Bush official fails to show for polar bear hearing - Independant Investigators and Prosecutors Needed ! Move to Legislate Protections !

Senator Barbara Boxer
Senator wanted Interior chief to explain indecision on endangered listing

I don't want to hear how this is a liberal conspiracy against the government. There is evidence indicating protectins of the Polar Bear are necessary and the Chairperson of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee has an obligation to carry out the laws of the people of the USA. Where was Secretary Kempthorne? He addressed a conference as a keynote speaker via video (don't even know if it was a live) link on April 1st (click here).


Keynotes
Secretary of the Department of the Interior (DOI) Dirk Kempthorne addressed the audience at the Plenary Session via video. Kempthorne discussed the remarkable technological advances in geospatial technology that allow us to see the world in a new way and provide tools for addressing sustainability and managing disasters. "The possibilities indeed, the promises of this technological revolution are literally beyond imagining for both this generation and future generations."

Where was he yesterday? Golfing? The man is alive, right?

Senator wanted Interior chief to explain indecision on endangered listing

WASHINGTON - APRIL 02: U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Chairman Barbara Boxer (D-CA) questions witnesses during a hearing about the possible listing of the polar bear under the Endangered Species Act April 2, 2008 in Washington, DC. U.S. Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne was invited to testify but declined until he said he could provide more information regarding the listing of the polar bear as endangered. According to conservation groups, polar bears are threatened because their habitat, sea ice, is shrinking from global warming.
Updated: 1:02 p.m. ET April 2, 2008
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23920837/displaymode/1176/rstry/23920757/




Interior Dept. faulted over polar bear status (click here)
Senator seeks explanation for delaying decision


By Matthew Daly
Associated Press / April 3, 2008
WASHINGTON - The chairwoman of the Senate Environment Committee yesterday slammed Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne for failing to appear before her panel to explain why the Bush administration has delayed a decision on whether to protect polar bears under the Endangered Species Act.
Senator Barbara Boxer, Democrat of California, criticized Kempthorne for declining her invitation to appear before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.
"It's wrong that Mr. Kempthorne is not here," Boxer said after the hearing, which went on without an appearance from Kempthorne or any other administration official....

It seems as though Mr. Kempthorne has a lot of people that want to talk to him.

Another WOPR setback Government scientists criticize BLM logging plan (click here)
Published: April 1, 2008 12:00AM
The Western Oregon Plan Revision is a dead plan walking.
Those exact words weren’t used by the team of government scientists that recently reviewed the Bush administration’s proposed forest management plan. But it’s the underlying message that should be clear to Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne, who should immediately yank the plug on the U.S. Bureau of Land Management’s hopelessly flawed proposal to nearly triple logging on 2.2 million acres in Western Oregon.
In a scathing 100-page report, the team of federal and state experts said the BLM’s proposal failed to consider the most current and relevant data on fundamental concerns such as wildlife habitat and water quality.
The report said the computer models used by the BLM were overly simplistic and failed to take into account the loss of spotted owl and other wildlife habitat to logging and wildfires. The models also failed to take into account budgetary, political and legal factors, and generally ignored climate change and its potentially profound impacts on Western Oregon’s forests....
...The Bush administration’s own Environmental Protection Agency has warned that the BLM plan lacks a sound scientific basis and would cause long-term damage to water quality. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says the plan fails to adequately protect steelhead and salmon....

And we already know about the overfishing of Salmon. So now that the Salmon are being lost, it's okay to destroy the ecosystem, huh? So, what is the issue? The loggers are 'getting enough?' Too bad !!!

...BLM officials say they will take the latest scientific criticism into account while preparing to issue the final version of the WOPR. That’s a mistake. The BLM plan is so thoroughly flawed that it must be replaced, not fixed.
If Kempthorne won’t give WOPR the early execution it deserves, then Congress should intervene with legislation that protects old growth.
What part of “dead plan walking” doesn’t the Bush administration understand? Why is it stubbornly continuing to push a plan that has as little chance of surviving judicial scrutiny as a condemned man does a trip to the gas chamber?

It would seem Senator Boxer has many bills to write including that of Old Growth Forests and Polar Bears. If the Bush White House continues to be this negligent then it is time the good Senator Boxer move to legislate protections while reporting the lax administration of this White House to the Justice Department and independant prosecutors !

Carbon dioxide is 72% of all greenhouse gases and is the widest spread throughout every sector of emissions.

Mass. leads bid to limit greenhouse emissions (click at entry to title)
18 states ask court to press EPA on car, truck gases
By Beth Daley and Stephanie Ebbert
Globe Staff / April 3, 2008
Eighteen states, led by Massachusetts, filed an unusual legal petition in federal court yesterday to pressure the US Environmental Protection Agency to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from cars and trucks - a move that could lead the automobile industry to produce cleaner-burning cars.
The filing came on the first anniversary of a landmark US Supreme Court ruling that such greenhouse gases are pollutants, and was designed to highlight the lack of progress since then. It also came in the face of suggestions that the White House is stalling approval of a document that would declare these emissions are harmful to public health.
"Once again the EPA has forced our hand, which has resulted in our taking this extraordinary measure to fight the dangers of climate change," Attorney General Martha Coakley of Massachusetts, which is leading the petition, said in a statement. "The EPA's failure to act in the face of these incontestable dangers is a shameful dereliction of duty."
The justices last year ordered the EPA to formally declare whether carbon dioxide and other global warming gases from motor vehicles could harm human health, and if so, to regulate them under the Clean Air Act. Specifically, yesterday's petition asked the US Court of Appeals in Washington to order the EPA to make that determination within 60 days.
If the states are successful and the agency rules that the gases can harm human health, it could lead to requirements that vehicles emit fewer greenhouse gases. This could be accomplished by requiring new cars to get better gas mileage or encouraging consumers to buy smaller vehicles or hybrid cars.
The states want the federal government to act before President Bush leaves office. Scientific evidence is growing that the manmade release of heat-trapping gases from power plants, vehicles, and factories will lead to public health problems, such as more common heat waves and increased plant pollens that can aggravate allergies and asthma, yet the Bush administration has repeatedly failed to regulate the gases. States and environmental organizations want greenhouse gas emission limits for power plants and factories in addition to vehicles....

Wilkins Ice Sheet

This map was updated to include the Wilkins Ice Sheet. (click here) Which Ice Sheet is next?

This was a reporting that came along with the collapse of the Larsen B.

...This is the largest single event in a series of retreats by ice shelves along the peninsula over the last 30 years. The retreats are attributed to a strong climate warming in the region. The rate of warming is approximately 0.5 degrees Celsius per decade, and the trend has been present since at least the late 1940s. Overall in the peninsula, the extent of seven ice shelves has declined by a total of about 13,500 square kilometers since 1974. This value excludes areas that would be expected to calve under stable conditions....



There is a lot more than Wilkins that collapsed. Wilkins is at 9 o'clock in this picture. There is also a sluffing off of a large ice mass just north of Wilkins at 12 o'clock. The 'ice' remaining that renders an ice sheet still somewhat intact is a very narrow and unstable ice sheet between Wilkins and its northern component. The complete ice sheet lends itself to demise except for the retreat of the solar radiation to the northern hemisphere.

This is just prior to the simultaneous destruction of the two ice masses of which Wilkins at 9 o'clock is the largest.

This is the close up view of the demise of Wilkins. The photo below is the aerial view of the same former ice sheet turned icebergs. That is why NASA watches this disintegration primarily. I am sure all the scientists are concerned about a warming Earth, but, the reason this monitoring is maintained is not to report the destruction of large ice sheets in regard to warming, but, in regard to shipping channels. Commerce. Scary thought to realize NASA scientists are 'allowed' to continue their work because of commerce and not the pure unadultered reasons of science in realtion to human impacts or human survival. Why do I believe we need legislation to 'insure' the smooth operation of NASA regardless of Executive Branch politics?

Click at title to entry for link to report.

This is Bush's Idea of the EPA. An agency meant to break the rules. Rules to Be Waived for Border Fence

National Guardsmen weld a section of wall being erected along the international border that separates San Luis, Mexico, and San Luis, Ariz., in this May 30, 2007, file photo. (AP Photo/Matt York)

By EILEEN SULLIVAN
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Bush administration will use its authority to bypass more than 30 laws and regulations to finish building 670 miles of fence along the southwest U.S. border by the end of 2008, federal officials said Tuesday.
Invoking the two legal waivers, which Congress authorized, will cut through bureaucratic red tape and sidestep environmental laws that currently impede the Homeland Security Department from building 267 miles of fencing in California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas, according to officials familiar with the plan. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly about it.
The move is the biggest use of legal waivers since the administration started building the fence, and it will cover a total of 470 miles along the Southwest border, the department said. Previously, the department has used its waiver authority for two portions of fence in Arizona and one portion in San Diego....

US Military Deaths in Iraq stand at 4,012 right now.

Shell says ready to help Iraq boost oil output (click here)
WASHINGTON, April 1 (Reuters) - Royal Dutch Shell (RDSa.L: Quote, Profile, Research) is ready to help Iraq boost oil production once that country's government finalizes a petroleum law covering big energy projects, the head of the oil giant said on Tuesday.
"We are very much prepared to go back to Iraq," Shell chief executive officer Jeroen van der Veer said at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank in Washington.
But first, he said, Shell employees must be able to work safely in the country and a petroleum law must be passed.
"You have to know the rules of the game because you have to bring a lot of money to the country (to develop its oil)," he said. "We expect that the petroleum law, we hope that it is finally passed...during this year."
The law would provide conditions for investment and international participation in Iraq's oil and gas industry.
Iraq holds the world's third biggest oil reserves at 115 billion barrels and has some of the cheapest extraction costs, according to the U.S. Energy Department.
Increasing Iraq's oil production to take advantage of high crude prices is seen as key to rebuilding the country's economy.
Iraq's oil output averages almost 2.3 million barrels a day, but with enough investment, the country holds enough crude to double its production, according to some estimates. (Reporting by Tom Doggett; Editing by David Gregorio)

The Bush Betrayal (click at title to entry)
Posted by mollypitcher , April 01, 2008 12:40AM
The Bush BetrayalPosted by Molly Sword McDonough
April 1, 2008
The President of the United States has two inviolable responsibilities, and those are to protect the lives of the people of the USA, and to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States of America.
It is with great sadness, anger and disappointment that we have all had to acknowledge that George W. Bush has betrayed those values.
The Bush/ Cheney Administration has put the lives of Americans in danger, and has put the Constitution of the United States in jeopardy, in so many ways it is simply unfathomable. This administration, which I once believed in with my whole heart, has betrayed us all....

A little nervous isn't he? He didn't foresee Bear-Sterns collapse? I see. Bernanke forgets, his economic forcast is through Republican eyes !

The Republicans are very limited in their ability to bring about economic recovery. They see themselves forever in Iraq, they don't believe in Human Induced Global Warming and rely on oil as the basis of energy in the USA. When an entire economy that feeds the world's markets is mired in 'old world' values, there can only be failure. There is no innovation, no changing paradymes, no elevating the brain trust that can bring the USA economy out of defeat of its own lost values of invention/cutting edge.

The USA is so mired in Republican rhetoric that even when changes in energy and transportation come out of places like Europe and Japan it is ignored and devalued. When competency returns to DC there will be economic rebirth, but, that change won't occur with more Republican rhetoric.

Laws limiting greenhouse gases will demand a different economy for the USA while returning its reputation to leadership in global markets. No one sees that?

Bernanke, Geithner, Cox to Be Pressed on Details of Bear Buyout (click here)
By Scott Lanman and Craig Torres

April 3 (Bloomberg) -- Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke and New York Fed President Timothy Geithner will probably be pressed by Congress today for more details on their decision to engineer JPMorgan Chase & Co.'s purchase of Bear Stearns Cos.
The Fed officials will be joined by Christopher Cox, chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, the main regulator of Wall Street firms. Bernanke, testifying to the Joint Economic Committee yesterday on the economy, said taxpayers may not lose money in the deal, though he deferred some specific questions to today's hearing....

Nothing but more meaningless crony politics by Bush. Has any of his eight years been based in reality? Even Afghanistan is a stretch,...

...when one recalls a report entitled, "Osama bin Laden Determined to Strike Within the USA."




Arab News

Editorial: Unnecessary Provocations
3 April 2008

It is hard to understand President Bush’s eagerness to have the Ukraine and Georgia become full members of NATO. Militarily both countries have little to offer the alliance while politically each brings major burdens that threaten relations with a resurgent Russia. Indeed the accession of Georgia could bring NATO into direct conflict with the Kremlin because there is a disputed border between the two countries.
Why therefore should Bush be tweaking the nose of the Russian bear by bringing what the Russians perceive as a threatening military alliance right up to their borders? We already have the precipitate American move to site a missile defense shield in Poland and the Czech Republic. Moscow very reasonably assumes that this $53 billion project, officially called the Ground-Based Midcourse Defense (GMD), will be deployed against its own missiles rather than those which Washington claims the Iranians may have in due time. Any Kremlin defense strategists with half a brain is going to appreciate that bringing NATO right to Russia’s eastern and southern frontiers constitutes a further threat.
The Georgians, whose army is being trained and equipped by America may welcome NATO membership as a further guarantee of their independence from Russian influence. However, many Ukrainians who are not of Russian origin are actually deeply concerned at the loss of their nonaligned status.

http://www.arabnews.com/?page=7&section=0&article=108529&d=3&m=4&y=2008

This is what its all about. Oil. No other reason Bush/Cheney went into Iraq. So !

Coast Guard Cutter Adak Bound for Al Basra Oil Terminal
by Chris Demarest (ID# 200701)
Each ship in the coalition force is assigned to three out of twelve sections surrounding oil platforms. Any ship approaching an oil platform must be boarded before entering the strict security zone around it (click here)


Al Basra Oil Terminal

A guided missile cruiser. Whom is the USA expecting any minute now? The Russians? New York Harbor should get this kind of protection. Oh, wait, I forgot, according to Darrell Issa, the soon to be former House Member (click here) there was no attack on the USA, but, ONLY New York. It wasn't like there were dirty bombs or WMD, since the Republicans stopped all that with their invasion into Iraq. I guess that cruiser is to stop any of those 'Old Bathhist' missiles still left in Saddam's old silos. Right? I mean a missile cruiser?

The guided missile cruiser USS Mobile Bay (CG 53) (click here) patrols near the Iraqi Al Basra Oil Terminal (ABOT) in the Northern Arabian Gulf, in this Sept. 28, 2004 photo. Despite President Bush's optimism on Iraq's reconstruction, Iraq appears set to pump less crude in 2005 than last year's disappointing showing and far less than under Saddam Hussein. (AP Photo/U.S. Navy,Samuel W. Shavers)

In this photo released by the U.S. Navy, engineman 2nd Class Robert Looney, left, and Engineman 2nd Class Joe Pearson stand watch on the North end of Al Basrah Oil Terminal (ABOT), in this June 13, 2004 photo, in Iraq. Despite President Bush's optimism on Iraq's reconstruction, Iraq appears set to pump less crude in 2005 than last year's disappointing showing and far less than under Saddam Hussein. (AP Photo/U.S. Navy, Wes Eplen)

When Bush/Cheney/Maliki think of Basra, it's for the oil and the port. When the people that have lived in that region of Islam thinks of Basra, its as a city and not a oil terminal. Al Basra has a long and glorious history which seemed to always include a strategic port for the region. Its populous ranked in the hundreds of thousands in the Middle Ages, long before there was any need or discovery for oil. The city has been depersonalized by the Bush/Cheney administration as a place where oil flows, but, it hasn't by the people of Southern Iraq. The name Basra means Black Pebbles (click here).

Oil In a Week (The Battle of Basra and its Oil Dimension)
Walid Khadduri Al-Hayat - 31/03/08//
No Arab oil industry has witnessed the difficulties and challenges facing the oil sector in Iraq over the past 25 years, especially during the past five years of occupation. Currently, a battle is raging for political control over Basra, Iraq's only marine gateway, its second largest city, and the source of almost 90% of its oil reserves which currently account for two million barrels a day. This is not to mention three huge oil fields with production capacity of over two million barrels a day that have been explored but not developed yet. These are the Majnoun field, the Gharb al-Qurna field, and Nahr bin Omar field. This battle will represent decisive turning point in the modern history of Basra and in the history and future of Iraq's oil industry.
Basra suffered its share of destruction in comparison to other Iraqi cities during the war with Iran throughout the 1980s. It also suffered the weakness that hit the southern provinces and other Iraqi areas in the 1990s as a result of the international blockade on Iraq. Given Basra's proximity to heated battlefields, the development of its oil industry came to a halt during that decade, not to mention the devastation that took a toll on numerous oil plants. The destruction inflicted upon al-Khor al-'Ameeq Port is only an illustration of the massive devastation suffered by oil constructions in that strategic area.

http://english.daralhayat.com/business/03-2008/Article-20080331-04eb2134-c0a8-10ed-017c-432453bc65dc/story.html

This article from Reuters was in The Moscow Times.

Wednesday, April 2, 2008. Issue 3874. Page 10.
Civilian Death Rate Up in Iraq
Reuters
BAGHDAD -- Fighting between security forces and Shiite militiamen last month has driven civilian deaths in Iraq to their highest level in more than six months, government figures showed on Tuesday.
A total of 923 civilians were killed in March, up 31 percent from February and the deadliest month since August 2007, according to data compiled by Iraq's interior, defense and health ministries and obtained by Reuters.
The figures are a blow to the Iraqi government and the United States, which have pointed to reduced overall levels of violence in recent months as evidence that a major security offensive has made significant progress.
Hundreds of people were killed and many more wounded in last week's fighting after Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki ordered a crackdown on Shiite militiamen in the southern city of Basra. Many of the dead were civilians caught in the crossfire.
Basra was relatively calm for a second straight day Tuesday after Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr called his fighters off the streets on Sunday. A Reuters reporter in the city said more shops were open and people were out on the streets although many schools and government offices were still shut.
In Baghdad's Sadr City, the slum of 2 million people that forms the cleric's main stronghold in the capital and location of much of last week's combat, the situation was tense but there were no reports of major clashes.

http://www.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2008/04/02/251.html

This article was published a year ago February. It would seem little has changed in Basra since 2003. Attacks within neighborhoods were frequent if not daily for the British to defend their presence and hence the Americans as well. The history of Basra and the region does not dictate a 'settlement' or 'conquest' by ANY government, not even Saddam could break the loyalty these people have 'first' to Allah and then to themselves.

The Basra video should lay to rest a scurrilous lie (click here)
The smug superiority of the British over their peacekeeping efforts in Iraq is an insult to those of us who live there

...The truth is that ever since the fall of Saddam Hussein's tyrannical regime, abuses and atrocities committed against Iraqi civilians have been a regular, at times daily, occurrence throughout the country, including in Basra. These have been committed by American, British and Iraqi official forces. Hearing the British prime minister describe this latest incident as an isolated case fills me and fellow Iraqis with anger....

While Americans are distracted by 'The American Idol' and the lust of million dollar contracts at the end of amateur hours, there is a conscience in the rest of the world that something is very "W"rong in Iraq, including Basra. Back in the day when the USA first "W"rongfully invaded Iraq, it was stated that Bush was practicing Imperialism. Indeed, he continues in that mode and as a result 'the hopes of a fool' determined to increase the military strength of a puppet government in the Green Zone has become his obsession and the hopes of the Republican political machine.

The rise of imperialism lite is prolonging the Iraqi horror (click here)
A nation was alienated and nation-building turned from mission improbable to mission impossible

The joint American-British occupation of Iraq is five years old this week and shows no sign of ending. There has been a fall in civilian deaths due to the intensive American policing of Baghdad, the legitimising of a 60,000 Sunni militia to fight Al-Qaeda and sheer exhaustion at the horror. But these are entry rather than exit tactics. They make departing more rather than less hazardous.
Nowhere in non-Kurdish Iraq is there a stable political or security regime. There are even indications that the anarchy of the Baghdad area has shifted north, witness the terrible killing of a Christian bishop in Mosul and a surge in deaths over the past month. The relationship between Kurds and Arabs, for instance over oil and the status of Kirkuk, is unresolved....

So, being the fools they are and hoping still the American public has lost its memory from the last time the Iraqi/British/American forces attempted to assassinate all those in the way in Basra, they are still making excuses.

THIS IS THE SIXTH YEAR, the Bush/Cheney administration is attempting to quell skeptism about their illegal war in hopes of passing on their blunderous legacy to the presidential hopeful, John McCain.

U.S. Cites Planning Gaps in Iraqi Assault on Basra (click here)

...But the Iraqi operation was not what the United States expected....

So much it was not expected (Which is a flat out lie by a bunch of smart asses in Special Forces) that the USA military simply 'hit the road' with all kinds of guns and weapons and bombs to 'end it' with jet fighters so it would not grow into a huge battle that would destroy the Green Zone Iraqis. So much it was not expected that ANYONE, any man, woman or child was the enemy since they lived in Basra. THIS is urban warfare? No. This is a USA military completely out of control of the circumstances in Iraq because there is no more enemy EXCEPT for those that cast their votes the "W"rong way.

...Instead of methodically building up their combat power and gradually stepping up operations against renegade militias, Mr. Maliki’s forces lunged into the city, attacking before all of the Iraqi reinforcements had even arrived. By the following Tuesday, a major fight was on....

This is the SIXTH "F.....king" year of mistakes, miscalculations, and REDRESS and STILL the Neocons think this is JUST GREAT !!! A playground to conduct war games that accomplish nothing but more of the same. Six years of 'gaming' the Iraqis and seeking to destroy their culture in 'hopes' that someday, anyday the people of that country will be the mirror images of Americans allowed to be Muslims. Amazing.

The Day Every Iraqi lays down their weapons, INCLUDING, the private militias of the Green Zone Iraqis is the day I'll expect the Sistani Shi'ites to do the same thing, BUT, not a day before !!!!

The American military is being used to conduct 'private' wars of 'the ruling class' in Iraq and that is all they are doing !