Political

::GRIN:: 
(note: this written for a paper that is inside the beltway of Washington DC)
http://www.fcnp.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=995&Itemid=33
By Tom Whipple    Thursday, 15 March 2007

Last week Portland, Oregon became the first governmental body in the US to not only acknowledge that imminent peak oil is a reality, but also to publish a plan as to what the city should be doing to cope. Breaking new ground has both its perils and its rewards. The peril is that you have no guidelines to the road ahead. The advantage is that there is no standard of comparison so your efforts instantly become the textbook to mitigating the effects of peak oil at the local level.

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/55077 

WASHINGTON, DC—After nearly six years of much-publicized service as Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld announced his resignation Wednesday afternoon, saying that he had "proudly accomplished everything [he'd] set out to bungle." "Years ago, I decided to bog this great nation down in an extended, grueling foreign occupation, and I'm happy to say that's exactly what I've done," said Rumsfeld in a farewell address at the White House, during which he urged Americans to continue waging the ill-conceived, mismanaged, and evidently unwelcome fight for democracy in the Middle East. "Each of my actions—from undersupplying troops with body armor to focusing on capturing Saddam Hussein while Osama bin Laden remained free—has led America inexorably toward our current state of extreme crisis. Well, anyway, goodbye!" President Bush expressed confidence that Robert Gates, his new nominee for Secretary of Defense, will be able to "fuck everything up the rest of the way."

My god, sanity has started to return to the political realm of this country. We have an enormous amount of work to do but at least this is the beginning of the beginning.

October 27, 2006 - Op-Ed Contributor
Staying the Course Right Over a Cliff
By GEORGE LAKOFF

THE Bush administration has finally been caught in its own language trap.

“That is not a stay-the-course policy,” Tony Snow, the White House press secretary, declared on Monday.

The first rule of using negatives is that negating a frame activates the frame. If you tell someone not to think of an elephant, he’ll think of an elephant. When Richard Nixon said, “I am not a crook” during Watergate, the nation thought of him as a crook.

I had planned on doing a detailed write up of my take on Shell's event but I decided to just cross-post Rowan's write up.  I would add that at the very end of the event I had a couple minute conversation with Mr. Hofmeister that started with wondering if he had heard of the Hirsch report. He had not and gave me his business card wanted for him to send him a copy.  

http://www.uncommonthought.com/mtblog/archives/2006/10/29/shells_portland.php 

I attended one of Shell's "National Dialogue on Energy Security" town halls on October 27th. This is part of a 91 city tour by Shell President John Hofmeister and a few staff to have "discussions" across the nation. Portland, Oregon is one of Shell's "markets" and was stop 14. It was interesting and informative, though not necessarily in the way Mr. Hofmeister intended.