Melting polar ice caps, extinction of endangered species, worsening air pollution, wildfires, droughts, spread of diseases.  These are all frightening effects of global warming that make me want to takepart to further reduce my personal contribution.  What do they mean to you?

Well, you could be part of the 1/5 of the general US public that doesn’t believe global warming is happening. Yes, it’s not just Sarah Palin and Dick Cheney who are the naysayers but a whopping 60 million Americans. I think part of the problem is the phrase “global warming.” An increase of one or two degrees on the planet will have drastic effects on its delicate ecological balance but people might be able to ignore (to some degree) how it affects their daily lives. And, some people might think that having Miami Beach weather in Seattle might be a good thing (though I don’t know if culturally people in Seattle would be happy about that).  However, global warming doesn’t mean warmer temperatures everywhere. It means chaos on the planet with warming in some places, colder temperatures in others and a complete churning of the intricate, delicate balance of nature.

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A few months back, I wrote about the unexpectedly welcome news that President Bush asked his cabinet for a plan to protect the waters around some of the most remote islands in the Pacific Ocean, including the Mariana Trench, the deepest spot on earth.  We read that, and we thought, “Huh.  That’s pretty awesome.  We’ll put this one in the win column for this administration.”

Aaaaaannnnnd…not so fast.  There are objections to the plan.  And, not from the most helpful of places.  Richard Dreyfuss The Penguin Vice President Dick Cheney is not onboard with this idea, at all.  The Washington Post reports (and, yes, sorry about the cheap dig at the Vice President…they’re not even original jokes, and all joking aside, I have heard he’s a nice man, in person):

Vice President Cheney and some officials in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands have argued that the plan could hurt the region’s economy by barring fishing and energy exploration.

Ah, yes.  Money.  It always comes down to money.

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Former New York Times journalist Judith Miller has joined Fox News. The journalist, who spent 85 days in jail for refusing to disclose the identity of a source, who she later revealed was none other Vice President Dick Cheney’s Chief of Staff Scooter Libby, during the Valerie Plame affair, will work as an analyst on international and security affairs for the Rupert Murdoch owned cable news network.

Could there be a better match than this? The revelations regarding Miller and her relationship with Scooter Libby after she finally divulged his identity and was subsequently released from prison nearly made me stop reading The New York Times. Specifically this passage from the letter Libby sent Miller releasing her from confidentiality struck a chord in its exposing a type of relationship that had become far too close to even resemble objective journalism anymore:

Out west, where you vacation, the aspens will already be turning. They turn in clusters because their roots connect them. Come back to work - and life.

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I’m going to go ahead and write about whales one more time today because why not.  This time, though, we have the government doing something to protect whales.  The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (which apparently exists, and is part of the Department of Commerce) has instituted a speed limit for ships that are coming near to the North Atlantic right whale.  From the Washington Post:

North Atlantic right whales, which were intensely hunted in the 1800s during the height of the U.S. whaling boom, now number fewer than 400 and rank among the most endangered animals in the world. The rule issued by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration requires large ships to slow to 10 knots (11.5 mph) during parts of the year when they come within 20 nautical miles of several East Coast ports in areas where the whales feed, reproduce and migrate.

A few years back, the zone was going to be 30 nautical miles (roughly 840,000 land miles (not true)), but “shipping interests” and “Aides to Vice President Dick Cheney” said, hey, how about not so much?  We got things to ship here.  So the NOAA scaled the zone back down to 20 nautical miles.  Which it seems will make a difference, but not an entirely huge one.

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These are dark times for these United States.

War in Iraq. Stock market going all Louganis. War in Afghanistan. Home foreclosures driving little old ladies to shoot themselves. War against Iran if Dick Cheney gets his 2008 Christmas wish. And Tampa Bay is four wins from the World Series.

Apocalypse, if not now, may be really friggin’ soon. (Tampa Bay?! Srsly?)

Despite the impending calamity, our nation — President Ronald Wilson Reagan’s shining city upon a hill — looks ahead optimistically. As cool fall air blows and the leaves turn, we gird ourselves for the next installment in our democratic tradition: Town Hall Smackdown ‘08! — Barack Despite What the MSM Say, My Middle Name Really Is Hussein Obama versus John Can I Finally Go Balls-Out Negative On This Punk (Like The Viet Cong Did To Me, As You Might Recall)? McCain. Truly, prosperity is just around the corner.

Yet before we bid farewell to last week’s VP undercard, an overlooked portion of that debate deserves closer examination. While it did not go completely unnoticed, it was obscured by BlinkGate, Say-It-Ain’t-So-Joe-Mania, and Exceeding-Preposterously-Low-Expectations-Palooza. And it portends doom for the Land of the Free.

Two simple words…

Biden cried.

You saw it. 70 million of you saw it. Well, minus the ones who flipped to Ace Of Cakes.

What in the holy name of Brian’s Song was THAT about? Senator, just who do you think you are? Hillary?

In a post-9/11 world, crying does not cut it.

You know who cries? This guy:

Here’s the caption of this photo (from the National Archives):
A Frenchman weeps as German soldiers march into the French capital, Paris, on June 14, 1940.”

A Frenchman weeps.

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With Barack Obama’s Vice Presidential Nominees (along with John McCain’s Republican pick) about to be announced (there are even bar graphs predicting results…), I got to thinking about fictional VPs, along with a few real ones that were portrayed by actors in movies.

A selection of them are below:

1) Joan Allen in The Contender - she’s tough and in a day and age where a lady VP is a real possibility, this film speaks volumes.

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Al Gore may be staying out of fray by keeping mum about his choice for the democratic presidential candidate, but he’s still on the front lines of the campaign to stop global warming. In a 60 Minutes interview last night with Lesley Stahl, Gore discussed his new $300 million dollar bipartisan advertising campaign to increase awareness about global warming. The commercials feature political odd couples including Nancy Pelosi and Newt Gingrich, and Al Sharpton and Pat Robertson, who share at least one thing in common ” their concern for the environment.

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As I blogged on Friday, Young People For, the program that empowers young progressive leaders to promote social change in their communities, and the Republican National Committee do not share much in common. But over the Martin Luther King Day three-day weekend, these two groups shared the same hotel, where YP4 held their national summit and the RNC held their winter meeting. The diversity among YP4 was truly stunning, as young people from different parts of the world, different ethnicities, different gender identities, different sexual orientation, different life experiences gathered in one place to connect around social change and community building. To be fair, the members of the RNC were also diverse: their skin color ranged from golfer’s tan to translucent; they celebrated diversity by wearing black ball gowns of different sizes and shapes; and their fur coats came from a variety of animals, making the affair a truly inclusive and representative one.But this weekend’s irony is not limited to the RNC YP4 coincidence. The greater irony is the RNC MLK coincidence. How appropriate it is for Republicans, many of whom, including Dick Cheney, fought hard against making Martin Luther King Day a holiday, to take advantage of this three holiday to hold their winter meeting. As they planned committee activities and events for an administration that has eroded–and is still eroding– so many of the gains of the civil rights movement, for which King fought and died, did these RNCers think they were honoring Martin Luther King’s memory?