Al Gore: We Can’t Wish Away Climate Change

By GottaLaff

Al Gore finally does what we all need to do. He calls out the "market fundamentalists" and goes after the Senate:

It would be an enormous relief if the recent attacks on the science of global warming actually indicated that we do not face an unimaginable calamity requiring large-scale, preventive measures to protect human civilization as we know it.

Wouldn't it though?

We would no longer have to worry that our grandchildren would one day look back on us as a criminal generation that had selfishly and blithely ignored clear warnings that their fate was in our hands. We could instead celebrate the naysayers who had doggedly persisted in proving that every major National Academy of Sciences report on climate change had simply made a huge mistake.

Just like those old Three's Company premises: One big, ongoing, silly misunderstanding.
What a laugh riot.

And just think of the spin-offs! Why, there's no telling what Naysayers Inc. could come up with for, say, health care or the economy.

[T]he scientific enterprise will never be completely free of mistakes. What is important is that the overwhelming consensus on global warming remains unchanged.

And now, for those who still need a refresher course... Climate Change 101:

Here is what scientists have found is happening to our climate: man-made global-warming pollution traps heat from the sun and increases atmospheric temperatures. These pollutants — especially carbon dioxide — have been increasing rapidly with the growth in the burning of coal, oil, natural gas and forests, and temperatures have increased over the same period. Almost all of the ice-covered regions of the Earth are melting — and seas are rising. Hurricanes are predicted to grow stronger and more destructive, though their number is expected to decrease. Droughts are getting longer and deeper in many mid-continent regions, even as the severity of flooding increases. The seasonal predictability of rainfall and temperatures is being disrupted, posing serious threats to agriculture. The rate of species extinction is accelerating to dangerous levels.

That Al, he's such an optimist. Seriously, I kid Mr. Gore, but he's spot on.

As for a remedy:

The political paralysis that is now so painfully evident in Washington has thus far prevented action by the Senate — not only on climate and energy legislation, but also on health care reform, financial regulatory reform and a host of other pressing issues. [...]

It’s important to point out that the United States is not alone in its inaction. Global political paralysis has thus far stymied work not only on climate, but on trade and other pressing issues that require coordinated international action.

The reasons for this are primarily economic.

There is so much more in the editorial, but he ends this way:

We have overcome existential threats before. Winston Churchill is widely quoted as having said, “Sometimes doing your best is not good enough. Sometimes, you must do what is required.” Now is that time. Public officials must rise to this challenge by doing what is required; and the public must demand that they do so — or must replace them.

Please go read the whole thing.

Headline of the Day

Obama puts forward last-ditch health care plan

That is the AP headline that is appearing in newspapers across the country, from Seattle to St Paul. Nothing quite like media editorializing to set the tone for reforms now is there? (Some of the local papers have changed the headline, but the one above shows up in the RSS feed.)

The Torture Report

By GottaLaff

Rep. Jim Moran (D- Virginia) just said on Hardball that the Obama administration won't move on the substance of this New York Times editorial, because they want to "move on". As the editorial says, it's too "politically fraught". Oy.

Duncan Hunter is on Hardball, too, and calls it "left wing rubbish", because, see, only three people were waterboarded and those three were bad, bad, bad guys who gave us "enormously valuable information that saved American lives" after being tortured. Great logic, Duncan. Moral high ground and real American principles be damned. Double oy.

All but President Bush’s most unquestioning supporters recognized the chain of unprincipled decisions that led to the abuse, torture and death in prisons run by the American military and intelligence services.

Now, a bipartisan report by the Senate Armed Services Committee has made what amounts to a strong case for bringing criminal charges against former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld; his legal counsel, William J. Haynes; and potentially other top officials, including the former White House counsel Alberto Gonzales and David Addington, Vice President Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff.

The report shows how actions by these men “led directly” to what happened at Abu Ghraib, in Afghanistan, in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and in secret C.I.A. prisons.

It said these top officials, charged with defending the Constitution and America’s standing in the world, methodically introduced interrogation practices based on illegal tortures devised by Chinese agents during the Korean War. [...]

The officials then issued legally and morally bankrupt documents to justify their actions, starting with a presidential order saying that the Geneva Conventions did not apply to prisoners of the “war on terror” — the first time any democratic nation had unilaterally reinterpreted the conventions. [...]

These top officials ignored warnings from lawyers in every branch of the armed forces that they were breaking the law, subjecting uniformed soldiers to possible criminal charges and authorizing abuses that were not only considered by experts to be ineffective, but were actually counterproductive. [...]

These policies have deeply harmed America’s image as a nation of laws and may make it impossible to bring dangerous men to real justice. The report said the interrogation techniques were ineffective, despite the administration’s repeated claims to the contrary. [...]

A prosecutor should be appointed to consider criminal charges against top officials at the Pentagon and others involved in planning the abuse. [...]

At the least, Mr. Obama should, as the organization Human Rights First suggested, order his attorney general to review more than two dozen prisoner-abuse cases that reportedly were referred to the Justice Department by the Pentagon and the C.I.A. — and declined by Mr. Bush’s lawyers.

Mr. Obama should consider proposals from groups like Human Rights Watch and the Brennan Center for Justice to appoint an independent panel to look into these and other egregious violations of the law. [...]

A good place for them to start would be to reverse Mr. Bush’s disastrous order of Feb. 7, 2002, declaring that the United States was no longer legally committed to comply with the Geneva Conventions.

Moran:

If we don't hold them accountable, we are not the nation the rest of the world wants us to be.

New York Times editorial board endorses Obama

By GottaLaff

This all pretty much goes without saying, now, doesn't it:

The editorial board of The New York Times has endorsed Senator Barack Obama for president.

In an editorial in its Friday editions, the board says that Mr. Obama “has the will and the ability to forge the broad political consensus that is essential to finding solutions to this nation’s problems.”

Of Mr. McCain, it says he has “retreated farther and farther to the fringe of American politics, running a campaign on partisan division, class warfare and even hints of racism.”

Wall Street Journal: Gramm-pa McCain "unpresidential"

By GottaLaff

Here is what the Wall Street Journal, not exactly a liberal paper, says about Gramm-pa's grasp of the economy, based on his own remarks:

Wow. "Betrayed the public's trust." Was Mr. Cox dishonest? No. He merely changed some minor rules, and didn't change others, on short-selling. String him up! Mr. McCain clearly wants to distance himself from the Bush Administration. But this assault on Mr. Cox is both false and deeply unfair. It's also un-Presidential.

The Wall Street Journal just labeled Gramm-pa a liar.

The SEC further tightened its rules against naked shorting just hours before Mr. McCain excoriated Mr. Cox for doing nothing. [...]

While he was at it, Mr. McCain added the wholly unsupported assertion that "speculators pounded the shares of even good companies into the ground." It wasn't very long ago that he blamed speculators on the long side for sky-high oil prices. Then oil prices fell. Now Mr. McCain wants voters to believe speculators are responsible for driving mismanaged financial companies to ruin. The irony is that this critique puts Mr. McCain in the same camp as some of the Wall Street CEOs who have led their firms so poorly. They also want someone (else) to blame.

In case Mr. McCain is interested, overall short interest in financial companies actually declined by 20% between July and the end of August. That's right: Far from driving this crisis, shorts were net buyers of financial stocks this summer, as they must buy stocks back to close their positions and realize their gains (or losses).

In a crisis, voters want steady, calm leadership, not easy, misleading answers that will do nothing to help. Mr. McCain is sounding like a candidate searching for a political foil rather than a genuine solution. He'll never beat Mr. Obama by running as an angry populist like Al Gore, circa 2000.

Heckuva job, Gramm-py.