December 31, 2006

• SUNDAY GOOD NEWS

  First
  of all, Happy New Year to everyone! And be safe tonight. It’s actually
  my favorite holiday – no gifts to buy, no house to clean, no
  decorations to put up and take down, no big meals to cook. Just a brand
  new leaf to turn over – all bright and shiny.

  As for the good
  news, in this last week of 2006, the Interior Department
  proposed making polar bears an endangered species due to the speed of
  ice melting going on in their Arctic home. Maybe you heard how a
  40-foot-square ice shelf just broke off up there the other day. See,
  polar bears have to be able to have enough land to hunt on without
  falling into water every five steps. Duh. Interior Secretary Kempthorne
  isn’t copping to having any say about global warming though. That’s not
  his job. But gosh darn it, it’s pretty hard to get around presenting
  the real reason in the proposal backed up with science. Kind of puts
  everybody involved between a rock and a hard place. Well, the I.D. has
  a year to make a final determination and a recovery plan. Absurd to
  picture the plan not involving manmade emissions of heat-trapping
  gases. Three environmental groups, including Greenpeace had to sue the
  I.D. in 2005 to get it to move this far. There are only about 25,000
  polar bears left in the world at this point and dropping fast. So it
  will be interesting to see if the I.D. comes down on the side of the
  new oil and gas drilling it’s proposed up there or on the side of this
  gorgeous animal – money vs. bear – money, bear, money, bear, money,
  bear. Stay tuned.

  ---

  Deep Thought: “I bet a
  fun thing would be to go way back in time to where there was going to
  be an eclipse and tell the cave men, ‘If I have come to destroy you,
  may the sun be blotted out from the sky.’ Just then the eclipse would
  start, and they’d probably try to kill you or something, but then you
  could explain about the rotation of the moon and all, and everyone
  would get a good laugh.”
  Today I am grateful for: Sense and sensibility
  Guess the Movie:
  “Take a look at yourself here in a worn-out Mardi Gras outfit, rented
  for 50 cents from some rag-picker. And with a crazy crown on. Now what
  kind of a queen do you think you are? Do you know that I’ve been on to
  you from the start, and not once did you pull the wool over this boy’s
  eyes? You come in here and you sprinkle the place with powder and you
  spray perfume and you stick a paper lantern over the light bulb – and,
  lo and behold, the place has turned to Egypt and you are the Queen of
  the Nile, sitting on your throne, swilling down my liquor. And do you
  know what I say? Ha ha! Do you hear me? Ha ha ha!”  Answer:  A Streetcar Named Desire.  Winner:  thenarrator.
  Silencing Saddam
  by Robert Scheer
  It
  is a very frightening precedent that the United States can invade a
  country on false pretenses, depose its leader and summarily execute him
  without an international trial or appeals process. This is about
  vengeance, not justice, for if it were the latter the existing
  international norms would have been observed. The trial should have
  been overseen by the World Court, in a country that could have
  guaranteed the safety of defense lawyers, who, in this case, were
  killed or otherwise intimidated. (Rest of article here.)

  • 9:00 pm
  • 27 Comments