Bush Skipping Climate Change Summit...Mostly
From the AFP:
WHILE dozens of world leaders have gathered at the United Nations for talks on how to fight global warming, US President George Bush is skipping all events except for a final dinner.Condoleezza Rice is here for the U.S.A., but Bush's unwillingness to actually participate in the meetings—and holding his own set of meetings—is being regarded by most here as an upturned finger to U.N. authority.His focus is on his own gathering of leaders in Washington this week, a meeting with the same stated goal -- a reduction in the emissions blamed for climate change -- but a fundamentally different idea of how to achieve it.
Mr Bush's aides say the parallel meeting does not compete with the UN process. They say Mr Bush hopes to persuade the nations that produce 90 per cent of the world's emissions to come to a consensus that would allow each, including the US, to set its own policy rather than having limits imposed by an international treaty.
The United States chose not to accept the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012.
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I visit lots of political sites, even run one myself, and I don't need gadgets.boing to cover this stuff.
I thought gadgets.boingboing.net was for "gadgets" and not stuff like this (which belongs on www.boingboing.net). And the "pain gun" article on www.boingboing.net really seems to belong here.
Why bother having two separate sites if they both run the same type of material?
Peace be on you, dudes. As I announced earlier today, I'm at a summit on climate change at the U.N. Things will be running a little bit differently today. Fret not.
Article VI of the United States Constitution makes it clear that the Constitution is the Supreme Law of the Land. Nothing can legally contradict or overrule it--not an act of Congress, not an Executive Order, not a Judicial Ruling, not a state law, and not the Bible or any other Holy Book. Furthermore, and this is little understood, treaties made with foreign governments and ratified as provided in the United States Constitution are SECOND ONLY TO THE CONSTITUTION ITSELF AS THE SUPREME LAW OF THE LAND! Thus, to the extent that any Federal or state statue, regulation, or judicial ruling conflicts with a legally ratified international treaty, the treaty takes precedence and the conflicting law is invalid.
This is just ONE reason why we did not ratify the treaty. There are MANY others.
If you guys aren't having a good time, there's a whole internet out there. You can come back tomorrow for gadgets.
One of my favorite bush quotes was just after he was reelected... he promised to "reach out to everyone who shares [his] goals." I don't know if he realizes it, but usually you reach out to people with different viewpoints, not the same ones. I just wish he'd done that in this case -- he could have attended both meetings in ernest and argued his case. But, his negotiation skills seem to consist of ignoring the other side.
I'm seeing a lot of comments from people who want BoingBoing to adhere to its new bifurcation of Gadgets and Non-Gadgets topics. Personally I like having some gadgets bleed into the main page because otherwise I wouldn't end up reading anything about gadgets. I'm not such a gadget-hound that I have to read the gadgets page, so in fact I'm totally skipping the gadgets page (except for this which was linked in from the main page), but I like some gadgets once in a while.