The January Southwest Climate Outlook is online.
This month’s outlook provides recent drought conditions and the latest seasonal forecasts. The feature article is entitled “Global warming inspires a look at solar, wind energy.”
This month’s cover photo was provided by Steve Novy, Institute for the Study of Planet Earth.
To download a printer-friendly PDF file (2.3 MB) of the January 2007 Outlook, visit:
http://www.ispe.arizona.edu/climas/end/packets/janpacket2007.pdf
As always, you can view the latest Southwest Climate Outlook in html format at:
http://www.ispe.arizona.edu/climas/forecasts/swoutlook.html
Highlights from the January 2007 Outlook
Drought – Conditions have improved somewhat in New Mexico due to winter precipitation but have deteriorated slightly in Arizona.
In the short-term, much of New Mexico is drought-free while most of Arizona is abnormally dry or in moderate drought.
Long-term conditions are forecast to improve somewhat with the expectation of above-average winter precipitation.
Temperature – Temperatures over the past thirty days have generally been cooler than average for most of the Southwest.
Precipitation – Over the past month, most of Arizona has had below-average precipitation while large regions in New Mexico have had above-average precipitation.
Climate Forecasts – Forecasters predict increased chances for above-average temperatures and above-average precipitation for most of the Southwest through May.
El Niño – Weak El Niño conditions are expected to persist through April, though the current event may have already reached peak strength.
The Bottom Line – Cooler-than-average temperatures combined with predicted above-average precipitation this winter could mean drought relief, increased water supplies, and fewer wildfires later in the year for the Southwest.
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Limbaugh suggested caller visit site of Foster suicide: “See if you get out alive”
On the January 19 broadcast of his nationally syndicated radio show, Rush Limbaugh advised a caller to “go to Fort Marcy Park” on the caller’s upcoming visit to Washington, D.C., and “[s]ee if you get out alive.” Fort Marcy Park is the Northern Virginia location where Clinton Deputy White House Counsel Vincent Foster committed suicide on July 20, 1993.
Read more
http://mediamatters.org/items/dailyemail/200701220006?src=other
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Concerns about monopolies and fears of a possible “fascist” takeover of the US media have prompted a Democratic congressman to push to restore the Fairness Doctrine
At:
From: Poacnewsletter
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HYPOCRITICAL TALK
At:
http://www.prwatch.org/node/5653
“Spocko,” an obscure blogger living in San Francisco, has shaken up some of the merchants of hate on right-wing KSFO-AM radio. For the past year, he has been e-mailing the station’s advertisers with audio clips from its shows and asking sponsors to consider what they’re supporting. Some sponsors have pulled their ads, after hearing clips like one of KSFO’s Lee Rodgers suggesting that a protester be “stomped to death right there. Just stomp their bleeping guts out.” Other controversial clips were from Melanie Morgan, the chair of the pro-war group Move America Forward. In retaliation, the station’s corporate owner, ABC/Disney, threatened legal action that forced Spocko to shut down his site (it’s now back up), while simultaneously accusing him of attempting to censor their speech.
SOURCE: San Francisco Chronicle, January 11, 2007
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Editorials, Op-Eds Address Bush’s Health Insurance Proposal, State Health Care Initiatives
Access this story and related links online:
http://www.kaisernetwork.org/daily_reports/rep_index.cfm?DR_ID=42429
Several newspapers recently published editorials and opinion pieces about a health insurance proposal that President Bush plans to announce on Tuesday in his State of the Union address, as well as other recent proposals.
Denver Post: The Bush proposal would “give tax breaks to people who buy modestly priced plans out of their own pockets and cover the cost of those breaks by establishing a new tax on a portion of higher-priced coverage that some workers receive from their employers,” but “we’re not convinced that going through the tax code is the best way” to help U.S residents obtain health insurance, according to a Post editorial. The proposal could encourage employers to drop health insurance for employees, “jeopardizing coverage for 160 million Americans,” the editorial states (Denver Post, 1/22).
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State of the Union – War
GARETH PORTER, garethporter@erols.com ,
http://www.bu.edu/globalbeat/syndicate/porter110104.html
Author, most recently, of the book “Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam,” Porter said today: “If Bush were really focused on the problem of worsening sectarian violence in Iraq, he would have learned that continuing to make war against Sunni insurgents while supporting a largely Shiite security structure which is only interested in targeting Sunnis — and not just al-Qaeda — is the worst option he could pursue.”
Porter has also written extensively about U.S. policy toward Iran.
From:Institute for Public Accuracy
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Looking for a Gulf of Tonkin-like Incident
by Prof. Rodrigue Tremblay
Global Research, January 21, 2007
The AmericanEmpire.com and Global Research.ca
“The spirit of this country is totally adverse to a large military force.” Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) 3rd American President
“Force is the vital principle and immediate parent of despotism.”Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) 3rd American President
“If there is one principle more deeply rooted in the mind of every American, it is that we should have nothing to do with conquest.” Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) 3rd American President
“I fully understand that they [the Congress] could try to stop me from doing it. But I’ve made my decision. And we’re going forward.” President George W. Bush, (in an interview broadcast on CBS 60 Minutes, Jan. 14, 2007)
Obviously, President George W. Bush is busily looking for a Gulf of Tonkin-like incident in order to further escalate the war in Iraq and to start a fresh one with Iran.
Let us remember that when the administration of President Lyndon B. Johnson, another Texan, wanted to escalate the war against North Vietnam, in 1964, it fabricated a tale about a maritime incident in the Gulf of Tonkin, which many historians believe never happened. Congress was then steamrolled into passing the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which was used by the Johnson administration, and later by the Nixon administration, to escalate U.S. military involvement in Indochina. Tens of thousands of young Americans and hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese died as a consequence of this resolution.
And the same scenario is repeating itself today. Politicians, when facing a quagmire of their own making and feeling powerless and under attack, will spend unlimited amounts of public money and will sacrifice unlimited numbers of other people’s lives, in order to save face. —Anxious to provoke Iran into a military confrontation, George W. Bush authorized, in early January, an attack on an Iranian consulate in the town of Irbil, in Iraq, capturing five staff members. This was an act of war, because it was carried out on a diplomatic compound. The Iraqi and Iranian governments have both called for the men’s release.
This aggression came after the Bush-Cheney administration sent two large nuclear aircraft carriers, the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower and the USS John C. Stennis, each accompanied by guided-missile cruisers, destroyers, frigates, submarine escorts and supply ships, to the Persian Gulf. As a consequence, the Persian Gulf is teeming with American military gear.
In this relatively small sea, such a concentration of military equipment is bound to result in accidents. Indeed, around January 8, a U.S. nuclear submarine hit a Japanese oil tanker in the Strait of Hormuz near the Arabian Sea. The Strait of Hormuz connects the Persian Gulf with the Arabian Sea and is a most strategic shipping lane for transporting oil products from countries such as Saudi Arabia and Iran.
All this military gear is deployed in order to blockade two Iranian oil ports on the [Persian] Gulf and to start bombing Iran, possibly with nuclear weapons, as soon as Bush can invent a pretext to launch a war against Iran. It seems the only thing this politician knows how to do is to launch wars. Countries such as Israel and the Gulf states are being equipped with advanced Patriot missile systems, in preparation for missile counter-attacks that Iran is expected to launch, after it has been bombed. As soon as some ‘Persian Gulf incident’ can be orchestrated, the table will be set for starting a bombing campaign of Iran, possibly, according to some observers, sometime in April (2007). As the neocon plan calls for, such a war is designed to create “a new power balance” in the Middle East, beneficial both to Israel’s strategic interests and to American oil interests. In fact, what the Bush-Cheney administration and its neocon advisors ideally would hope to accomplish is to repeat the 1953 CIA coup that ousted from power the democratically elected prime minister of Iran, Mohammad Mossadegh, after the latter nationalized the oil industry. The result was a concentration of all power in a puppet, the Shah of Iran.
What can be expected from another illegal war in the Middle East? First, politically, it will further weaken the United Nations, a long held goal of the Neocons, because it is most unlikely that the Security Council will go along with a war of aggression. Such wars are against the U.N. Charter, which calls for the maintenance of international peace and security, not for initiating wars of aggression. Second, economically, the U.S. blockade of Iranian ports would automatically stop the flow of oil from Iran, one of the world’s major petroleum exporting nations, and will precipitate an international oil crisis. This in turn is likely to provoke a worldwide stock market crash and initiate an international economic recession. —But Bush doesn’t care. —Saving face has no price in his mind. Besides, he enjoys playing war with America’s large stocks of military gear, like kids like to play cowboy. Most Americans disapprove of the way he is governing and they told him so democratically in the November 2006 election. Bush’s approval rating has fallen to 30 percent, but he doesn’t care what the American people think. He couldn’t care less for democracy.
…
Complete article at:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=TRE20070121&articleId=4535
Rodrigue Tremblay is professor emeritus of economics at the University of Montreal.
He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
He and can be reached at rodrigue.tremblay@ yahoo.com .
He is the author of the book ‘The New American Empire’.
Visit his blog site at www.thenewamericanempire.com/blog .
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Off the Rails:
Big Oil, Big Brother Win Big in the State of the Union
by Greg Palast
23 January, 2006
There was that tongue again. When the President lies he’s got this weird nervous
tick: He sticks the tip of his tongue out between his lips. Like a little boy who knows he’s fibbing. Like a snake licking a rat.
In his State of the Union tonight the President did his tongue thing 124 times — my kids kept count.
But it wasn’t all rat-licking lies.
Most pundits concentrated on Iraq and wacky health insurance stuff. But that’s just bubbles and blather. The real agenda is in the small stuff. The little razors in the policy apple, the nasty little pieces of policy shrapnel that whiz by between the appearances of the Presidential tongue.
First, there was the announcement the regime will, “give employers the tools to verify the legal status of their workers.” In case you missed that one, the President is talking about creating a federal citizen profile database.
There’s a problem with that idea. It’s against the law. The law in question is the United States Constitution. The Founding Fathers thought the government had no right to keep track on a citizen unless there is evidence they have committed, or planned to commit, a crime.
But the Founding Fathers didn’t imagine there were millions and billions of dollars to be made by private contractors ready to perform this KGB operation for the Department of Homeland Security, tracking each and every one of us to keep tabs on our “status.”
These work databases will tie into “voter verification” databases required by the Help America Vote Act. And these will tie to the databases on citizenship and so on.
Will Big Brother abuse these snoop lists? The biggest purveyor of such hit lists is Choice Point, Inc. – those characters who, before the 2000 election, helped Jeb Bush purge innocent voters as “felons” from Florida voter rolls. Will they abuse the new super-lists? Does Dick Cheney shoot in the woods?
There were several other little IEDs (improvised execrable policy devices) planted in the State of the Union. Did you catch the one about doubling the Strategic Petroleum Reserve? If you’re unfamiliar with the SPR, it is supposed to be the stash of oil we keep in case the price of crude gets too high. Well, the price of oil has been horribly high but Dick Cheney, the official who sits on the Reserve’s spigots, has refused to release the oil into the market. Instead of unleashing the Reserve and busting Big Oil’s price gouging Bush will double the Reserve, which will require buying three-quarters of a billion barrels of oil. This is a nice $40 billion pay-out to Big Oil from the US Treasury. Compare this to the President’s health insurance plan which will be “revenue neutral” — that is, have a net investment of zero.
But the $40 billion in loot the oilmen will get from us taxpayers for doubling the Reserve is nothing compared to the boost in the worldwide price of crude caused by this massive, mad purchase. While the Congressional audience didn’t even bother polite applause for the reserve purchase plan, there’s no doubt they were whooping it up in Saudi Arabia. Clearly, the state of the Saudi-Bush union is still pretty good.
But why end on a cynical note? I must admit I was moved by the President’s praise of Wesley Autrey, a New Yorker who, last month, threw himself on top of a man who had fallen on subway tracks — and held him between the track rails as the train passed over them.
While the President properly acknowledged Autrey’s courage in saving the man who fell on the subway tracks, Mr. Bush still did not explain why Dick Cheney pushed the man in the first place.
Greg Palast is the author of the New York Times bestseller: Armed Madhouse: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the Class War. The subscribe to Palast’s investigative reports, go to http://www.gregpalast.com/
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three to see
This Modern World: The ongoing adventures of Sparkman and the Blinkster
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Ted Rall: george bush presidential library
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Jeff Danziger: McCain, Straight Talk Express, The Surge
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