Comments and Archives

Blogger has a new interface and internal comment support, so for a bit you'll see two options in the comment category. The archives appear to missing parts at the moment. Don't know what that means. Forget the past though, I'm sure to repeat everything many times, but Commenting is good. Speak up!

Warned and Warned and Warned.

Californians, along with much of the world, have been warned about the uncertainty and critical importance of water supply. They have had close calls, dire straits, water fights, and warning lists as long as your arm, but they persist in poor planning. Along with practical action to avoid disaster, how shall we institute accountability for those who risk millions ignoring environmental and scientific facts?

Yet another editorial warning for those in civic office to ignore:

A drought of this severity naturally calls into question the definition of "normal." It appears, in fact, that what is normal is an oscillation in climate, from wet periods, like 1976 to 1998, to dry periods, which have recurred with some regularity. So far, this is a five-year drought. But no one knows how long it will last. The climatic history of Arizona, for instance, has been reconstructed by painstaking analysis of tree rings. That research shows that there have been two droughts that lasted 18 years and one, near the end of the 16th century, that lasted 28 years. Tree-ring evidence also shows that for parts of Arizona, 2002 was the driest year in the past 1,400 years.

This drought still isn't as dire as the one from 1900 to 1904. But everything in the West has changed since 1904. In fact, everything has changed since 1976, when two wet decades led to an almost unimaginable explosion of development and population across the region, an explosion that, in some places, is rapidly drawing down underground aquifers. In the short run, that pace of growth is unsustainable. In the long run, the question is whether the West can sustain even the growth it has managed so far.

from, The Arid West
Published: May 10, 2004, New York Times online.

Furthermore, this is yet another symptom of the sickness of willful ignorance on the part of a gargantuan population, ever growing, and ever less willing to be accountable for understanding. The problem with public service, as with public education, is the Public, and any effective leader will have to make that point and make it stick to make lasting policy change. Like any child, the Public wants a leader who'll set limits and have high standards for them. The permissive and capricious panderer to bases and blocks for coalitions of support to gain "winnability" degrades the already torpid body of the Public.

New York Times Calls for Rumsfeld's Resignation

THE NEW IRAQ CRISIS
Donald Rumsfeld Should Go

Published: May 7, 2004

"This page has argued that the United States, having toppled Saddam Hussein, has an obligation to do everything it can to usher in a stable Iraqi government. But the country is not obliged to continue struggling through this quagmire with the secretary of defense who took us into the swamp. Mr. Rumsfeld's second in command, Paul Wolfowitz, is certainly not an acceptable replacement because he was one of the prime architects of the invasion strategy. It is long past time for a new team and new thinking at the Department of Defense."

NPR : Talk of the Nation for Tuesday, May 4, 2004

NPR : Talk of the Nation for Tuesday, May 4, 2004
This was an excellent show about the Arab Media and its response to market share. As the Arab world is angered at the US, it falls victim to the same media addiction/market share cycle that has produced the "godless America" they so despise. We aren't the perpetrators of a mindless addiction to a media machine, but merely the first victims.

[posted with the "BlogThis!" feature, under which neither the IESpell spellchecker nor the Blogger spellchecker would check.]

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IESpell - Reviews and free downloads at Download.com

A toolbar based spell checker for IE, available for free at Download.com. Checks your spelling when you fill in boxes in your browser. Good for search engine submissions, blog posts, etc.

Even George Will says it

Time for Bush to See The Realities of Iraq, By George F. Will:

"Ron Chernow's magnificent new biography of Alexander Hamilton begins with these of his subject's words: "I have thought it my duty to exhibit things as they are, not as they ought to be." That is the core of conservatism.

Traditional conservatism. Nothing "neo" about it. This administration needs a dose of conservatism without the prefix."

--Washingtonpost.com column by George Will, May 3.

Dowd on the Neocon Disconnect

Maureen Dowd asks what we all should:

"Can't the hawks who dragged us into this hideous unholy war at least pay attention to a crisis of American credibility that's exposing Iraq and the world to more dangers every day?"

From Shocking and Awful, By MAUREEN DOWD, Published: May 6, 2004, New York Times.

Friedman Offers Urgent Suggestions to the Wandering Neocons

From Restoring Our Honor, By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN, Published: May 6, 2004, New York Times:

"Mr. Bush needs to invite to Camp David the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, the heads of both NATO and the U.N., and the leaders of Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Syria. There, he needs to eat crow, apologize for his mistakes and make clear that he is turning a new page. Second, he needs to explain that we are losing in Iraq, and if we continue to lose the U.S. public will eventually demand that we quit Iraq, and it will then become Afghanistan-on-steroids, which will threaten everyone. Third, he needs to say he will be guided by the U.N. in forming the new caretaker government in Baghdad. And fourth, he needs to explain that he is ready to listen to everyone's ideas about how to expand our force in Iraq, and have it work under a new U.N. mandate, so it will have the legitimacy it needs to crush any uprisings against the interim Iraqi government and oversee elections — and then leave when appropriate. And he needs to urge them all to join in."

One more alarm sounds--how many times can you hit the snooze?

Doom and gloom for the day: Why Antarctica will soon be the only place to live - literally. Further warnings that we should think about what we do. There are Six Billion of us, and now more than ever our actions add up in a disturbing way.

Meanwhile over at the more staid CNN.com: Global warming debate aside, West is heating up, in which the loss of millions of trees in the American west to beetle infestation is described as a result of six years of drought, also possibly linked to human action. If something nice were possibly to blame for all of this, I could see holding off for more info, but it's cars and cows for crying out loud. I'll even give you cows, but cars are ugly, filthy, expensive, dangerous tools used by humans to substitute for their lack of personal integrity and intelligent thought.