Wednesday, August 23, 2006

GOOD MORNING AMERICA. Wednesday, August 23, 2006

WEATHER:
Much of the country is dominated by high pressure centers which tend to push storms away. There are a couple of lows moving across the center of the country. Storm is in northern Wisconsin this morning and another just moving off North Carolina. There is a tropical storm “Debby” just moving east from the coast of Africa that we will watch and a tropical depression “Hector” in the Pacific. Ileana and Ioke are still active in the Pacific.

NEWS:
Everything about the same as it was when you went to bed.
Iran is still game playing with typical efforts of terrorist’s states to keep us unsettled. They gain when they get our hopes up and then knock them down and depress us. The more they can do to depress us and make us unhappy with our leadership improves their position and makes us weaker and more willing to move back.

See my posting titled “What would Teddy do?” as to our best course of action.

The New York Times has brought up the UN peacekeeper rules of engagement from last week.

France is still dallying about how many to send to Lebanon. Is it 1500 or 3000 with higher figure being reconsidered so maybe they can be in charge?

Fox news taking note of increase in Bush approval polls.

O’Reilly had a segment about the decrease in welfare rolls due to legislation pushing welfare recipients back to work. His outlook was positive.
A local paper had an editorial citing same law and how it was failing and leaving many in poverty.
We need to sort this out. Who is correct?

Late yesterday I posted my thoughts about my political affiliations. I am trying to get a dialog going with people of different viewpoints so I am discussing my background.
I will follow that up today with some additional thoughts and action needed to remove the influence of campaign finance funds. Our politicians must sell their principles to get into and stay in office. I believe we must take some of the blame because we stood by and watched while congress got themselves into this mess. A representative is only in office 2 years and must spend most of that time raising funds to stay in office. There is little time left for serious leadership us so we are cheated out of our representation. This is an issue that should concern all citizens regardless of political outlook.
We can change this and I will talk to you about how we can do that. Later today.
Thanks for checking in.
Stewart “Stew” Rusby
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1 comment:

Anonymous said...

RE: Grand Oil Party's push to drill in our pristine ANWR

Thanks for the interesting conversation at Flagler Beach the other day. You told me it was “hard to believe.” Here are some quotes from NRDC.org articles that serve to inform.

http://www.nrdc.org/land/wilderness/arctic.asp
TITLE: "Arctic National Wildlife Refuge: Why Trash an American Treasure for a Tiny Percentage of Our Oil Needs?"

QUOTE: "Although drilling proponents often say there are 16 billion barrels of oil under the refuge's coastal plain, the U.S. Geological Service's estimate of the amount that could be recovered economically -- that is, the amount likely to be profitably extracted and sold -- represents less than a year's U.S. supply.

"It would take 10 years for any Arctic Refuge oil to reach the market, and even when production peaks -- in the distant year of 2027 -- the refuge would produce a paltry 1 or 2 percent of Americans' daily consumption. Whatever oil the refuge might produce is simply irrelevant to the larger issue of meeting America's future energy needs."
END QUOTE

NCDC Article: http://www.nrdc.org/land/wilderness/artech/farc2000.asp
TITLE: "Drilling in the Arctic Refuge: The 2,000-Acre Footprint Myth - Oil development would stamp a spiderweb of industrial sprawl across the whole of the refuge's 1.5-million-acre coastal plain."

QUOTE: "The House bills would have opened the entire 1.5-million-acre coastal plain of the Arctic Refuge to oil and gas leasing and exploration. The so-called 2,000-acre limitation would not have required that the 2,000 acres of production and support facilities be in one compact, contiguous area. As with the North Slope oil fields west of the Arctic Refuge, development could be spread over a very large area.
"The 2,000-acre limitation only addressed "surface acreage covered by production and support facilities." In other words, it only includes the area where oil facilities actually touch the ground. Using Rep. Sununu's math, the 37 miles of pipeline at the Alpine oil field west of Prudhoe Bay would take up less than one-quarter of an acre of the Arctic Refuge coastal plain -- where the pipelines' 12-inch-diameter posts hit the tundra.7 The limitation also would not have covered land excavated to bury pipelines.

"The 2,000-acre limitation would not have included seismic or other exploration activities, which have significantly degraded the arctic environment west of the coastal plain. The oil industry conducts seismic activities with convoys of bulldozers and "thumper trucks," which drive over extensive areas of the tundra. Meanwhile, exploratory oil drilling requires moving heavy equipment, including large rigs, across the tundra. The limitation would not have prohibited oil companies from drilling exploration and production wells anywhere on the entire 1.5 million-acre coastal plain." END QUOTE

Another NRDC article: http://www.nrdc.org/media/pressreleases/040823.asp
TITLE: "The Bush Administration's Unbalanced Plan to Drill in the Western Arctic"

QUOTE: "In any case, the technology exists today to increase average vehicle fuel economy standards to 40 miles per gallon. If automakers could meet that standard over the next decade, the United States would save at least seven times more oil than the Western Arctic Reserve is likely to produce." END QUOTE

That article concludes with a quote from Chuck Clusen, director of NRDC's Alaska Project:
"It makes no sense to industrialize this incomparable wilderness area when there's less than a year's worth of economically recoverable oil in the entire Western Arctic Reserve," said Clusen. "The United States has only 3 percent of the world's proven oil reserves and we use 25 percent of the world's produced oil. We can't drill our way to oil independence. We have to wean ourselves off oil." END QUOTE

NRDC.org, "The Earth's Best Defense," is one of the best organized, informed, user-friendly websites that offers readers not just information, but opportunities to take on-line action.

I highly recommend signing up for a free subscription to email bulletins, which allows you to tailor alerts in your area of interest and location: http://www.nrdcaction.org/join/subscribe.asp

10:55 AM

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