Guardian | Oil Chief: My Fears for Planet

The Guardian :

“The head of one of the world’s biggest oil companies has admitted that the threat of climate change makes him ‘really very worried for the planet’.
In an interview in today’s Guardian Life section, Ron Oxburgh, chairman of Shell, says we urgently need to capture emissions of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide, which scientists think contribute to global warming, and store them underground – a technique called carbon sequestration. ”

This guy is either a nutcase, or is engaged in trying to placate the “green” morons.

Either way, my money is removed from Shell as of the opening bell on Friday.

The SanFran Chron:

“Filmmaker Michael Moore said Friday he wasn’t sure he did the right thing by saving footage of U.S. American soldiers’ cruelty toward Iraqis for his controversial documentary, ‘Fahrenheit 9/11,” instead of releasing the evidence earlier when it might have helped halt such abuse.
‘I had it months before the story broke on ’60 Minutes,’ and I really struggled with what to do with it,” Moore said in a telephone interview with The Chronicle. ‘I wanted to come out with it sooner, but I thought I’d be accused of just putting this out for publicity for my movie. That prevented me from making maybe the right decision.” ”

So, let me make sure I understand this. This wasn’t a move for publicity?

I mean, aren’t we to understand that Mr. Moore had evdience of this stuff before the Penetgon did, and decided instead of helping those poor Iraqis …(Who as it turns our are not Iraqis at all, but insurgents)… decided to hold it back so as to create a bigger bang when his movie came out?

Look, let’s call this what it is, shall we? That Moore is a liar of the first order has already been established rather well. But this action of his strikes me as not only anti-American, which is to be expected from Moore, but anti-Humanitarian.

If, of course it’s true, which, with ElRotundo, is always a question. 
But of course Credibility issues never seem to bother liberals.

THe AP reports a poll that comes back with figures saying around 60% of Americans think we’re in bad economic times. Well, no wonder; it’s what the press is telling you. The news is all bad, or so the press would have you think.

Well, here’s news you’ve not been hearing:
1,200,000 jobs created in the last 6 months nationwide…. and of those, 1,000,000 new jobs have been created, since March, suggesting the trends for job creation are straight up.

And the forcasts are for more of the same… job creation at a rate not seen since Reagan was in office.

And why aren’t you being told this? Why is it that the press isn’t telling you all this good news? Because it’ll help the President get re-elected, that’s why.

Citizen Smash reports:

“THE PURPORTED LETTER from Jordanian terrorist leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi to al Qaeda leader Usama bin Laden that was recently posted on an Islamic web site is a virtual copy of the infamous “Zarqawi Memo” that was intercepted by Coalition forces back in February.”

Suddenly, the press is giving this new life, afte having ignored it the first time? Hmmm.

Sign the Peta Petition

The AP says the Army is redesigning it’s uniform.

Billy Beck notes:

“She had an intellectual side that was fairly well hidden from us because we were all looking at what kind of clothes shes was wearing.’
(Evan Thomas of Newsweek, just now on Imus In The Morning — speaking of Nancy Reagan and the press)

Thomas said that after several minutes of explaining that he had expected Nancy to ‘go shop’ after her husband’s term as president, but that he’d been wrong, and surprised when she attended Ronnie as closely as she did.

Someone remind me why people like this have jobs.”

Billy, I should think the answer to this to be within sight of Occam and his shaving apparatus; Their bosses suffer from the same pattern of non-thinking; they held the same opinion of the Reagans, and for that matter, of anyone who agreed with them… and thereby did the writers keep their jobs… their jobs being spreading not the truth, but their pre-determined propaganda.

W’s right in his stem cell policy.
and invoking RWR’s name in this gets us nowhere.

The Gipper knew as should we all; you don’t take innocent life so as to make someone else’s longer or better.

Boortz this morning brings up a parallel to my thoughts about the Reagan funeral, last week:

” Last week we honored a president, a Republican, who earned and deserves the credit for ending the Cold War.  Ronald Reagan also reinvigorated capitalism in America, creating a growing economy that still affects us all.  So … this question.  Since JFK, what have Democrats had to offer that could match the performance of Ronald Reagan?  Carter?  Clinton?  Go ahead, tell me what they accomplished.  And don’t give me this nonsense about the economy under Clinton.  The economy was improving when Clinton took office, and was on its way down when he left.  I’m waiting.”

And that’s it, then, isn’t it… it’s as I said;

When people remember the greatness of Ronald Reagan, will they also remember what John Kerry was doing during Reagan’s eight years in the White House… That is, doggedly opposing Mr. Reagan every step of the way… Opposing actions Kerry now disingenuously praises Reagan for?

Now that we’ve had a week or so of remembering what real leadership is, and we’ve had some time to reflect who is closer to those ideals of leadership, the Democrats are going to be spending a great deal of time trying to tear down Mr. Reagan’s legacy, so as to deny the use of that legacy to Mr. Bush. As I’ve already said in this space, and mark this well; Mr. Reagan’s legacy will loom large in the coming election run-up.

Which means that Kerry and company will have to go negative, bigtime, not only on Mr. Bush, but on Mr. Reagan as well. Granted, this is crass, perhaps, but the Reagan legacy is the elephant in the room we now deal with, like it or not. Matter of fact, I suggest Kerry can only win now, if he manages to separate Mr. Bush from Mr. Reagan’s legacy, either by a direct separation, or be the discrediting of Reagan. I suspect the next several weeks will see Kerry and his people attempting both paths, with limited success. The image is far too deep in the minds of the voters, now.

If Kerry tries to separate Mr. Bush from Mr. Reagan’s legacy by means of saying Mr. Bush falls short of Mr Reagan, he’s in effect lauding Reagan’s policies…. policies he’s on record all through the Reagan years of working against. On the other hand given the obvious feeling about Mr. Reagan, it will not do to try and denigrate Mr. Reagan’s legacy in his attempt to deny Mr. Bush’s identification of himself as being the heir of it.

The question becomes, in either event, how much of that negativity the American people are going to stand for after a week of being reminded what it’s like with a read leader at the helm. The answer, obviously, is “not much, if any”.

And that, I think is the defining question of this campaign at the moment, and going forward, too, unless Kerry and his people can find some other issue to latch onto. What else, after all, do they have to go on?  Without any changes in the lay of the land, Kerry is trapped, having far more in the way of problems to get through to get elected than does Mr. Bush.

Certainly the economy is off the table given the booming economic numbers… The task of course is getting those numbers past the liberal press who is seemingly reluctant to post those massive economic gains. I suspect that the republicans will gain the upper hand on that sub-plot by election day.

Afghanistan is pretty much dealt with, and is certainly on the right track.. and our relations with them are quite good; Mr Bush is meeting tomorrow, for example with Afghan President Hamid Karzai. Kerry will not be able to use Afghanistan as a wedge issue. It’s off the table.

We’re in for a spot of nastiness in Iraq over the next two weeks as we move up to Iraqi sovereignty, as the Islamofacists try to tip the scales in their favor. But I don’t know of anyone who didn’t expect them to try something… and once that settles down, Mr. Bush looks very good indeed going into the election…. so Iraq is off the table as well as an election issue.

All Kerry will have left to run on is negativity and hate. And even he’s not stupid enough to think that’s going to gain him the election.

OK, Gang; here it is;
I’m completely out of space on my Rochester.rr website, which hosts half of this website… that’s the side that hosts this system’s home page, and the long-form write-ups I call BitsBits, my newsroom and all of my grahics for both those sites and here on BitsBlog as well.

Rather, though, than simply erasing the older ones what I’ve done is to start moving al of the old BitsBits over to the BitsBlog side, adjusting the dates of the pstings accordingly.

As an example, “The Domino Effect” will now be hosted on the BitsBlog site. It’ll be in the archives list on the date it was originally posted on the BitsBits site. 12-21-03.

To help some folks find the older stuff I’m trying to make arrangements for the original filenames to hardlink to the files new actual location. I likely won’t be making the hard switch for a few days, but I wanted you to know what was what. Pardon my dust, as the sign goes….

Now all that means to regular BitsBlog readers is that they’ll see my long form stuff posted here, too, going forward. I’m working on a way to run different sub-threads on Blogger. We’ll see about that. Other than that, BitsBlog will continue as before.

A year ago, I told you I’d not stop doing my long-form write-ups, and I still hold to that statement. It’s just their location n the web that’s changing.

PS To the sites that have BitsBits in syndication…. fear not; I’ll be sending you each weekly column as I used to, in the mail, in HTML format for easy copy and paste to your own sites.

WorldTribune.com says that The UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission briefed the UN’s Security Council.  And guess what?

Saddam Hussein shipped weapons of mass destruction components as well as medium-range ballistic missiles before, during and after the U.S.-led war against Iraq in 2003.

The briefing contained satellite photographs that demonstrated the speed with which Saddam dismantled his missile and WMD sites before and during the war. Council members were shown photographs of a ballistic missile site outside Baghdad in May 2003, and then saw a satellite image of the same location in February 2004, in which facilities had disappeared.

I will not be blogging today, in respect for Mr. Reagan, though I may have some comments tonight.

“When Franklin Roosevelt died in 1945, The New York Times wrote, “Men will thank God a hundred years from now that Franklin D. Roosevelt was in the White House.”

It will not take a hundred years to thank God for Ronald Reagan. But why? Why was he so admired? Why was he so beloved? He was beloved, first, because of what he was. Politics can be cruel, uncivil.

Our friend was strong and gentle. Once he called America hopeful, big-hearted, idealistic, daring, decent and fair.

That was America and, yes, our friend. And next, Ronald Reagan was beloved because of what he believed. He believed in America so he made it his shining city on a hill.

He believed in freedom so he acted on behalf of its values and ideals. He believed in tomorrow so the great communicator became the great liberator.

He talked of winning one for the Gipper and as president, through his relationship with Mikhail Gorbachev with us today, the Gipper, and yes Mikhail Gorbachev, won one for peace around the world.

If Ronald Reagan created a better world for many millions, it was because of the world someone else created for him. Nancy was there for him always.

Her love for him provided much of his strength, and their love together transformed all of us as we’ve seen — renewed seeing again here in the last few days.

And one of the many memories we all have of both of them is the comfort they provided during our national tragedies.

Whether it was the families of the crew of the Challenger shuttle or the USS Stark or the Marines killed in Beirut, we will never forget those images of the president and first lady embracing them and embracing us during times of sorrow.

So, Nancy, I want to say this to you: Today, America embraces you. We open up our arms.

We seek to comfort you, to tell you of our admiration for your courage and your selfless caring. And to the Reagan kids — it’s OK for me to say that at 80 — Michael, Ron, Patti, today all of our sympathy, all of our condolences to you and remember, too, your sister Maureen home safe now with her father.

As his vice president for eight years, I learned more from Ronald Reagan than from anyone I encountered in all my years of public life. I learned kindness; we all did. I also learned courage; the nation did.

Who can forget the horrible day in March 1981, he looked at the doctors in the emergency room and said, “I hope you’re all Republicans.”

And then I learned decency; the whole world did. Days after being shot, weak from wounds, he spilled water from a sink, and entering the hospital room aides saw him on his hands and knees wiping water from the floor. He worried that his nurse would get in trouble.

The good book says humility goes before honor, and our friend had both, and who could not cherish such a man?

And perhaps as important as anything, I learned a lot about humor, a lot about laughter. And, oh, how President Reagan loved a good story.

When asked, “How did your visit go with Bishop Tutu?” he replied: “So-so.”

It was typical. It was wonderful.

And in leaving the White House, the very last day, he left in the yard outside the Oval Office door a little sign for the squirrels. He loved to feed those squirrels. And he left this sign that said, “Beware of the dog,” and to no avail, because our dog Millie came in and beat the heck out of the squirrels.

But anyway, he also left me a note, at the top of which said, “Don’t let the turkeys get you down.”

Well, he certainly never let them get him down. And he fought hard for his beliefs. But he led from conviction, but never made an adversary into an enemy. He was never mean-spirited.

Reverend Billy Graham, whom I refer to as the nation’s pastor, is now hospitalized and regrets that he can’t be here today. And I asked him for a Bible passage that might be appropriate.

And he suggested this from Psalm 37: “The Lord delights in the way of the man whose steps he has made firm. Though he stumble, he will not fall for the Lord upholds him with his hand.”

And then this, too, from 37: “There is a future for the man of peace.” God bless you, Ronald Wilson Reagan and the nation you loved and led so well. ”

In the spring of 1987 President Reagan and I were driven into a large hangar at the Ottawa Airport, to await the arrival of Mrs. Reagan and my wife, Mila, prior to departure ceremonies for their return to Washington. We were alone except for the security details.

President Reagan’s visit had been important, demanding and successful. Our discussions reflected the international agenda of the times: The nuclear threat posed by the Soviet Union and the missile deployment by NATO; pressures in the Warsaw Pact, challenges resulting from the Berlin Wall and the ongoing separation of Germany; and bilateral and hemispheric free trade.

President Reagan had spoken to Parliament, handled complex files with skill and good humor — strongly impressing his Canadian hosts — and here we were, waiting for our wives.

When their car drove in a moment later, out stepped Nancy and Mila — looking like a million bucks. As they headed towards us, President Reagan beamed, threw his arm around my shoulder and said with a grin, “You know, Brian, for two Irishmen, we sure married up!”

In that visit, in that moment, one saw the quintessential Ronald Reagan — the leader we respected, the neighbor we admired and the friend we loved — a president of the United States of America whose truly remarkable life we celebrate in this great cathedral today.

Presidents and prime ministers everywhere sometimes wonder how history will deal with them.

Some even evince a touch of the insecurity of Thomas d’Arcy McGee, an Irish immigrant to Canada, who became a father of our confederation. In one of his poems, McGee, thinking of his birthplace, wrote poignantly:

“Am I remembered in Erin/ I charge you, speak me true/ Has my name a sound, a meaning/ In the scenes my boyhood knew?”

Ronald Reagan will not have to worry about Erin because they remember him well and affectionately there. Indeed they do: from Erin to Estonia, from Maryland to Madagascar, from Montréal to Monterey. Ronald Reagan does not enter history tentatively — he does so with certainty and panache. At home and on the world stage, his were not the pallid etchings of a timorous politician. They were the bold strokes of a confident and accomplished leader.

Some in the west during the early ’80s believed communism and democracy were equally valid and viable. This was the school of “moral equivalence.” In contrast, Ronald Reagan saw Soviet communism as a menace to be confronted in the genuine belief that its squalid underpinnings would fall swiftly to the gathering winds of freedom. Provided, as he said, that NATO and the western industrialized democracies stood firm and united. They did. And we know now who was right.

Ronald Reagan was a president who inspired his nation and transformed the world. He possessed a rare and prized gift called leadership — that ineffable and sometimes magical quality that sets some men and women apart so that millions will follow them as they conjure up grand visions and invite their countrymen to dream big and exciting dreams.

I always thought that President Reagan’s understanding of the nobility of the presidency coincided with the American dream.

One day President Mitterrand in referring to President Reagan said, “Il a vraiment la notion de l’Etat.” Rough translation: “He really has a sense of the State about him.” The translation does not fully capture the profundity of the observation: what President Mitterrand meant was that there is a vast difference between the job of president and the role of president.

Ronald Reagan fulfilled both with elegance and ease, embodying himself that unusual alchemy of history, tradition, achievement, inspirational conduct and national pride that define the special role the president of the United States must assume at home and around the world. “La notion de l’Etat” — no one understood it better than Ronald Reagan and no one could more eloquently summon his nation to high purpose or bring forth the majesty of the presidency and make it glow, better than the man who saw his country as a “shining city on a hill.”

May our common future and that of our great nations be guided by wise men and women who will remember always the golden achievements of the Reagan era and the success that can be theirs if the values of freedom and democracy are preserved, unsullied and undiminished, until the unfolding decades remember little else.

I have been blessed to have had a friend like Ronald Reagan. I am grateful that our paths crossed and that our lives touched. I shall always remember him with deep admiration and affection and I shall always feel honored by the journey we traveled together in search of better and more peaceful tomorrows for all God’s children, everywhere.

And so, in the presence of his beloved and indispensable Nancy, his children, friends and the American people he so deeply revered, I say “au revoir” today to a gifted leader, historic president and gracious human being. And I do so with a line from Yeats who wrote:

“Think where man’s glory most begins and ends and say — my glory was that I had such friends.”

“Mrs. Reagan, Patti, Michael and Ron, members of the Reagan family, distinguished guests, including our presidents and first ladies, Reverend Danforth, fellow citizens, we lost Ronald Reagan only days ago but we have missed him for a long time.  We have missed his kindly presence, that reassuring voice and the happy ending we had wished for him.

It has been 10 years since he said his own farewell, yet it is still very sad and hard to let him go.

Ronald Reagan belongs to the ages now, but we preferred it when he belonged to us.

In a life of good fortune, he valued above all the gracious gift of his wife, Nancy.  During his career, Ronald Reagan passed through a thousand crowded places, but there was only one person, he said, who could make him lonely by just leaving the room.

America honors you, Nancy, for the loyalty and love you gave this man on a wonderful journey and to that journey’s end.

Today, our whole nation grieves with you and your family.

When the sun sets tonight off the coast of California and we lay to rest our 40th president, a great American story will close.

The second son of Nell and Jack Reagan first knew the world as a place of open plains, quiet streets, gas-lit rooms and carriages drawn by horse.

If you could go back to the Dixon, Illinois, of 1922, you’d find a boy of 11 reading adventure stories at the public library or running with his brother Neil along Rock River, and coming home to a little house on Hennepin Avenue.

That town was the kind of place he remembered where you prayed side by side with your neighbors.  And if things were going wrong for them, you prayed for them and knew they’d pray for you if things went wrong for you.

The Reagan family would see its share of hardship, struggle and uncertainty.

And out of that circumstance came a young man of steadiness, calm and a cheerful confidence that life would bring good things.

The qualities all of us have seen in Ronald Reagan were first spotted 70 and 80 years ago.  As the lifeguard in Lowell Park, he was the protector, keeping an eye out for trouble.

As a sports announcer on the radio, he was the friendly voice that made you see the game as he did.

As an actor he was the handsome all-American good guy, which in his case required knowing his lines and being himself.

Along the way certain convictions were formed and fixed in twe should strive to know and do the will of God.  He believed that the gentleman always does the kindest thing.  He believed that people were basically good and had the right to be free.  He believed that bigotry and prejudice were the worst things a person could be guilty of.  He believed in the golden rule and in the power of prayer. He believed that America was not just a place in the world, but the hope of the world.

And he believed in taking a break now and then, because, as we said, there’s nothing better for the inside of a man than the outside of a horse.

Ronald Reagan spent decades in the film industry and in politics, fields known on occasion to change a man.  But not this man.  From Dixon to Des Moines to Hollywood to Sacramento to Washington, D.C., all who met him remembered the same sincere, honest, upright fellow.

Ronald Reagan’s deepest beliefs never had much to do with fashion or convenience.  His convictions were always politely stated, affably argued, and as firm and straight as the columns of this cathedral.

There came a point in Ronald Reagan’s film career when people started seeing a future beyond the movies.  The actor Robert Cummings recalled one occasion.

“I was sitting around the set with all these people and we were listening to Ronnie, quite absorbed.  I said, ‘Ron, have you ever considered some day becoming president?’

“He said, ‘President of what?’

“‘President of the United States,’ I said.

“And he said, ‘What’s the matter?  Don’t you like my acting either?”‘

(LAUGHTER)

The clarity and intensity of Ronald Reagan’s convictions led to speaking engagements around the country, and a new following he did not seek or expect.

He often began his speeches by saying, “I’m going to talk about controversial things.”  And then he spoke of communist rulers as slave masters, of a government in Washington that had far overstepped its proper limits, of a time for choosing that was drawing near.

In the space of a few years, he took ideas and principles that were mainly found in journals and books and turned them into a broad, hopeful movement ready to govern.

As soon as Ronald Reagan became California’s governor, observers saw a star in the west, tanned, well-tailored, in command and on his way.  In the 1960s his friend Bill Buckley wrote, “Reagan is indisputably a part of America and he may become a part of American history.”

Ronald Reagan’s moment arrived in 1980.  He came out ahead of some very good men, including one from Plains and one from Houston. What followed was one of the decisive decades of the century as the convictions that shaped the president began to shape the times.

He came to office with great hopes for America.  And more than hopes.  Like the president he had revered and once saw in person, Franklin Roosevelt, Ronald Reagan matched an optimistic temperament with bold, persistent action.

President Reagan was optimistic about the great promise of economic reform, and he acted to restore the rewards and spirit of enterprise.  He was optimistic that a strong America could advance the peace, and he acted to build the strength that mission required.

He was optimistic that liberty would thrive wherever it was planted, and he acted to defend liberty wherever it was threatened.

And Ronald Reagan believed in the power of truth in the conduct of world affairs.  When he saw evil camped across the horizon he called that evil by its name.

There were no doubters in the prisons and gulags, where dissidents spread the news, tapping to each other in code what the American president had dared to say.  There were no doubters in the shipyards and churches and secret labor meetings where brave men and women began to hear the creaking and rumbling of a collapsing empire. And there were no doubters among those who swung hammers at the hated wall that the first and hardest blow had been struck by President Ronald Reagan.

The ideology he opposed throughout his political life insisted that history was moved by impersonal tides and unalterable fates. Ronald Reagan believed instead in the courage and triumph of free men and we believe it all the more because we saw that courage in him.

As he showed what a president should be, he also showed us what a man should be.

Ronald Reagan carried himself, even in the most powerful office, with the decency and attention to small kindnesses that also define a good life.

He was a courtly, gentle and considerate man, never known to slight or embarrass others.

Many people across the country cherish letters he wrote in his own hand to family members on important occasions, to old friends dealing with sickness and loss, to strangers with questions about his days in Hollywood.

A boy once wrote to him requesting federal assistance to help clean up his bedroom.

(LAUGHTER)

The president replied that, “Unfortunately, funds are dangerously low.”

(LAUGHTER)

He continued, “I’m sure your mother was fully justified in proclaiming your room a disaster…

(LAUGHTER)

“… therefore you are in an excellent position to launch another volunteer program in our nation.

(LAUGHTER)

“Congratulations.”

See, our 40th president wore his title lightly, and it fit like a white Stetson.

In the end, through his belief in our country and his love for our country, he became an enduring symbol of our country.

We think of the steady stride, that tilt of the head and snap of the salute, the big screen smile, and the glint in his Irish eyes when a story came to mind.

We think of a man advancing in years with the sweetness and sincerity of a scout saying the pledge.  We think of that grave expression that sometimes came over his face, the seriousness of a man angered by injustice and frightened by nothing.

We know, as he always said, that America’s best days are ahead of us.  But with Ronald Reagan’s passing, some very fine days are behind us.  And that is worth our tears.

Americans saw death approach Ronald Reagan twice in a moment of violence and then in the years of departing light.  He met both with courage and grace.  In these trials, he showed how a man so enchanted by life can be at peace with life’s end.

And where does that strength come from?  Where is that courage learned?  It is the faith of a boy who read the Bible with his mom. It is the faith of a man lying in an operating room who prayed for the one who shot him before he prayed for himself.  It is the faith of a man with a fearful illness who waited on the Lord to call him home.

Now death has done all that death can do, and as Ronald Wilson Reagan goes his way, we are left with the joyful hope he shared.

In his last years he saw through a glass darkly.  Now he sees his savior face to face.

And we look for that fine day when we will see him again, all weariness gone, clear of mind, strong and sure and smiling again, and the sorrow of this parting gone forever.

May God bless Ronald Reagan and the country he loved. ”