In Bush World, now Polar Bears are going extinct

Last week, the Washington Post reported that polar bears are going extinct. I have been talking about this polar bear story all week...it was one of the few stories I could actually stomach reading after the elections. But, it really turned my stomach.

Now, I know in Bush world, there is no such thing as global warming. Those melting polar ice caps are really just a figment of our liberal enviro imaginations.

Bush can proudly add polar bears to the list of things he is destroying. I wonder if he has the same kind of checklist to cross off endangered species that he has for Al Qaeda operatives. It's just too bad, he hasn't had as much luck destroying terror networks as he has had ruining the rest of the planet.

The first two paragraphs give the harsh news, but read the whole story:

Global warming could cause polar bears to go extinct by the end of the century by eroding the sea ice that sustains them, according to the most comprehensive international assessment ever done of Arctic climate change.

The thinning of sea ice -- which is projected to shrink by at least half by the end of the century and could disappear altogether, according to some computer models-- could determine the fate of many other key Arctic species, said the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment, the product of four years of work by more than 300 scientists.

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Moderate Republican. What's the point?

There is no longer any point in being a moderate Republican. Unless the mods start speaking up, they will very shortly be irrelevant, if they aren't already.

Case in point: Arlen Specter. Specter made the "mistake" of saying that anti-choice Bush judicial appointees would have a hard time being confirmed by the Senate. The religious right is now demanding that Specter not be given the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee for his heresy. (Note the comparison to the Democrats, who gave Harry Reid the chair of the party because he was "next in line" - to hell with whether he was the best choice at this time.)

The latest from the Republican is Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, telling the Sunday morning shows that whoever leads the Senate Judiciary Committee must agree Bush's judicial nominees.

Sure, why not? It's not like the Congress is an independent branch of government. It's not like Senator Frist and his Senate colleagues were actually elected to represent their own states and their own local interests. Oh no. This is the new Republican party. Welcome all, and please leave you brain at the door.

While I personally worry about what it will mean if Specter doesn't get the chair of the committee, there's an equally large part of me that couldn't care less. Let the Republican party purge the CIA, purge the Senate, purge America of anyone who doesn't believe in Pat Robertson's and Jerry Falwell's hateful, bigoted, narrow-minded jihadist agenda. It's about time moderate Republicans, and America more generally, woke up and realized what the "new" Republican party really stands for and how it actually operates.

As a gay man who's been on the receiving end of Republican hardline intolerance for years, it's not surprise, and even a bit amusing, to watch that intolerance now spread to others who always thought they were out of the line of fire. Perhaps this is the only way they'll wake up. Read the rest of this post...

Bush is purging CIA

Newsday reports that the mass exodus of senior CIA staff is no coincidence. Bush has ordered a purge of CIA employees who don't agree with the president's agenda. As we noted below, this is incredibly dangerous. Whatever you think of the CIA, it does NOT exist to skew its intelligence to any political agenda. They're the agency that it supposed to privately tell the president "the way it is," then the president can do what he wants with the info. In this case, Bush is demanding that the CIA tell him what he wants to hear, and that is not only incredibly stupid, it's a very serious risk to our national security for years to come.

If we had a real Democratic party, they'd be all over this. Harry Reid, where are you?

From Newsday:

The White House has ordered the new CIA director, Porter Goss, to purge the agency of officers believed to have been disloyal to President George W. Bush or of leaking damaging information to the media about the conduct of the Iraq war and the hunt for Osama bin Laden, according to knowledgeable sources.

"The agency is being purged on instructions from the White House," said a former senior CIA official who maintains close ties to both the agency and to the White House. "Goss was given instructions ... to get rid of those soft leakers and liberal Democrats. The CIA is looked on by the White House as a hotbed of liberals and people who have been obstructing the president's agenda."

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More red state - blue state fodder

I hate to beat a dead horse, but maybe it isn't that the red states just oppose gay marriage -- it seems they oppose marriage generally.

Guess where divorce rates are highest? And guess where they're lowest?
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I'm asking Porter Goss nicely...

The Washington Post has some of the details about the brewing mutiny at the CIA. Porter Goss, the guy who recommended massive cuts in the intelligence budget as a member of Congress, apparently prefers to meet with the personal staff he brought with him from the Hill. My guess is he's more comfortable with them because they treat him with the respect he wants.

Now, I like Hill guys. They get politics pretty well, they're quick studies by nature, and usually they're interested in developing solutions that work. But apparently, these Hill guys -- from the House Intelligence Committee -- were mostly (if not all) low- to mid-level CIA guys who never really distinguished themselves. As most Hill guys would, they saw the writing on the wall and found other jobs.

Well, now they're back at the CIA and they're in positions of power. And the senior, experienced guys at CIA have to answer to them. But it seems to me that rather than actually listen to these senior guys, and try to make things work, Goss' boys are prancing around like Fredo Corleone would, demanding respect while never really having to do the heavy lifting themselves. They're already using their bruised egos as an excuse to talk to people like David Brooks at NYT. It's probably just a matter of time before they do something worse. You know, like maybe out a covert agent.

There may be a few places you can act like Fredo and not end up like he did, but I'd be willing to guess the CIA is not one of them.

So, I'm gonna ask Porter Goss, nicely, and with respect, will you please keep your family in line? It's kind of important.
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Say Hello To...

...a teetotaling Mormon (one of the most anti-gay groups in the country). A former Capitol Hill cop. A staunch opponent of abortion. A co-sponsor of the constitutional amendment to ban flag-burning.

Who is it? A rising star of the "traditional values" Republican Party? Some new young turk who came into office on the coattails of George Bush?

Nope! It's Harry Reid of Nevada, the new face of the Democratic Party and the Senate minority leader! That's right: an anti-choice, anti-free speech, anti-gay, heck even anti-beer Senator is the spokesman for the Democratic Party. Write it down. Because with his record, that might be hard to remember.

P.S. By the way, don't expect him to deliver. Reid couldn't even deliver Nevada, even though Bush broke his promise to the state and tried to dump radioactive waste in their backyard.
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Glass Half Full In Fallujah? Or Leaking?

Fallujah -- everyone reports similar facts about that city and Iraq in general. But what conclusions do they draw?

The manly headline in today's New York Times:

U.S. Armored Forces Blast Their Way Into Rebel Nest in Falluja

Damn! We're kicking ass! But then there's the far less rah-rah headline in today's Independent in the UK:

Violence erupts across Iraq and aid agencies warn of disaster as US declares battle of Fallujah is over

Damn! That sounds pretty awful! Which description do you believe?
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