Mind Vomit by the ikss ~ a journal
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�Once in his life, every man is entitled to fall madly in love with a gorgeous redhead�
-Lucille Ball
"To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public."
--Theodore Roosevelt, 1918
REGISTER TO VOTE
"The time is always right to do what is right"
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
"The "seven social sins": Knowledge without character,
Science without humanity,
Wealth without work,
Commerce without morality,
Politics without principles,
Pleasure without conscience,
Worship without self-sacrifice."
--Gandhi
"We have not inherited the world from our forfathers -
We have borrowed it from our children."
--Kashmiri, proverb
~~~
So Bye-bye Joe, I guess. Lieberman, that is. Personally, I won�t miss him much.
At approximately 9:57pm last night, folks walking through the Belmont Shore/Bluff Park area of Long Beach may have heard me shouting: �Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!�
This was after Catie did not get booted from America�s Next Top Model.
One thing I failed to mention yesterday was my hatred for spoiled little Catie who cries at the drop of a hat in efforts to gain sympathy. I thought perhaps she would be sent home last night. Instead, they sent home the short (well, by model standards. She�s 5�7� which in my family would make her an Amazon) and quasi-quirky Jenascia. Bummer. I kind of liked her. She even lists Family Guy as her favorite t.v show. What�s not to love?
And did I mention my enormous amount of dislike for Catie? Cuz seriously...She so needs to go home.
Last night�s show was an all around fabulous snark-fest, I must say. These girls is so catty. True hilarity, boy howdy.
~~~
BUSH MISLEADS PUBLIC ABOUT CAUSE OF DEFICIT
On the same day the White House unveiled its 2005 budget, President Bush calculatingly obscured the reason the nation now faces a record $500 billion deficit. He said, "The reason we are where we are, in terms of the deficit, is because we went through a recession, we were attacked, and we're fighting a war."
But according to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, the single biggest cause of the deficit is the president's massive tax cuts for the wealthy -- which he conveniently did not mention. Specifically, 36% of the deficit comes from the tax cuts, while only 31% comes from defense/war-related spending increases, and the rest comes from the economic slowdown. In fact the president actually acknowledged in last year's budget that the deficit is primarily his fault. Table S-3 of Bush's 2004 budget "shows unambiguously that the administration's fiscal 2004 budget proposes a massive annual increase in the deficit" and that without those proposals the nation would return to surplus. In other words, the president is falsely invoking national security, the terrorist attacks of 9/11, and the war in Iraq to hide the fact that his tax cuts for the wealthy have created the largest deficit in American history.
With 88% of Americans now believing that the deficit is a "very serious" or "somewhat serious problem," the president has also tried to blame government spending for the deficit. But again, as the CBO notes, spending is at "a lower level than in any year from 1975 through 1996." And as the president starves veterans health care, low-income housing, and health care programs of funding, he is pushing more than $1 trillion in new tax cuts, primarily for the wealthy.
Read the full Mis-Lead
~~~
Administration OKs Drilling On Endangered Sea Turtles' Beach
The Bush Administration has approved extensive gas drilling in a national park that is the main U.S. nesting beach for the most endangered sea turtle in the world.
The National Park Service under President Bush has given the green light to "an aggressive drilling campaign" that could involve drilling 20 or more natural gas wells on Padre Island National Seashore in Texas. And it did so without formally consulting with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, as required by the Endangered Species Act.[1]
"It's a case of -- perhaps literally -- running over a critically endangered species on the way to pocketing profits on public lands," George Frampton, chairman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality and assistant secretary of the interior for fish, wildlife and parks under President Clinton, told BushGreenwatch.
"It is disturbing that the Interior Department would fail to get a formal opinion from their own biologists before allowing the drilling."
In 2002, BNP Petroleum of Texas began drilling its first well in the park, the longest undeveloped barrier beach in the world. Park Service approval for a third drilling permit is likely soon, despite the use of the island by the Kemp's ridley sea turtle every spring for nesting.
Each drilling operation involves plowing an access road through the dunes, allowing hundreds of trips by tractor-trailer trucks up and down the beach, bulldozing a square-mile site or more for each well pad, and installing a 100-foot-tall rig, according to Fred Richardson, a Texas volunteer with the Sierra Club who has monitored the issue.
The drilling puts in jeopardy 25 years of work by the Park Service to bring back the Kemp's ridley sea turtle in the U.S.[2] They are the smallest and most critically endangered type of sea turtle in the world, with only about 3,000 to 5,000 adults remaining.[3] Padre Island is also the only U.S. location where all five protected species of sea turtles in the Gulf of Mexico have nested.[4]
The main risk to turtles is the heavy trucks on the beach. The trucks could crush nests or pack down the sand so that hatchlings are unable to emerge from nests. Even the vibrations from rumbling trucks can increase the likelihood of embryonic damage or mortality, according to the species' official "Sea Turtle Recovery Plan."
When Padre Island was named a national seashore in 1962, the rights to minerals underneath the island remained in private hands. Over the years, limited gas exploration has taken place, but after 1973, production fell off.
"When the Bush Administration came into power, the oil companies decided to launch an aggressive drilling campaign," said Sanjay Narayan, a Sierra Club attorney who unsuccessfully sued to stop the drilling.
Richardson said another serious impact of the noise, traffic and sight of the drilling is on the recreational experience for park visitors. And on that, the National Park Service has refused to conduct a survey of visitor opinions.
"The Bush Administration doesn't want to hear what visitors have to say," Richardson said. "Their agenda is that all public lands are open for business."
SOURCES:
[1] Sierra Club press release
[2] National Park Service
[3] Ibid.
[4] National Park Service biologist Darrell Echols, Endangered Species Bulletin, Jan/Feb 2002
~~~
Word of the Day for Wednesday February 4, 2004
pulchritude PUL-kruh-tood; -tyood, noun:
That quality of appearance which pleases the eye; beauty; comeliness; grace; loveliness.
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~~~~~~~~~~~peace, love and smooches~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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