I remember during the presidential campaign of 2008, when I was appalled that at an Obama event in Dallas, the security people stopped checking attendants. WTF, I thought, this is Dallas!

And there have been really ugly things that Obama’s candidacy/presidency brought to surface. The worst this country has to offer; racism, willful ignorance, and the dreadful forgetfulness that besets this land.

And yet, after the worst presidency in our history, one in which almost every day was an outrage, Obama could not cash in on political capital.

Sometime, in the past year, it has crossed my mind that Obama does not really like being president. He was all about the process of getting power, but never yielding it. He wants to be liked? He has some idea of himself that he wants to portray?

Although I normally would hesitate from psychoanalysis upon people I have never met, I am stuck thinking about Obama’s pride and gratefulness to his asshole father, when the elder visited in Hawaii, and gave him a basketball.

One which he gratefully accepts from Mitch O’Connell & John Boehner today.

The pics below were taken on September 4, 2010.

Understate much? All seven circles are in this photograph:

A river runs by it. Or rather a slackwater lake. In the background, the Columbia. Offstage left, the Snake. This circle is engraved with the names of the various peoples who once gathered here to trade, celebrate, and socialize.

The bounty of nature through the seasons. Food, shelter, clothing.

Trade goods. The real economy.

The seeming crowd favorite, and mine as well. “Coyote said: I am leaving you. I am going back toward the sunrise, but I leave salmon for you. Every year they will come up this river.”

If I’ve done this right, all photos can be enlarged by clicking on them.

All photos by Anne Kenny Chapman

Article and photo gallery on the dedication, from the Tri-City Herald.

It should be pointed out why Maya Lin began this project. When the subject was floated around of a commemoration of the Lewis and Clark expedition, the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation asserted that there was only one person whom they would support for the task. Others soon followed suit.

Milken, who is barred from securities trading for life by federal regulators, has since re-created himself as a proponent of investing in for-profit educational corporations, an industry that regularly comes under government and media scrutiny in response to complaints of fraud made by dissatisfied students.

At the conference, Blum, who is the husband of U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein and a professional Wall Street speculator, sat on a panel called “The New University and Its Role in the Economy,” alongside the presidents of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Arizona State University. The panel focused on how universities can best serve the corporate jones for tech-savvy employees by recruiting smart freshmen with scientific talent. One panel member urged treating universities as “laboratories of business ideas and products.”

As someone who oversees investment policy decisions for the University of California’s $63 billion portfolio, and as the largest shareholder in two for-profit corporate-run universities (in which UC invests), Blum had a unique perspective to share at the conference. He advised public universities to attract business-oriented students with clever advertisements as vocational schools do.

“It’s like anything else,” he said. “It’s how you market it.”

Marketing strategy aside, Blum has taken on two seemingly disparate roles—one as an advocate for a nonprofit university, and the other as an owner of two for-profit educational corporations. However, as a regent, Blum has taken actions that, intentionally or not, have enhanced the value of his vocational schools. Are his loyalties conflicted? “

Now for the rest of the country. As usual, the House has long since passed the Shark Conservation Act but the Senate sits on its thumbs, far too busy doing nothing else to be bothered. Tell them to pass S. 850.

You could start with urging the members of the Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee to get a move on. Committee members Boxer and Cantwell are already sponsors, as are, happily, the other four west coast senators.

We will have a double-dip recession, and another or 2, Vietnams to the tenth power.

A lab rat would have learned by now.

Someone had the temerity to post a crab-stuffed shrimp recipe on-line today.

Here’s my contribution to the HOMELAND today:

Earth, man. What a shithole. –crewman Johner, Alien Resurrection

Congress asked the National Research Council for its opinion on climate change. The NRC is responding with America’s Climate Choices, a five volume report. The first three were released this week.

Advancing the Science of Climate Change

A strong, credible body of scientific evidence shows that climate change is occurring, is caused largely by human activities, and poses significant risks for a broad range of human and natural systems. As decision makers respond to these risks, the nation’s scientific enterprise can contribute both by continuing to improve understanding of the causes and consequences ofclim ate change, and by improving and expanding the options available to limit the magnitude of climate change and to adapt to its impacts. To do so, the nation needs a comprehensive, integrated, and flexible climate change research enterprise that is closely linked with action oriented programs at all levels. Also needed are a comprehensive climate observing system, improved climate models and other analytical tools, investments in human capital, and better linkages between research and decision making.

Limiting the Magnitude of Future Climate Change

Meeting internationally discussed targets for limiting atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations and associated increases in global average temperatures will require a major departure from business as usual in how the world uses and produces energy. This report recommends a U.S. policy goal stated in terms of a budget for cumulative greenhouse gas emissions over the period 2012‑2050. With only so much to “spend” during this period, the nation should act now to: (1) take advantage of key near-term opportunities to limit greenhouse gas emissions (e.g., through energy efficiency and low carbon energy sources), and to create new and better emission reduction opportunities for the longer term (e.g., invest in research and development); (2) create a national policy framework within which actors at all levels can work toward a common goal; and (3) develop policy mechanisms durable enough to persist for decades but flexible enough to adapt to new information and understanding.

Adapting to the Impacts of Climate Change

Much of the nation’s experience to date in managing and protecting its people, resources, and infrastructure is based on the historic record of climate variability during a period of relatively stable climate. Adaptation to climate change calls for a new paradigm – one that considers a range of possible future climate conditions and associated impacts, some well outside the realm of past experience. Adaptation is a process that requires actions from many decision-makers in federal, state, tribal, and local governments, the private sector, non-governmental organizations, and community groups. However, current efforts are hampered by a lack of solid information about the benefits, costs, and effectiveness of various adaptation options, by uncertainty about future climate impacts at a scale necessary for decision-making, and by a lack of coordination. Therefore, a national adaptation strategy is needed to support and coordinate decentralized efforts. As part of this strategy, the federal government should provide technical and scientific resources that are currently lacking at the local or regional scale, incentives for local and state authorities to begin adaptation planning, guidance across jurisdictions, shared lessons learned, and support of scientific research to expand knowledge of impacts and adaptation.

At the links you can access press releases and 4-page summaries of each report. The quotes above are the opening paragraphs of those releases. You can also read the full reports online. There is considerable eye strain involved – each runs to hundreds of pages – but the online presentation is well organized and one can skip to chapters of particular interest.

Two more volumes are forthcoming: Informing Effective Decisions and Actions Related to Climate Change and the finaly synthesis, America’s Climate Choices.

This isn’t Earth First! speaking. It is the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the Institute of Medicine. The question is will congress read it, or put it back on the shelf along with its highflown endangered species day resolution?

Looking for something we can do on the day? The Center for Biological Diversity’s Action Alerts page is a good place to start. It currently features 42 active campaigns. Reading all these amounts to a grad course in ecology. Tiresome as it is, we have to send these letters and emails, because the other side never sleeps. I send them all, even though only Maria Cantwell responds.

Below, Alexandra Morton’s letter to BC Premier Gordon Campbell

May 17, 2010

Dear Gordon Campbell

On the afternoon of May 8, 2010 thousands of British Columbians from all walks of life, from the far reaches of Kingcome Inlet, Hope Town and Gwyasdums, from Port McNeill to across the Strait of Georgia and from the bays and watersheds of Vancouver Island traveled to your office to tell you that we want salmon farms out of our ocean, because we want our wild salmon. Everywhere in the Pacific Ocean where salmon farms do not exist (Alaska and the western Pacific) wild salmon remain abundant, even the Fraser sockeye that do not pass salmon farms are thriving. The people of BC want their salmon back.

Someday we are going to learn how Canada’s governments were sold on corporate salmon raised in public waters in cages that prevent public access when the Constitution states no one has the right to privatize ocean spaces, nor own a fish in the sovereign waters of Canada. In 1989, fish farms were handed to the province to simply side-step the inconvenience of the Constitution, but this era is over and the industry remains fundamentally unconstitutional. Farm salmon enable dams on the Fraser River, oil wells, clear-cuts, open pit mines and I think this is why the bureaucracy has blindly pushed it no matter which government is in power or what scientists, lawyers, First Nations and everyone else has to say. I think Ministry of Agriculture and Land’s handling of salmon farms needs thorough scrutiny.

Mr. Campbell, you did not cause this problem, but you have inherited it. The era of cheap oil is over with the people on the Gulf of Mexico being the first hit with what will be a cascading degradation of planet earth that all our children will inherit. You cannot morally choose a salmon that robs one ocean, to pollute a second one while consuming fuel because it feeds Atlantic salmon in BC on fish from Chile. You must choose the salmon that comes home to us without oil consumption feeding us, our forests and creating oxygen.

Norwegian salmon farming corporations are holding this coast ransom using the excuse “jobs”, when at the same time they are mechanizing to reduce their payroll. Nothing about this industry appears legitimate to me. It does not make food. It depletes global supply. It is not sustainable as it is running out of cheap fish to grind into pellets. It is not benign as it intensifies disease and pollutes.

I do not believe the assurances from the Provincial Ministry of Agriculture and Lands (MAL), nor the Federal Pacific Biological Station that salmon farms are not damaging Canada’s public fishery resources. I believe their research has been skewed and suppressed. I eagerly accept any invitation to argue these points in a court of law.

The Norwegian salmon farming industry is consuming massive quantities of Canada’s wild fish with no accounting, or licenses. If you think I am wrong, let’s have a look. Put cameras and observers on every fish pen as it is pulled to the surface, on every packer pumping out the pens and on the assembly line as these fish are gutted. Commercial fishermen have accepted and borne the costs of this scrutiny to protect wild fish and the Norwegians can too. Why did it require an order from the Department of Justice to make DFO lay a charge against Marine Harvest for unlawful possession of wild salmon? Something is very wrong here.

Why won’t MAL test Atlantic salmon facilities for the Norwegian ISA virus? How can MAL say sea lice in Nootka Sound are not drug resistant without producing a single test result?

My colleagues from the First Nations, scientific, legal, environmental and political communities have all tried to bring reason to the Norwegian salmon farming industry, but the government sponsored level of secrecy surrounding it simply grows. The only reason for secrecy is activity the public does not like.

If we remove corporate farmers and the European shareholders from this equation the solution is simple:

1- Rescind the leases under all salmon farms in British Columbia and place covenants on these sites in trust for future generations, as they are BC’s most productive coastal wild fishery grounds.
2- Invite Norway to graciously bow-out and go face the calamities they are experiencing in Chile and in their own shores.
3- Protect aquaculture jobs by WISELY developing a sustainable, community-based land-based industry
4- Use the best knowledge we have and actually restore the resilient wild fish, not enhanced fish, which are very unlikely to survive climate change.

If the people of British Columbia are your primary concern, there is no rational obstacle to embracing these solutions please start rescinding leases immediately.

There is something very wrong with this situation and it is only a matter of time before we figure it out. Lets move forward. Given their track record in Chile these Norwegian companies are not sustainable anyway. The state of the planet is a very serious concern and it is immoral to further degrade public resources that we will need on in the coming decades. This is about food-security and to pretend it is anything less is deceptive. In a world depleted of easy oil no one is going to be moving fish from the south Pacific to make less fish in the North Pacific, but we will most definitely be thankful to have millions of wild salmon returning to us for free!

Thousands of people showed up in person to deliver a message to you. Get salmon farms Out of BC waters. We await your response.

Sincerely,

Alexandra Morton
Salmonaresacred.org

Created by Codey Wilson and his elite step team of volunteers. The video is an EXAGGERATED act of a possible future military that is open to any sexual preference. Please don’t try to cause us any problems. We’re just a few good guys trying to enjoy ourselves and get this deployment over with.

There seem to be a number of people bitching about this video. The usual suspects, all of whom need to get a life.