alternative hippopotamus

The Hippo congratulates the Moose on his observation that the Donkey must widen its base. While the Donkey may not know how best to do this, the Hippo has a possible solution. All of us who would prefer that we do not destroy the planet in the next dozen years should unite under a common banner. The Hippo believes that this banner could be called anything: Donkey, Elephant, or even Moose. The objective is more important than the name.

I understand the Moose is a most enthusiastic supporter of one Teddy Roosevelt. I believe Mr. Roosevelt once said something along these lines:

"We of an older generation can get along with what we have, though with growing hardship; but in your full manhood and womanhood you will want what nature once so bountifully supplied and man so thoughtlessly destroyed; and because of that want you will reproach us, not for what we have used, but for what we have wasted...So any nation which in its youth lives only for the day, reaps without sowing, and consumes without husbanding, must expect the penalty of the prodigal whose labor could with difficulty find him the bare means of life."

How audacious! When several corporate fat kittens could profit from the venture of paving over the Alaskan coast, how do we dare to balance that against "What nature once so bountifully supplied and man so thoughtlessly destroyed?"

If a Howard Dean made such an outlandish statement, one wonders if the Jonah Golberg's of the world would invoke the word "heresy", or perhaps its more modern form: "looney left." One wonders if the Moose would concur with the Jonah Goldbergs, or with the Roosevelts.

The Hippo wonders why the Moose has avoided discussing ANWR? Is he concerned about what the Mooseketeers might say?

file under: anwr.
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I'm going to devote some of the space where I'd be talking about the latest gossip on the Bush Twins to ANWR.

I've dug up some relevant facts and figures that led me to a startling hypothesis: this is really once again about Cheney/Rove/Norquist's vision of achieving long term domination of the Republican party. Or to put it in more basic terms: this is about the conservative dream of killing off the 1960's.

This is a discussion that will take some time and space, however. Better perhaps to start with my own reasons for fighting this fight.

As I get older I see more and more that life is not about me. Happiness is found in serving some greater good. In this aim there are no small actions. Take for instance the photographs of Subhankar Banerjee, who took the shot you see above. As a physicist at Los Alamos he probably had a pretty comfortable life. Yet something moved him to photograph the ANWR region. What exactly? Who can say. But it's a fair guess that it was something about participating in the greater good.

After reading Leah's post at corrente, I went through the World Without Borders site, and something just hit me in the gut. If there's something still sacred in the world right now, you can see it in the image of what Bush calls Area 1002.

file under: anwr.
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Interior Secretary Gale Norton snowmobiling through Yellowstone park last Friday.

I don't usually get pissed off on Fridays. We are mere hours, after all, from that great 48 period of comatosis, the weekend. Brought to you by Democrats, may I add.

But the more I read about Gale Norton, the more she pisses me off. Here's an example. (taken from Who's Lying... )

In 2001 Senator Frank Murkowski writes to Norton wondering what the caribou who live on the shelf where Cheney wants to drill are going to do. Norton writes back saying:

"Concentrated calving occurred primarily outside [ed: emphasis mine] of the 1002 area in 11 of the last 18 years."

That sounds clear enough. No caribou, so no problem. The Washington Post looks into it, and apparently Norton (described as a "lifelong conservationist, public servant and advocate for bringing common sense solutions to environmental policy" in her official biography) got it exactly wrong. That's exactly where the caribou are concentrated. Here's what the Post said:

"But when Norton formally replied to the committee, she left out the agency's scientific data that suggested caribou could be affected by oil drilling, while including data that supported her case for exploration in the refuge, documents show. Norton also added data that were erroneous, stating that caribou calving has been concentrated outside the proposed drilling area in 11 of the last 18 years, when the opposite is true."

Norton explains the error. She wrote outside in the letter to Murkowski, but she meant to say inside. Again, from the Washington Post:

"Norton spokesman Mark Pfeifle said her error was simply that -- an inadvertent substitution of "outside" for "inside" -- and noted that she has preached peer-reviewed science ever since she got to Washington. [ed: WTF? Is that a total non-sequitor, or is she saying that she depends on other people to catch her frequent mistakes?]

Isn't funny how the one word that changes the entire meaning of her letter to Murkowski happens to be one she gets wrong. I'm assuming that's what happened. I'd really hate to believe she's a liar.

file under: anwr.
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It was a pleasure indeed to meet distinguished DC bloggers Bulworth and Rox Populi. I don't want to embarass her, but let me tell you something, Rox knows how to work a crowd. (Man, oh man, would I like to see a Malkin-Cooper debate. You know, we might be able to sucker Malkin into it, say under the heading of: Fox News or Village Voice, Who's the Real Vox Populi, and then... kabam! She wouldn't know what hit her.)

Plus, there's something about the back room at Timberlake's that really brings out the Revolution-era rabble rouser in all of us. By the way, I spoke to Mr. Timberlake afterwards, and he liked the group. We may be back there again, soon.

So, we were talking about speakers and how with the ANWR debate, it would be good to have an environmental speaker. Apparently, House Republicans are going to attach an ANWR drilling provision to the budget. So, we're going to be having this debate sooner rather than later. Guys, I think this may be even more important Gannongate.

Next... Gale Norton on ANWR.
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Live from the blogosphere, these are the voices inside my head:

I'm officially appointing American Leftist liaison to Euro-Bush watch, for keeping on top of anti-Bush protests from around the world. From AL's comments section:

Needless to say, it was pretty crazy here yesterday. We had to come into work at 6am because the only bridge connecting central Mainz with the Wiesbaden side of the river was closed from 7 'til 7 - even though the Bush cavalcade would have spent, ooh, all of 30 seconds crossing the bridge on the way into the city and another 30 seconds on the way out again.

Meanwhile, LVB.net describes the massive pro-Bush protests in Brussels:

Twenty Belgians and sixty Iraqis demonstrated peacefully in front of the US Embassy on Tuesday morning to show their support and gratitude for president Bush and the people of the United States.

I say it's always nice to have a protest intimate enough that everyone can go to TGIFriday's later.

Oliver Willis let's us know that Media Matters is now podcasting (very cool).

Roxanne speaks tonight at Drinking Liberally here in DC.

And finally, for those of us trying to make sense out of Hunter Thompson's suicide last Sunday. His son and daughter-in-law explain: (Rocky Mountain News)

"He'd done his work," Winkel Thompson said, adding, in Hunter Thompson's own words, "He was a road man for the lords of karma."

Juan Thompson added, "And you couldn't ask him what it meant."

But, said Winkel Thompson, it is the idea that her father-in-law watched over the powers that be and meted out literary punishment to "wrong people" and "wrong deeds." Now, it will be someone else's time behind the keyboard.

"I think maybe he wanted to go out before it stopped being fun," said Hunter Thompson's only son.

I think that's as good an explanation as we'll get.
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Over at Jesus Politics I posted an objectively polite correction to the (bogus) James Watt quote about how being pro-environment is pointless, since the Apocalypse was going to be happening pretty much any minute.

Someone commented later, and was clearly upset with me. If I understand correctly, the commenter didn't feel that I had condemned Bill Moyers sufficiently, and that further penance would be necessary to undo the great wrong done against James Watt.

(I should note that in this case it was RFK, Jr., who was repeating the bogus quote. But it's clear that people are still pretty steamed at Moyers, and by extension, me. I should also add that, except for the Watt mistake, the RFK Jr. quote is brilliant.)

So, first off let me condemn Moyers more severely: Bill, you got the quote wrong. In the afterlife, you don't deserve to end up in the same place in hell as Watt.

As part of my penance, I'd like to correct other misattributions to Mr. Watt.

• Watt never said: "I'm glad that the Beach Boys are helping to keep the youthful spirit of the 1960's alive during our Independence Day celebration." Instead, he banned them from performing on the Mall, and replaced them with Wayne Newton.
• Watt never said: "I am proud to say that I have a diverse staff at Interior, and we make a good team." The correct quote is: "We have every kind of mixture you can have. I have a black, I have a woman, two Jews, and a cripple.”
• Watt was not found guilty of of withholding documents from a federal grand jury investigating alleged corruption at HUD. Instead, he plead guilty to that charge, wiping out 18 felony charges against him.

I'm glad to set the record straight.
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Waiting for Dorothy says:

so really, this is a war against a really really extreme and perverted form of an otherwise harmless religion. it is against a violent cult. what does ethnic or racial background have to do with this? if you simply do a little research and figure out who these extremist religious leaders are and find out who they are preaching to and go after suspect terror cells masking as "religious groups" - doesn't that make more sense? why would racial profiling even work? have an answer to that, michelle malkin?

Well, Emily2 there's a few things at work concerning Malkin:

1. One wonders how deeply-held her views on such things as internment really are. The DC area is one of the most racially diverse areas that I've ever lived in. Not unlike Central Square, in fact. How come she lives here? Why not relocate to Limbaughland? It could be that she just likes the talking-head life style, and Defense of Internment was her hook into that clique.
2. Her target audience feeds on Xenophobia, Homophobia, Francophobia, Anuptaphobia, Melophobia, and pretty much everything else that ends in obia. I'm sure she understands that giving a righteous voice to these diseases bookmarks her spot on talking-head shows.
3. You describe terrorism as a cult. I agree. Or, at least it's organization and anti-social tendencies look and feel just like a cult. One of the movements that concerns me is the rise of pseudo-Christian white-power movement cults. These, combined with the lone wacko's like John Salvi or Chris McVay (who may have had an organization in back of him) are cause for serious concern. When are we going to start interning the likes of these folks?

Malkin, of course, is not the worst of these. She's just trying so hard to be the most obvious.
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Bush is calling his current charm offensive in Western Europe a "listening tour." (BBC)

"You might call this a listening tour," said President Bush in answer to one question here at the Nato headquarters in Brussels, and that is not a bad way of characterising this, the president's first foray abroad of his second term.

Mr Bush is in favour of giving Nato a more political dimension In private, many Nato and European Union leaders remain sceptical about the trajectory of Mr Bush's foreign policy over the next four years.

Here's some of the listening he's been up to: (The Times of London)

“We liberated Iraq. And that decision has been made, it’s over with and now it is time to unify for the sake of peace. The key now is to put that behind us and to focus on helping the new democracy succeed.”

Mr. Bush explained he is in favor of a more unilateral US-led form of listening. He also explained that he would continue to refer to world leader's by their first name, as any parent would do to a child.

Looking forward to future visits Spiegel Online weighs in with some suggested alternatives next time Bush wants a "listening tour": (Spiegel)

Our suggestion for Bush's next visit: given the already astronomical costs of moving the president from place to place and the extraordinary security precautions necessary to bring him, wouldn't it simply be better to limit Bush's trip's to the world's most remote spots? That way, the fewest people possible would be bothered. He could then ask those he really wanted to see to visit him. Here is our list of potential European presidential destinations: Germany's Helgoland, an island in the North Sea (70 km from land) with a population of 1,650 (likely just about the number in the president's entourage). Scotland's Highlands, where there aren't many people but there is one of the only free-living herd of reindeer in the world. Any of Denmark's 18 Faroe islands. They're mid-way between the Atlantic and the Norwegian Sea. An online city calendar for the main city of Torshav shows there are no official events all month.

Lower Slobovia is also nice this time of year.

Ever get the impression that these guys hate us for our superior listening skills?
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Actual Coulter quotes from CPAC:

• “Since they’re always acting like they’re oppressed…I say let’s do it, let’s oppress them.”
• “Liberals like to scream and howl about McCarthyism, I say let’s give them some. They’ve have intellectual terror on campus for years....it’s time for a new McCarthyism.”
• "“They don’t have any ideas, we have all the ideas. We are sweeping the youth of America and they are going the way of the Whigs” [ed: Whigs? Has she, umh, taken a good look at her party's demographics lately?]

In related news, Annacula is alleged to be dating Ron Silver.

Blekh!
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A twofer from White House Briefing. First, Is Bush going to invite Chirac to Crawford?

Here's Sciolino's take: "During a photo opportunity, Mr. Bush refused to be pinned down on whether relations had improved to the point where Mr. Bush would be inviting Mr. Chirac to the United States or even to Mr. Bush's ranch in Texas.

" 'I'm looking for a good cowboy,' Mr. Bush joked, dodging the question. He did not say whether he considered Mr. Chirac a cowboy. Mr. Chirac did not seem to get the joke."

Huh? Okay, how about this one, where Bush is asked what's up with Iran:

Pool reporter Mark Silva of the Chicago Tribune reported to his colleagues that the pool had been warned not to ask questions at the Blair event. But CBS News's John Roberts tried to get one in anyway, asking: "What more does President Bush need to do for Iran to believe he fully supports the negotiations?"

Silva reported that Bush chuckled audibly: " 'Heh heh heh,' Bush laughs, as the two turn on their heels and leave to head for NATO."

WTF?
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La Shawn Barber:

Indulge me for a moment while I wax self-centeredly. I want to be more than just a “black conservative blogger/writer” or a “Christian blogger/writer.” If I must be either or both (it’s human nature to attach labels), I want to be huge, the biggest black conservative blogger in the blogosphere or the most popular Christian blogger on the web.

I don’t mean simply well-known but influential and sought-after. I’m talking about visitor stats out of this world, endorsement deals, books, TV, radio…

... and a pony. And a scooter.

Update: I wanted to respond to NTodd in full. Here goes:

Your pony is pretty much in the bag. I've never seen a pony in a bag before, but I'm pretty sure your future pony is comfortable with it.

Here's what I've been looking at: there's a lot of liberal-center kind of folks who are frustrated with NPR/PBS/CPB. Many of whom have written in, only to receive Cheney-off responses.

So, here's the concept: instead of donating to your local PBS affiliate, send a message. The message is: "We want change. The change is that until PBS meets our demands, we will be donating our money to 'Hondas for Hippos.' After looking over some of your programming decisions, we feel that our money is better spent on a hippopotamus riding a motor scooter."

Of course, if that objective is ever met, then we'll start to lean on "Pony for NTodd." It lacks alliteration, but the concept is valid.

Now here's the real kicker. If for some unforseeable reason, we actually raise enough money, it's important to acknowledge that PBS has some formidable competition in the form of "Democracy Now." Any decent news show that doesn't also give a nod to the Military-Industrial-Bio-Pharmaceutical-Agricultural-Moonie Times complex deserves some face time. So, here's my idea:

If we get enough cash for the scooter then I give Amy Goodman a ride on said scooter. In fact, I am her Scooter Slave for a full day. I don't know Amy, but I know some people who know some people, and I think we can make it happen. (Also, between you and me, NTodd, Amy Goodman is hot. Don't let anyone else know I said that.)

What I'm saying is, we do the scooter first, then we do the pony. Make sense?
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Neocon megahack David Horowitz to Rox Populi:

Of course there’s nothing to “read” in the picture grid on the “Individuals” page which is the only page about which Rox Populi cares to comment. The laugh, in other words, is self-reflecting. The picture grid is not a list of anything, except a small fraction of the raw contents of the site.

Yeah, we're really that stupid. We don't get that the whole concept of the site is to infer some kind of conspiracy between Michael Moore, Gandhi, and Momar Kadaffi. Oh, wait, Kadaffi's one of the kul kids now. Moore and Gandhi are the real enemy.

I love this bit:

In our introduction, “What This Site Is About,” we pointed out that there are several already existing leftwing sites whose clear purpose is to smear conservatives by mislabeling them “homophobic” or “racist” on the basis of policy differences (e.g., support of the Clinton military policy of “Don’t ask, don’t tell” or opposition to racial preferences). These sites include People for the American Way’s “Rightwing Watch,” the report on conservatives compiled by the Southern Poverty Law Center, and David Brock’s MediaMatters. In contrast to DiscoverTheNetwork, it is the intention of these sites to misrepresent and smear conservatives.

If you're like me, you just did the old CRT spit-take. Umh, David, your open use of homophobia and xenophobia couldn't be more explicit if you changed your name to Race Baiters 'R' Us.

Anyways, congrats to Rox. And remember that the enemies list of my enemies list is my friends list.
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I've been thinking some stuff over concerning pledge drives, and think I've got a cunning plan. More on that soon. Meanwhile, this:



This wall painting hangs over Woodley Park, about a mile up from Dupont Circle. There's a lot of history between my family, specifically my grandfather, and Woodley Park. But that's for another day.

This wall painting, commisioned in 1981 and created by John Bailey, is one of the most photographed locations outside of the mall area. I'm guessing it's because deep down, people remember the part of The Great Gatsby, where a sign just like this is described. Plus, as John Kerry said: "Who amonst us doesn't like staring at a wall painting of Marilyn Monroe."
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