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Bush ‘Flat Wrong’ on Kyoto

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It will “hurt the economy”, eh? He probably means his personal economy. The problem isn’t going away and the country’s economy will probably be hurt worse the longer it takes the oil-mongers in Washington (DC) to realize that there won’t be one to hurt before too long. Then again, the oil-mongers will probably be dead first and if there’s one constant among politicians it’s the “I’ll Be Dead by Then so Who Cares” philosophy.

Excerpt:
Wired News: Bush ‘Flat Wrong’ on Kyoto
The Canadians and others also saw Montreal as an opportunity to draw the outsider United States into the emission-controls regime, through discussions under the broader 1992 U.N. climate treaty.

But the Americans have repeatedly rejected the idea of rejoining future negotiations to set post-2012 emissions controls. The Canadians continued to press for agreement early Friday, offering the U.S. delegation vague, noncommittal language by which Washington would join only in “exploring approaches” to cooperative action.

While rejecting mandatory targets, the Bush administration points to $3 billion-a-year U.S. government spending on research and development of energy-saving technologies as a demonstration of U.S. efforts to combat climate change.

WWdN: at long last, a political post

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A lot of readers have e-mailed me, and asked why I haven’t talked more about politics this election season. It’s mostly a time issue, but the real reason is, there are other sites out there that say the very same things I want to say, and they say them better than I do. As I wrote back in May: “Salon, DailyKos, Atrios, Josh Marshall, The Daily Howler, Juan Cole, and Kevin Drum are just a few of the sites I read at least once a day. I do a lot of nodding along in agreement when I read them, and they always say what I would say, with more eloquence and passion than I can currently muster.”

In that entry, I also said, “There’s enough anger and strife in the world right now. I’d rather put my time and energy into reflecting on the things that make me happy, than the things that piss me off.”

Then I got an e-mail this afternoon inquiring why I haven’t written about the most important election in our lifetime.

The most important election in our lifetime.

Boy, did that strike a nerve with me. This is the most important election in my lifetime. Forget the concept of holding the Bush administration accountable for the lies and incompetence for a moment, and just think about the very real possibility of a Supreme Court stacked with Bush appointment

…excerpt from: Wil Wheaton DOT Net

Juan Cole: Informed Comment

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Juan Cole: Informed Comment
Excerpt:
The Bush administration is full of revolutionaries. They are shaking up the world by military force. They are playing a role familiar in modern history, pioneered by Napoleon Bonaparte, of using overwhelming military superiority to establish new forms of hegemony by appealing to desires for change among neighboring publics. Bonaparte promised the Italians liberty on the French model, but in fact reduced the Italians to a series of French puppet regimes and then he looted the country. So far Bush’s Iraq looks increasingly like Bonaparte’s Italy in these regards.

At a time of increased radicalization in the global South, at a time when mass terrorism has been made possible by new technologies, the last thing the US should be risking is destabilizing Asia by provoking a series of revolutions.

Kerry is not a revolutionary, unlike Bush. He recognizes that al-Qaeda is a real threat and needs to be the main focus of US security thinking. Kerry will capture or kill Bin Laden and al-Zawahiri because he will put the resources into that endeavor that Bush instead wasted in Iraq.

JARON ‘N’ BRAVUS

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Yesterday I found myself listening, on my car radio, to someone from Nader’s campaign. This person was attempting to refute the various criticisms we’ve all heard so many times. It made me feel as though someone was trying to work their well-chewed gum ever deeper into my ears, and reminded me all too thoroughly of why I think of myself as centrist.

The idea that Kerry and Bush are merely two sides of the same bad coin is both ludicrous and all too potentially tragic.

At the risk of making him permanently self-conscious, I’m going to quote Bravus again, because he put this, yesterday, so much more tidily than I’ve yet been able to put it:

“I think I’ve said before that usually I have a fair bit of sympathy for the ‘they’re all as bad as each other, there’s no real difference’ argument. I really, honestly think that’s crap, this time around. Bush is heading for an undemocratic combination theocracy/oligarchy in unprecedented ways. The Republican party has been hijacked by extremists. Mainstream Republicans and mainstream Democrats might not have a lot of characteristics that are different, but these guys (Bush/Cheney/Rove) differ from both groups in their radicalism. A vote for them – or even a vote that’s not against them – is qualitatively different, I would argue, than any vote cast in the US in recent memory.”

This isn’t the election in which to make the quixotic but satisfying point that you’d really rather vote Green, or the quixotic but satisfying point that you’d really rather not have to vote for any more white men in tight blue suits at al
…excerpt from: William Gibson’s blog

Rocky Mountain News: Columnists

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Rocky Mountain News: Columnists
In one truly bizarre finding, the research found that 57 percent of Bush supporters assume that the majority of the world favors his re-election. According to recent international research in 10 countries, reported in the British newspaper The Guardian on Oct. 15, the world has “made up its mind, backing (Kerry) by a margin of 2 to 1.” A recent survey by leading newspapers in 10 countries concluded that “a majority of voters share a rejection of the Iraq invasion, contempt for the Bush administration, a growing hostility to the U.S. and a none-too-strong endorsement of Mr. Kerry.”