Preznit hypocrisy alert – Dirty energy will stimulate economy

That’s the big message from today’s press conference by President Bush.

Bush said we need to burn more coal to help us out of the current economic “situation,” which he still refuses to call a recession.

After that came the litany of other Big Oil and Big Coal goodies — drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, more oil refineries, heading the list. But, as Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) pointed out, ANWR’s oil reserves would lower our oil costs by about a penny.

Rhetorical question: If the economy is not in a recession, Mr. Preznit, then why are you so worried about it?

That said, he’s right that the farm bill could use yet more tweaking. But, when Bush is talking about cutting payments to millionaire farmers, I know there’s a catch somewhere; I just haven’t figured it out yet.

Where dirty energy intersects the farm bill, Bush defended the use of ethanol, despite plenty of information that corn-based ethanol may actually be a net energy loser, is a big cause of the soaring food prices he decried, and is environmentally unfriendly as well, between the fertilizers and pesticides of Big Ag on the one hand and the refining process on the other.

Yet, the farm bill has at least a token 6-cent cut in ethanol subsidies, much of which winds up in the hands of folks like Cargill or ADM and not individual farmers. But, Bush supports ethanol.

Besides the word “recession,” the word “conservation” was also missing from Bush’s lips.

In a sidebar, Bush backed off earlier State Department criticism of former President Jimmy Carter’s meeting with Hamas. Why? He knows Carter has State dead to rights, especially after Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas protested about Bush doing nothing to speed the peace process.

One Syrian nuke site, made to order

Especially if the “made to order” is Photoshopping an image.

As for why Syria wouldn’t want the International Atomic Energy Agency snooping around if that were, in fact, not a nuclear fuel processing site, well, I’ve already blogged that if that was a chemical weapons site, Syria is probably afraid IAEA inspectors would find chemical traces.

And, given that the CIA infiltrated U.N. weapons inspectors in Iraq in the late 1990s, Syria has another good reason to be concerned about the IAEA, right?

Allegedly some site photos of Syria’s alleged nuclear processing site have been enhanced; in some cases, that means sharpened, in others, items may have been cloned into pics, which is a biggie.

Preznit looks for pony in economic shitpile

Well, you don’t actually need to wait to hear the glowing word from President Bush’s press conference today. He says we don’t need to do anything because the economy is about to rebound.

That’s right, the Herbert Hoover of the 21st century is at it again, though he’s not explicitly promising a barrel of Iraqi oil in every pot.

Both he and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson are against any further stimulus, i.e., an extension in unemployment benefits like Speaker Nancy Pelosi is pushing.

Well, if she hadn’t given away the store on this in original negotiations… but, that’s another story.

But, the economy is going to rebound!

Housing plunge worse than first thought

Standard & Poor says housing prices declined 12.7 percent in February in the nation’s top 20 markets. Results were even worse in the nation’s top 10 markets, with a 13.6 percent decline in February from one year previous.

The reality of the housing slump will only bring into sharper relief House and Senate attempts to deal with the situation.

And, here in Texas, despite brags that the problem isn’t that bad here, it’s bad enough due to the petard of another Texas brag — a heavy reliance on property taxes. Metro Dallas declined 4 percent from a year ago.

The Preznit will be speaking shortly. Doubtful he’ll have any real ideas on the housing issue, but comment will come on his speech.

‘Expelled’ goes in the tank

Dropping as fast as George Bush’s poll ratings after “Mission NOT Accomplished, “Expelled” dropped 54 percent in its second week at the box office.

For more about the movie, see Expelled.

More evidence humans are ginning climate

Antarctic researchers have found convincing evidence that, until human activity began to massively ramp up carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere, that our biosphere could regulate itself.

The average change in the amount of atmospheric carbon dioxide over the last 600,000 years has been just 22 parts per million by volume, Richard Zeebe said, which means that 22 molecules of carbon dioxide were added to, or removed from, every million molecules of air.

Since the Industrial Revolution began in the 18th century, ushering in the widespread human use of fossil fuels, the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has risen by 100 parts per million.

That means human activities are putting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere about 14,000 times as fast as natural processes do, Zeebe said.

And it appears to be speeding up: the U.S. government reported last week that in 2007 alone, atmospheric carbon dioxide increased by 2.4 parts per million.

The natural mechanism will eventually absorb the excess carbon dioxide, Zeebe said, but not for hundreds of thousands of years.

Climate change skeptics and outright global warming denialists have claimed that the climate will take care of itself as it has in the past. But, a rate 14,000 times as fast as natural processes tends to refute that.