Mostly good news…
BLM Will Not Lease Drilling Parcels Near Arches, Canyonlands: In the face of
intense opposition from the National Park Service, members of Congress and a top
official from President-elect Barack Obama’s transition team, the U.S. Bureau of
Land Management backed down Tuesday from its plan to sell oil and gas leases
near national parks and wilderness-quality areas in Utah on Dec. 19.
[1] http://www.sltrib.com/outdoors/ci_11072818
[2] http://www.cdarc.org/page/5erd
[Southwest Archaeology Making the News - A Service of the Center for Desert
Archaeology
Southwest Archaeology Today is a service provided by the Center for Desert
Archaeology to provide current news about topics in archaeology, history and
historic preservation in the American Southwest and Mexican Northwest.
Back issues of Southwest Archaeology Today are available at:
http://www.cdarc.org/pages/articles.php?req=newsletters2]
But if only 22 out of “more than 90″ ’sensitive’ leases were affected, what about the other 68+ leases you ask?
“It’s still a disaster in the making,” said Steve Bloch, an attorney for the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance. “Parcels [that Park Service officials] said were important are still on [the sale list]. That seems a pretty clear indication the Park Service was rolled by someone higher up in the administration.” [1]
Predictably, Mike Snyder, director of NPS’ Intermountain region said they were not “rolled.”
Snyder denied Bloch’s claim. “We got no pressure from the administration. None,” he said. “I got support to do what was best for the parks.” [1]
And if you believe that, I’ve got some property outside of Las Vegas you might be interested in…
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Today is Thanksgiving, in the USA, at least. Traditionally, the US has observed it a secular harvest festival.
The use of the turkey in the USA for Thanksgiving precedes Lincoln’s nationalization of the holiday in 1863. Alexander Hamilton proclaimed that no “Citizen of the United States should refrain from turkey on Thanksgiving Day”, but turkey was uncommon as Thanksgiving fare until after 1800. By 1857 turkey had become part of the traditional dinner in New England. [1]
Elsewhere in the country regional choices such as ham, chicken or other meats were the central dish. Turkey acquired its character as the national Thanksgiving entrée of choice in World War I (1918), when American men and women in the military dined on turkey, regardless of where they were stationed.
Happy Thanksgiving!
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Stickers like the "W" ones, except they're "O The President."
"You've seen these crappy stickers on SUV windows for 8 years now. It was a badge of honor to wingnuts. To us, it was a warning that someone stupid, and unpredictable was driving the car in front of you! Well, things have changed.
The American I.Q. has risen and ordinary citizens are once again walking erect, knuckles no longer dragging on the ground.
You have made this happen.Your work, your vote, and the hard earned money that you donated did it!
What do you do now?
What you do, is show your pride, and support for the President of the United States of America, Barack Hussein Obama!"
The automagic del.icio.us posts have resumed because I finally realized that if you change your passwords regularly — and you know you should — you need to propagate that change or things like these postings no longer work.
This is the craft that Ian did at school today.
Via Digby comes Eric Boehlert: Covering new presidents: the media’s double standard:
In anticipation of the new administration, Beltway media insiders are busy laying the groundwork for how reporters and pundits will treat the new team on Pennsylvania Avenue.
“Once a president takes office … an adversarial relationship usually flourishes, at least with beat reporters,” wrote Howard Kurtz in The Washington Post. And former New York Times reporter Judith Miller, discussing the press corps on Fox News, agreed: “They are inevitably going to turn on him, as all — this happened to every administration. I don’t see why we should be surprised. It is the natural turn of events.”
The conventional wisdom is quite clear: The press always turns skeptical and becomes combative when new presidents come to town.
Except, of course, when the press does not. (…)
At the outset of the Bush presidency, when it became obvious that the press had adopted a softer standard for judging the new Republican president, author Jeffrey Toobin noted that “the high emotional temperature of the Clinton years left a lot of people, including journalists, kind of exhausted.” He added, “I think it will probably take a while to sort of gin that back up again.”
Over the course of eight years of covering Bush, I’m not sure the press ever recaptured the fever it displayed during the Clinton years. So it would be deeply suspicious if, in 2009, the press managed to turn up that emotional temperature just in time to cover another Democratic administration.
It would also be troubling for journalism if the press responded to conservative claims today that reporters had been too soft on the Democrat during the campaign by reacting the same way journalists did when those claims were lodged during the 1992 campaign: by trashing the victorious Democrat to prove the press corps wasn’t “in the tank.” [more]
I guess Senate Democrats have voted to allow Joe Lieberman to keep his two of his three committee chairmanships. I guess they showed him, didn’t they? No Democrat will ever dare to break ranks and support a Republican candidate for president, speak vitriol at the Republican national convention in prime time, and repeatedly bad mouth the Democratic Party’s candidate ever again.
No, no links. sputter, sputter
I’ve heard that the Clintons “campaigned hard” for Obama. Their appearances were news and you could not avoid hearing about those three or four instances after the convention. In contrast, Lieberman was like, at every single McCain campaign rally I saw TV coverage of pictures of! I am likely ever-reaching there, still, Lieberman seemed to be in the background constantly.
Anything for 60 votes. Like they will be able to depend on his vote anyway. There are plenty of Blue Dog Dems to make 60 votes unreliable already.
Harry, you are my Senator and I hope you can understand when I back someone else in the primary here in Nevada.
