Tuesday, July 15, 2008

Global Warming Bush Prayer and Wishful Thinking

Bush Regime attempts to make reality to fit their ideology and belief system. Sometimes they are also just plain greedy .

Bush and the Neocons have decided that a human life is not worth what it use to be. So much for their concern for human life. Since human life is not worth as much and profits are more important they see no problem with causing the deaths of Americans by way of pollution, dirty air and dirty soil and dirty deadly water are not so bad afterall.

US Environmental Agency Lowers Value of a Human LifeThe Guardian UK reports:




"It sounds like a spot of gallows humour, but the numbers are no joke: the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has lowered the value of a human life by nearly $1 million under George Bush's administration. The EPA's estimate of the 'value of a statistical life' was $6.9 million as of this May - down from $7.8 million five years ago - according to an Associated Press study released today."


Though it may seem like a harmless bureaucratic recalculation, the devaluation has real consequences.When drawing up regulations, government agencies put a value on human life and then weigh the costs versus the lifesaving benefits of a proposed rule.The less a life is worth to the government, the less the need for a regulation - such as the tighter restrictions on pollution that the EPA refused to impose today, effectively postponing any action on climate change
until after Bush leaves office.Consider, for example, a hypothetical regulation that costs $18bn to enforce but will prevent 2,500 deaths. At $7.8m per person (the old figure), the lifesaving benefits outweigh the costs. But at $6.9m per person, the rule costs more than the lives it saves, so it may not be adopted....Dan Esty, a senior EPA policy official in the administration of the first President Bush and now director of the Yale centre for environmental law and policy, said: "It's hard to imagine that it has other than a political motivation."

The devaluation also raised alarms in Congress, where Senate
environment committee chairman Barbara Boxer vowed to introduce legislation reversing the EPA's move."EPA may not think Americans are worth all that much, but the rest of us believe the value of an American life to our families, our communities, our workplaces and our nation is no less than it has ever been,"
Boxer, a Democrat, said.

-----The members of the Bush Regime and their supporters live in a world of fantasy and wishful thinking. Again we are reminded how this group in many ways have the characteristic of a cult with a fanatical belief system which they believe is true and beyond criticism.so much for being concerned about the facts on the ground they are only to be taken seriously when they agree with Neocon ideology and belief system . Their belief in Intelligence Design and the Rapture makes them predisposed to distrust all science and rational thought. So if they all hold strongly to their belief that Global Warming is not true and that will make it so. That will prove that Global Warming is just a lie told by leftists , atheists and liberals . They apply the same logic to the Iraqi War and occupation. Suddenly some neocons are claiming the war is nearly over and has been won. So how does one define victory. A country destroyed hundreds of thousans dead three or four refugees. Besides it was supposed to be a cake walk over in a few months or a year. Its like the soldiers in the first world war who were told each year it would be over by Christmas.


Cheney Aides Altered CDC Testimony, Agency Official SaysCheny Aides Altered CDC Testimony, agency official says 08 July 2008by: Juliet Eilperin, The Washington Post


Ex-administrator says official from vice president's office edited out six
pages. Members of Vice President's Dick Cheney's staff censored congressional
testimony by a top federal official on the health threats posed by global
warming, a former Environmental Protection Agency official said today. In a
letter to Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), who chairs the Senate Environment and
Public Works Committee, former EPA deputy associate administrator Jason K.
Burnett said an official from Cheney's office edited out six pages from the
testimony of Julie Gerberding, director of the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention, last October.Several media outlets, including The Washington Post,
reported at the time that Gerberding had planned to say that "CDC considers
climate change a serious public health concern," among other passages. Boxer
said the administration feared that Gerberding's testimony would force it to
regulate greenhouse gas emissions from burning fossil fuels. The White House has
opposed mandatory limits and insisted that voluntary measures and increased
research are the best way to address the problem. "The Council on Environmental
Quality (CEQ) and the Office of the Vice President (OVP) were seeking deletions
to the CDC testimony," Burnett, a 31-year old Stanford-trained economist and a
Democrat, wrote in response to an inquiry from Boxer's committee. "CEQ requested
that I work with CDC to remove from the testimony any discussion of the human
health consequences of climate change." Burnett, a member of the wealthy Packard
family, has given more than $100,000 to Democratic campaigns in recent years,
including $3,600 to Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama (Ill.). He
did not identify who in the vice president's office called him.
anyway
Bush On the Environment : Wrong, and Proud of It Until The very End
at Huffington Post by Jeremy jacquot July 14, 2008


Perhaps no single moment best encapsulated Bush's (dismal) record on the environment than his final meeting at the G8 summit. Fists pumping defiantly into the air -- much to the surprise (and, one can assume, consternation) of his fellow world leaders -- Bush gleefully proclaimed: "Goodbye from the world's biggest polluter." While many have dismissed this comment as a poorly conceived joke, I can't think of a more frank, emblematic statement from a president who still refuses to acknowledge the severity of global climate change.

Granted, Bush has hardly been the chief obstructionist in his administration when it comes to climate change talks and regulation. That dubious honor certainly goes to Mr. "conservation-is-a-personal-virtue" Cheney, whose influence has only seemed to grow during the Bush presidency's final months (of course, one could argue that it has always been at its peak). Yet, whether it be through his early and consistent opposition to the Kyoto Protocol and other emission targets or his renewed embrace of offshore drilling (alongside his good friend, John McSame), the Decider has pulled out all the stops to ensure "science" doesn't get in the way of his shenanigans or those of his friends from the oil industry.

As he did on most of his early (somewhat commendable) 2000 campaign promises, Bush quickly reversed his pledge to regulate carbon dioxide as an air pollutant and ditched all efforts to give even a remote semblance of governing from the middle (remember that "compassionate" conservative talk?) by booting all independent-minded bureaucrats in favor of his ideological, incompetent cronies. Predictably, that resulted in years of censored climate science research, little to no progress on the issues of conservation and alternative energy and, of course, giveaways galore to the already uber-profitable fossil fuel industry.

and more on the environment as Bush Lifts Presidential Ban On Offshore Oil Drilling
Monday 14 July 2008 by: Elana Schor, The Guardian UK


George Bush has today lifted a presidential ban on oil drilling off American coastlines that was first signed by his father - a symbolic move aimed at pressuring Congress into lifting its own similar ban.

Skyrocketing gas prices in the US have set off feverish political debates over offshore drilling, which was banned by Congress in 1982 and by former president George HW Bush in 1990.
Most Democrats point out that drilling off the coast of Florida, California, and other states would have a negligible effect on the nation's current fuel crisis but a potentially devastating effect on tourism as well as the environment.


anyway as for John MCain and how far to the right he is:

John MaCCain appears to be shoring up his support from Religious Right.

July 8, 2008 McCain Winning Over the Right With SCOTUS Talk People For The American Way


John McCain's courting of Religious Right leaders
and activists started off badly, culminating in the
Rod Parsley/John Hagee debacle back in May, but since then, the campaign seems to have regained
its footing and subsequent lower-profile efforts have been startlingly
effective:As we noted a few weeks ago, McCain quietly met with a handful of
right-wing leaders at which he was pressured to start talking more in public
about the issues they care about and, as if to signal that he heard the message
loud and clear,
announced the next day that he supported the anti-gay California Marriage Amendment.
From that point, things began to pick up and just last week,
he secured the support of a bevy of right-wing activists like Mat Staver, Tim and
Beverly LaHaye, Phyllis Schlafly, Rick Scarborough, and David Barton. Just last
week we were noting how the Right, even though not traditionally supportive of
McCain, was
working diligently
to remind its supporters that the future of the Supreme Court is at stake in the
next election. It seems that the McCain campaign has been
playing up that angle in its outreach efforts as well:Mr. Burress said he, Eagle Forum
President Phyllis Schlafly, former interior secretary and Christian Coalition
leader Donald P. Hodel, WallBuilders founder David Barton, Liberty Council
counsel Mathew Staver and others have been moved to work for the election of Mr.
McCain. He cited mostly their trust in several McCain promises - to make
judicial appointments that will resemble that of Chief Justice John G. Roberts
Jr. and Justice Antonin Scalia, to "get serious" on abortion and same-sex
marriage, and to push values issues in general. It looks like this is a
coordinated message that the McCain campaign and its surrogates are committed to
spreading far and wide:A pro-family activist and former presidential candidate says
people of faith cannot afford to endure four years of Barack Obama in hopes that
he will be defeated in 2012. Gary Bauer says it's all about the Supreme Court.
----Written by Sean Clarach MacDomhnail --------------------

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