As of 7:57 PM Pacific Time, according to Technorati. Totals will change.
Ken Salazar, Obama’s pick for Interior Secretary, will oversee resource extraction from and/or protection of one fifth of the US’s land area. Salazar has deep ties to the mining and ranching industries and though he opposes North Slope drilling and favors moderate environmental protections, Salazar is expected by many environmentalists to continue to manage public lands to benefit those industries rather than the public interest. The mining and ranching industries have lauded the pick. Salazar will also be the lead Federal official responsible for enforcing the Endangered Species Act. His nomination has been known to bloggers for three days: Blog posts on Ken Salazar: 1,088.
Rick Warren, homophobic and sexist Evangelical preacher, was announced today as having been chosen by Obama’s inaugural committee to say a prayer at the inauguration ceremony. Blog posts on Rick Warren: 14,447.
The horror that is human nature! although, as a person whose blog has tags like ‘I’m on the internet disempowering you’ my thoughts on important discourse are limited.
anyway, writing blog stories about important meaty issues is hard, and not fun, so that’s why we have more on more trival ones.
holy crap! shannon! how are you?
Oh, and I don’t think (not that you were really saying this) that the Rick Warren thing is trivial. It’s a symbol, and symbols are important. It’s a signal to the right and a slap at the left and here we are doing the Time Warp again.
But, you know. It’s also a prayer at a big party. Salazar’s appointment affects the fate of the nine-tenths of all US endangered species not protected under the ESA due to Bush and Clinton-era stonewalling. He’s talking about proceding cautiously and prudently to develop oil shale reserves, an echo of Obama’s “safe” nuclear and “clean” coal, and an environmental disaster under ANY mitigative program. Salazar will preside over a reconsideration of policy in applying the 1872 Mining Law, which as currently interpreted says that mineral extraction trumps all other forms of use of public lands — and the mineral companies pay NO ROYALTIES on the gold and silver and rare earths and such they take out of public lands. The liaisons between Interior and the mining companies are corrupt enough to make Halliburton look like a good corporate citizen, and Salazar inherits this. He’s spoken out against it, and he’s thus in an excellent position to appear to clean things up, root out the corruption, and then continue to sell out public lands to the miners as a “reformer.”
It’s a crucial appointment. But, you know. Environment, out west, not really a snarkable topic, and so discussion of Salazar is confined to the usual suspects in the Intertubes Green Zone.
Yes. Warren’s bad, but mostly because of what his appearance implies about Obama’s policies, and what it suggests about Obama’s degree of support for progressive social issues.
Salazar’s appointment, on the other hand, doesn’t imply or suggest - it demonstrates.
I think a lot of people are so relieved that we have a science-friendly president again, one who also talks big about dealing with global warming and energy, that they forget that there’s more to environmental issues than those currently trendy things (obviously important though they are). For people with a shallow understanding of those issues, especially for those accustomed to thinking of the West in vague terms at best, Obama’s talk is good enough for them that they forget (or choose not) to pay attention to his walk.
But I expect you already know this.
? I’ve been on the internet all along. I don’t think I understand symbols so much of political discourse is unreadable to me.So mostly I make fun of people instead.
Yeah, but *I* haven’t.
Chris, and others - who would you like to have seen named as Interior Secretary? Include “political acceptability” (whatever you think that means), or not.
Raul Grijalva, currently in the House of Representatives from southern Arizona, had the backing of a number of environmental groups and a lot of wildlife biologists with impressive credentials. He was on Obama’s short list, and got dropped for undisclosed reasons. Rumors I’ve heard include an alleged hot temper. In reality, my sense is that Obama found him too strong an enviro. He’s been an outspoken critic of Bush administration land management policy, and in November released a survey of the damage Bush et al caused to public lands. He seems to be issue-driven rather than career-driven: he just this week turned down the chairmanship of the House Ways and Means Committee so that he could stay on as Chair of the Subcommittee on National Parks, Forests and Public Lands on the House Committee on Natural Resources, which he said allows him to keep fighting uranium mining near Grand Canyon NP and other such threats.
If we’re talking Fantasy League appointments, there’s Gloria Flora, Mike Dombeck, or Clinton BLM chief Jim Baca, who it turns out has a blog. Kewl. (He seems to think Salazar can rise to the occasion. Hope so.)
I was hoping for Grijalva too. His report against Bush that Sven posted here last month was made of awesome.