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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: geode00 who wrote (184796)	4/7/2006 10:20:56 PM
From: sylvester80	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

And the majority of those 211K jobs are mainly service oriented like clerks at Wal-Mart making minimum wage ($11K a year). Good luck making a living with those "jobs".

To: geode00 who wrote (184796)	4/8/2006 12:32:57 AM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Gore takes on global warming, calling it 'a moral issue' for all insidebayarea.com 04/07/2006 OAKLAND — Al Gore brought corporate executives and environmentally minded investors roaring to their feet Thursday with multimedia images of an overheating planet and a call for Americans to reclaim their "moral authority" by tackling global warming. "This is really not a political issue, it is disguised as a political issue," Gore said. "It is a moral issue, it is an ethical issue — If we allow this to happen, we will destroy the habitability of the planet. We can't do that, and I am confident we won't do that." As a U.S. senator, Gore gave global warming talks 15 years ago in Washington, D.C. that relied almost entirely on scientists' best guesses and computer models. Now bolstered by real climate changes, he's gone Technicolor, with movies of collapsing ice shelves, then-and-now shots of vanishing glaciers and lakes, telegenic photos of dwindling wildlife species — plus floods, tornadoes and, of course, hurricanes. "We have been blind to the fact that the human species is now having a crushing impact on the ecological system of the planet," Gore said. After Katrina, Rita and Wilma in 2005, federal hurricane scientists used the Greek alphabet in naming tropical storms. "This is the first foretaste of a cup that will be offered to us again and again and again until we regain our moral authority," Gore told members of Ceres, an organization of companies, investors and environmentalists pressing for greener behavior by corporations. Gore's message is much the same as it was in the early'90s, but his talk in Oakland comes at a political tipping point in the debate not over global warming, but what to do about it. Twenty-two states and the District of Columbia now insist on some percentage of renewables for their energy. Washington and Oregon are considering a carbon tax. California and a coalition of eight Northeast states are setting mandatory caps on greenhouse gases and moving toward carbon markets. Oakland and 217 other U.S. cities with a total population of more than 40 million have endorsed the Kyoto Treaty's limits on greenhouse gases. More than 40 U.S. Fortune 500 corporations say they favor mandatory federal regulation of greenhouse gases. In Congress, the number of bills dealing with climate change has rocketed from seven in 1997 to more than 100 this year, said Truman Semans of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change. "It shows what politicians believe it's important to have a record on, and they believe it's important to have a record on climate change," he said Thursday. U.S. senators Pete Domenici and Jeff Bingaman on Tuesday held the first hearings in Congress on creating a mandatory cap on greenhouse emissions and setting up a carbon market to drive less carbon-intensive technologies. At those hearings, trade associations for the electric-power and mining industries opposed the new rules as potentially disastrous for the U.S. economy. But executives of General Electric, Wal-Mart, Exelon and other companies urged the senators to move ahead. If a carbon market were in place that could place a price on the right to release greenhouse gases, then technologies to curb those emissions would rise in value, and the corporate risks of those emissions could be quantified by financial markets, said Kaj Jensen of Bank of America. "It's inevitable," Jensen told Ceres members. "The only real question we think is when we will have a market in place." Many of the answers — increased energy efficiency, conservation, expanded use of alternative fuels — already are in hand, Gore argued. The nation overcame slavery, gave women the right to vote, defeated global fascism on two fronts simultaneously and put a man on the moon, he said. "We can do this if we set our minds to this."

To: geode00 who wrote (184796)	4/8/2006 12:55:55 AM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Bush's "Party of Ideas" . . Submitted by Bob Geiger on April 7, 2006 George W. Bush \| Republicans & Conservatives In addition to the most recent revelations of George W. Bush authorizing leaks of critical intelligence information to silence Iraq war critics, Bush had this to say when responding to the decision by disgraced Republican Congressman Tom DeLay to retire from Congress: “I wish him all the very best and I know he is looking to the future. My own judgment is, our party will continue to succeed because we're the party of ideas.' The party of ideas? Off the top of my head, here’s the only Republican ideas I’ve seen in the last five years: * Doctoring evidence used to start a war with a country that did not attack us and posed no threat to America. * Having responsibility for the deaths of 2,344 American military people and tens of thousands of Iraqis, at least $250 billion in wasted war money and a trashed reputation throughout the world. * Being fully supportive of holding prisoners without charges, without counsel and in violation of every tenet of American ideals. Oh, yeah, the GOP leadership thinks it’s acceptable to torture people too. * Consistently lying to the American people about everything from the rationale for war, through Hurricane Katrina response to domestic spying. * And speaking of Katrina, how many people might have lived had the Republicans not gutted the Federal Emergency Management Agency and exiled it under the Department of Homeland Security? Incompetence kills. Heck of a job, Brownie. And speaking of domestic spying, the Republican party stands for eavesdropping on all of us, without required court orders and in express violation of the law. * Politicizing to the extreme the heart-wrenching Terri Schiavo situation – including Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist making a magical “diagnosis” of her condition from the Senate floor that, as it turns out, was wrong anyway. * Being the party of Tom DeLay, Jack Abramoff and Duke Cunningham – enough said. * Disclosing the identity of covert CIA agent, Valerie Plame as retaliation for her husband, Ambassador Joe Wilson, pointing out that Team Bush was lying in their reasons for attacking Iraq. The GOP: Where treason becomes fashionable. * Seeding the media with right-wing propaganda disguised as legitimate news, including having former prostitute Jeff Gannon sitting front and center in the White House briefing room to throw softball questions at Scott “The Lyin’ King” McClellan. * Embarrassing the American people by making a macho vow to get Osama bin Laden – you remember, the guy who actually did attack us on September 11 – letting him roam completely free for almost five years, while allowing al Qaeda to continue operating in at least 60 countries. * Cutting taxes for other rich Republicans time after time, while running up the biggest budget deficit in U.S. history. * Making our Statue of Liberty at least temporarily irrelevant by trying to kick 12 million immigrants out of the country, while branding them felons. (I’ve been in Mexico a lot lately and the people I talk to there have the same reaction as most people throughout the world – love most Americans, hate our government.) * Decimating social programs including Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare while forcing a disastrous drug program on the nation’s elderly. * Refusing to raise the minimum wage and only funding the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program for a fraction of the approved budget and at the end of the winter. * Giving the American version of the Taliban – our very own religious extremists – a front-row seat in governing our country. * Fighting at every turn, attempts by Congressional Democrats to support homeland security – such as providing funds for port protection and first-responders – while rejecting almost every Democratic effort to fund Veterans programs. * Trying to turn over security of our major ports to a country with known ties to the terrorist attacks of 2001. * Leading the effort to turn back the clock in our society and outlaw a woman’s right to reproductive choice. Whew! That took me a whole 10 minutes. Bush may be right and the Republicans may indeed be the “party of ideas.” Too bad those ideas are ruining our country, destroying our world standing and imperiling the next generation. democrats.com