Clean Up on Aisle HUD: Bush to Tap "Disaster Expert" Steve Preston

Dick Cheney Swears At, er In Steven Preston

After the disaster that Alphonse Jackson turned out to be as the head of HUD through crony deals, is it any wonder that an expert on disasters is being named by President Bush to take over the department?

In his last gig, Steven C. Preston, a Wisconsin native who had no small business administration experience, was unanimously confirmed by the U.S. Senate to become the 22nd Administrator of the U.S. Small Business Administration. The SBA was called to task for rulings that favored Blackwater USA under Preston, as well as for making loans to small businesses such as Microsoft, General Dynamics and others.

Preston has served in senior finance and operational roles at The ServiceMaster Company (see his compensation)and First Data Corporation, and worked as an investment banker at Lehman Brothers.

Biden, Kerry, Hagel Helicopter Downed in Afghanistan

By snow...Made you look.

Fortunately no one was injured.

CNN story

A helicopter carrying three U.S. senators was forced to make an emergency landing in Afghanistan Thursday, military and congressional sources tell CNN.

The military helicopter carrying Democratic Sens. Joseph Biden of Delaware and John Kerry of Massachusetts, and Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska had to land in the mountains because of a snowstorm, said Elizabeth Alexander, a spokeswoman for Biden.

No one was hurt in the incident, said Kerry spokesman David Wade. The senators proceeded to their destination in a ground convoy after the helicopter landed in a field, he said.

"After several hours, the senators were evacuated by American troops and returned overland to Bagram Air base, and left for their next scheduled stop in Ankara, Turkey," Wade added.

Kerry v. Clinton: Nevada Caucus Skirmish

Heavyweights Bill Clinton and John Kerry acted as infighting surrogates on a last minute lawsuit by plaintiffs with alleged connections to the Hillary Clinton campaign intended to prevent some service workers from caucusing at select Nevada casinos.

Former President Clinton argued that the casino caucuses were deliberately set up to have a disproportionate impact on the outcome of the contest. Clinton said, "Do you really believe that all the Democrats understood that they had agreed to give everybody who voted in a casino a vote worth five times as much as people who voted in their own precinct? Did you know that?"

Clinton is referring to a decision last March by the Nevada Democratic Party to have special at-large caucus sites to allow those service workers to participate in the caucus. The Culinary Workers Union, who represents those workers was involved in pushing for the sites.

Meanwhile former presidential candidate and current Barack Obama supporter, John Kerry, accused those who brought the lawsuit of attempting to disenfranchise voters. Said Kerry, "Mere days before the caucus, we now see a lawsuit to shut down those at-large sites and deny the casino workers their right to vote. Three of the plaintiffs voted for the very plan they’re now trying to block – reasonable people have guessed they’re changing their minds presumably because just a few days ago the Culinary Workers Union endorsed Barack Obama."

For their part, both Obama and Hillary Clinton are distancing themselves. Hillary Clinton said she is aware of the lawsuit, but hopes it "can be resolved by the courts and the state party because, obviously, we want as many people as possible to be able to participate. ... In the meantime, I'm just going to campaign as hard as I can here in Nevada."

Obama, at a Culinary Union event Sunday, said the rules were fine until the union decided "'I'm going to support the outsider, I'm going to support the guy who's standing with the working people instead of the big shots.'"

"You don't win an election and you don't serve democracy by trying to keep people out," Obama said. "You're supposed to try to bring them in and encourage everybody to get involved."

Quotes from the AP, the NY Sun, and TPM Cafe

Kerry to Annoint Obama in SC

Apparently not feeling the love for his 2004 running mate, John Edwards, Sen. John Kerry is going to endorse Barack Obama today.

According to the Boston Globe, "Kerry, who announced last year he would not again seek his party's nomination for president, believes his Illinois colleague "has the best potential to bring about transformational change,'' said the official, who asked not to be named because he was not authorized to speak about the endorsement before Kerry makes it official in Charleston today."

For his part, John Edwards said "Our country and our Party are stronger because of John’s service, and I respect his decision. When we were running against each other and on the same ticket, John and I agreed on many issues. I continue to believe that this election is about the future, not the past, and that the country needs a President who will fight aggressively to end the status quo and change the Washington system and to give voice to all of those whose voices are ignored in the corridors of power."

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/

Also Reuters

Polar Bears Goners US Study Says

Global Climate Change is the reason that the polar bear population will decline drastically, a US Geological Survey projects.

Josh Hill at Green Options reports: "At the moment, polar bears number somewhere close to 16,000, and reside throughout the Arctic in Russia, Alaska, Canada and Greenland. Already, areas such as the Northwest Passage have almost totally disappeared, and experts are predicting anywhere between a 40% to total drop-off of summer ice by 2050.

The reports executive summary concluded that by the mid 21st century, a full two-thirds of the bears population could be gone, with remainders living in Canadian Arctic islands and the west coast of Greenland.

The polar bear has recently also been the subject of a potential addition to the Endangered Species Act list. Unable to successfully hunt on land – being too acclimatized to hunting in the water and on ice – the polar bear would probably begin to suffer in its cub’s inability to survive past adolescence, and the females unable to successfully reproduce.

First making its way on to the ecological landscape some 40-50,000 years ago, the polar bear has adapted to the icy conditions of the northern icecaps. In that intervening period, earth has not suffered a warming to such an extent that its caps have depreciated as they are now. It is this unaccustomed warming that worries experts."

Also contributing to the eradication of the polar bear population is trophy hunters. Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) introduced the "Polar Bear Protection Act," in May, which would prohibit trophy hunters from bringing polar bear carcasses into the US from Canada. The bill would restore the 1972 moratorium on the importation of marine mammal trophies, which mostly enter the United States from Canadian hunts. The ban would repeal a 1994 exception that let the Interior Department issue permits, which allowed hunters to bring polar bear carcasses across the border from hunts in Canada.