Germany: Bush’s ‘Losership’ Climate Change Speech the Work of a Talking Monkey

Oh, the shameful glimpses we get into what the world thinks of our country.

Most of us are aware of (and actually care about) the fact that the United States has lost its esteem in the world arena under Bush. It’s not just the hundreds of mind-blowingly idiotic things that he’s done over the years. It’s the incredibly dumb things that come out of his mouth. I don’t think I’ll ever forget when he said, “Too many OB/GYN’s aren’t able to practice their love with women all across the country.” (WTF?)

The latest gaffe is sort of a combination of the two - stupid ideas, stupid statements. And the leaders of countries like France and Germany are rolling their eyes and pronouncing Dubya a ‘neanderthal’. Hilarious! From Reuters:

“The president gave a disappointing speech,” German Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel said in a statement issued in Berlin headlined “Gabriel criticises Bush’s Neanderthal speech. Losership, not Leadership”.

“The American administration is starting to awaken,” French climate change ambassador Brice Lalonde said. “It’s a bit late.”

“We are looking forward to whoever succeeds the present (U.S.) administration, because we believe we can probably only do better,” South African Environment Minister Marthinus van Schalkwyk told reporters.

Losership, not leadership. Fantastic. I think most of us agree!

Link [Reuters] via [The Lede]

Photo: Wikimedia Commons + Wikimedia Commons

What Would You Buy with the $3 Trillion Spent on the Iraq War?

When all is said and done, the Iraq war will cost America $3 trillion dollars. That’s a figure that’s difficult to fully comprehend, and some may wonder how it was calculated. The Washington Post broke it down:

Some people will scoff at that number, but we’ve done the math. Senior Bush administration aides certainly pooh-poohed worrisome estimates in the run-up to the war. Former White House economic adviser Lawrence Lindsey reckoned that the conflict would cost $100 billion to $200 billion; Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld later called his estimate “baloney.” Administration officials insisted that the costs would be more like $50 billion to $60 billion. In April 2003, Andrew S. Natsios, the thoughtful head of the U.S. Agency for International Development, said on “Nightline” that reconstructing Iraq would cost the American taxpayer just $1.7 billion. Ted Koppel, in disbelief, pressed Natsios on the question, but Natsios stuck to his guns. Others in the administration, such as Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz, hoped that U.S. partners would chip in, as they had in the 1991 Persian Gulf War, or that Iraq’s oil would pay for the damages.

The end result of all this wishful thinking? As we approach the fifth anniversary of the invasion, Iraq is not only the second longest war in U.S. history (after Vietnam), it is also the second most costly — surpassed only by World War II.

Why doesn’t the public understand the staggering scale of our expenditures? In part because the administration talks only about the upfront costs, which are mostly handled by emergency appropriations. (Iraq funding is apparently still an emergency five years after the war began.) These costs, by our calculations, are now running at $12 billion a month — $16 billion if you include Afghanistan. By the time you add in the costs hidden in the defense budget, the money we’ll have to spend to help future veterans, and money to refurbish a military whose equipment and materiel have been greatly depleted, the total tab to the federal government will almost surely exceed $1.5 trillion.

Have you ever thought about how much $3 trillion dollars really is? Like, in terms of what else you could buy with that money? Well, 3trillion.org has, and they’ve created an awesome website where you can add hundreds of items to your shopping cart and still not even come close to spending that much.

The concept is simple: you browse their website for items to add to your cart. They can be as large in scale as wind turbines to power all of the United States ($1,000,000,000,000.00), or as small as a copy of the ‘Inconvenient Truth’ DVD ($10.00). You can even buy yourself a boob job, the New York Yankees, a custom rollercoaster or launch your ashes into space. The possibilities are endless, and if you don’t see something you want, you can add it.

It’s seriously very hard to spend $3 trillion. I still didn’t end up making it all the way; after over an hour on the site my grand total was $2,885,172,839,274.00 for all of the following:

• Universal Health Care for Every American
• Fight AIDS in developing nations
• Search for a cure to cancer
• Switch to solar power (all of America)
• Fund research for alternatives to oil
• National rapid transit system
• Clean up pollution (in major cities)
• Achieve universal literacy
• End hunger and poverty related diseases
• Increase sustainable organic produce in the US
• Finish repairing the damage done by Hurricane Katrina
• Cure a deadly disease
• Sustainable agriculture education, worldwide
• Non-violent leadership training (1 year) for 10 million leaders
• Food, shelter & vet care for unwanted pets
• End animal testing
• K-12 arts and music education
• New clothing, shoes, coats and schools supplies for 10 million children
• Build 100 new schools
• Pay 1,000 teachers’ salaries
• Give all firefighters a raise
• Plant 1,000,000 trees
• National Park Service Annual Budget
• Help rebuild Iraq
• Send Bush to Mars (1 way ticket)

After all that do-good spending, I still had over three billion dollars left over for things like homes for myself and all of my friends and family, organic vegetarian groceries for a year, home brewery equipment, a hammock and the Essential Leonard Cohen CD. You know, after expending so much energy on helping the world, you really want to kick back and relax a little.

It’s staggering to realize how much could have been achieved with that money. Instead of putting it to use actually doing all of the things that we dream about doing to make the world a better place, that money is funding pointless carnage and destruction. The Bush administration wants us to believe that this money was well spent, but we should know otherwise.

Maybe putting a price tag on the steaming bag of shit we’ve been sold as a nation will help people wake up and realize how much this war is affecting the world. If over 1 million dead Iraqis and 4,000 dead Americans isn’t enough for you - not to mention the destabilization of an entire region - perhaps what Americans really need to come to grips with the reality of this situation is to see how that money could have solved all of their complaints. Snowed under by hospital bills? We could have a whole new system in place by now! Nervously living in a region where a natural disaster could easily wipe out your entire community? You could have levees, shelters and emergency backup plans galore!

So please, everyone, buy away. Send $3 trillion gift certificates to everyone you know via the 3trillion.org website and urge them to fantasy-shop to their hearts’ content. The point isn’t gluttony and greed, though by all means have fun shopping: the point is awareness. We as a nation are letting our government get away with this. The power of the people is stronger than we realize, whether it’s put in motion through protests, boycotts, the purchasing decisions we make or simply exercising our rights as citizens of a democratic nation to vote accordingly.

Link [3trillion] + [Washington Post]

Photo Credits: Flickr user FredoAlvarez, Wikimedia Commons + Wikimedia Commons

Seven Years and Tons of Lost Credibility Later: Bush Decides Greenhouses Gasses Need to Be Curbed, Color Us Unimpressed

Am I the only one who could give two shits about Bush’s new plan (just announced today) to curb Greenhouse Gases? That’ll be left to the next President, this guy is just riding out the clock after what will go down as the worst Presidency in history. George Bush is an asshole and we can’t wait for him to move back onto the Ranch and let Obama get to work fixing all his mistakes. Global Warming will be one of them, we don’t need that douche nozzle chiming in now on how important it is to go green. I’d rather hear what Paris Hilton has planned to fight rising CO2 emissions.

The AP has it:

WASHINGTON (AP) - Revising his stance on global warming, President Bush on Wednesday proposed a new target for stopping the growth of the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions by 2025.

The president also called for putting the brakes on greenhouse gas emissions from electric power plants within 10 to 15 years.

“To reach our 2025 goal, we will need to more rapidly slow the growth of power sector greenhouse gas emissions so that they peak within 10 to 15 years, and decline thereafter,” Bush said in excerpts of the speech released early by the White House.

“By doing so, we will reduce emission levels in the power sector well below where they were projected to be when we first announced our climate strategy in 2002. There are a number of ways to achieve these reductions, but all responsible approaches depend on accelerating the development and deployment of new technologies.”

Bush was not to outline a specific proposal, but he’ll lay out a strategy for “realistic” emission reduction targets and “principles” he thinks Congress should follow in crafting global warming legislation.

Link [Breitbart]

Photo: Flickr user Tootsfontaine

An Insult to Sewage Plants Everywhere: Renaming the San Fran Zoo Sewage Plant after George Bush

How fitting, someone is trying to rename a sewage plant in San Francisco after President George Bush.

SFist has it:

Looking to honor the forty-third President of the United States of America, George W. Bush, the recently formed Presidential Memorial Commission of San Francisco is looking to change the name of the Oceanside Wastewater Treatment Facility. It seems the group would like to rename the SF Zoo adjacent facility to the “George W Bush Sewage Plant.”

Links [SFist] & [Presidential Memorial Commission]

As The Boos Rained Down: President Bush Throws Out First Pitch in Green(er) Stadium

Michael recently reported that President Bush would throw out the first pitch in the Washington Nationals new green(er) stadium. Here’s video of him running out to a cascade of boos, quickly throwing his pitch (a good one for a throw-out pitch, I’ll give him that), and then retreating to the tunnels.

Our country does like this President.

Impeach!!!

The War on Iraq is Costing $4,000 a Second, or About $120,000 in the Time It Took to Write This Headline

We’re spending over $4,000 A SECOND on the clusterfuck that is Iraq. Is anyone else pissed off about that? What. The. Fuck. How many better ways could we be spending that? How have Bush and Cheney not been impeached yet? Grrr….

Check out the entire Tom Tomorrow comic over at Salon.

Link [Tom Tomorrow on Salon]

EarthFirst Blog Week in Review: March 3rd - 7th

Last week was a good one if only because I turned 30 on Saturday. Three cheers for Pisces!

You can feel Spring in the air here in Maine, though we’re probably due for another good storm or three. We’re slowly ramping up things on the ol’ blog here and should be getting our Official Launch on in the next few weeks. You’ll start to see some new writers get into the mix and our editorial intern Caroline starts this week. Yeeeehaw!

Here are the headlines from Earthfirst.com from March 3rd through the 7th.

• The Internet Saves 10 Watts of Energy for Every Watt it Uses
• War’s a Comin’! Alabama, Georgia and Florida Will Fight it Out Over Water
  
• Bush 0 Whales 1, Federal Court Rules Against Use of Navy Sonar
• Al Gore Calls out Major Media at TED: Ask More Green Questions to Presidential Candidates
• It’s a Long Way Back to The Office- A Pull Back in Work At Home Policies?
  
• Very Stupid Eco-Arsonists Torch Green Homes in Seattle Suburb
• Tiny Homes Are Full of Awesome, 100 Square Foot Tumbleweed Tour Video
  
• Higher Gas Prices + Road Congestion = Greener Mass Transit
• Great Flying Spaghetti Monster! Look at Those Gas Prices!
  
• Alyssa Milano Makes a Very Strong Argument for Vegetarianism
• Ripping Off Mother Nature For Design Tips Nets Better Wind Turbines
  
• George Bush Bends Space and Time to Recast America as a Leader on Climate Change
• The Pedal Powered Snow Plow Is Chock Full of Awesome
  
• Tripp Isenhour, Pro Golfer and Dick, Kills a Hawk with a Well Aimed Bal
• Bullet Proof Vest Saves Anti-Whaling Activist from Japanese Whaler’s Bullet
  
• Clearly You’re Doing it Wrong
• The Friday Crazy: The Can Man Suit is 35lbs. of Aluminum Can Awesome

Bush 0 Whales 1, Federal Court Rules Against Use of Navy Sonar

President George Bush got smacked down by Johnny Law this week when a federal court over-ruled a White House exemption allowing the U.S. Navy to use whale-damaging sonar. According to the court decision, Navy ships can’t use sonar within 12 nautical miles of California, must turn it off when whales are spotted and avoid places where they live.

I’m not sure they have quite thought this thru. Whales are sea mammals. Therefore they live in the sea. Therefore the ENTIRE sea is out of bounds for Navy vessels?

We think this is a remarkable development and we will be looking forward to seeing a case in court on behalf of the Leopard Gecko (Iraq desert) and the Steppe Eagle (Afghanistan).

In fact, we hope in future armed conflicts will have to consider the full Environmental Impacts from the start.

“Sorry George,” says Condy “there is a rare newt in Tehran. We’ll just have to relocate the war someplace else”.

Link [Terra Daily]

Memo to Bush: Distributing the 2,220 Page Budget in PDF Format is NOT Green

Want to hear a good joke? George Bush’s $3 trillion budget is “green”.

Not because it budgets funds to support the growth of renewable energy. Not because it removes the subsidies gas and oil companies receive. And not because it tightens regulations over toxic chemicals.

No, it’s “green” because they didn’t print it out. This year they are skipping out on printing the 2,200 page budget and passing it around to Congress and journalists in PDF format.

I’m not surprised in the least bit. Bush has pretty much made it his administrations signature move to do very stupid things and then to lie about it. This one is a pretty minor bit compared to Iraq, warrent-less wire tapping, and everything Dick Cheney does.

339 Days, 15 Hours, and 9 Minutes left in the Bush Administration…

Link [Ecogeek]