THE WEEKLY GREEN PLANET

Iowa: What Counts -- The Romney Takeaway

2012-01-04T06:45:00.000-08:00

Mitt wins IOWA 2012 by 8 votes, 6 votes less than he received in 2008.

The chattering classes have another 28 days until South Carolina to fan the dying embers of this Republican Primary season into something more than a fizz-out. Romney will win New Hampshire and come very close if not outright win in South Carolina and it will be all over but the shouting. Here's a sampling of such pointless punditry:

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0112/71061.html

http://www.thetakeaway.org/2012/jan/04/

http://www.businessinsider.com/the-big-takeaway-from-iowa-75-percent-of-republicans-dont-want-mitt-romney-2012-1

The voters who will decide this year's Presidential election are still asleep.

What matters is not that Mitt Romney is clearly an underwhelming choice for President as viewed by Iowa caucus-goers and the right-wing, dogmatic, misinformed base of his own party.

What matters is that Mitt Romney will be an attractive choice for the undogmatic, uninformed will-o-the-wisp independents who decide American elections.

Iowa and the lunacy of the GOP field up until now is just so much sausage-making.

GRASPING AT STRAW POLLS

The perhaps more telling vulnerability that Mitt has shown appeared again last night in his 'victory' speech. It was in his forced, emotionally disconnected, pressurized ramble. Like his offer to bet Perry "10,000 dollars" it had the impulsive, thin-skinned hauteur he shows when he's threatened and disappointed.

Last night in Iowa that was likely due to the fact his 'handlers' had told him he would win and allowed him to go out and publicly declare himself the likely winner -- which he did -- only to find himself in a tie with a political non-entity, the latest NOT-ROMNEY.

Likely, most of the sturm-und-drang for Mitt the Twit is over for now. At the hands of our overly-civilized President he's likely to have a cushy ride until the end of October. But, if the economy ticks up and Romney's numbers go a bit south, the breathless, desperate Mitt and his wacky faith in his own anointment could provide the result most desired and that's best for the country.

Romney will undoubtedly be forced to run away from the Tea Party death squads in Congress who have destroyed every positive, conciliatory initiative the Democrats have offered. With no coat-tails of his own then, even a fairly narrow defeat of Romney could portend a sizable rollback of the Congressional crazies and leave a second Obama term with a thin, but governable working majority.

Well, No Newt Is Good Newt

2011-12-24T08:01:00.000-08:00

Gingrich out of Virginia primary election

www.reuters.com
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Leading Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich has failed to meet the requirements to be in the primary election in his home state of Virginia, the state's Republican Party

Would someone please excoriate the GOP and the media for treating this unseemlyl food fight they call a nominating process as though it were a serious exercise when in fact it's transparently been 6 dwarfs on a book and self-promotion tour (ala Palin, the Queen of the new “Reality Show” politics-as-a means-of-achieving-instant-celebrity and wealth) with a petulant periennial candidate who their whole party basically can’t stand (Mitt the upperclass twit).

Breaking Non-News! Palin Not Running

2011-10-05T16:01:00.001-07:00

Just wanna say before yall come breakin' down my door asking me to run for President, just to save ya the time and energy now that that fat guy from New Jersey has said he's not gonna run either, I figure I should let you know before that groundswell of support I could feel building out there got to be a regular Tsuranami, that I, Sarah Palin, won't be running for President either... So you don't need to bother asking.

The Book Biz -- 1201 SE 7th Avenue Portland, OR -- What Amazon Allows

2011-04-06T09:24:00.000-07:00

"Dropshippers?"

What are they?

A 'dropshipper', for the uninitiated, is a volume buyer of books -- college texts, art books, any item at all -- who then ships them on to buyers elsewhere. At much higher prices, to places many local sellers may not want, or be able, to ship to, e.g., Eastern Europe.

The above address -- 1201 SE 7th Avenue Portland, OR -- is one most sellers on Amazon greet with dismay when it appears as the destination of a sales order. There are a host of buyers at that address, all possessed of Eastern European surnames (their nationality being utterly irrelevant except as it connects them) whom most surmise are "dropshippers".

At least that's been their cover. There's no law against it and no reason, therefore, Amazon should not allow them to operate with impunity.

Except these folks generate a huge number of seller complaints. Why?

Because they chronically harass small sellers with bogus orders, subsequent email requests for unpaid expedited shipping and refund demands for flawless items.

It happens with such regularity buying books would hardly seem to be their sole object.

Long threads on the AMAZON SELLERS COMMUNITY are filled with similar complaints. These complaints are met with lots of pushback from a handful of repeat "posters" (whose posts number in the thousands, "posters" whose names are unconnected to any seller account and who post so frequently they could hardly be managing sales operations). These "posters" appear to be professional scolds. Acting anonymously, they repeatedly attest to the reliability of these "dropshippers" and uniformly bat down, sometimes nastily, the complaints and demand sellers comply dutifully with sales requests.

It's hard to tell, consequently, how much of the "dropshippers" buying is untroubled and headed overseas, and how much is systematic harassment.

Not coincidentally, a software company at the same address sells an automatic "book pricing" product -- a product that insures a seller's price will remain lower than his competitors' by automatically lowering the price to below that of a comparable book.

That company, too, is headed by persons of the same nationality (again relevant only as it suggests a connection to the dropshippers) and a transparent connection to the dropshipping operation (whose seller name cannot be ascertained) has been suggested.

What both organizations have in common appears to be a form of price-influencing.

The dropshippers "buyer harassment" buys frequently target small sellers (and items) whose prices have undercut the outrageous sums some huge Amazon sellers ask for allegedly "new" out-of-print books. These huge sellers, who almost all certainly use pricing software on their cheaper books, can ask and get extravagant prices for rare "new" books when they are able to maintain a monopoly on books listed in "new" condition.

Both organizations at this Portland address appear to be coordinating what is essentially an 'arbitrage' operation. (They buy a 50-buck book to remove it from the market so the volume seller can sell their copies at $200 while degrading the value of the small seller's book through shipping wear and their assertion the book was never "new"). This complements their predatory pricing software in instances where volume sellers specifically don't want software to automatically reset prices -- i.e., dropping their $200 allegedly "new" book to $49.95.

And Amazon would appear to benefit from these harassing practices. It keeps prices and Amazon commissions high! So that while the pricing software sold at this address may make the price of many abundant, inexpensive book titles somewhat more competitive, Amazon gains far more by allowing these buyer/seller price-fixers to use the advantage of their size and coordination to maintain monopolies on "new" condition hard-to-find titles.

That Amazon is aware of these activities and account aliases and links (having spoken and written repeatedly to them) seems almost certain.

But, crucially, it would be hard to prove in court without access to all Amazon emails (including internal ones).

Why they don't stop them -- since Amazon is a power unto itself -- appears not unrelated to the fact pattern here presented.

But the real tortious question may be how much damage they do not to sellers, but to buyers. When Amazon is faced with a class action they may move expeditiously to end these practices.

Sheen For Gaddafi Switch Shakes Up TV Schedule

2011-03-01T09:50:00.001-08:00

2 AND A HALF MEN to resume production with 'new' dictator; Libya to be ‘liberated’ by 'Carlos' Sheen.

In a daring move that both sides hope will immediately calm roiled waters, CBS and Tripoli switched-out self-proclaimed avatar geniuses. While the result appears to simultaneously solve huge PR and logistic problems sources close to the deal acknowledge the hasty trade of drug-addled stars involves substantial risks.

“I have told CBS that, while I am very excited for this new opportunity, I can only commit to one season,” said the former ruler from the Endeavor offices of agent Ari Emanuel. "Though I am thrilled to be working with the greatly talented Jon Cryer and Chuck Lorre, two giants of our industry.”

Meanwhile, frosh helmer Sheen subtlely shifted the focus of his recent diatribes. “Libya, under my leadership, remains unalterably opposed to the state of Israel and its terrorist agent, Chaim Levine.” On ankling his CBS series, the sitcom wildman said, “Sure, I hate to walk away from a fight, but do you know how much rock I can buy with 30 billion dollars?”

Sheen may at best be a temporary fix for Libya an aide to Secretary of State Clinton conceded, and execs at CBS were more than a little worried their top-rated show can survive with the Libyan strongman headlining. “Look, there’s no doubt Moamar can do comedy. But it remains to be seen whether American audiences will buy a show topped by a delusional egomaniac who isn’t a child of Hollywood royalty.”

Internet Access Blocked In Egypt -- Could It Happen Here... PLEASE!!

2011-01-28T13:28:00.000-08:00

BEST CASE SCENARIO FOR 2012 ELECTION: If the 2010 midterms are a Republican Landslide

2010-10-18T19:06:00.000-07:00

October 18th, 2010

The Democratic Prospects For 2012 Through Rosey Colored Glasses

The over/under on the midterms for Congress is, as of today, a likely loss of 50 seats by the Democratic majority. That's 11 more than the GOP need to take control of Congress. It's a very large shift even for an off-year electon where the out-party traditionally picks up seats.

Reliable pollsters say it's possible the Republican may even pick up as many as 70 seats. And should they merely pick up 40 seats on election day, falling far short of prognostications, the national media will nonetheless paint this as an epochal defeat for the Democrats, for this administration, for health care, liberals and progressives of all-stripes.

In the short-term we will be asked to believe the sky is falling, or has fallen, that the Tea Party has completely altered the political landscape, and that Barack Obama is fated to be a one-term President.

Okay. Not so fast. Rationally it simply does not add up.

So, in coming weeks, when you feel an anxiety attack coming on, when you begin to wonder what again is wrong with this nutty nation of ours, stop and take several deep breaths.

Then consider the actual political landscape and the inevitable swings and over-reaches that occur. Because, in fact, objectively, prospects for 2012 (even if the Republicans manage to exceed a netgain of 50 seats) will remain rather good. Maybe even better than good.

First off, remember, out-parties almost never nominate candidates for President from their ideological base EXCEPT in years where they stand little chance of winning. (E.g., Barry Goldwater in 1964).

However, 2012 might prove the exception. Like Reagan in 1980 who was the exception to prove the rule, a candidate who had nearly ousted the incumbent President, Ford, in 1976, and bowed out relatively gracefully after, Reagan was owed the nomination. But there don't appear to be any Reagans out there right now.

Additionally, there are a number of developments with probabilities that have to be graded as better-than-even that will make a Republican nominee's prospects difficult. (Better-than-even events listed in red)

1) An improving economy. Signs are that as low as we have gone and as uneven as it has been, continued growth, though slow, decreasing unemployment numbers and slight inflation (rather than the dreaded 'deflation') are the most likely conditions the next 24 months. And it is all about the economy. Period. A positive directionality will favor the party in power.

2) The Republican takeover of the House will produce vivid scenes of Republican-led legislative chaos and internecine bloodletting. Boehner's leadership will see a challenge. Someone has to introduce a repeal of Heathcare. There will be other Angles, O'Donnells, Bachmanns and the '94 Contract On America Congress will probably look like a well-ordered Weimar rally by comparison. No one will be able to ride herd on these cats.

3) Talks with the Taliban. Likely? Maybe not. But it's in the air, and how would that fact coupled with a careful, cautious, orderly draw down of troops in Afghanistan beginning in July of 2011 look?

4) The repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" with the blessings of the Joint Chiefs. You think not?
The commission reports in December. I bet it will at worst merely be equivocal, favoring the repeal and the open service of gays and lesbians in the military.

5) The Obama Deficit Reduction Commission also is due to report in December. It will lead to deficit proposals and legislation.

6) How about instead of another terrorist attack on American soil, or in Europe, something slightly unexpected -- the capture or killing of Bin Ladin? Impossible?

No matter the fine-grain outcomes, the likelihood is that January, 2012, when the first Presidential Primaries roll around chances are Obama's re-election won't appear certain, but good enough to guarantee a contentious, expensive, divisive battle between the Republican establishment (Mitt Romney probably backed by Glenn Beck) and the insurgent Tea Partiers, hopefully led by Sarah Palin. That will be a knife-fight that should make Obama-Clinton look like a love-in.

This battle royale, even if it sucks most of the oxygen out of the media air, won't be stealing fire from a weak, crowded field of hopefuls struggling for attention. Like in '08. It will be backstopped by the sight of a confident, competent leader dealing with the day-to-day business of governing this lunatic asylum we call a country.

Don't be too quick to bet against President Barack O'Xanax in that scenario whatever the noise is now.

Obama Aides Unanimous -- Woodward "A Dick"

2010-09-22T10:09:00.001-07:00

BP means Blowout Preventer

2010-05-31T07:09:00.000-07:00

from the bp media glossary

Blow·out pre·vent·er: \'blō-aut pri-'vent-ur\ 1. an untested virtual device whose “failure" and/or "malfunction” is designed to deflect blame in the event of an actual blowout.

Obama Says "April Fools -- No Healthcare!"

2010-04-01T07:23:00.000-07:00

"Or drilling off the coasts. Gosh, you'd think folks would know me better than that by now."

Actually, the WGP thinks #44 may be getting the hang of this POTUS job. No, oil drilling will not be the boon its' proponents suggest. But if you're dealing with a lethally toxic environment, and that's what energy, health care, the environment and all things political have become you have to be prepared to face reality.

The reality is that there is oil off American shores, an enormous, ever-increasing demand for energy worldwide and, in an economic environment that leaves progressives almost no margin for error, no room in which to gesture grandly toward one's base making awkward shows of idealistic principle before facing the real politik of life on this planet in 2010 .

It asks progressives of every stripe to, "Grow up." Immediately. Or, in the less sensitive, but more spot-on assessment of Rahm Emanuel, to not be "retarded."

This includes the venerable but not worthy of veneration New York Times who today ran a piece of 'news analysis' or 'idea-lite', an everything-you-need-to-know-is-in-the-title article with this piece of thoughtfulness: RISK IS CLEAR IN DRILLING, PAYOFF ISN'T by John Broder and Clifford Krauss. Hope that didn't take you all day, guys.

The WGP is also very much for the nuclear option. And not just for use on Republicans and tea party people (see, I called them 'people'). But as a carbon-clean transitional energy source, along with wind and solar. Bury the stuff. Deep. 10,000 years is a long time. If the French can do it without a 3-Mile Island maybe we can, too. With French governmental regulation.

Scott Brown, Sarah Palin Merge To Create Super-race Of Stupid Republicans

2010-01-22T18:22:00.001-08:00

Or was that "stupid race of super-Republicans?"

No matter. It's still an irresistible match, even if only envisioned with the help of free morphing software.

CNN: Please, Turn Us Off! (Climategate)

2009-12-09T10:29:00.000-08:00

CNN habitually provides a platform for the likes of Christopher Horner, a man essentially shouting fire in a crowded theater when it comes to global climate change.

It allows boldly asserted lies, e.g., his assertion that the climate change data has been fabricated, to go essentially unchallenged – as though the most outrageous statements need no refutation, and then CNN’s anchors (in this case Campbell Brown) take the provocateur’s statement as the predicate (“Climategate”) for a debate among responsible talking heads who are asked to defend against these baseless charges.

The result is irresponsible journalism of the most egregious kind. But 'good' TV as a TV producer might say. It's the modus operandi of this so-called news organization. Never, for example, in Horner’s case are his thoroughly disreputable and totally self-interested bonafides stated, let alone questioned. In fact, Horner’s only ostensible means of income is the CEI, an advocacy group based in Washington DC that calls itself "a non-profit, non-partisan research and advocacy institute dedicated to the principles of free enterprise and limited government,” but is, in fact ,a consortium of rabid, unrepentant and unscrupulous energy companies, energy company-owned foundations, and private foundations whose fortunes were amassed from tobacco and oil. But his wholely unfounded claims become the basis of a bogus discussion. His expertise, if he has one, is as a lawyer/lobbyist, a paid flack with no science background whatsoever. "Why," Campbell Brown then opines with a supercilious shake of her walnut mane, "Why would climate scientists around the world conspire to claim the earth is getting warmer?" What ensues, inevitably interrupted by the energy company pitbull Horner with snide insinuation and totally groundless authority, centers on what motivation NASA, NOAA and the world community of climate scientists could possibly have to conspire to rig data or falsify a conclusion about global warming. Reasons are inevitably offerred and apologies and explanations profferred. But the entire exercise is an obscenity -- a big lie. It’s an abuse of the air-waves. It should be punishable by FCC license revocation as once-upon-a-time it was.

CNN is simply a money-grubbing rumor-mill. No better than Fox in many ways, and hardly superior to the kind of ranting and hyperventilating found on MSNBC by Keith Doberman. Why do they do it?

Below, from Simulmedia.com are two graphs which explain why absolutely NO REPORTING of any kind was done for over two hours during CNN's promotion of the bogus balloon boy story October 15th, 2009.

As we see in the chart and graph below, the CNN ratings skyrocketed with the balloon’s flight last Thursday as the story first “aired.”

The set top box tune in to CNN Newsroom between 1 and 4 pm EST on October 15^th was more than 1.6 times higher than on the three previous Thursdays at the same time. The tune in to The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer more than doubled in comparison to each of the three previous Thursdays. At 6:14pm EST, CNN reported that young Falcon Heene had been found. The story’s arc culminated for the night, and the prime time CNN ratings returned to normal levels.

The less obvious effects of spectacular viewership spikes on breaking news may prove more interesting.

http://www.simulmedia.com/2009/10/cnn-ratings-soar-with-the-balloon-boy/

simulmedia.com yuliya torosjan

(BLOG IN PROGRESS...)

POLITICAL CORRECTNESS, FT. HOOD & THE RIGHT

2009-11-27T08:25:00.000-08:00

Or, You Can Get Anything You Want... Except An Honorable Discharge!!!

THE PALINS & CHENEYS who know so much about the armed forces in general, never having served, are leading the chorus of blathering 'tea-baggers' and morons-general, sounding the alarm of political correctness.

They hint, over and over, ad nauseum, that the reason Nidal Malik Hasan wasn't drummed out of the service before he became the shooter in the Fort Hood 'terrorist attack' -- and it's critical to them it be called a 'terrorist attack', as if the term weren't meaningless enough, believing there's political gold to be mined suggesting it represents a lessened level of alert now that W and his crew of incompetents are gone -- is that these days our armed services are incredibly sensitive to political correctness.

Are they insane?! Short answer: Yes. Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, these guys think driving a Hummer makes them military experts.

You don't get out of this man's Army, now or ever, particularly after they've spent HUNDREDS of THOUSANDS of DOLLARS training your sorry-ass to become a DOCTOR, when you couldn't have got into a legitimate med school as a civilian with an automatic weapon -- just because you've printed up some business cards with SofA (Soldier of Allah) on it.

Or made your Muslim, anti-war on terror views publicly known. Or merely acted crazy.

"No way, Pal. You think this is going to get you a discharge?!" The Army Brigadeer says to Dr. Hasan when he submits his umpteenth discharge request. "Now, suddenly, you're a conscientious objector? I'll tell you what THIS is going to get you -- a deployment to Iraq!!

According to NPR, fellow students and faculty were strongly troubled by Hasan's behavior, which they described as "disconnected," "aloof," "paranoid," "belligerent," and "schizoid."

"And I walked in and sat down and they gave me a piece of paper, said,
"Kid, see the psychiatrist, room 604."

And I went up there, I said, "Shrink, I want to kill.  I mean, I wanna, I
wanna kill.  Kill! I wanna, I wanna see, I wanna see blood and gore and
guts and veins in my teeth!!!... And the sargent came over,
pinned a medal on me,sent me down the hall, said, "You're our boy."...

And when I finally came to the see the last man, I walked in
and I walked up and said, "What do you want?"  He said,
"Kid, we only got one question. Have you ever been arrested?"

And I'm pleased to see this man's army hasn't changed one whit.

Obama Wins Cy Young & MVP in National League

2009-10-09T12:24:00.000-07:00

"I'm humbled," The President said today when he heard of the announcements, "I'm honored, and I have to say I do think, in this case, the Cy Young, at least, is premature. " Off the record a surprised White House Staffer was heard to say, "What the 'eff'? Who's the American League going with, C.C. Sabathia?"

On the heels of the Nobel Peace Prize, an undeniable momentum seems to be building for the newbie Prez. At Harrah's, a representative for the Sports Book said it was, in his view, unprecedented. "I have to tell you, we haven't even made our book yet. But moving into the awards season, unofficially, he's odds-on to win Best Director, I shit you not."

Vegan: Won't Eat Anything That Has A Facebook Page

2009-10-09T10:09:00.000-07:00

Creature from Vega

Given it's deeply held conviction about the sanctity of life, this visitor from a neighboring solar system has vowed NOT to eat social networkers. Weekdays.

Vega, of course, is the brightest star in the constellation Lyra, the fifth brightest star in the night sky and the second brightest star in the northern celestial hemisphere, after Arcturus. It is a relatively nearby star at only 25 light-years from Earth, and, together with Arcturus and Sirius, one of the most luminous stars in the Sun's neighborhood.

So, it really makes a lot of sense that a being from Vega might take such a stance.

What is more surprising perhaps is what this reseacher discovered on his own:

RAPIDLY SPINNING STAR HAS COOL DARK EQUATOR

That's right, good diet can really make a difference in your appearance. And one thing it effects is your waist. If you're cutting down on fat calories stay away from empty ones.

Fox News Finds Commie Czars On Nobel Committee!

2009-10-09T09:11:00.000-07:00

"Yes, 'Commie Czars'!, or, oops, correct that, 'commissars'... How do you pronounce that word? Where's my producer? Who works here now? This can't be right.. 'Obama wins the Nobel'? Okay. Would somebody please check the wire services. This is a joke...Isn't it? Frank,' Commissars' or ' Commie Czars', what am I supposed to be saying here?"

On an open mike, Fox News Announcer (or Correspondent) Carl Cameron was heard to mutter the above today. Yes, the President of the United States was handed the Nobel Peace Prize today, and, yes, Fox News has it on good authority -- none -- that members of the Nobel Prize committee are both communists and pre-soviet totalitarian royalists, the two not being mutually exclusive in the world of Fox News.

Which is more surprising, the enthusiasm for the Obama Presidency on the Nobel Committee, or the certainty it's the work of a conspiracy by America's number one source of cable news?

OUSTED HONDURAN PRESIDENT ZELAYA WON'T RETURN -- WILL ASSUME GOVERNORSHIP OF SOUTH CAROLINA!

2009-07-01T07:46:00.000-07:00

Former President ZELAYA -- He's the new Governor!

In a cagey bit of state-craft Wednesday, the Obama administration defused two potentially volatile political situations with one move. Gov. Mark Sanford (R) of South Carolina in a bloodless surrender of power in Columbia announced that on Thursday he plans to vacate the remainder of his term. "I hope to devote myself full-time to interviews and a book of love poetry." One he said he's been hankering to write, "for quite some time now."

Meanwhile, President Zelaya will assume Sanford's duties, retaining the option to run for another term in 2010 -- a sticking point in the Honduran upheaval. In agreeing to assume the governorship, Zelaya is seen as avoiding a likely violent confrontation with the military and oligarchs in his native Honduras had he chosen to return.

Former Governor Sanford -- "He's Zelaya!" says his wife

Reports that the former Governor will go back to Honduras himself later this week seeking to serve out the remainder of President Zelaya's term are called 'premature'. An aide said, "Mark's experience with Latin America, though positive, has been very limited up to now. And he's not sure he's prepared to go there yet. In fact, avoiding an armed confrontation -- with his wife Jenny -- was what drove this decision in the first place."

Best Articles On The Economic Crisis / Credit Meltdown

2009-04-06T06:31:00.000-07:00

Here are the best pieces by general consensus on our American-led worldwide economic woes, credit crunch, financial collapse. Up to now. No keywords excluded. All suggestions welcome.

Many will have read much that's here. Finally willing to take a look at the ongoing implosion, it was surprising not to find in googling a single site offerring the best of these worst of times.

Please don't hesitate to recommend links. Articles will be added as they appear. Michael Lewis's Portfolio.com piece is highly recommended.

Portfolio.com: The End Of Wall Streets Boom

Vanity Fair: Wall Street Lays Another Egg

Rolling Stone: The Big Takeover

Atlantic: Why Wall Street Always Blows It

Wired: Recipe For Disaster

Atlantic: How The Crash Will Reshape America: Meltdown Geography

Harry Shearer / Le Show Receive Federal Bailout

2008-11-23T11:13:00.000-08:00

Ahead of the nation's automakers and subprime mortgageholders, humorist Harry Shearer and his Le Show radio program have received a generous bailout package from President-elect Barack Obama. Heard locally on KCRW, 89.9, Santa Monica, Le Show has for the last 16 years depended on two recurrent serials, Clintonsomething and phone calls between 41 and 43 (the senior and junior Georges Bush) for much of its mirth, and audience.

With the election of Barack Obama, Le Show, however, appeared headed for comedic Chapter 11. After all, how far can one go airing Apologies Of The Week? Deprived of its two hit staples, the extent of Le Show's impending woes were only fully revealed this morning when the versatile voice-artist delivered an absolutely 'brown bag' impersonation of the new President. Hopeless.

The nondescript phone-distorted voice of the Illinois senator was heard successfully negotiating with Hillary Clinton to become the next Secretary Of State. The ever-resourceful Shearer, having prevailed upon friends Bill and Hillary to take the cabinet post, then used today's episode to launch a revamped version of one of his most popular long-running satires.

Clintonsomething: The Obama Years will, hopefully, provide Shearer's Sunday morning show with sufficient chuckles to bridge any laugh deficits before the next election cycle. Which begins in early March.

ANOTHER BLACK EYE FOR THE G.O.P.

2008-10-24T19:24:00.000-07:00

McCain Worker Attacked And Brutalized Over Bumper Sticker

Published October 24, 2008

In an incident which seems like it epitomizes much of the anger and bitterness of this election season, a McCain campaign worker from College Station, Texas who was in Pittsburgh helping to work a phone bank was robbed and then attacked, brutalized, and disfigured in what appears to be a politically motivated hate crime...

Police Declare 'Mutilation' of McCain Campaign Worker a Hoax

By Greg Mitchell

Published: October 24, 2008 2:00 PM ET

NEW YORK It had drawn wide local and national -- even political attention, with some of the candidates for president/vice president weighing in or even calling -- but now the story has fallen apart. Police in Pittsburgh have declared it all a hoax, and are charging the McCain worker at the center of the episode...

John Moody, executive vice president at Fox News, commented on his blog that "this incident could become a watershed event in the 11 days before the election. If Ms. Todd’s allegations are proven accurate, some voters may revisit their support for Senator Obama, not because they are racists (with due respect to Rep. John Murtha), but because they suddenly feel they do not know enough about the Democratic nominee. If the incident turns out to be a hoax, Senator McCain’s quest for the presidency is over, forever linked to race-baiting."

Hey, GOP! It’s Not Too Soon To Start Pointing Fingers

2008-10-23T07:22:00.000-07:00

Well, it sure looks like McCain has lost. The real question now is how badly and why?

Enthusiasm for a prospective Obama Administration is only exceeded these days by hopes for a very public internecine conflagration in the Grand Old Party. There's so much blame to go around, so many villains -- dupes, incompetents, mush-headed intellectual poseurs, con artists, buffoons, bullies, liars and plain, old hypocrites -- that the circular firing squad will need gatlin guns. And who but the Republicans come well-armed enough for this kind of genocide?

It would require a virtual Encyclopedia Of 21st Century Republican Blunders to tell the whole story. In reverse chronological order one wonders who’s to blame for: The Ayers Strategy, The Palin Choice, The McCain Campaign Suspension To Do Nothing About The Bailout Package, The World Financial Crisis, The Military Failure In Afghanistan, The Iraq War Debacle, The Katrina Disaster, The Global Warming Denials, The 10 Trillion Dollar Deficit, Enron, Energy Deregulation…?

What’s next? Who’s going to lead your party?

What’s the GOP's next new great idea?

Got Ideology? Milk it.

Is Palin the future of your party?

Is Romney?

How bout Mike Huckabee?

Are you set to become the party of the low-information right and hidebound social conservatives too resentful to vote their own self-interest? Or... What other choices do you have?

For a history and credit list of McCain's Campaign Bunglers, see next weekend's New York Times Magazine article, "The Making And (Re)Making Of John McCain"

A powerful and somewhat counter-narrative about the selection of Sarah Palin can be found in Jane Meyer's "The Insiders" piece this week in the New Yorker.

The real story of Sarah's selection will be some time in the making. Clearly, the competing stories have as their essential difference the extent to which John McCain was the agent of or the unwitting victim of her selection.

Someone, whom exactly varies with the version (and neither of these articles even tries to dabe dabes), apparently told the Senator that he could not have his first choice, Joe Lieberman. The real question is who put their foot down, how hard and with what rationale.

The Palin battle for the soul of the party looms as the most interesting and potentially devastating conflict on the GOP horizon. But the number of self-inflicted wounds that her nomination has already caused is heartening.

For example, the doyenne of conservative commentators, the ever-fatuous and dishonest Peggy Noonan who is treated with such undeserved deference and is such an unabashed shill for whatever bullshit is being peddled by the Republicans, has this performance after the Palin-Biden debate to live down.

"She killed"

For Noonan to then write, a few days later in the WSJ, when it was apparent Palin's debate performance was largely a flop:

"In the end the Palin candidacy is a symptom and expression of a new vulgarization in American politics. It's no good, not for conservatism and not for the country. And yes, it is a mark against John McCain, against his judgment and idealism."

Makes her over-the-top "assessment" a transparent instance of the kind of tone-deaf, and to a degree ideologically blindered punditry, she has always practiced. Her cred suffers. She, after all, helped give us W., too.

McCain UnAbel

2008-10-11T10:02:00.000-07:00

McCain UnAbel to stop his war machine.

Now we have some inkling of what John McCain's "my fellow prisoners" slip was about. He views himself as surrounded by hostiles. This isn't a unique situation for him. It's likely the reason McCain repeatedly boasts of not having been voted "Miss Congeniality" in the Senate. At heart, McCain is a man who really can't tolerate affiliation. He shamed his father by finishing next to the bottom of his class at the Naval Academy. Short of permanently destroying his own future, one can only guess how tempted he must have been to accept the offer of early release from his captors at the Hanoi Hilton since it also offered him the ultimate opportunity to humiliate his father.

He disdains everybody, that's the kind of "Maverick" McCain is -- no surprise his campaign lurches from scheme to scheme, that it's been criticized for having no governing philosophy. He flies, when he's not crashing, by the seat of his pants.

But in this parallel to the Cain and Abel story, McCain has once again crashed into enemy territory. His palin' around with Palin has him rolling around in the rabble-dregs of his potty. Embraced by the base he hated.

Now that he has them up in arms, he's bearing the mark of Cain. The election is pretty much over, even should there be a terror attack. But in the combustible climate of the current financial meltdown McCain needs to pull ads and publicly retract the Ayers' crap if he wants deniability when the shooting starts. Some trigger happy gangstas should let Cain know he's marked if anything happens to O.. No Keating.

WGP PREDICTS: OBAMA'S VEEP... GOV. ED RENDELL

2008-08-21T09:09:00.000-07:00

May have waited too long to make this prediction. I posted the reasons on WikiAnswers about a week ago.

Recapping, here's why... Gov. Ed Rendell will BE the Vice Presidential nominee.

He of all the name office-holders best serves the most compelling of the Obama campaigns needs. Besides bagging PENNSYLVANIA, he is

1)The least objectionable and probably closest FOB and FOH of the prospects
2)The best demographic fit with OHIO voters
3) Jewish, offering Obama a huge leg up in FLA.
4) He is a middle-class "lunch bucket" moderate who is the former Chairman of the DNC (Unity, unity, unity)
5) His strength is pocketbook domestic issues (bucked Unions and instituted an Rx program in Penn), i.e. he helps most with white middle-class men.
6) His lack of national foreign policy experience is preferrable to being out of touch with working-class white men in an election that will turn on a souring economy.
7) He blows the 'elitist' label out of the water. Particularly if McCain chooses Romney.
8) His having been kept out of the national limelight will make his choice seem an energizing stroke of genius. Which is probably why the 3 dwarves (Kaine, Bayh and Biden) have been so publicly paraded.

RICHARDSON is the other, even greater choice, but the Clintons have probably vetoed his nomination, refusing to let will him to be rewarded for what they regard as his treachery.

Earlier prediction is available at http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Would_Barack_Obama_consider_Rendell_for_VP_running_mate

Top 10 Reasons Hillary Should NOT Be The V.P. Nominee

2008-05-08T12:50:00.000-07:00

If an impartial or inexperienced observer doubted how ruthless, unethical, shameless and destructive the Clintons can be, the last days of her campaign should have now erased any uncertainty.
Having fueled her bankrupt campaign using the kamikaze calculation that she had nothing to lose (that her negative, attacking posture would either result in a victory or force Senator Obama to assume her debts -- the 11 million dollars she loaned her campaign) she’s now attempting through minions like George Stephanopoulos, whose Clinton White House exit was dogged by whispers of proclivities which could account for his servility, to coerce a place on the ticket.

So here are the TOP 10 REASONS WHY HILLARY CLINTON SHOULD NOT BE OFFERED THE VICE PRESIDENTIAL NOMINATION

10. The only undisclosed location where she truly feels secure is inside the Oval Office.

9. Socks, the Clinton cat, needs a larger lawn to mark her territory… as does Bill (and to those who say she’s dead, the Clintons point out only the superdelegates can determine that)

8. Though older White Women love her, they make up a smaller proportion of general election voters than in the primaries. And only they, among the voters she scared up in the last phase of the race, are her native constituents. Poorer and less educated whites were, in general, voting a preference and are far more likely to be attracted to a Democratic ticket where the VP-nominee actually appeals to them (e.g., Edwards, Clarke or Jim Webb).

No matter how many boilermakers she pretends to knock back, or how good she gets at pumping gas, these folks are not her folks. And everybody knows it.

7. She should be offered the Vice Presidential nomination after, and only after, Bill Clinton heads off on his critical, four-year fact-finding mission… to Uranus.

6. She brings enormously high negatives. Not only would she, personally, be a drag on the ticket, she comes with heavy baggage. Beyond Bill, the laundry list of suspicious dealings, shady characters and scandals that were scrupulously not trotted out by the Obama campaign, or the media, will be endless aired in the general election.

5. Though 60 to 70 % of all Democrats consistently rated her campaign more negative and attack-oriented, Clinton voters consistently reported they would defect to McCain at higher rates. Typically 30% to 20%. Gee, what could explain it?

How about, she was losing. In other words, childish resentment. Had the situation been reversed the numbers would have been higher, and for cause.

So it's a good index of particular partisans' transient unhappiness with the state of the primaries, but a poor indicator how Democratic voters will behave in the election.

4. The raison d’etre for many Democrats in the primaries was to find an electable candidate who would not carry the deficits of a Bill or Hillary Clinton into the Fall.

Giving her the Vice Presidential nomination utterly and totally defeats the point of his insurgency.

3. If an Obama/Clinton ticket did somehow manage to win the election it would almost certainly lead to a fractious, volatile, divided government, two centers of power with differing constituencies vying in an endless rivalry.

That, in and of itself, would be reason for any unbiased, thoughtful, non-partisan voter to NOT vote for the ticket. Period.

2. The mere fact Hillary Clinton needs the Vice Presidency means she hasn’t, like Lyndon Johnson, been able to achieve a decent working relationship with Senators of even her own party let alone members of the other.

She soiled her nest. Let her clean it up.

She’s a straw dog.

We’ll listen and applaud loudly to her long, rousing primetime speech at the convention.

We will honor her and her husband's long service to the nation.

She should, perhaps, have a voice in choosing the Veep, even some influence on Obama's advisers and cabinet.

But the Number One reason Hillary Clinton can and should be denied a place on the Democratic ticket is...

She lost the goddamn nomination, goddammit!!!

MORMONS HAVE GREAT SECTS

2008-04-17T10:11:00.000-07:00

A nation rubbernecks. Texas

Who's more Waco, the state's child protective services for rounding up 416 people with April 19th fast approaching on the basis of a single phone call placed on a cellphone (i.e., from 'anywhere, u.s.a.), or the co-religionists practicing multiple marriage and statutory rape within?

Compounding a felony

Bill Clinton Comes To Jesus -- "I Love My Wife, But I Support Barack Obama"

2008-03-18T09:07:00.000-07:00

"The speech Senator Obama delivered today -- on Race in America -- was so extraordinary, such a remarkably frank opening toward a healing of our national divides, I have no choice but to acknowledge the obvious and offer my own personal witness to the exceptional opportunity his candidacy provides...

This man, this senator, this Barack Obama is the man this country has long waited for, the man this country needs, the man we, indeed, must elect our next President. I'm sorry, Hillary. I hate to disappoint you. Again. But the truth is the truth, and when the spirit moves us, the flesh must follow..."

IF HILLARY OUTRUNS THE TIDAL WAVE...

2008-02-25T14:10:00.000-08:00

Today, Frank Rich agreed with our post of February 21st, "Hillary's Blunder From Day One"

OPINION February 24, 2008 Op-Ed Columnist: The Audacity of Hopelessness By FRANK RICH "The Clinton camp has been the slacker in this presidential race, and its candidate’s message, for all its purported high-mindedness, is self-immolating."

He goes on to point out that Obama has so far evidenced far and away the superior management skills

And here is another disturbing fact that has also so far gone under reported, ignored, or simply unnoticed. Perhaps in attempting to be balanced no one has noted the main determinant behind the trendline that has been moving in Barack Obama's direction since "Day 1".

The movement of support for Hillary to support for Obama has thus far followed a simple, straightforward information pyramid. A game of telephone.

In fact, it appears to be the only rule support for Obama has obeyed. His growing 'movement' has resisted confinement to the categories on which political bases are normally founded. So far, his appeal has had almost nothing to do with interest groups. Neither race, religion, economic strata, education, nor ethnicity has been relevant in determining where his core support lies

Only one factor has been a reliable predictor -- access to information.

Obama's support has increased obeying a simple metric, moving from those most informed (the college educated) to those less informed to those least informed. The only possible exception might have been his support among African-Americans that took a sudden jump just before and after the South Carolina primary. But Bill Clinton whacked the jungle drum exceedingly hard those days (under an assumption that has always proved true in the past, the more black support a black candidate has the more uneasy white support becomes). That may well account for the sudden dramatic shift to Obama in that community.

If you have any doubt check out the two new polls in Ohio just released today. (Linked below)There's been a big switch in just the last two weeks. At the top of the information totem pole. College-educated voters have gone from +5 for Hillary to +25 for Obama.** (again, see below)

That shift accounts for almost all the gain in the Quinnipiac survey in the last two weeks. And that corresponds to every other shift we've seen. If California's primary were help today Hillary Clinton would lose. Nationally, she's now trailing by a good margin. The Obama wave sweeps over each primary state as the primaries come into focus in each new information micropolis.

The point is this -- even if Hillary Clinton should somehow manage to outrun the information stream long-enough to capture the nomination she will be viewed, ultimately, fairly or not, as undeserving of the nomination. It isn't worth it at that price. Or, certainly, it shouldn't be.

**A Quinnipiac University Poll indicates Clinton's lead over her opponent has slipped to 51 percent to Obama's 40 percent. Less than two weeks before, Clinton was favored 55 percent to Obama's 34 percent. Ohio's primary will be held March 4.

The poll, which surveyed 1,853 registered Ohio voters from Feb. 18-23, shows a particular erosion of support for Clinton among college-educated voters, who favored the candidate 46 percent to Obama's 41 percent earlier in the month. That sector of voters now favors Obama 58 percent to Clinton's 33 percent. http://www.bizjournals.com/dayton/stories/2008/02/25/daily3.html

Hillary's Blunder From Day 1 -- Running Obama's Campaign Pt. 5

2008-02-21T09:17:00.000-08:00

The campaign sound-bite that Senator Clinton has offerred ad nauseum for her candidacy emphasizes her readiness "from Day One" -- ''Both Senator Obama and I would make history, but only one of us is ready on Day 1 to be commander in chief, ready to manage our economy, and ready to defeat the Republicans."

As sloganeering goes, it's sad. It draws attention to a deficit even as it trumpets her main asset. What about "Day Two," and Three, Four and Five..?

Not only is the claim modest, it seems to concede her learning-curve might not be as steep as her opponents'. Should a crisis arise sometime after the first weeks and months of the next President's inauguration, her edge is debateable. But even this claim has been called into question by the on-the-ground reality of the primary season.

Having watched her campaign flounder attempting to find a compelling rationale for her candidacy, or a consistent message, while squandering huge sums of money -- her husband had the temerity to suggest her campaign's under-performance this month was, in fact, over-achieving given it's been run on 'a shoestring' -- it's no longer fair to assume she has any edge over Senator Obama in competency. From Day 1, or otherwise.

In fact, the management of these rather massive political campaigns, both Republican and Democratic, are a very good measure of the candidates aptitudes for governance. They are the biggest executive operations any of them have ever managed. And if people are truly interested in judging their management skills, rather than making empty debating points, you have a pretty fair indication of what to expect.

"What has Barack Obama ever accomplished?"

Well, this campaign season, he and his staff have run a seamlessly efficient operation. Mere competence has triumphed over massive advantages in experience. McCain's campaign went broke, absolutely belly-up, dead in the water. It was the result of a management style that befits him, inattentive delegation to the nuts and bolts of the operation. His professed weakness, a disinterest in economics, reared it's head. It's a style much like George W. Bush's, without the dishonesty.

Hillary's campaign has been plagued by dissension. Not surprising. Conflict is her (and her husband's) metier. This battling and embattled style is further weakened by another design flaw, one that seems to flow from Hillary's own disposition. After all, it was she who blamed "a vast right wing conspiracy" for sabotaging her husband's administration. Consequently, she has surrounded herself, again, by an arrogant, closed circle unable or unwilling to learn from events.

The organization that has appeared most organized?

Judging by his campaign, this guy Obama should run for President.

A famous fighter, Oscar Bonavena, once said of experience, "Experience is like being given a comb after they have shaved your head."

Raw "experience" is over-rated as a crucible of character. Since every morning brings a new day, and each new day entirely new situations, "learning" from experience is a unique aptitude that shows up early, or not at all.

Hillary and John McCain haven't learnt much from their experiences.

IF YOU'RE LOOKING FOR THE SKINNY ON OBAMA'S CAMPAIGN STAFF, their bios and positions, scroll down to Running Obama's Campaign, Pt. 3

And the Nominees Are... Or, PUTIN ‘08

2008-02-19T09:55:00.000-08:00

Who will it be, Obama or Hillary? The answer here. Lots of noise and a maze of speculative information plagues the public arena on who is “winning". There are hosts of news organizations whose websites show a variety of pledged and unpledged superdelegate counts. These usually combined with a host of uncertain and widely varying counts of the actual elected delegates.

So how will it be decided? No one is prepared to say for certain, except that no candidate will win enough delegates outright. One scenario being bruited about is that Al Gore and/or perhaps John Edwards and a coven of other party elders, Biden, Dodd, Richardson, will confer and somehow intervene. But the benign Big Brother solution seems wishful. Most likely, to this observer, the writing will eventually be on the wall.

This can only happen once a consensus evolves. And the Democratic delegate-selection debacle – a foray into true representative democracy – has kicked up too much dust to offer any clarity before the Pennsylvania primary. The candidate best able to garner un-electorally earned delegates (Hillary Clinton) will, most likely, find it in their interest to keep the writing from appearing on the wall even then. Given that Sen. Clinton and her husband are the “big dogs” in this fight, short of a knockout, they’ll use the confusion to try and force Sen. Obama to take the Vice Presidential slot and call it the best solution.

The alternative, which may well emerge, particularly if the blogosphere picks up the cry, is to rely on the one fairly stable and certain indication of support – the raw total vote count. See REAL CLEAR POLITICS

Florida’s vote can be included, maybe has to be included. But Michigan’s vote can’t reasonably be credited. This makes the large primaries in Ohio, Texas and Pennsylvance hugely important. Sizable pluralities for Hillary, no matter how the resultant delegate apportionments are reduced by savvy management of resources by the Obama campaign, will get her the raw vote lead and, almost certainly, the nomination.

RUSH LIMBAMA: THE BARACK EFFECT

2008-02-18T17:23:00.000-08:00

What new painkiller is rightwing talk radio jockey Rush Limbaugh sucking on these days?

Today, he announced that, "You know what name would excite me for McCain’s Vice President… Bobby Jindal." Jindal, the India-born newly-installed Governor of Louisiana, has been at his job something like three months.
One can only conclude, since Rush is not a Clinton Kool Aid-drinker, he’s on some powerful drugs of his own. This after he spent weeks excoriating McCain as a poisonous traitor to the conservative Republican bedrock. Here he is announcing, no, declaring excitedly for a moderate, son of the third world who’s been Governor slightly longer than the lifespan of a mayfly. But, what the heck, if you can’t beat them, join them. Has the Obama bug become so powerful that, having stung the racialist religio-fascist Limbaugh, it has produced a case of candidate-envy so strong Limbama is lobbying Republicans to pick someone with even less experience, and a more exotically ‘diverse’ background?

He’ll take any kind of diversity, just so long as its not this Democrat Obama. Tomorrow, my money is that he’ll claim he was joking.

It's the anxiety of influence. Limbaugh's afraid he's about to not have any!

Clinton's Fake Shake-Up -- What Else Is New?

2008-02-12T06:22:00.000-08:00

Hey, the Clinton change in campaign managers (from Patty Solis Doyle to Maggie Williams) is just another slick bit of marketing from the savviest campaign ever to seek a third term as President.

Why do it? And why do it now? Ah, yes. Timing. Tuesday Clinton will lose three more primaries in the "Potomac" region. She just lost Maine after losing Washington, Nebraska and Louisiana.

This change is touted as no change at all. And it isn't. Ms. Williams is just getting a new title and so is Ms. Solis. But it lays the predicate for suggesting, when Hillary wins Texas and Ohio, which she is expected to do, that some wondrous turnabout has occurred.

It doesn't hurt at this point to show her flagging supporters that 'change' is in the air. And she will need all the help she can get from the media by the time Texas and Ohio roll around.

It's making the most of a bad situation. This is the Clinton magic. That they constantly find themselves in 'bad situations' is of their own divisive doing.

What her campaign is most desperately in need of is a 'rationale' -- a reason to vote for her, a reason she's running. But, absent that, manipulating the atmospherics will have to do.

So far, the only 'real' event, the only primary that really varied from the predicted outcome, was New Hampshire. An event which may well have been inflected by Hillary's tears. They were real enough one supposes. But her reason for crying -- that she so desperately wants to do great things for our country -- was transparent baloney which even those moved to sympathy could see through.

What these Clintons might have been had they only been honest...

Running Barack Obama's Campaign Pt. 4

2007-12-23T03:29:00.000-08:00

Watching the Republican Presidential Candidates this year we learn three things...

There is a god!

She's black... And a Democrat!!

Not ruled out

The Truthiness Of Green Nanotech (Pt.- 2)

2007-08-08T07:56:00.000-07:00

As Promised, a follow-on to the previous post. How troubled is the technological panacea of nanotechnology? Well, there's this:

Nanotoxicity: A New Discipline
Dr. Mae-Wan Ho

A fully referenced version of this article is posted on ISIS members’ website. Details here

Nanoparticles – billionths of metre in dimensions - produced by nanotechnology have unusual properties not found in the bulk material, which can be exploited in numerous applications such as biosensing, electronics, photovoltaics, diagnostics and drug delivery. However, research within the past few years has turned up a range of potential health hazards, which has given birth to the new discipline of nanotoxicity.

Researchers in the University of Texas in the United States found that carbon nanotubes squirted into the trachea of mice caused serious inflammation of the lungs and granulomas (tumour-like nodules of bloated white blood cells in the lining of the lungs), and five of the nine mice treated with the higher dose died ("Nanotubes highly toxic", SiS 21) [1, 2].

In a similar experiment carried out at the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health in Morgantown, West Virginia, in the Unites States, researchers not only found granulomas in the lungs, but also damage to mitochondrial DNA in the heart and the aortic artery, and substantial oxidative damage, both foreshadowing atherosclerosis (hardening of the arteries) [3].

In yet another similar experiment in Tottori University, Japan, researchers showed that within a minute of contacting the mice’s tiniest airways, carbon nanotubes began to burrow through gaps between the surface lining cells and into the blood capillaries, where the negatively charged nanoparticles latched onto the normally positively charged red blood cells surface, thereby potentially causing the red blood cells to clump and the blood to clot [3].

Researchers from the University of Rochester, New York, reported an increased susceptibility to clotting in rabbits that had inhaled carbon nanospheres (buckyballs, an isotope of carbon shaped like a tiny football) [3].

Buckballs present in water at 0.5 parts per million were taken up by largemouth bass, which suffered severe brain damage 48 hours later, the extent of damage being 17 times greater than that seen in controls [4].

Nanoparticles in the lungs are translocated to the circulatory system and from there throughout the body, accumulating in the liver, spleen, and bone marrow [5].

Nanoparticles inhaled through the nose and air passages are translocated to the brain through the olfactory nerves, and accumulate in the brain [5].

Nanoparticles can enter the body through the skin; and quantum dots injected into the skin accumulate in lymph nodes with potential effects on the immune system [5].

Quantum dots consisting of a core of fluorescent cadmium selenide, touted as a non-invasive way to image internal body tissues, break down in the body, releasing cadmium, a toxic heavy metal [6].

In August 2005, the International Council on Nanotechnology (ICON) and Rice University’s Center for Biological and environmental Nanotechnology (CBEN) launched an online database of scientific findings related to the risks as well as benefits of nanotechnology [7]

(http://icon.rice.edu/research.cfm). Searches using common key words such as "quantum dots" and "nanospheres" gave zero returns in September 2005, which shows it is far from adequate and hence could well be misleading.

(POST in progress...)

Time Out For Baseball -- The Bonds (Rx) Prescription

2007-07-17T06:21:00.000-07:00

On the eve of Barry Bonds overtaking Hammerin' Hank for the all-time home run record, the Weekly Green takes time out from its planet-saving duties to address the Great Asterisk Controvery.

Since most fans agree an asterisk not only fails to preserve records achieved under vastly different conditions -- famously, Maris' unofficial "61*" -- we propose a notation that accounts for the "player" not the "record" having been alterred.

For example, using this method the current standings for lifetime HR's would look like this:

1 Aaron..........755
2 Bonds(Rx)..751
3 Ruth............714
4 Mays...........660
5 Sosa(Rx).....602

RUNNING BARACK OBAMA'S CAMPAIGN (PT.3) -- Who IS Running His Campaign?

2007-07-14T10:48:00.001-07:00

Some of you, drawn by our ongoing feature, Running Barack Obama's Campaign, have lately visited this site searching for clues to Obama’s campaign staff.

Good, it’s time people started wondering. Because, frankly, to this point they rate a C-

If you're looking to contact them (hint: find the websites for their consulting firms, email them there) direct them here, too. I’ve listed his team below starting with David Axelrod.

Axelrod’s TV presence has been decidedly underwhelming. A low-watt, not very suave media presence, he delivers determinedly content-free spin. Is that the strategy, to dance while Hillary closes in on the nomination? Described as "the strategist at Obama’s right hand, perhaps the best-known Democratic consultant working outside of Washington, D.C., equally adept at sensing the right metaphor for high-minded aspirations and at finding the vulnerable spot to savage an opponent," none of those qualities has yet been on display.

Besides fundraising, what is there? Where are the articulate, passionate public policy addresses? Lincoln left a raft of writings from barnstorming speeches prior to his election that gave every indication he was, in the Emersonian sense, a Representative Man. Brilliant analyses of the constitutional questions of the day.

Barack Obama needs to do something similar. There's plenty to talk about. For example...

With the next election ours for the losing, Democrats can’t rest. Some big-time inoculation is needed immediately in the ever-so-likely event of another terror attack.

That means a rhetorical preventive strike. He needs to say LOUDLY and repeatedly that the country remains in jeopardy, that the politically unglamorous work of dismantling terror cells, of penetrating and neutralizing our enemies has yet to be done. That this administration's decision to fight a noisy, unnecessary war rather than focus on that difficult, secret work has left us more, not less vulnerable. While we've been fortunate not to have had a terror attack since 9/11, this administration has made the job of drying up support for Al Qaeda and rolling up its organizational base that much more difficult. But it's a job that must be done, and he intends to make certain it gets done.

America needs to know the terrorists love these Republicans the way Fire loves Gasoline.

They, the terrorists, more than anyone else have benefitted from this administration's ham-fisted approach, so we should not be surprised when they do everything in their power, including another terror attack, to bring another version of Geo. W. Bush back in ’08.

Okay, the rest of the Obama campaign team seem to be ...

Robert Gibbs, communications director, a campaign veteran;

David Plouffe, an Axelrod partner who worked on Obama's 2004 Senate campaign;

Bill Burton, national press secretary for the House Democrats' midterm campaign;

Julianna Smoot, finance director for John Edwards' 2004 campaign and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee in 2006

Peter Giangreco, a Chicago-based media consultant and veteran of the Iowa caucuses;

Cassandra Butts, who first met Obama at the financial aid office at Harvard;

Betsy Myers, chief operating officer. Executive director of the Center for Public Leadership at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government (and sister of Dee Dee Myers, Clinton's first press secretary)...

But the group most tightly circled around Obama is a longstanding one, made up of old friends who share an understanding of how he works. Key players include straight-talking Valerie Jarrett, a veteran of Chicago Democratic circles and John Rogers, head of Ariel Capital Management, a friend of Michelle Obama's brother Craig Robinson, with whom Rogers played basketball at Princeton…

If Barry isn’t up to honing his sound-bite rhetoric he might just as usefully be letting us see his thinking in crafted addresses. Fundraising does not a campaign make.

The Truthiness Of GREEN Nanotechnology

2007-07-12T08:52:00.000-07:00

Since 42% of the public in a recent poll had no idea what ‘nanotech’ is, lets spend a moment explaining it. Nanotechnology involves imaging, measuring, manipulating and manufacturing things on a scale of 1-100 nanometers. A nanometer is 1 billionth of a meter; a sheet of paper is about 100,000 nanometers thick.

Nanotechnology was first introduced as an idea in 1959 when conventional-sized robot arms were instructed to construct a replica of themselves one-tenth their original size. Then, using that new set of arms (and instructions) they were made to manufacture an even smaller set. Theoretically then, the demonstration suggested the process could be repeated until the molecular scale is reached. A nanorobot, therefore, is/was a theoretical device measured in nanometers that when fully realized works at the atomic, molecular and cellular level to perform tasks in both the medicine and industry.

Nanoprobe attaching to a red blood cell -- CGI 'vision' of nanotech at work

THE GOOD NANO NEWS:

When Floyd Landis won the Tour de France last year it was a victory for nanotechnology. Landis road a bike that was enhanced with carbon nanotubes. As a result, the frame of his BMC Pro bike weighed less than a kilogram, just under 2.2 pounds.

It’s estimated that nanotech in some way, shape or form is already part of $30 billion dollars worth of consumer products this year.

Here is the Nanotechnology Consumer Products Inventory – http://www.nanotechproject.org/index.php?id=44 as maintained by the Pew Trust-endowed Project On Emerging Nanotechnologies. Their website lists over 450 items.

Back in April the Project released a report, "Green Nanotechnology: It's Easier Than You Think," which outlined ways to harness nanotech's power. It explores the benefits of linking nanotech with green chemistry and engineering to minimize environmental impacts through resource-conserving and waste-eliminating improvements in processes and products.

The report focused on four areas:

Creating new nanotechnology-enabled products and processes that are environmentally benign - or "clean and green";

Managing nanomaterials and their production to minimize potential environmental, health, and safety risks;

Using nanotechnology to clean up toxic waste site and other legacy pollution problems;

Substituting green nanotechnology products for existing products that are less environmentally friendly.

For example, James Hutchison, a University of Oregon chemist, uses DNA molecules in a novel process that holds promise for building nanoscale patterns on silicon chips and other surfaces. The method saves materials and requires less water and solvent than the traditional printing techniques used in the resource-intensive electronics industry.

Other researchers are investigating nanoscale approaches to replace lead and other toxic materials in electronics manufacturing. Nanotech has opened promising new routes for making inexpensive solar cells and improving the performance and cost of fuel cells. And work at the nanoscale is leading toward tools for removing toxic materials and cleaning up hazardous waste sites.

And Engineers are trying to build a system to remove the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide from the atmosphere in an effort to reduce global warming. A research and development company called Global Research Technologies, LLC (GRT) and Klaus Lackner from Columbia University recently successfully demonstrated a device that captures carbon from the air.

Their air extraction device uses sorbents (absorbing compounds) to capture carbon dioxide molecules from free-flowing air and releases those molecules as a pure stream of carbon dioxide for sequestration. It met a wide range of performance standards in the GRT research facility.

"This is an exciting step toward making carbon capture and sequestration a viable technology," said Lackner. "We are trapping carbon dioxide about 1,000 times faster than a tree does," he said. "Once you have the CO2 attached to the sorbent, you have to pry it loose again, which is the costly part of the procedure."

Having dreamed the sci-fi dream of "true nanotech" back in the 90's -- "true nanotech" being nanotech that can "self-assemble," like the nanobots envisioned in 1959, building nanotools and nanofactories from a set of instructions -- the Weekly Green began its inquiry into Green Nanotechnology with hopes that "real" nanotech might be on the verge of creating not only "scrubbers" like Lackner’s device but perhaps free-floating nanoparticles, co2 eaters. That we might find that perhaps soon an egoogleplex of nano pacmen could simply be released into the air to bind with global warming gases and produce a harmless green rain of inert material.

Not so.

In fact, sadly, as we shall see in PT 2 – The Bad News About Green Nanotech, the recent bad news about the dangers of Nanotech at this point may outweigh the good.

"How Many Doctors Does It Take..

2007-07-03T09:05:00.000-07:00

To Screw Up A Terror Attack?"

"I give up, Osama, how many?"

"None! That's how many! Zero! Never, never again. No doctors, we are done with those arrogant whoreson dogs."

"Apologies, Osama."

"What did I tell you? They give Al-Qaeda a bad name. How many times, Ayman, did we beg them?"

"Many times, 'O'--"

"--Many, many times. 'Just come to a training camp,' we say. 'Don't be silly, Osama, it is not necessary, we are Doctors.' 'For two weeks. That is all. Come in August when you are not so busy.' 'August?!' they cry like stuck-up little Paris Hiltons, 'Do you know how hot Afghanistan is in August? Besides, we've been to med school, Osama. How difficult can it be to blow up a car?' What do we get? A lot of broken glass and one fool with second-degree burns screaming 'Allah, Allah'!"

"You are very right, Osama."

"So from here on out, architects, okay, lawyers, maybe, but the next doctor who wishes an assignment tell him no, no way--"

"--Yes, Osama--"

"Immediately show him the door. No better, have him sign in at the window and take a seat in the waiting room. A cave deep in Tora Bora..."

Mighty Green Chemistry

2007-07-02T06:56:00.000-07:00

PAUL ANASTAS

Who dat man? A true eco-celebrity -- Paul Anastas is the father of green chemistry. It's wonderful the world's getting so much help from planet-conscious media celebs, but what we really need are those with the requisite technical skillsets to save our globe.

Mr. Anastas is today's poster boy for those efforts. Director of the Green Chemistry Institute, Paul Anastas was formerly the Assistant Director for the Environment in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. Trained as a synthetic organic chemist, Dr. Anastas has published widely on topics of science through sustainability, such as the books Benign by Design, Designing Safer Polymers, Green Engineering, and his seminal work with co-author John Warner, Green Chemistry: Theory and Practice.

On the eve of last year's 10th annual Green Chemistry & Engineering Conference, Anastas discussed green chemistry and its challenges with the ACS News Service Weblog

The central questions for Green Chemists he summarized in this fashion:

"What is the molecular basis of hazard – toxicological, physical and global? Can we use weak forces as a design tool in imparting performance as we have done with covalent forces? What is the pathway toward designing catalysts from first theoretical principles? Can we use energy in the place of matter to effectively carry out transformations catalytically on a commercial scale? Are the reaction types and feedstocks we use currently in chemical manufacturing the one’s we should be using in the next ten, twenty years? If we are to meet the challenges of sustainability, it will require that we address the problem at the molecular level as one part of the solution."

The interview can be read in its entirety at the above link.

THE ANNALS OF POLITICAL INOCULATION -- The Clintons Soprano Spoof

2007-06-20T08:04:00.000-07:00

You saw it here first! Running Obama's Campaign - The Clintanos --May 27th, 2007

Did the above photo and post inspire The Clintanos Spoof now running on Youtube?

They may have tons of political baggage, but you've got to admit they're smart!

In the above post the Weekly Green Planet complained (while posting the above photoshopped photo) that the New Yorker and Connie Bruck had conveniently, amnesiacally ignored a major Clinton scandal in doing its recent profile of L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. We also suggested it was a self-interested 'oversight'. The New Yorker, we surmised, has reasons to keep its close ties to Bill and Hill.

But the photo hit home in so many ways. Like Carmela, Hillary is more admired and respected if less loved than her Mafioso husband. And Hillary has silently benefitted from his MacBeth-ian ruthlessness, overlooked his "whooring", hid the money -- Whitewater, the Rose law firm, the stock profits --and is every bit as tainted.

So, if you're a Clinton operative, what do you do to combat this? Remind people that you know and love these characters, flawed as they are. And do it first, before the opposition does!

That's what the Youtube "spoof" is about. It's phenomenal political theater.

Who knows, maybe Democrats "Don't Stop Believin'"and will take that Journey.

But it's a poor bet and a sure bumpy ride. So why, with Barack in the wings, or even John Edwards?

William Jefferson wasted four years of this planet's precious time explaining why he couldn't keep it in his pants and Hillary will spend four years jousting with a vast right wing conspiracy while making Margaret Thatcher look like the Ivory Girl.

The smart Dems are humming "Won't Get Fooled Again!"

WHY WE “FRIGHT”

2007-06-07T22:12:00.000-07:00

From the ‘Cold War’ To The ‘War on Terror’ -- Why America Can’t Live Without Fear

Lacking other unifiers, does a pluralistic America require outside enemies to preserve domestic tranquility?

If true, if America has a unique need for external threats to tamp down domestic conflicts, then the challenges posed by radical Islamist "Terrorism" likely were and will continue to be exaggerated.

But the impulse to strike back may have been directed less by unwise and self-serving politicians than by a little understood internal menace. Lurking behind our reaction to Bin-Laden and Al-Qaeda is an even more enigmatic criminal mastermind, the sinister Amygdala -- aka 'Corpus Amygdaloideum' -- the brain’s ‘fear’ center.

The Terror Triangle

Bin Laden------------------- Sheik Muhammad--- ---------------- Amygdala

Al Gore is doing more than indulging the current vogue for neuroscientific explanations for human stupidity when he demonized the Amygdala in his "The Assault On Reason". Illuminating the murky area where social biology meets brain neurology may be the way to begin to end the endless terror that seems a staple of American life.

Sometimes, most often in science, it's advised to start with the observables, the data, and work back to a theory. In politics and sociology the problem is agreeing on what’s observed. Take, for example, the loud, insistent debate on Immigration that has just these last weeks come to a head. Why, one wants to ask, was it so far below the radar after September 11th, 2001? First, was it below the radar?

Yes, absolutely. Certainly there was no end of concern voiced about America’s long, open borders after the attack on the World Trade Center. But the initial focus was, in fact, on our border with Canada due to its sizable Muslim communities and as a direct consequence of the foiled Millenium Plot (the plot to bomb LAX by an Algerian living in Canada named Ahmed Ressam who was caught New Year’s Eve 1999, trying to cross into the United States, an event that took on ominous significance in retrospect).

The 'guestimated' twelve-to-fourteen million immigrants presumed to be illegally in this country, however, did not all arrive the last six years. In fact, the boom was a phenomenon of the 1990’s, which saw a 57.4-percent increase in the foreign born population of these United States. The debate over this immigrant boom, largely Hispanic, predominantly Mexican, has, in fact, been framed not around security issues so much as in economic and social terms – as an ongoing threat to this country’s social welfare system, such as it is, its employment opportunities and its cultural integrity (e.g, initiatives to statutorily guarantee English as America's first language).

But it’s a fight Americans have been having for 400 years, since Jamestown; a debate about ‘legitimacy’, what it takes to become a citizen, what the rights, claims and legacy of those already here are over and against those who are newly arrived.

In a country peopled entirely by immigrants these issues come up with each successive wave, often provoking ugly racial and ethnic hostility, anti-Immigrant ‘nativists’ frequently fanning anxieties about the loyalty of 'foreign' arrivistes and stressing the concomitant security issues.

In that context, the current crisis represents a return to normalcy (one fairly free of outright racial nastiness) as a result of a waning anxiety about terror attacks, a refocusing once again on domestic politics. If we have come to feel that Al-qaeda and Muslim extremism are not the most proximate threat to our well-being, we have returned to the situation pre-9/11 where a divided county, turning back on itself, was faced with a potentially paralyzing deadlock. I am referring, of course, to the 2000 election. There, opposing parties of converging ideologies managed to divide the country into two equal parts, and left the prospect for an ongoing stalemate on all initiatives a virtual certainty.

9/11 changed all that. For a time. But the internal stalemate seems to have returned as fears have faded that the current 'War On Terror' will require constant vigilance and a unity of national purpose.

ADDICTED TO ADRENALINE

Is it unreasonable to suggest that the "marketplace" of a plural democracy naturally finds a bi-polar equilibrium, especially absent external threats? That with the fall of the Soviet Union and the morphing of China into state capitalism, the United States, bereft of enemies, was left to confront itself?

Isn’t it fair to characterize these post-Cold War years as paradoxically having seen ever-fiercer competition in the domestic political arena even as Democrats and Republicans have had less and less to fight over ideologically? Perhaps because what’s at stake in a world with America left as the lone superpower is a monopoly on its greatest aphrodisiac -- power.

Although fear is an innate response, objects of fear can be learned. Fear offers a defensive survival advantage, and is usually a response to a given stimulus. The immediate fear response, the "fright" reaction, however, has the body freeze up an instant allowing the brain to decide whether to flee or fight.

When we spot potential danger, it's the amygdala that reacts most dramatically, triggering the limbic system to pump adrenaline and other hormones into our bloodstream. Meanwhile, the hormones released center our attention on the threat -- adrenaline causes the eyes to dilate, blood to be pumped to the large muscle groups, the heart rate to increase.

This phenomenon is known as preparedness. However, the brain is so wired that nerve signals travel more readily from the amygdala to the upper regions, the reasoning portions of the brain, than from the upper regions back down. Setting off alarms is easier than shutting them off. This, in fact, may partly account for the enduring popularity of "cheap thrills" like scary movies and roller-coasters – they trigger a powerful primitive reaction, an arousal that continues to affect the body long after we recognize the threat isn’t real.

For American society, a culture whose greatest shared value is competition – where the status of every public issue represents the state of play of a host of competing forces -- the cohesive value of ongoing external threats may far outweigh the disadvantages of long-term exposure to stress. As a body politic, the United States may gain more from "international terrorism" in national unity than its cost in national treasure.

The preparedness that is a by-product of our fear, whether real or imagined, has likely dampened and preempted internal conflicts with the potential to do greater damage. Only in the wake of 9/11 were the major initiatives of the last decade realized.

Green Planet Blue Planet Run Water Run

2007-06-03T08:22:00.000-07:00

They’ve been running for 2 days and 20 minutes, as of this moment, having started a round the globe marathon in New York, June 1st, to raise awareness and funds for the more than one billion people who lack clean drinking water. Organized by the BLUE PLANET FOUNDATION, the run is 95 days on the road through 16 different countries with a team of 20 runners and almost as many support staff. (http://blueplanetrun.org/)

The Blue Planet Run will cover 15,200 miles, across 16 countries and 4 continents, 24 hours a day for 95 days to deliver the urgent message that we can and must begin today to alleviate the catastrophic burden placed on over a billion people who, every day, must drink unsafe local water.

A Sneaker Parade, an outdoor New York City-wide exhibit of oversized running shoe statuettes designed by celebrities, accompanied the kick-off with Hillary Swank presiding. Participating celebrities include David Arquette & Courteney Cox-Arquette, Rosie O'Donnell, Rachael Ray, Mena Suvari, the New York Giants football team, Chris Kattan, Matt Modine and the cast of Rescue Me among others.

The final leg of the relay will end where it began, in the heart of New York City.

RUNNING BARACK OBAMA'S CAMPAIGN (PT. 2) -- The Clintanos

2007-05-27T12:44:00.000-07:00

Tony Bill Clinton Soprano and his lovely wife Carmelary

enjoyin' happy times in t'erapy together

Granted, Connie Bruck's "Fault Lines" article in this week's New Yorker is hardly a paean to Tony Villaraigosa. It paints Los Angeles' new mayor as a man terminally on the make. "They'll never get me," he's quoted as saying, "I'm like Bill Clinton."

But is it really possible to write a long profile about our new mayor without any mention whatsoever of his efforts to get Bill Clinton to pardon Carlos Vignali's crack dealer son? This incident was publicized even before Villaraigosa got the hots to run for mayor in 2001, and it may well have cost him that election. Perhaps it's an innocent omission.

Admittedly it's an "old" scandal and then you'd have to remind readers Hugh Rodham received 400,000 dollars as a fee for Vignali's son's eventual pardon (yes, of course, he did get it from Bill) and that Hugh is Hillary's brother and I suppose that might have tilted the article a smidgeon to far from the Left Coast, making it a shade too parochial, too local, too... New York.

So why annoy Bill, or readers who are Hillary supporters? (Do I smell a bigger profile in the works -- one of the New York Senator?)

Then don't raise an unpleasant ordure. Wait until she gets nominated and let the Republicans do it! This kind of wisdom has cost us winnable elections in the past. And some Democrats might prefer a candidate who doesn't have to continually rise out of the slime.

Is this being too hard on the Clintons? Well, did Monica, Whitewater, the Rose law firm and that messy bit with the pardons at the end have anything at all to do with Pope W's election?

The sarcasm, if you haven't noticed, is thick here. Today's Sunday New York Times notes that Hill was among the last of the major candidates to withdraw from the Fox News-sponsored debate planned for next September, and you need only look to last weekend's "Eco-Tecture" issue of their Sunday magazine for broad hints of how spotty the Clinton environmental record was, including extremely luke-warm support of Kyoto.

As was presciently suggested by the Weekly Green Planet months ago, yes, Fabian Nunez, one of the two prime movers in advancing the date of the California primary supports Hillary.

Trailing in Iowa, her staff cleverly leaked a memo yesterday so she could scotch the rumor she's going to ignore Iowa while laying the predicate for its irrelevance. Basically, she has to give it less attention because that's what the primary season is going to demand of her. Not that she had anything to do with it.

Harry Shearer's public radio show LeShow has long enjoyed twitting the C's with a sound-alike spoof he calls "Clinton-Something". I'm looking forward to their last installments, hopefully this year.

But if they, the Clintons, garner the Democratic nomination he should rename and reframe it for another soon-to-be-defunct TV show -- The Clintanos -- with B. eating big bowls of ice cream and taking care of the family business while Carmelary is off building her spec house, a white one, in Washington.

Green Thieves: RiverWired

2007-05-09T07:40:00.000-07:00

Here they come, folks, to the ageless "Greensleeves," they prance piping forward, dancing for dollars, veiled in green, those who will stop at nothing, not even the pretense of social consciousness, in search of a quick buck. RiverWired, a site billing itself as "green" Social Networking, has stolen this blog -- lock, stock and barrel -- without permission and without attribution. And it has "monetized it". These web pages appear, crummily I should point out, with ADS. Paid advertizing. If this is a "Green community," social networkers beware.

When I finally caught up with them and demanded they stop RiverWired took four days to respond. When they did this was their note: "Dear T. Lief, Sorry for the delay in getting back to you. We're in the process of contacting bloggers about their participation in the content aggregator service on our site...(ie, too busy stealing) We had trouble finding contact info..."

But no trouble pulling down the entire blog, ripping off all identifiers and no response to my direct request they remove my material. When I again demanded they stop, I received this from one Cris Popenoe, who'd been copied with all previous communications:

"Everything has been removed.

Cris Popenoe"

Surprise, surprise, I checked today, that was a lie. A quick search of the blogosphere shows that the blog greenlagirl.com complains of the same shabby treatment. Anyone doing this legit would not have taken the liberty Cris Popenoe, et. al., have taken. Nor responded the way they have. So it may be helpful to other bloggers and green sites, particularly those doing without ads, to list those enlisted in this FOR PROFIT scheme.

It has numerous touts who'd go nameless, except they are likely bad actors, too. And naming bad actors is the best we can do for now. For example, one dubious ally is killerstartups.com. Another is Random Thoughts of an Eco Tech Entrepreneur (name says it all, doesn't it?). Fucc blog, Ypulse blog, Appscout, Dexly, Screenalicious are some other touts for RiverWired.

This is another example of the dollar-driven pollution green advocates face. It's a tide. Making money off the boom in environmental consciousness is the only thing taking off at the moment. With so much dung being passed off as green, sadly, its hard to be anything but a gadfly.

This RiverWired scheme reminds us of the carbon neutral companies reported on in an earlier post. Only its goals are not even as laudable, since the site provides nothing except what it takes from others and more chatter and meetups for carbon neutral dating...

To update that post, THE TRUTHINESS OF CARBON NEUTRALITY, which examined the offset companies who have gone so far as to flog the virtues of private jet travel to boost their business, the New York Times has finally caught up. It 'reviewed' the phenomenon in an article on Sunday, April 29th, 2007, called, provocatively, "The Carbon Neutral Myth – Offset Indulgences for your Climate Sins."

However, in the slovenly journalistic fashion that has become the norm at the Old Grey Lady, the article propagated the results of a survey done by a carbon neutral offset provider to rank the quality of their own cohort!! This is Judy Miller redux. You remember Judy, the reporter who was in bed with Scooter Libby and the Neocons? She chose jail and a false martyrdom to forestall the disclosure that it was her run-amok, unvetted Times reports on the presence of WMD that led the charge in the run-up to the Iraq War.

This recent Times article smacks of the slapdash; it's dismal, source-avoidant, research-free infotainment. It's available for comparison online at www.tni.org.

The press could help if they'd show courage in daring to write more than eye-catching leads.

Keanu Clips Paparazzi In Gas-Guzzling Vehicle

2007-03-21T06:51:00.000-07:00

Dude, Where's Your Prius?

Displaying alarming insensitivity, Keanu Reeves reportedly grazed an aggressive photographer leaving a club here in Los Angeles in the early hours this morning driving a Porsche.

A Porsche, man!? Sheesh, Keanu. Not only is it poor form to be caught inside one of those things, but Porsches get under 1500 photographers per gallon! That is definitely not the way to deal with that kind of situation. If you're going to nail a 'Razzi here's our recommendation.

Keanu Reloaded !!

A Prius is the stealth-vehicle of choice when side-swiping privacy-infringing parasites. They're quiet, they're fuel-efficient and they don't leave marks. What were you thinking?

(This item is posted in partial fulfillment of the original stated mission of The Weekly Green Planet -- to bring you eco-celebrity-news)

SAVING THE DAY (LITE) -- Brazil Bush; The EU Biofuel Goals

2007-03-11T09:12:00.000-07:00

It will surprise no one who lived through the great 'Opec' oil crisis of the 70's that Congress's rush to implement an early start to Daylight Savings may result in zero net energy savings. What's hard to accept about Global Warming is that it admits of no easy solutions. It's a 'global' problem: Savings in one area produce costs somewhere else.

In a study last year, the U.S. Department of Energy estimated that, overall, this year's extension into March and November will save little — less than 1 percent of the nation's annual consumption. Another recent study, by the California Energy Commission, came to a similar conclusion. These estimates may be optimistic. The Golfing industry expects $200 million in added revenue from equipment sales and greens fees as a result of the extended evening hours. Factor in automotive use, multiply by millions of shoppers and what do you get?

Skeptics won't be heartened to learn its principle backers were Republican lawmakers who funded a post hoc $150 million study of the energy savings while tacking on subsidies for the oil and nuclear industry.

Like 'Evolution', Global Warming poses a hard set of facts. It doesn't care we suddenly 'care' and is fairly intractible. Consequently, like Darwin's Dangerous Idea, the public is prey to snakeoil salesmen, preferring hopeful solutions taken on faith to facing the grim realities.

The headlines from Brazil show Bush & Lula in an ethanol embrace. But bioethanol and biodiesel from energy crops compete for land that grows food and can return less energy than the fossil fuel energy squandered in producing them while doing serious damage to the environment. American corn-based ethanol, buoyed by trade-stifling subsidies, is less GHG-friendly (Green House Gas-friendly) than Brazil’s sugar cane-based ethanol, which currently can’t come to the U.S. due to stiff tariff barriers, but whose increased production will undoubtedly encourage more rain forest destruction.

A few years ago, politicians and green groups in the Netherlands were thrilled by the country's early, rapid adoption of "sustainable energy," in part by coaxing electricity plants to use biofuel. In particular, palm oil from Southeast Asia. But last year, when scientists studied practices at palm plantations in Indonesia and Malaysia, this fairy tale began to look like a nightmare.

Spurred by government subsidies, enthusiastic energy companies designed generators that ran exclusively on palm oil. Rising demand brought about the razing of Southeast Asian rain forest and the overuse of chemical fertilizer. Worse still, space for the expanding palm plantations was often created by draining and burning peat land, sending huge amounts of carbon emissions into the atmosphere.

Factoring in these emissions, Indonesia had become the world's third-leading producer of greenhouse gases.

"If you make biofuels properly, you will reduce greenhouse emissions," said Peder Jensen, of the European Environment Agency in Copenhagen. "But that depends very much on the types of plants and how they're grown and processed. You can end up with a 90 percent reduction compared to fossil fuels — or a 20 percent increase."

"Its important to take a life cycle view," he said, and not to "just see what the effects are here in Europe."

Biofuelswatch, an environmental group in Britain, now say that "biofuels should not automatically be classed as 'renewable energy.'" It supports a moratorium on subsidies until more research is done to define which biofuels are truly good for the planet.

Unfortunately, biofuels from energy crops cannot substitute for current fossil fuel use. The major constraints are available land surface, crop yields, and energy conversion efficiency, although economics also plays a large role. A one mile-per-gallon increase in car fuel efficiency would, apparently, far outweigh any gains from ethanol at present and the near-term future.

And there’s a huge debate about ethanol’s real energy costs. Some contend it takes more fossil energy input to produce the equivalent energy in biofuel. Recent analyses show that current production methods offer only a small positive energy balance and little if any savings in greenhouse gas emissions, even with the most favourable assumptions built in.

The much joked-about switchgrass, however, appears to be the best biofuel candidate for subsidies. A perennial native to the USA, it’s prolific, does not require much nitrogen fertilizer, and does the least environmental damage.

Grown for burning, as biomass, it would be the cheapest biofuel both in energy and financial terms, as it requires minimum processing after harvest. Substituting for coal it is estimated to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by about 1.7 t CO2 per t switchgrass.

The economic consequences of excessive corn production in Iowa, the largest corn producer, has led to a 10-fold price decline between 1949 and 2005 as corn yields tripled. Today, Iowa farmers earn a third for the corn they sell compared to 1949, while their production costs have increased many times because they burn methane and diesel to produce corn.

The price of methane has increased several-fold in the last three years. "Corn crop subsidies supplemented the market corn price by up to 50 percent between 1995 and 2004." an expert writes, "the United States has already wasted a lot of time, money, and natural resources…..pursuing a mirage of an energy scheme that cannot possibly replace fossil fuels…The only real solution is to limit the rate of use of these fossil fuels."

Cheney Contemplating ‘Vice Presidential’ Pardon For Libby

2007-03-06T16:44:00.000-08:00

Dismayed by Lewis ‘Scooter’ Libby’s conviction on obstruction of justice charges today, Vice President Cheney is considering granting his former Chief of Staff a pardon. Seen here examining the Constitution, when questioned the testy Veep sneered, "If I can reveal state secrets and expose a CIA agent with impunity, what makes you think I can't grant pardons? Might even grant myself one." Before returning to his reading, the irritable Vice Head of State was heard to chuckle sourly, "Besides, who’s going to gainsay me, Tony Scalia?"

Representative Men

2007-03-06T06:50:00.000-08:00

IT IS NATURAL to believe in great men...The search after the great man is the dream of youth and the most serious occupation of manhood... Other men are lenses through which we read our own minds... A new quality of mind travels by night and by day, in concentric circles from its origin, and publishes itself by unknown methods… The genius of humanity is the right point of view of history. This is the key to the power of the greatest men - their spirit diffuses itself… We are as much gainers by finding a new property in the old earth as by acquiring a new planet.

Emerson, "The Uses Of Great Men" from REPRESENTATIVE MEN

2007-03-03T16:37:00.000-08:00

THE TRUTHINESS OF ORGANIC COTTON

2007-03-01T16:08:00.000-08:00

(The second in our not so long-running 'Truthiness' series)

bloomin' cotton

Given the popularity of WGP’s SOY UNDERWEAR column, today we answer the question:
What is ‘organic cotton’?

Simply put, 'organic' cotton is non-genetically modified cotton grown without the use of inorganic pesticides and fertilizers. Okay. That said, what’s the big deal?

The answer is tied to this fact -- less than a third of all cotton grown in the world today is GM, genetically-modified cotton. I.e., , it's not that GM cotton is so prevalent. But, less than 0.1 percent of all cotton is grown without using inorganic pesticides and fertilizers.

So the 'organic' label bears on the fact that the cotton is grown without "inorganic" pesticides and fertilizers. Not that it doesn't use some form of pesticide and fertilizers. Perhaps you can see where we're going with this.

The real issue with "organic cotton," it seems to us, is who is reaping the profits.

Cotton fibre is the fabric of life in Asia, Africa and South America. Globally, more than 50 million farmers grow it, but many receive a low price. There’s a fast-growing niche for organic, or low-input cotton. But the question, posed by Camilla Toulmin Director of the International Institute of Environment and Development (IIED), is, "How can we be sure that the increasing demand and premiums for organic, or low-input cotton, will bring better prices to farmers and not just benefit others in the supply chain?" In other words, those glossy, high-end marketers of the stuff we see on the internet.

Organic cotton sells for up to 20 percent more than non-organic cotton and the amount produced, not surprisingly, has increased by 35 percent a year since 2002.

The viability of cotton farming, however, hangs by a thread. Industry analysts attribute current low market prices for raw cotton to the oversupply of subsidized American cotton on the world market. American farmers receive $3.5 billion in subsidies. Most developing country farmers receive no subsidies but suffer the consequences of lower world market prices.

"Despite successful appeals led by Brazil, Mali, Burkina Faso, Benin and Chad and a ruling by the World Trade Organisation that has stipulated to the US government that its cotton subsidies contravene global trade rules," says Toulmin, "the US seems happy to ignore the multilateral rules when it suits its interests."

LOOK FOR THE NON UNION (EU) LABEL -- DON'T BUY IT AS WELL

After fierce lobbying from Spain, the European Union (the EU) has also recently postponed reducing its support to EU cotton growers.

' organic' cotton bloomers

So, if you’re going to buy right, here’s the cotton club you want to be a member of. To support the two million cotton farmers in West Africa, a number of initiatives to increase returns are underway. "Currently farmers in Mali get 165 francs per kilo of seed cotton," explains Toulmin. "But costs of production are more like 180-190 francs a kilo."

In Mali, organic cotton certified to European standards is supported by Helvetas, a Swiss NGO. Standards linking ecological criteria with fair trade and social justice concepts for cotton are also promoted by Max Havelaar and the Fairtrade Labelling Organisation to give growers a premium considerably above the conventional price.

In Benin and Burkina Faso an alliance (GTZ, the German technical agency, the OTTO clothing group and local textile companies) is pushing ahead with introducing reduced pesticide use, and forging closer links between growers and buyers.

On a more global scale, the Better Cotton Initiative of UNEP, WWF and others aims to set standards in West Africa, Asia and Brazil at a level, which could involve 50 percent of cotton producers; in contrast to the much smaller proportion likely to attain Fairtrade and organic certification, estimated at around five percent.

So, if you want to wear "organic cotton" with a social conscience it’s not the pesticides and inorganic fertilizers you should be most concerned with – it’s making sure the cotton itself comes from the above sources.

More Than 'Inconvenient': Al 'Green' Gore Assaulted By Policy Whores

2007-02-28T06:54:00.000-08:00

Nice as it was to win an Oscar for "An Inconvenient Truth," Al Gore immediately became a target. First, for those who think he should run for President again. In his present wide-bodied condition, 'run' is a euphemism. Thrilled with this incarnation of our former vice president, we don't see a need.
Why throw another log on the Democratic Presidential fires? They're burning hotly enough. Gore is truly an example of a candidate who looks best with his hat on and not in the ring. (In contrast to Obama who has Republican pundits hyperventilating about 'sizzle' and 'rock star status' desperately fanning the hope, a wish, that they are not up against the real deal--a candidate with durable class and charisma. Good Luck to you, sirs.)

Al Gore running for President would, and he seems to know it, be a colossal waste of precious fossil fuel. He's become a rock star in the global politics of energy and has most to offer there. "More than inconvenient" is what the truth of global climate change truly is. And getting the world to work on an extremely thorny issue will take some doing. Particularly since there are still 'bad actors' who have not yet faced the ostracism their unreconstructed views deserver. For example...

Gore’s award inspired Fox’s Sean Hannity to dredge up a worm from something called the Tennessee Center for Policy Research to whack him with the claim his home uses 20 times the energy of the national household average. The center is a right wing non-profit claiming non-partisanship and admittedly promoting “free enterprise” that keeps its donor list hidden. They are paid distorters and obfuscators. There are dozens and dozens of these right wing shells. Hannity then harangued Ed Begley, Jr., demanding Begley say Gore is a hypocrite. “Isn’t that what hypocrisy is?!”

Sean, a hypocrite is what you are, a long-term global warming skeptic who says he wants to drive his SUV without anyone or any organization saying nay who then lambasts others for excessive energy use. That’s a hypocrite. The fellow being paid by The TCPR, on the other hand, is a policy whore. (We’ve allowed these ‘bad actors’ to corrupt the air of our political environment without exacting a price; we hope to suggest how these individuals might be dealt with in future columns.)

Fox’s Hannity, on the other hand, has an audience that delights in his social irresponsibility and gives them and his corporate allies a certain number of free “Hannity jobs" just for fun.

Untangling the knot of corporate bad actors in support of these think tanks is the work of groups like MediaMatters.org and other who deserve our support.

Bombing Of Cheney Rejected By Americans

2007-02-27T08:22:00.000-08:00

Seeing the failed assault on the extremely unpopular Vice President for a cynical attempt to divide those who overwhelming reject the Iraq War, Democrats and Independents joined with Republicans in condemning the suicide bomber who attacked the main gate of Bagram Air Force Base as Cheney awoke there this morning.

"Look, it's way too easy. Sure, a lot of us are furious at Dick Cheney. But blowing him up will only make him a martyr and do nothing to reverse the incalculable damage he's done to American interests and our prestige abroad," a spokesperson for a contributor to MoveOn.org opined. "We stand behind our Vice President. Just not directly behind him. And, in certain regions, we try not to stand too near him, either."

A number of theories have been proposed including purported links to Harry Whittington. (See: Was it Harry? )

RUNNING BARACK OBAMA'S CAMPAIGN

2007-02-24T10:41:00.000-08:00

The 1st in an occasional series addressing his supporters and strategists. (UPDATE: If you actually are looking for Who's Running His Campaign go to the post dated July 14th, 2007, RUNNING OBAMA'S CAMPAIGN - Pt. 3, it has that information for you.)

Alright, so here's our first mistake: This household received 3 fundraising calls in two days.

Okay, fine, it's a race about money; moreso this year than ever. But in taking this tack, the Obama campaign cedes ground to the Clintons since it is not opposing moves to hold early primaries in many large states; e.g., moving California's primary up to next February.

Strategists likely advised the Senator these moves, overall, benefit him. Cash is flowing in, he's the other major player; it's simply the smart play. And the judgment has probably been made these moves are nearly impossible to stop. (We aren't so sure.)

So why is it important he oppose it? Senator O may well be able to compete with Hillary for money. Tom Vilsack dropped out yesterday faced with the likelihood there's no place in this race for less well-funded candidates. But there's two HUGE reasons he should resist letting the primary calendar become front-loaded next year and those reasons are:

1) Sen. Obama immediately becomes a "big money," machine candidate and he gets all that goes with it, bed-fellows like David Geffen who's no less sleazy than the Clintons. And Sen. Obama doesn't even get the luxury of time to pick, choose, vett and control these big-time bed crumbs. Which, for example, gets him into an immediate mud-slinging contest.

He also loses a critical opportunity to show political skill and savvy, and to do the right thing electorally. This is the very thing people are desperate to see. To see him stand for something, and organizing supporters around an objective. One with some populist appeal. It's a fight he therefore can afford to lose. Win or lose, it serves his and the country's wider interests.

And 2) the Democrats benefitted hugely in 2004 by having a long, hotly-contested primary race with a host of colorful candidates. Lots of air time, lots of talk. The country got to know the candidates. Kerry was hardly a household name. Neither was Dean. (Admittedly, both disappointed. But it's very difficult to get most Democrats to remember that losing an election to an incumbent War-time President by less than 200,000 votes in one state is astounding and this while the economy was in pretty fair shape, too).

Almost nobody but we political junkies knows who Barack Obama is at the moment. He's inexperienced; he calls it his biggest asset. That's cute. But he, above all, needs the time a dilated primary season would provide not just in name-recognition. He needs to be tested. We all want it. So that he can show that profile in courage. He needs to weather a long, fierce battle with grace and good humor, show endurance and fortitude, even lose and come back.

Letting the political calendar get squished into a month-long campaign awash in TV-ads plays directly into his opponent's hands. You're asking voters to step up and decide right then who should be the Democrat nominee. Winner-Take-All. They get one shot to get it right.

That's Hillary's ticket. In fact, it may be the ONLY chance she has. Asking voters all at once, cash on the barrelhead, to pick the nominee. Her, a known if very troubled quantity, VS. Barry Who?

I think she wins the nomination in that scenario. And the Democrats lose the election.

In that scenario, the Rose law firm, the last-minute pardon of international felons, Monica, Susan McDougal, and Paula Jones don't get mentioned til Hill is on her way to the convention with enough delegates to cinch her nomination and to tell the rest of us to eff off.

Do we really want to forget what the Clintons left us until we're heading toward a general election waiting for those ghosts and skeletons to get rattled by the Republicans?

The GREEN & GOLD OSCARS... "And The Nominees Are..." (PT3)

2007-02-22T07:08:00.000-08:00

For Best Supporting Actress…

Here we learn what a PR business charitable work is for celebrities. With so many newcomers in this particular category this year the pickings are slender. And the one veteran appears to hew to the "my art is what concerns me most" school. The nominees are…

Cate Blanchett, Notes on a Scandal - After filming "The Missing" she gave to the Forest Guardians, one of the Southwest’s environmental overseers. She recently converted her residence in the Hunters Hill district of Sydney, Australia into a "green house,"fully powered by solar energy after moving back and declaring that "family and the theatrical community in Australia were a large part of who we are." A periennial nominee, she’ll be pressured to do more.

Adriana Barazza, Babel – Barazza is a dialogue coach and drama teacher suddenly huge internationally. A fairly deep scouring of charity work suggests her work in Mexican soap operas has up to now consumed her.

Abigal Breslin, Little Miss Sunshine – Deeply involved in RED, ONE, GREEN PEACE and Kids For The Protection Of The Biosphere, young Ms. Breslin campaigns tirelessly for… I’m kidding, she’s ten, for chrissake! However, if she’s nominated again in the next couple years.... better get your green resume in order, Abby.

Jennifer Hudson, Dreamgirls – Ditto. Only so long you can ride American Idleness, Jen.
Rinko Kikuchi, Babel – Also gets a pass. Began modeling at 15, she’s 26 and has appeared in a handful of Japanese features. Without scouring the net, no green causes or charities appear.

THE GREEN & GOLD OSCARS -- "AND THE NOMINEES ARE..." (PT2)

2007-02-20T15:39:00.000-08:00

If charitable works are part of the price of celebrity, there’s a three-way split between those who believe their ‘art’ is their sole obligation (like O’Toole and Arkin, perhaps?), those who recognize they must do something (Eddie Murphy & Mark Wahlberg, say) and those who throw themselves into it, whether soul-heartedly, or for pr, or both -- like DiCapiro & Will Smith. We’re not picking winners, or losers, but some thought went into representing the level of commitment to be found in the philanthropic resumes that follow.

So, in the category of Best Actress, the nominees are…

Penelope Cruz, Volver - She’s worked on (RED), fighting Aids in Africa, the ONE campaign, and given her photos and time to The Art of Elysium which encourages artists to dedicate the product of their talent to children battling serious medical conditions. She spent a week working for Mother Teresa assisting in a leprosy clinic which inspired her to start a foundation to support homeless girls in India and donate her salary from a film to the Mother’s foundation.

Judi Dench, Notes on a Scandal – She works on behalf of Epilepsy Action and the Neurofibromatosis Association, and has backed the North West Cancer Research Fund, signing up to a national campaign aimed at raising the public's awareness about leaving money to charity. She’s helped Mencap, a charity supporting people with learning disabilites, The Roy Castle Lung Cancer Foundation also in the UK, been the spokesperson for a campaign for Women Against Lung Cancer and helped the Karuna Trust which worked with some of India's most disadvantaged people. This not all-inclusive list appears to be only what she has done the last 5 years or so.

Helen Mirren, The Queen – She’s campaigned with Oxfam against the small arms trade, having addressed the U.N., and she's worked with Action Aid to stop the Asian sex slave trade. Mirren took part in One Knight Only, a benefit for the Asian Tsunami Appeal.

Meryl Streep, The Devil Wears Prada – Oh, lord. It's alphabetical on a fan website. She’s worked for the ACADEMY OF AMERICAN POETRY , on ARTS FOR AMNESTY, with ACT which offers assistance to victims of domestic violence, the ARTS & EDUCATIONAL PARTNERSHIP, the CENTER FOR HEALTH AND THE GLOBAL ENVIRONMENT, the CHILDREN'S HEALTH ENVIRONMENTAL COALITION, the CIRCLE OF FRIENDS (part of the American Paralysis Association), CLOTHES OFF OUR BACK, CONNECTICUT FARMLAND TRUST , DISCOVER JERSEY ARTS, ELTON JOHN AIDS FOUNDATION, EQUALITY NOW (Human Rights of Women), GLOBAL RELEAF for American Forests, the HOLE IN THE WALL GANG (therapeutic drama for 800 seriously ill children), IT ALL STARTS WITH NEWSPAPERS, JOHN F. KENNEDY CENTER FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS, MOTHERS & OTHERS, NET AID, READING IS FUNDAMENTAL, SAVE THE MUSIC, SCENIC HUDSON, THE GRACE CHILDREN'S FOUNDATION… Somebody stop this woman!

Kate Winslet, Little Children – Kate has helped the Helen & Douglas House charity providing respite and end of life care for children and young adults with life-shortening conditions, the National Literacy Trust and been a patron of Family Haven, a pre-school supportive day centre in Gloucestershire. There are many one-time donations of Kate-crafted objects she has given to charities.

Coming Soon, Part 3, the Best Supporting Actresses and perhaps a look at the Best Director nominees…

THE GREEN & GOLD OSCARS -- "AND THE NOMINEES ARE..." (PT 1)

2007-02-19T08:15:00.000-08:00

GOOD ACTORS & BAD ACTORS

It has occurred to the Weekly Green that along with lauding efforts of celebrities and newsmakers who promote a healthy globe for all species, there may be a need to point out the shortcomings and, in some cases, even to publicly pillory deliberate bad actors. (Two future columns here will investigate 'debt vultures' and 'climate change' skeptics in the pay of big oil.)

But for now the subject is Hollywood and, in the spirit of Oscar generosity, the list below stresses the good deeds, whether environmental or simply charitable, (the Green and the Gold) of those nominated in the male acting categories. (I will happily correct omissions. Please email: weeklygreenplanet@gmail.com)

In the category of Best Supporting Actor, the nominees are...

Alan Arkin, Little Miss Sunshine – Arkin is a legend. A founding member of Second City, he’s supported an organic lifestyle and preservation of the environment for many, many years. His father, David Arkin, was an artist/writer who, as a teacher, lost his job refusing to answer questions about political affiliation in the 50's. Though his father prevailed against his politically-based dismissal, Alan Arkin has long shunned celebrity for celebrity’s sake. Perhaps in the present urgent "climate" he’ll rethink his stance and take a more high profile and active role in the issues of concern to him.

Jackie Earle Haley, Little Children – After 13 years of virtual anonymity, the child and young adult actor first seen in BAD NEWS BEARS and BREAKING AWAY, has no resume of environmental or charity work we could find. So far.

Djimon Hounsou, Blood Diamond – Hounsou participates in the ONE Campaign and he appears on behalf of Oxfam. His production company, Belly Serpent, actively seeks projects that "tell African stories through the eyes of Africans." From Benin, he’s a former runway model who was briefly homeless in Paris, but he’s been living in L.A. 18 years now and starred in AMISTAD in 1997.

Eddie Murphy, Dreamgirls – Murphy started the Yeah! Foundation which helps the homeless and provides scholarships for schools. He also supports the Martin Luther King, Jr., Center for Nonviolent Social Change as well as the AIDS Foundation and cancer charities.

Mark Wahlberg, The Departed – He established the Mark Walberg Youth Foundation to raise and distribute funds to youth service and enrichment programs and is involved with the L.A. Free Clinic.

In the category of BEST ACTOR, the nominees are as follows..

WILL SMITH, The Pursuit of Happyness - The Will and Jada Smith Family Foundation benefits inner-city community development, youth educational projects and under-privileged children. Smith hosted the Nelson Mandela AIDS benefit concert in George, South Africa, has worked with the Dream Foundation to enhance the lives of individuals and families battling terminal illnesses. He also worked with PACT, a charity for children with special needs and Youth Health Empowerment, a pilot project that targeted youth in Philadelphia to reduce the spread of HIV.

FOREST WHITAKER, The Last King of Scotland - The role is a statement in itself. Whitaker, however, only recently joined with PETA to promote his vegetarianism in a new TV spot for their website talking about his meat-free diet. Long a favorite for sympathetic and powerful performances in films like BIRD; GHOST DOG; GOOD MORNING, VIETNAM; THE COLOR OF MONEY and THE CRYING GAME, this year’s Oscar-favorite might be pushed, hopefully, to do more now that his star is shining so brightly.

LEONARDO DICAPRIO, The Departed - DiCaprio is simply Hollywood’s hardest-working ‘do-gooder’. He has a website full of links to charitable efforts in service to the planet and the creatures living on it. His largely selfless contributions, listed in part elsewhere at this site, are best seen at: http://www.leonardodicaprio.com/

RYAN GOSLING, Half Nelson - Gosling is involved with ONE (see November archive, "So Much Good To Do, So Little Time" re Running The Sahara), a campaign working to help the poor overcome AIDS and poverty. He’s also worked for animal-rights, writing a letter to Kentucky Fried Chicken on behalf of PETA, urging the company to improve its treatment of animals, and has traveled to Darfur and Katrina-devastated areas to assist in relief efforts.

PETER O’TOOLE, Venus - What to say about Peter. This is a man who generously donated his pancreas, a large portion of his stomach and a good deal of his liver to alcoholism. At 74, with an Oscar win, or, at the very least, high visibility again, one hopes Sir Peter will be granted the time to put it to beneficent use. His performance as Henry the 2nd in BECKETT remains, to this viewer, a thing of lasting human value in itself.

Coming soon, the Best Supporting Actress and Best Actress Nominees...

Barack, Hillary, Washington Weather

2007-01-28T14:38:00.000-08:00

You heard it predicted here first, the unprecedented unpresident did, in fact, finally speak the words "global climate change" during the State of the Union. That little concession to reality, and 500 million dollars, will get the future George W. Bush Presidential Library sited wherever some very needy municipality will allow it. Hey, wait, how bout NEW ORLEANS!?

Apparently, Frank Gehry was prevailed upon to go back to his earlier 'deconstructivist' work in designing the Bush edifice.

On other weather fronts, the Clintons are already busily working to tilt the primary process in favor of their lady.

Moves are afoot in several "Big" states -- California, Michigan, Florida and New Jersey -- to move up the dates of their primaries, this under the guise of giving large electoral entities their "fair" share of clout. It's backed by Clinton supporters in sheep's clothing. In California, e.g., Chris Lehane, former special Asst. Counsel to Pres. Bill, has a 527 collecting signatures to move up the primary.

If you'd prefer the primary season be an opportunity to see how potential candidates perform you should OPPOSE it. (It favors well-funded frontrunners -- Hillary -- and will put a gun to the head of undecideds to pick the nominee without any of the candidates -- Obama -- gaining 'seasoning', or traction.)

We need to push back these efforts before they get rolling. These bills are just now being introduced into state legislatures. Even if you're a Hillary supporter, she needs the test she'll only get if we force her to run a long, hard primary campaign.

In California, the two dems behind the bill to move up the primary are: State Speaker Fabian Nunez Assemblymember.Nunez@assembly.ca.gov and Senate Pro Tem Senator.Perata@sen.ca.gov

It is NOT too early to email these gentlemen as concerned Democrats and insist they cease and desist.

The article below, which is studiedly "neutral" about the real reasons for this push, is from sfgate.com
************************************************************************
Carla Marinucci: Internet push now behind plan to move up 2008 primary in California

The effort to move up the California 2008 presidential primary to February may have gotten another key boost today as grassroots activists launched a serious internet outreach effort aimed at reaching more than 30,000 state with petitions to support the idea.

Rick Jacobs, chair of CourageCampaign.org -- a 527 MoveOn-style coalition founded to support Democratic intersts in 2004 -- says the ramped up internet effort began Thursday to collect hundreds of thousands of voters' signatures. They will be forwarded to Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez, as part of the effort asking that the legislature move forward on the February primary idea "so Californians can have a voice in the election," he says.

Jacobs says many Democratic California voters were angered in 2004 when a few thousand mostly white voters in Iowa and New Hampshire virtually decided the Democratic party nominee -- U.S. Senator John Kerry -- leaving supporters of other candidates like former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean out in the cold.

"We're going to work every possible way so we get a voice,'' says Jacobs.

The organization's pitch: "Sign our petition and forward it to your friends so we don't have to pay $2300 to shake hands with a candidate. It's time Hillary, Obama, Edwards, McCain, Hagel and the others visit California's voters, not just donors. We're the most diverse state in the country and the fifth largest economy in the world ... Sign our petition to ensure these candidates actually talk to us about our hopes and dreams, not just raid our wallets."

Top California political strategist Chris Lehane -- the former Clinton White House spokesman -- says that the such efforts may just be the beginning of a wave to push for an early primary, which he says "would be good for the state, the economy -- and the political parties."

**************************************************************

This idea is "good" for Hillary only, who apparently already feels she needs to nail it down immediately or risk losing it. She needs to earn it. And, as was proved last election cycle, a well-fought contest with lots of debates and exposure for Democratic candidates is a blessing, not a hindrance.

This veiled, self-serving hokum makes you wonder just how desparate the Clinton forces are.

The Truthiness Of Carbon Neutrality

2007-01-13T07:04:00.000-08:00

Carbon Neutral (pronounced Kahr-buh,n Noo-truh,l) adjective Definition: the maintenance of a balance between producing and using carbon, esp. the global warming-inducing emission of carbon-dioxide by growing plants or planting trees both for fuel and carbon-capture to offset emissions from non-sustainable energy use

The web’s wires have been abuzz these last months with so much ‘Carbon Neutral’ news that the New Oxford American Dictionary recently proclaimed it Word Of The Year for 2006, unlike Merriam Webster’s which seemed a whole year late in making Steven Colbert’s ‘Truthiness" it’s choice. ("Besides, ‘Carbon Neutral’ is two words!" the snippish late night faux-conservative faux-talkshow faux-host can be heard to snipe.) But a day doesn’t go by without some company or celebrity jumping on the CN bandwagon. Exhibit A, this headline today from the Computer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

"Dell calls on customers to contribute to carbon-neutral computing". Dell announces it will plant sufficient trees to absorb all the atmospheric carbon dioxide generated by power plants producing the electricity used to drive its computers for a three-year period. Dubbed Plant a Tree for Me, Dell’s notebook and desktop buyers will be given the chance to donate $2 or $6, respectively, to fund Dell's project. Or rather, Dell will pass the money on to non-profit organizations that will handle the planting, in sustainably managed forests. Dell doesn't say whether it will be donating any money of its own and absent from its list of machines are servers, which consume more energy and tend to be powered up for longer.

Items like this show that it's getting harder to distinguish the sheep from the shorn. For example, Exhibit B, right below the same google news pages as Dell’s self-serving declaration is "The Helium Report" offering a chart that touts private jet travel as a comparably inexpensive way to fly (!!!)… from the point of view of carbon neutrality. "We were surprised to find it costs less than 1% of the flying cost per hour to fly carbon neutral…We reviewed ten popular jets in four categories and found the cost to fly carbon neutral ranges from $7 to $60 an hour — a minuscule amount when flying private costs $2,000 to $13,000 an hour. For less than $10,000, you can offset 200 hours in a Falcon 2000, a 10-seat jet that costs more than $25 million."

This on a site that appears to be largely sponsored by TerraPass, one of the largest firms engaged in selling carbon offsets.

More than just more hot air?

Do you really repair the damage caused by flying by paying a carbon offset company? Offsets are suddenly all the rage. This past Holiday Season friends boasted of giving their offspring a year’s worth of offsets, the perfect parental gift for progeny who have everything… except a planet to offer their own future progeny. For $99, Carbonfund.org offers a 'zero carbon' option, an offset not only for a year's worth of fossil fuel combustion but for all of the emissions associated with the production of 'everything we consume: clothes, food, electronics, your iPod, everything.'

The most obvious ethical problem is that any solution that when writ large, that is, when applied universally, would ruin the planet in an eyeblink needs to be approached with extreme caution. Money paid out for such schemes is blood money, balm for guilty consciences. Unfortunately simply planting trees won’t reclaim the irreplaceable fossil fuel spewed into the air on a private jet. Were all earth’s inhabitants to immediately adopt this tact there wouldn’t be space enough for all the trees needed to assuage the carbon damage. But that doesn’t mean carbon neutral efforts can't be part of the solution, one of the wedges in stabilizing our carbon dioxide emissions long-term.

However, the global market in personal, "voluntary" offsetting is exploding, expected to top over $500 million dollars the next three years. (The International Emissions Trading Association and World Bank estimate that the market for carbon credits, of which offsets are a part, is now worth more than $21.5 billion, according to a new study.) And many of these companies rely on assumptions based on "forest sequestration". It’s the easy and most attractive way to sell offsets. You’re "planting trees," you’re told. At best these efforts depend on the assumption that planting trees in an area previously without forest "locks up" carbon in the new trees grown there. In other words, it takes carbon out of the air and puts it into a plant. One criticism of "forest sequestration" is that carbon in a tree is not "stored safely". Trees burn up, forests die out due to insect infestation (the rock band Coldplay learnt this the hard way when most of the trees on a mango plantation they supported in India died), but new arguments have recently emerged that further question the value of tree planting.

Last month, two US-based ecologists claimed that most forests do not have any overall effect on global temperature. Except for a thin band around the equator, forests trap more heat than they help to get rid of by reducing CO². In fact, last year the WWF, Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace issued a statement saying they do not support forestry projects to offset carbon emissions. This has led some offset firms to downplay the forestry side of their business. A major player, the Carbon Neutral Company, (there are more than 30 of these firms, some not-for profit, some not-not) changed its name from Future Forests to avoid the appearance of being a trees-only offsetter.

Nonetheless, "carbon neutral" efforts are still to be applauded. They not only raise consciousness about our individual "carbon footprints" they will inevitably be part of any carbon mitigation initiative. The issues, however, are complex, and pressing given the difficulty of calculating what really is an ‘offset’ in a rapidly warming world where ‘offset companies’ are entirely unregulated.

Readers piqued to examine this in more depth are invited to begin their journey with visits to the following online articles that contributed to this column:

A lot of hot air? By Dominic Murphy, The Guardian, Thursday January 11, 2007

Going carbon-neutral By Drake Bennett THE BOSTON GLOBE Sunday, December 24, 2006

And to follow up with perusals of Joel Makower’s piece Carbon Neutral Stabilization Wedges

And of “Do carbon offsets live up to their promise?”

... CLIMATE CHANGE IN WASHINGTON... Bush Takes Late-Year Dip with Polar Bears

2006-12-29T07:46:00.000-08:00

December 29, 2006, Washington, DC -- In another 360-degree about-face, the Bush Administration ("What do you mean we denied 'global warming'? We were always against it, and still are.") indirectly acknowledged the natural disaster it has spent 6 crucial years vigorously abetting when the Interior Department proposed Wednesday to designate polar bears as a threatened species, saying that the accelerating loss of the Arctic ice that is the bears’ hunting platform has led biologists to believe that bear populations will decline, perhaps sharply, in the coming decades.
staying at the paris hilton
"It was either swim with the polar bears, or my 'legacy' was going to be ‘swimming with the fishes’, heh-heh," the poll-plummeting Chief Executive explained today with his characteristic, inappropriate-nervous villain’s chuckle. "Karl said my reputation was about to be absolutely shredded. Like those itty-bitty pieces of fish they throw in the ocean to catch bigger ones with, you know, whadaya call it?"

"Chum!" one reporter shouted brightly.

"Hey!" the President snarled, "Just cause I'm chatting with you folks is no excuse to get over-familiar. In any case, this move is completely in keeping with my administration’s long-standing approach to disasters, both natural and man-made, and that is to first miss the boat, then sink it and then to pretend we were always on-board. Now if you've got any more questions, ask Tony. He's the High Commissioner of Snow around here."

In a conference call with reporters, Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne went on to say that although the decision to seek protection for polar bears acknowledged the melting ice, his department was not taking a position on why the ice was melting or what to do about it.

"Some folks have said when you've got melting ice make gin-and-tonics!" Kempthorne elaborated. "No one in this administration, of course. Or any longer in this administration."

THE WAY FORWARD IN HOLLYWOOD

2006-12-28T08:27:00.000-08:00

Since my Iraq Study Group broke up I’ve been sort of at loose ends. It started as a book group that met twice a month to share pics of our grandkids and discuss our readings. In fact, we’d only just finished Marly & Me before taking up Iraq. But this time afterwards everybody agreed the group needed a break. So I asked my friend Bob what he’d be doing during our hiatus and he said he might be tied up for awhile, but did I realize how many "good" movies there were to see?

I was insulted at first, I was hoping he’d take the hint and find me work. But he told me, relax, I was probably better off not getting the DoD on my resume just now, and had I seen "The Good Shepherd"? Well, I thought that was odd, even though he used to head the CIA. But when he asked if I’d report back on "The Good German" and I said, sure, of course, he could count on me, he looked around and, seeing no one watching, slipped me an envelope. He wanted me to look into some suspicious activity. Hollywood, they were at it again. We all know the media can’t be trusted to point out the "good" we’re doing in the world. So what was going on? Bob asked me to get to the bottom of it and make my findings public.

I don’t have to tell you, he had given me quite a list. This year alone had produced four notable ‘good’ films. Along with The Good Sheperd and The Good German, there had been A Good Year with Russell Crowe and a British PBS deal called A Good Murder; and that didn’t take into account The Good Life, a movie with Bill Paxton and Harry Dean Stanton and Zooey Deschanel that’s due out next year. Not to mention last year’s Good Night & Good Luck. My first thought was George ‘Do-Gooder’ Clooney was behind this, since he was a common thread, so I called him. Right off, he admitted it. He was only interested in making ‘good’ movies. But I said, "George, this looks media-wide to me."

"I don’t control the media," he opined. ("Opining" is a favorite smart alec Liberal way of replying according to Bill O’Reilly.) It was a denial which, you’ll agree, coming from the "Sexiest Man Alive," is as good as him tacitly saying he does control the media.

But what was the idea, was this a whitewash? Was Hollywood trying to wrap itself up in ‘goodness’ to get America to believe it was not a tool of the insurgents, or terrorists, or communists, or whomever it was who’d gotten us into so much trouble around the world lately? "I really couldn’t say," Mr. Clooney lied, and then said he had more urgent business to attend to, world hunger or some genocide to help stop. As Don Rumsfeld would say, "My goodness!"

Finally, I went to see these films, The Good Shepherd and The Good German, or The Good German Shepherd as some wags have put it. I was surprised, it was like watching movies from the good old days, when America was the bastion of all that was right and good. Both films harked back to WWII, the last really ‘good’ war, where ‘good’ and ‘evil’ were clear as night and day. (By the way, another film simply titled "Good" is due in 2008 with Viggo Mortensen. Again, about the rise of National Socialism).

Then it hit me. It was a classic case of misdirection. The abundance of ‘good’ movies all concealed the same thing – the absence of ‘great’ movies, the movies Hollywood was no longer making! Sure, The Good German was ‘good’, but it was no Casablanca, or The Third Man. And neither was The Good Shepherd.

Where had all the great movies gone, movies like The Great Escape or The Great McGinty, The Great Santini or The Great White Hope? Or even the not-so-great great movies like The Great Impostor or The Great Bikini Off-Road Adventure?

So America, this Holiday Season when you’re deciding which movies to take the family to see, take your time. Like the extended shopping in this era of ‘gift cards’, it pays to wait. And be patient with our president, who’s also weighing all his extremely limited alternatives. Maybe revisit a great old movie, like It’s A Wonderful Life, or White Christmas (with that great song, "I’m Dreaming Of A Way Forward"). And relax. Things will (eventually) get better. For example, they already have a great movie coming out in 2007, The Great Buck Howard with John Malkovich.

Peace & Happy New Year.

Yours Truly,

Big Jim "I Wished I’d Never Gotten Involved In That Recount" Baker

FILM FESTS & MORE -- A KEY TO GREEN MEDIA

2006-12-25T07:10:00.000-08:00

Festivals

Try the above for an array of links to global film and tv festivals.

The site -- Eco/Enviro/Green -- is a rich resource of Film & TV contacts for Television - Festivals - Peer to Peer Organizations - Catalogs & Distributors - Hollywood Environmental Focus Groups - Environmental Fimmaking Tips

Santa Monica's own Laemmle 4-Plex Theater, at 1332 2nd street, played host to the 2nd Annual INSPIRATION FILM FESTIVAL last April. Dates for this year, 2007, are listed as April 27th -29th. But I would check. Particularly pending an announcement early January when submissions of films will again be accepted. In 2006 they offerred a $15,000 GAIA Feature Film award and two $5,000 GAIA Awards for Short and Documentary.

See Inspiration Film Fest

SOY UNDERWEAR?

2006-12-13T11:26:00.000-08:00

From the Man who gave us the term “wardrobe malfunction” comes news of the latest in eco-fashion. According to People magazine, Justin Timberlake has taken to covering his nether extremities in soy fiber undershorts. Soybean protein fiber is being marketed as a "vegetable cashmere," a new eco-friendly luxury textile. Those who've tried it vouch for soy's soft feel, luster, washability and durability.

A Short History Of Soyled Shorts

Soy in clothing isn't new. Henry Ford first preached for the bean back in the 1940s and was photographed wearing the first known soy suit and tie (above, amid the haycocks). Soy fibers had largely disappeared though, until recent developments in China. They've created a new fiber made from the leftover dregs of soybean oil and tofu production. With the advantage of being a renewable resource and a by-product of food manufacturing, soy textiles have organic certification, but cost 30% more than organic cotton and hemp due to accessibility issues and material costs today. This means the new soy clothing is being marketed as a higher end fabric, with the hope its unique texture and patina will support the price-point.

Where can you get soy clothing? Right now only the leading eco-clothing stores carry it: Under the Canopy and Of The Earth. But others are getting involved. Mikka-clothing, a Danish-Chinese company, has set up shop in China. Soy, watch out!

The Refinery Fire

2006-12-12T17:50:00.000-08:00

The Refinery Fire

The patrolman piled high cans of petroleum
siphoned from earth’s ancient mausoleum
on the oil company office's linoleum,

then lit a thin line of vasoline
that ignited the gasoline…

This, his refinery fire, an inferno felt in every
fiber of his being, in all its red, fiery finery
- all inessential elements eliminated -
refined his ire to very fine tire lines,
tiny, defined wiry treds to find,
that found, led to, first, a fine.
Then to being fired, tried,
freed, and, when retried,
nearly fried. Finally
free, he retired,
tired & died.

fin.

Hey, Los Angeles Auto Show!

2006-12-05T06:13:00.000-08:00

In the midst of the attention being lavished on the Los Angeles Auto Show and the big automakers becoming newly attentive to fuel concerns, the City of Santa Monica is sponsoring what is billed as the largest and most technologically advanced Alternative Car and Transportation Expo this coming weekend at Barker Hangar at the Santa Monica Airport.

Admission is free to ALTCAR EXPO. An electrifying car rally and opening ceremony—including a parade of all participating alternative vehicles—takes place at 10:30 a.m. on Friday, December 8. The event will begin at the Santa Monica Pier and end at Barker Hanger and will include actors James Brolin, Alexandra Paul and Ed Begley Jr., as well as a few surprises.

More than 100 alternative fuel vehicles will be showcased at the expo, including hybrid, electric, hydrogen, compressed natural gas, plug-in hybrid, high MPG gasoline, ethanol and biodiesel. Other eco-friendly vehicles—such as Segways, electric skateboards, bicycles, mopeds and two- and three-wheeled scooters—will also be on display. You can find more info at http://www.altcarexpo.com/

A wide-ranging selection of environmental, health and alternative fuel seminars will be held throughout the two-day event and will include Assemblymember Fran Pavley, National Center for Smart Growth Professor Reid Ewing and World Council for Renewable Energy Chairperson Angelina Galiteva. Keynote addresses will be provided by former CIA Director R. James Woolsey, author Edwin Black and former head of the California EPA Terry Tamminen.

Blonde on Blonde

GREEN GOLDEN GLOBES

blood on the tracks

E! Entertainment Television joins with EMA (the Environmental Media Association who still haven’t caught up with T. Lief’s blog) and 9900 Wilshire to throw this year’s first annual "Green" Golden Globes party -- a Hollywood first. They say they’ll be throwing the best and most eco-friendly post-Golden Globes party in town.

We’ll be the judge of that.

Gwyneth Spanish Clooney's pig

Hollywood's elite will party into the evening in an environmentally responsible way, while E! viewers will get "behind the velvet rope" access to the party. Participating celebrities are thought to include: Ed Begley Jr., Kristin Davis, Daryl Hannah, Anthony Kiedis, Wendie Malick, Nicole Richie, Jeffrey Tambor, Wilmer Valderrama, Constance Zimmer, and many others.

SOMETHING'S ROTTEN

2006-11-27T16:19:00.000-08:00

In the state of Russia. How does a radioactive isotope that is produced in quantities of less than 100 grams a year wind up in an anti-Putin activist’s sushi? (Or rice wine vinegar more likely, since the isotope Polonium likes dilute acids) Named by Ms. Curie for her native Poland, not Polonius – though Hamlet’s over-verbose courtier might as well have been its namesake. And it was a hidden draught of poison poured in his ear that killed the elder Ham, and wasn’t Fortinbras on his way to Poland?

In any case, what kind of control of radioactive by-products, let alone government apparatchiks, is exercised in the former Soviet states these days?

GREEN POWER

More less than savory eco-news in this next item… Garbage in, diesel out, was the idea… Green Power, a company funded by private investors, was set to build an $82 million plant in Fife, Washington to convert hundreds of tons of garbage each day into high-grade diesel fuel. But now the Securities Division of that state’s Department of Financial Institutions is investigating the company after an investor complaint, former employees say paychecks have bounced and the company is in a dispute with the garbage-to-diesel plant’s inventor over Green Power’s rights to the technology… Green Power CEO Michael Spitzauer is listed as a defendant in more than a dozen lawsuits in this country. Spitzauer and Christian Koch, the German inventor behind the technology, rolled into Fife last July with a small-scale, mobile garbage-to-diesel plant they used for a public demonstration. Workers fed shredded garbage mixed with motor oil into a shiny, silver machine. Minutes later golden diesel poured from a spigot. Spitzauer then took the bucket and poured the fuel into the tank of a black SUV… Spitzauer, however, it turns out was convicted of fraud in Austria in 1992 and served three years of a six-year sentence. The Austrian government later tried to extradite him from the United States on additional fraud charges.

Details can be found at http://www.thenewstribune.com/business/story/6227817p-5439397c.html

If this all sounds like an updated version of Music Man meets The Rainmaker the saddest part of this con is the likelihood the technology is bogus. Check Alphakat Gmbh’s website, the German company that claims ownership of the process and if you’re an engineer tell us what you think…

Meanwhile, the reactionary right, presumably afraid the spreading awareness of the overheating biosphere might hurt the bottom line of their corporate leash-holders, is attacking what?… Penguins?.. Disney’s animated feature Happy Feet, this Turkey Day weekend’s biggest box office hit, has gotten bitch-slapped by a dubious trio of "journalists" in the run up to its opening weekend.

Neal Cavuto: "My biggest thing was, you can make a political statement all you want in an adult movie and all. I just think it's a little tacky and big-time objectionable when you start foisting it on kids..."

Really, Neal? And who but the kids will inherit this global mess?

Glenn Beck: "If you're going to include those (environmental) themes, the least you could do is tell me, a parent. Tell me about it first, OK, so I know I'm walking into propaganda."

’Propaganda?’.. Okay, admittedly Glenn Beck is not only not a journalist, CNN is likely daily weighing what costs less, buying him out or letting his contract run out while audience share spirals hellward. He’d set fire to his hair if it would get him a tenth of a ratings point… Then there’s the always reliably loathsome...

Michael Medved: "I'm particularly annoyed at the big new animated film about tap-dancing penguins…The marketing suggests a feel-good frolic for kids… but the reality is dark, disturbing and deeply political… The penguins -with voices from Robin Williams, Nicole Kidman and others - face a menace from evil "aliens": human beings."

BLow Job

"Particularly annoyed"? How do you feel about Global Warming, Michael? Yeah, I thought so.

ALL THE NEWS THAT FITS, BUT JUST BARELY (given this darn new beta program for posting)

2006-11-19T20:53:00.000-08:00

Comic Relief celebrated its 20th Anniversary by Raising Funds to Assist Families in the Rebirth of New Orleans on Saturday night, November 18th... The three hour show aired on HBO and its sister station, TBS... Hosted by its original trio of Billy Crystal, Whoopi Goldberg, and Robin Williams,. it was filled with hot, rising comedy talent and live segments from New Orleans. If you missed it it’s available On Demand…

Meanwhile, Lindsay Lohan, pictured here hurriedly changing out of leather pants and a leopard-skin pillbox hat... Has reportedly just given up fur after learning that she was just days away from being named by PETA as this year's Worst Dressed Celebrity…

OJ Britney

But no laughing matter is this news item: the Washington State Department of Ecology has fined Celebrity Cruises $100,000 for dumping untreated wastewater into state waters in the fall of 2005 from its ship, the (aptly or unfortunately named) Mercury. The company blamed the spill on confusion about whether the ship was in state-governed waters...

Kobe Bryant Lebron

...Wait, does that mean outside of state waters it’s assumed it's okay to dump?! Oh, my…

Friday night at the United Nations, American rap star Jay-Z premiered his new video diary, ‘Water For Life’, which captures his journey into areas affected by the ongoing global water crisis... Touring several developing countries, Jay-Z is shone travelling children along the roads they take every day to fetch water for their families and schools, water that is often unsafe and inadequate to local needs... UNICEF is working to improve water and sanitation conditions – with an eye toward the Millennium Development Goal of halving the number of people without access to safe water or basic sanitation by 2015…

… More sweet music to globally over-heated ears, rock luminaries Green Day and the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) announced a major new campaign Friday. Move America Beyond Oil will mobilize and empower music fans to demand clean, renewable energy solutions that break our dangerous dependence on oil -- a fuel that threatens both our security and our environment…

The pairing unites one of the world's most popular and socially conscious rock groups with one of the nation's most effective environmental action groups… The online hub for the Move America Beyond Oil campaign is http://www.greendaynrdc.com/ where visitors can see exclusive video messages from the band and send personal messages directly to political leaders straight from the site. Visitors will also be able to send text messages directly from their cell phones to lawmakers and corporate leaders, a development the NRDC sees as ushering in a new age of ‘Cell Phone Activism’… Fine with me, as long as you’re not driving… The NRDC, long known for the work of its lawyers and scientists, has gained prominence by virtue of it collaborations with well known conservationists such as Robert Redford, James Taylor, Leonardo DiCaprio, Laurie David, Jack Black, Cameron Diaz and Ben Harper...

Readers will want to take a look at Elizabeth Kolbert’s most recent article, "The Darkening Ocean," in this week’s New Yorker. Following on her fabulous, three-parter last year on global climate change -- far more detailed and frightening than even the admirable An Inconvenient Truth -- this piece gives the particulars of a newly identified phenomenon known as "ocean acidification" which is nearly irreversible and the result of carbon emissions.

Me, "Bobby" & Ira G.

2006-11-18T10:16:00.000-08:00

Yesterday's article in the LA Times Calendar Section by Sandy Banks, They Never Needed to Reimagine 'Bobby', brought that era, the era of the assassinations, back. In it, Ms. Banks catches up with the other victims of the shooting the night Robert F. Kennedy was killed, those who were collateral damage in Sirhan Sirhan's shooting spree. That their recollections in some cases differ greatly from the depiction in Emilio Estevez's new movie is the gist of Ms. Banks' article:

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-me-bobby17nov17,0,4263649.story?coll=la-home-headlines

Among those mentioned as having been shot in the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel that night, however, was one Ira Goldstein, then 19, or so it says, who caught a bullet in his left buttocks.
No one who lived those days of assassination from '63 to '68 ever quite puts it completely behind them. (Except perhaps maybe Ira.) But as one of those people, the reason I'm not a conspiracy buff, for all my 'paranoid' predispositions, I believe has to do with the real 'untold' story behind Ira, or of Ira's behind.

The Ira Goldstein story is elided in Ms. Banks retelling of events that night. It always has been in every L.A. Times version. (See? Catch a hint of my naturally conspiratorial bent?) In fact, Mr. Goldstein is characterized in Ms. Banks article today as living in welcome obscurity with no wish to relive those memories. But, given the age we live in, where security issues are all the rage, the 'real' story is something of a cautionary tale. A comic note in a tragic text. And may go some ways toward explaining why Ira isn't keen on dredging up the details.

That's because Ira Goldstein got shot in the ass in the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel, June 5th, 1968, playing sidekick to a valley high school kid playing boy reporter. A 17 year-old classmate of mine named Jeff... what was Jeff's name again, Kent, Kemp… Brent! (Speak, Memory!)

As I remember him, Jeff was a 'character', one of those socially-awkward late adolescents (no 'hippy', Jeff was more a London Fog raincoated Sinatra-manque) whose rebellion took the shape of a passion for premature acceptance as an 'adult'. He was hellbent to be taken seriously.

In love with ham radio, in 11th Grade he printed up business cards and, wielding them, a flashy tape recorder and a big professional-looking padded mike, he and Ira chased around town crashing their way into events. (In fact, Jeff might have even gone so far as to put a panel on his car's door identifying it, too, as part of his "news" operation. To not denigrate it, they did manage to feed some stories to the wire services and local radio.)

I'd love to learn what ever became of him. What I do know, however, is in the myriad official reports, the hundreds of deadly earnest articles on RFK's murder, amid speculations of additional gunmen, impossible bullet angles, police conspiracies, links to JFK's assassination, Ira is always identified, when they bother to do so, portentously, as "19, an employee of the Continental News Service." (See, e.g.,"DAY OF MOURNING" American Experience, PBS, primary sources: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/rfk/filmmore/ps_mourning.html)

Never, ever have I seen it mentioned that Ira and Jeff were two underage valley kids who'd managed to weasel their way into the kitchen of the Ambassador with homemade credentials.

Sirhan Sirhan was not the only guy that night who had no business being there. But Jeff's bonafides were never susbsequently looked into and Ira, having been shot in the ass, has always, far as I am aware, been allowed to glide over the matter. But a paid employee of a legitimate news service? Give my jealous, 17 year-old ego a break.

So one should hardly carp over poetic license being taken with events in Mr. Estevez's 'Bobby'. Here's wishing him well with his new film. Among their many acts of good will toward the planet, he and his father, Martin Sheen, endorsed the Heritage Tree Preservation Act in 2002 which banned the cutting of Heritage trees, trees alive in the year California became a state (1850), on non-federally owned forestlands. Heritage trees can be over 16 feet in diameter, are resistant to forest fires because of their size, and provide crucial habitat for numerous endangered and threatened species. Unfortunately the act did NOT pass.

For the absolutely most inspiring read about California's ancient Sequoias, I recommend Richard Preston's "Climbing Redwoods" articles in the New Yorker which are to be found collected in The Wild Trees: A Story of Passion and Daring due out in April, 2007.

What You Get Is No Tomorrow

2006-11-16T14:24:00.000-08:00

"Fame… What you want is in the limo..."

Hello, Sports Fans! Which, in fact, was the column I set out to write today when, lo and behold, I discovered to my dismay that there simply aren’t a whole helluvalot of athletes, high profile American professionals, on the frontlines of environmental work.

Hot Pussy

I’m not saying there isn’t a single tree hugger in Major League Baseball -- tho, please, tell me his name -- or a Prius-owner in the NFL (a place-kick holder, most likely), but when it comes to sports this fan fears Shaq’s carbon footprint completely dwarfs his legendary feets.

OJ Simpson Nancy Pelosi Richard Powers Trent Lott
"Fame… What is it good for?… Absolutely nothing!" --David Bowie, FAME

Wait, not so fast, David. And the NFL does have it’s NFL Environmental program which has been on-going since 1992. It works with host communities of the Superbowl and Probowl to mitigate their impact, attempting comprehensive solid waste management, recycling, collection and donation of extra ‘prepared food,’ and it has a "Carbon Neutral" initiative that "seeks to plant hundreds of seedling trees to offset the greenhouse gas emissions." It'll be there once again in South Florida on February 4th when Superbowl XLI is held.

Michigan vs. Ohio State

Sure, it’s mostly public relations, but it is laudable.

So, is working to limit the adverse effects of humongous sporting events, but having few star athletes involved in green causes better than the reverse?

Girls Zune Youtube
For example, yesterday a UCLA Institute of the Environment report claimed Hollywood production is responsible for 140,000 tons of particulate pollution a year in Los Angeles. Despite individual producers and studios attempts at minimizing that raging waste, the variety of sub-contractors, of tradespeople, gaffers, teamsters, caterers, all of whom are employed job to job make it next to impossible to impose uniform standards and therefore to control it.

But it’s Hollywood celebrities first and foremost who are out front, putting their names and faces, their time and their voices, to making the public aware of the precarious state of the planet’s health and of an increasing number of green alternatives.

Frankly, in the short and even medium run, I’d prefer that situation – that ‘double-standard’ if you will -- of burning a little extra gas getting people aware of our choice to what’s going on in the sports world. True, Athletes in this media-conscious age are giving of their time to their communities, to campaigns to help eradicate disease, to reach inner city kids, to a wide range of charitable endeavors. To suggest anything less would be churlish. And, after all, all these things are interconnected.

But there’s something troubling, and misplaced, maybe even a bit of deep denial at work when the heroes who earn their fame racing over broad swatches of mown grass, breathing deep lungfuls of fresh air, swatting little balls into stands of tall trees or over far distant fences, or arching larger balls up for the shell of a peach basket, have so little care, so little time for the causes that would preserve the sunlight and open spaces that gave birth to these games.

2006-11-14T12:18:00.000-08:00

"I trust a good deal to common fame... If a man has good corn, or wood, or boards… If a man can write a better book, preach a better sermon, or make a better mousetrap… you will find a broad hard-beaten road to his house, though it be in the woods."

--Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1855

So Much Good To Do, So Little Time

2006-11-12T12:55:00.001-08:00

As I write three marathoners are attempting to cross the Sahara, 4000 miles in 80 days, by running roughly 2 marathons a day. LivePlanet, Matt Damon’s production company, is filming the race as a documentary. But a major aim of RUNNING THE SAHARA, which Damon will narrate, is to raise awareness for H2O Africa, the project’s Clean Water initiative. H2O Africa hopes to raise awareness of the water crisis in Africa and gather support for clean water programs in critical areas since clean water, or the lack thereof, is one of the core challenges facing Africa– from health, to education, to human rights...

Meanwhile, on Sunday, November 26th The Miss Earth 2006: Beauties for a Cause pageant will take place in Manila. The pageant focuses on this year’s hot topic: Global warming. Like traditional beauty pageants, contestants will compete in swimwear, talent, and long gown competitions. But the new Miss Earth will participate in various environmental campaigns and the runners up will be crowned Miss Earth Fire, Miss Earth Water, and Miss Earth Air respectively. How primitively elemental… Leonardo DiCaprio, widely regarded as the most active and effective eco celebrity activist, is rumored to be pitching "E-topia", a reality-based project that would chronicle a down-and-out town being rebuilt into an eco-friendly community…

Sacha Baron Cohen britney spears Sex tape Jude Law Sienna Gils
At the Environmental Media Awards -

Actresses Marla Sokoloff, left, and Wendie Malick and actor Chris Kattan, at right, present an award during the 16th annual Environmental Media Awards at Ebell Club of Los Angeles on Nov. 8. Oops, they forgot to invite T. Lief!... Which is too bad since this writer knows the value of award shows in incentivizing writers. But the EMA does a nice job calling attention to film and television work that raises environmental awareness. Winners this year included AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH, Boston Legal for "Finding Nimmo" and the Simpson’s episode: "Bonfire Of The Manatees"…

Bush Rumsfeld Pelosi Borat

Angelina Jolie promised as much as $1.3 million over five years to Cambodian Vision in Development. According to an AP report, the Academy Award-winning actress voided her contract to fund the forest conservation program when hundreds of thousands of dollars went missing, allegedly stolen by the organization’s director. Now she’s started her own Cambodian conservation project, the Maddox Jolie Project, named for her 5-year-old son…

Tom Cruise private jet

Paris Hilton is supposedly close to signing a deal with an eco-friendly accessories company, but the amount of private air travel she indulges in makes her an 'amber' rather than a 'deep green' celeb. She, however, is merely one of numerous celebs, some bona fide Eco Warriors among them, who’ve been taken to task worldwide...

Yahoo James Baker Iraq Study Group

It’s a growing concern, first raised in the British press http://observer.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,1939492,00.html that many of our favorites, while busy working green causes, blithely board private jets and wing across the world burning and spewing ungodly amounts of fossil fuel. Among those chided for their careless globetrotting is green campaigner George Clooney who recently flew privately from LA to Tokyo and Julia Roberts for taking a private jet from LA to Chicago… A double standard? Perhaps we’ll take it up in the next installment.

Hello, Children Of The Ocean!

2006-11-10T10:20:00.000-08:00

Last night, on a hilltop near Mulholland, the Oceana Awards http://www.oceana.org/ produced some inspiringly memorable moments. On hand to accept his Ocean Hero Award, recipient JAMES CAMERON gave the glamorous gathered Oceana fundraisers a glimpse into his aqueous soul. And, perhaps, the best explanation to date for all his rapturously liquid movies. He’s been a scuba diver from the age of sixteen. Introduced by the ever-effervescent JAMIE LEE CURTIS, who lovingly described her TRUE LIES director as 'a geek', Cameron ("Hey, Jamie, 'Geeks' are the guys who tear the heads off chickens?!") spoke from the heart, off-the-cuff and, not surprisingly, quite eloquently. What became as clear as the blue glass sculptures of wafting bubbles that framed the presenters and honorees was Mr. Cameron's abiding love for the sea and for Oceana’s work to restore its abundance. "The next ten years will decide the fate of the oceans," he predicted, going on to explain that at the very least we will be deciding whether it will contain anything like the rich diversity that first drew him to explore its vastness and that is, sadly, no longer there.

TED DANSON emceed with the effortless grace and charm he’s shown since his dancing Assistant D.A. debut in BODY HEAT. He deftly gave way at the podium for NICK CAGE to do the honors and, in his inimitable way, Mr. Cage, another devoted son of the sea, stirred us all with a gentle post-election call for "An Ocean Revolution". He presented an Oceana Partners Award to publicist ANNETT WOLF who’s been a tireless supporter of its work. SALMA HAYEK then stirred hearts and souls in presenting another of the three Oceana Partner Awards to ABC Prexy STEVE MCPHERSON. Holy Aqualung, the ravishing Ms. Hayek also revealed roots to the briny deep. Her love affair with the blue fathoms also began with scuba diving -- at the tender age of 12! If there were any lingering doubts about the sense and sensibility of this actress, they were scattered in the chill hilltop breezes which kept many from investigating the pool-decked plateau where Esquire House 360 http://www.esquirehouse360.com/ is stunningly sited. And Mr. McPherson disarmed and delighted all with his remarks, claiming that the extent of his ocean activism had to date been no more than to stop eating Chilean Sea Bass!

What was great – and there was a lot of gilded glitz and gaucherie to the Esquire Housed affair: wall screens in nearly every room, Luis Vuitton straps on the bookshelves in his "signature suite" – was this frank admission. This is the purpose of celebrity. You are called upon to be honored as a means of lending your name, your notoriety, your circle of friends (and your rolodex!) to a worthy cause. And it is a far, far better thing that you do, if it is no more than having not eaten an endangered species, that you give of your public estate, your good name, to saving the planet.

Doing this, and more, were the night’s two other Partner recipients, PIERCE BROSNAN and his wife, KEELY. Afterward, both a silent and not-so-silent auction was held as guests mingled and wandered through the many-roomed mansion.

OCEANA PARTNER AWARDS

2006-11-09T15:48:00.000-08:00

Tonight! And T. Lief Tepper and The Weekly Green can't wait to get there on the red carpet to attend the festivities and post all the hot eco-celebrity-news that's fit to print.

The event, which is also a benefit fundraiser for Oceana, an organization that campaigns to protect and restore the world's oceans, is honoring James Cameron, director/ creator of TERMINATOR, THE ABYSS and TITANIC. Mr. Cameron is set to receive the Ted Danson Ocean Hero Award; and honoring PIERCE BROSNAN and his wife KEELY BROSNAN with the Partners Award for their work on behalf of the ocean environment.

On hand as presenters, NICOLAS CAGE and FELICITY HUFFMAN

The star-studded event is hosted by Esquire at their just recently-christened bachelor palace, a 17,000 sq. foot designer pad, the Esquire 360 House. With views that span from the ocean to the mountains, it promises to generate almost as much attention to Oceana's environmental efforts as the planet-conscious celebrities lending their time and names to the cause.

Oceana is a fairly new environmental protection charity whose campaigns have brought pressure to bear on the cruise ship industry to stop them treating our seas as outhouses, and Oceana's teams of marine scientists, economists, lawyers and advocates have won specific, concrete policy changes to reduce pollution and to prevent the irreversible collapse of fish populations, marine mammals and other sea life.

Global in scope, Oceana has campaigners based in North America (Washington, DC; Juneau, AK; Los Angeles, CA), Europe (Madrid, Spain; Brussels, Belgium) and South America (Santiago, Chile).

For more about them go to http://www.oceana.org/

Announcing The Weekly Green Planet

2006-11-09T15:26:00.000-08:00

Announcing ~ THE WEEKLY GREEN PLANET ~ the first column devoted to celebrity aid to the global environment.

Modeled on Army Archerd's famous "Just For Variety," THE WEEKLY GREENPLANET will be fast-paced, three-dot journalism informing readers of therapidly expanding world of environmental news.

Fax, phone or email us your press items. We'll get your clients andtheir causes attention.
Email: weeklygreenplanet@gmail.com
Phone or Fax: 310 828-9582

Website: http://Eco-Celebrity-News.com/The_Weekly_Green_Planet.html

THE WEEKLY GREEN kicks off November 11th, 2006 with a new installment appearing once a week here and at

(Deadline for inclusion for the following week is noon Sunday)

Eco-Celebrity-News is a non-proprietary site promoting people and causesseeking an ecologically-sustainable future. Bringing internet eyeballsand awareness to that quest by trumpeting celebrity associations with"green" causes.

From electric cars to greenhouse gas-reducing technologies, from eco-friendly resorts to anti-climate change initiatives, don't hesitateto send us news of your clients "green" promotions: what won't work for the column we'll find a place for.

Enter this email address in your electronic rolodex. Fwd it to the proper press contact.
Let your office know of our existence. weeklygreenplanet@gmail.com

If it promotes an environmentally friendly project, we're interested.