Two friends share contrasting perspectives on today’s hot topics and timeless issues.

I’m posting a lot lately. Guess I’m getting excited for the upcoming day when Bush is no longer our president. Here is another reason why McCain won’t replace him:

I’ve heard the right wing attack Al Gore as a hypocrite because of his big, energy guzzling house since “An Inconvenient Truth” came out, and have to admit I was a little nonplussed that he used so much energy.

Then when I got another Newsmax “expose” about Gore’s energy use INCREASE, I thought I should investigate a little for my own edification. A quick trip to Digg (which showed the 10-day old article to have only 3 diggs) allowed a commenter to reveal that it’s not only obsessive, but inaccurate.

It makes me wonder how non-factual most of the stuff on Newsmax is… but I don’t have the time or energy to find out. As for Gore’s energy consumption, It’s gone down by 40% since he installed many energy saving features into his old house… AND he buys only green power from the grid. Meaning he is consuming only clean and renewable power which doesn’t seem very hypocritical to me.

It’s really time to put this sham debate to rest. Global Warming is real. It’s serious… and it’s something humans need to do something about!

Yesterday we got a new report from hundreds of media outlets that the North Pole could be completely melted by the end of this summer!

Serious people need to turn their discussions away from “Is it real?” and “Is it our fault?” To “What can we do about it NOW?”

An excerpt from the CNN article:

“If you talked to me or other scientists just a few years ago, we were saying that we might lose all or most of the summer sea ice cover by anywhere from 2050 to 2100,” Serreze said. “Then, recently, we kind of revised those estimates, maybe as early as 2030. Now, there’s people out there saying it might be even before that. So, things are happening pretty quick up there.”

Serreze said those who suggest that the Arctic meltdown is just part of a historic cycle are wrong.

“It’s not cyclical at this point. I think we understand the physics behind this pretty well,” he said. “We’ve known for at least 30 years, from our earliest climate models, that it’s the Arctic where we’d see the first signs of global warming.

“It’s a situation where we hate to say we told you so, but we told you so,” he said.

justin

Newsmax is a right wing magazine. I subscribe to its newsletter to keep abreast of what they are saying. even though I don’t agree with them, I try to stay informed just in case they make a good point. Sometimes I groan, sometimes I laugh, and sometimes I go “hmmm”. But the article I just read on that site is downright crazy! Whoever this guy Kenneth R. Timmerman guy is, he should be muzzled.

This is the crap that comes in their emails!

Seriously?

Breaking from Newsmax.com

Israel Attack on Iran ‘Unavoidable’, Olmert Deputy

Special: 6 Days of Hell: the Coming War with Iran

Important: Homeland Security has advised every family to have an emergency radio — and one not dependent on electric outlet power. Please check out our free offer for one of the best emergency radios available — Go Here Now

Special: The Coming Obama Stock Market Crash

In a Time Magazine blog this week, (isn’t it great that mainstream press is trumpeting blogs now?) Joe Klein praises Petraeus for his tactics and adaptability that made the surge successful, but makes a great point about the entire premise of this war: It’s stupid. Somehow the neo-conservatives who started this war believe that we can just inject Democracy into a country and region that doesn’t want it. It’s this kind of arrogance that has gotten us into this mess and continues to undermine the legitimate war in Afghanistan against Al-Quaeda. Period.

We need to “cut and turn” our troops over to Afghanistan where they are badly needed to win the war on terrorism that we thought we were fighting in the beginning!

justin

What’s the deal with our energy consumption and how it affects the environment?  Where’s the truth on this issue?  

Energy and the Environment Part 1 from Justin Bradshaw & Joel Van Brunt on Vimeo.

I found myself taken by this analysis of Republicans on Grist.

I think it makes many true points about the nature of “conservatism” and why many conservatives use that belief structure to discount the idea of global climate change. It has that darn word “change” in it, just like Obama’s campaign.

Let’s hope we have more of Obama’s type of change in the next 10 years that the climate type of change!

justin

Stop the presses everyone… I just read an essay by Pat Buchanon that I liked! Yeah, he’s usually crazy and bible thumping and I laugh at him… but this one, which came into my email inbox through a conservative list I subscribe to (yes, I subscribe to Human Events and NewsMax to keep up with the right wing!) caught my attention. It starts out about Bush’s relevancy and ends with a truthful observation about the apparent results of the Bush foreign policy: BAD.

Check it out, you’ll be surprised, I was:
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=26753

America remains the first economic and military power on earth. But after seven years of Bush, we no longer inspire the awe or hopes we once did. We are no longer the world hegemonic power of the neocons’ depiction. And the reason is that Bush embraced their utopian ideology of democratic empire and listened to their siren’s call to be the Churchill of his age.

justin

Continuation of our discussions on the democratic primaries. 

Wright Continuation from Justin Bradshaw & Joel Van Brunt on Vimeo.

We discuss the implications of taking the democratic race all the way to the convention.  Democratic Primaries- Pennsylvania from Justin Bradshaw & Joel Van Brunt on Vimeo.

Wow. I just finished watching this moving photo-documentary of veteran Marine James Blake Miller (who wrote the music used in the video) and it is stunning and revealing to me how much he has gone through. The guilt and shame associated with shooting and killing other people must be overwhelming.

Check this video out. War is not pretty. Even when it’s over.

justin

Justin and I begin to talk about the Strategic Defense Initiative and the impact that policy had in the past.Star Wars? How did we start talking about this? from Justin Bradshaw & Joel Van Brunt on Vimeo.