages to be both wishy-washy and conservative leaning while never venturing into actual criticism of the media. Yet Kurtz has managed this trifecta of bad political journalism.

As Kurtz noted in his column on Friday, Al Gore has criticized those elements of the news media that regularly repeat Republican Party talking points as “news.” Since Kurtz is a media critic, you might expect him to offer an opinion on whether Gore’s criticism has any validity.

Does Kurtz, the media critic, even entertain the thought that partisan manipulation of our national political discourse might be detrimental to our society? No. Instead, he poses hypotheticals about how even if Gore is right, he shouldn’t be discussing such things:

Let's say Gore is right, that conservative news outlets are trying to blacken the reputations of people like him. Doesn't complaining about it just sound like whining? Or is he playing to his base, the way conservatives have done all these years by moaning about the liberal media?

Perhaps Kurtz just needed the weekend to mull over Gore’s criticisms that right-wing media outlets such as the Washington Times do the bidding of the Republican Party. Kurtz actually addresses the issue in today’s Washington Post.

Kurtz, however, seems to find Gore’s media criticisms to be unwarranted, absolving at least the Washington Times of being a Republican Party mouthpiece. In a column entitled “Right, but Not 100 Percent Right,” Kurtz writes:

Since taking over the Washington Times editorial page last summer, Tony Blankley has thrown some hard rhetorical punches. And it's not just Democrats who have been on the receiving end.

....

Blankley .... says "The Washington Times is a conservative paper, it's not a Republican paper. We don't hold a brief for either party. We hold a brief for our values and principles.”

It's no surprise that the colorful Blankley, a "McLaughlin Group" regular, is skewering leading Democratic officials. "It's going to be a long two years for Lefty Pelosi and the San Francisco Democrats," he wrote in one signed column. But Republicans aren't exempt from the Blankley Treatment.

Just who are these Republicans the fiercely independent Washington Times is attacking despite their ties to the Republican Party? They are Republican maverick Senator John McCain and ex-Republican Senator Jim Jeffords. Apparently, Kurtz views McCain as a loyal Republican and includes Jeffords on the theory that an ex-Republican is a type of Republican.

If a poll were taken of Republicans in Congress and the Bush administration on who is the biggest traitor to the Republican Party, the only suspense would be in whether McCain or Jeffords finished first. Yet Kurtz views the Washington Times’ attacks on these two Republican Party heretics as demonstrating the paper’s autonomy from the Republican Party.

Let’s add unintentional irony to Kurtz’s other journalistic achievements.
posted by Gary at 10:32 AM