Cobbers

Mates on a mission

Clitoral Economics

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Huffington Post’s Barbara Ehrenreich has a way with words:

“With all the talk about how to stimulate it, you’d think that the economy is a giant clitoris. Ben Bernanke may not employ this imagery, but the immediate challenge-and the issue bound to replace Iraq and immigration in the presidential race-is how best to get the economy engorged and throbbing again.

“It would be irresponsible to say much about Bush’s stimulus plan, the mere mention of which could be enough to send the Nikkei, the DAX, and the curiously named FTSE and Sensex tumbling into the crash zone again.

“In a typically regressive gesture, Bush proposed to hand out cash tax rebates-except to families earning less than $40,000 a year.

“This may qualify as an example of what Naomi Klein calls ‘disaster capitalism,’ in which any misfortune can be re-jiggered to the advantage of the affluent.”

Iowa By the Numbers

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Rolling Stone’s Tim Dickinson puts Iowa into perspective:

… Obama beat Clinton eight ways to Sunday. He edged her out among Democrats 32/31, and cleaned her clock among independents (44/17) and wayward Republicans (41/10).

He beat her among people making less than $15,000 (37/30) and more than $100,000 (41/19). He beat her among health-care voters (34/30) and suburban voters (30/25).

Most astounding however, he beat her among her core supporters, women, by five points. What more can I say than — in a night of mind boggling statistics — that that’s the stat of the night.

A black man did this. In a state that’s 96 percent white. This is truly a historic night in America.

California is getting pissed off with Bush

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Environmentalists harbor no illusions about the Bush Administration; from a 2001 decision to weaken regulations on arsenic in drinking water to its antagonistic performance at last week’s U.N. climate change talks in Bali, the White House has consistently opposed green goals.

But Wednesday’s move by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) denying California and 16 other states the right to set their own standards for carbon dioxide emissions from automobiles was an unpleasant surprise; even by Bush standards.

The announcement, made by EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson, temporarily torpedoes state efforts led by California to drastically reduce CO2 emissions from cars by treating the greenhouse gas as a pollutant that could be regulated like any other.

The California initiative, part of the state’s landmark climate change plan, could have provided a nationwide model for cutting automobile emissions, one of the single biggest sources of greenhouse gas in the U.S.

‘The Administration has done a number of indefensible things on the environment and global warming,’ says Jim Marston, director of the state climate initiative for Environmental Defense. ‘But this is the worst in terms of process, and the one that will be most harmful to the health and safety of the American people.’

Australia to monitor Japanese whaling

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Australia will send planes and a ship to conduct surveillance of Japanese whaling ships off Antarctica in a bid to build a potential legal case against whaling for scientific research, the government announced Wednesday.

The planes and ship would collect photographic and video evidence that would be used to decide if Australia will launch legal action to try to stop Japan’s whaling program, Foreign Minister Stephen Smith said.

Smith also said Australia will lead a group of anti-whaling nations in lodging a formal protest with the Japanese government within the next few days against Japan’s plans to harvest more than 1,000 whales, including 50 humpbacks, in its largest-ever scientific whale hunt.

‘We are dealing here with the slaughter of whales, not scientific research,’ Smith told a news conference. ‘That is our start point and our end point.’

An Airbus A-319 used by the Australian government’s scientific division in Antarctica would conduct surveillance flights over the Japanese fleet, which is due in its target area soon.”