I was checking the site for comments and realized that I left an item off my longer post earlier this week. It was going to be my "last" link to anything having to do with "Jeff Gannon, Ace Press Release Duplicator," as the story just gets wierder. The great Americablog posted a set of (warning: not for weak stomachs) pictures from Mr. Gannon's (aka "Bulldog") escort sites, and, well, it certainly gives new meaning to the Bush ManDate. Meanwhile, there've been spot-on columns/features by Joe Conason and Eric Boehlert, and then - gasp! - Howard Kurtz took note, and Maureen Dowd took aim ("I was rejected for a White House press pass at the start of the Bush administration, but someone with an alias, a tax evasion problem and Internet pictures where he posed like the "Barberini Faun" is credentialed to cover a White House that won a second term by mining homophobia and preaching family values?"), but John Aravosis is Absolutely Fabulous when he says this.

Terrific new Joan Chittister column, "Is this kind of Christianity Christian?" Here's the last part of it:

This month we saw "compassionate conservatism" -- all that concern we're told this government has for moral values and life and Christian identity -- show its real face. Now that the election is over, abortion and school prayer have suddenly disappeared from this administration's agenda, but the release of the Bush White House budget makes the administration's values clear. Furthermore, because the budget impinges on every citizen in this society, the values cannot be dismissed on grounds of personal moral commitment.

National budgets are a nation's theology walking.

In an era in which we call poverty "low-income" and hunger "lack of food security," the number of poor, according to the U.S Census Bureau, is increasing and the number of hungry in the richest country in the world has been rising steadily for four years. To pay for a war we should never have fought -- at least not for the reasons they gave us -- this budget is slashing domestic programs.

The budget of this Christian presidency cuts food stamps. It reduces support for subsidized housing. It suggests pillaging social security. It reduces environmental enforcement programs and scientific research in a scientific age. It even reduces veteran's health benefits.

Clearly, the country is in danger of going the way of all oligarchies; power and wealth are sucked to the top, while those on the bottom bleed. We can call it "Christian" as it collapses.

And all the while, we watch more food lines forming, more homeless on the streets, more environmental degradation and more of the elderly living destitute lives.

More than that, according to the budget analysis done by Bread for the World, (www.bread.org) while we honor our tax breaks to the rich in this country, we are not keeping our promise to fight HIV/AIDS around the world or to support the Third World development programs that might really make us secure in the future.

From where I stand, it seems that the poor who will be most affected by these budget cuts have no political voice with which to protest them and the rich can hardly be expected to object since they are benefiting from them.

I wanted to link to this the day I posted about the Kyoto Protocol launch, but of course didn't get to it. The author says it's too late to prevent global warming. Carbon dioxide - the primary component of greenhouse gases - has a "lag effect" of 50 to 100 years: "So even if humanity stopped burning fossil fuels tomorrow, the planet would continue warming for decades." Another way to think of that is that the severe effects we're already seeing have been in the making for 50 to 100 years, and we've continued (and increased) emissions all that time! So, in addition to reducing greenhouse gas emissions,

"...it is imperative to prepare against the climate change already on its way... Preparing to live through the global climate change bearing down on our civilization will be an enormous undertaking. It will require immense financial resources, technical expertise and organizational skill. But perhaps what's needed most of all, especially in the United States, is fresh thinking and political leadership -- an acceptance that climate change is inescapable and requires immediate counter-measures."

Speaking of showing leadership, cheers to CalPERS.

Very cool -- fossils found by Richard Leakey in 1967 have been re-analyzed by dating the materials in which they were found, and they turn out to be 35,000 years older than originally believed. This pushes back the emergence of Homo sapiens (that's us) to about 190,000 years ago.