Road Rules

"For instance, an existing requirement to keep all fish and wildlife species from becoming threatened or endangered is jettisoned. In its place is a requirement that managers consider the best available science to protect all natural resources when they are making decisions."

The NY Timeslays out the details of the new Bush timber-funded forest plan. Best available science can now mean the equivalent of astrology since Bush doesn't know the difference.

Roadless Stifling

This is a letter to Chief Bosworth from EPA staff on roadless concerns. The report was censored and rewritten to suit Bushland.

Hatchet Job

Marc Cooper does the best job of shedding light on the Gary Webb suicide. The case is a classic example of smearing by newspapers beholden or oblivious to the government agencies they cover. It is still unclear to me exactly how close Webb got to the truth about crack-running Contras and a CIA relationship, but apparently there's more truth to it than Saddam and Al Qaeda which frankly doesn't set the bar very high.

Up Up and Away

Off to Florida for the holidays.

Isms

Akin to John Horgan I'll call mine Yorkism. Deviate at your own peril.

Sprawl Rule

And the beat goes on for the Bush anti-environment agenda: AP The latest empowers homebuilders as if they weren't already. I'll be commenting on the new Michael Crichton novel soon. For now I think he's spoofing the doomsday outlook hyperbole that is Hollywood. Unless he actually thinks global warming isn't real, but I don't know that yet.

Reality-Based

"Second," writes Mark Roche dean at Notre Dame U. last October, "politics is the art of the possible. During the eight years of the Reagan presidency, the number of legal abortions increased by more than 5 percent; during the eight years of the Clinton presidency, the number dropped by 36 percent. The overall abortion rate (calculated as the number of abortions per 1,000 women between the ages of 15 and 44) was more or less stable during the Reagan years, but during the Clinton presidency it dropped by 11 percent."

Amen.

Via Kevin Drum.

Commandant

Bush, speaking at Camp Pendelton, is wearing a sand-colored military jacket with the Seal and George W. Bush Commander in Chief embroidered on it. The shoulder epilets are new as well. This image as a miltary commander should serve the insurgency well. What ignorant hubris about symbolic imagery.

Through the Looking glass

This voter fraud thing reminds me of the John Loengard character in "Dark Skies," claiming all the history we know is a really a lie. Is it? Damned if I know. Who is the is Menfil character?

I was the bearded man in this episode.

Bush Science

"Other biologists, however, were more surprised at Ms. MacDonald's interpretation of their work. Mike Schroeder of the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife said that she had misinterpreted his 1999 study when she said it showed that grouse could survive without sagebrush."

"Sage grouse clearly depend on sagebrush to survive on a year-round basis," Mr. Schroeder said. NY Times

Sage Grouse without sage; fish without water and so on. Typical industry hatchet job doing Bush's bidding.

Tom Wolfe

Wolfe just stepped in it on a live interview with Brian Lamb claiming that evolution couldn't be tested by the scientific method. Quite untrue. Consider bacteria and resistance to anti-biotics? Quite observable sir indeed.

Climate Change Consensus

Good little paper here on the above. Change is real and human-caused.

More falty logic on salmon

The LA Times puts the salmon "critical habitat" rollbacks in the center of the front page. Kudos to them for that. Thumbs down to the Bush administraion for continuing their degrading of the issue by declaring by proclamation that fish don't need water. That and counting hatchery fish to delist endangered wild runs. More bad news from the bad news bears of the right.