Do you like a good fight? Well, there was a good one in the paper on Sunday. Mayor Philip West wrote a Top of the Morning attacking Kevin Cooper, and Kevin responded in his column. What fun! Bet we have heard the last of this. This either means the Mayor is incredibly stupid, or he's not running for reelection. Whoever heard of a candidate attacking the only paper shortly before a campaign begins?
Our illustrious Governor is making international headlines again. If you want to know how much the rest of the world hates us (or at least our President), trying reading some papers from other countries. The link above is from the Turkish Weekly - supposedly our allies. Here's the story from a couple of foriegn sources:
The Center for Global Development (CGD) just released an analysis that provided a detailed inventory of power plants' greenhouse gas emissions by countries and regions within countries. The headlines in this country were that the US was the world's largest producer of carbon dioxide, followed by China, which is gaining on us.
But the headlines around the world were along the lines of "Bush Controlled by Power Companies". Here's a lead off sentence:
Southern Company, one of the largest American power companies, which was listed among the world's top polluters, has got President George W. Bush firmly under its thumb by lavish spending on his Republican party, forcing him to turn a blind eye to global warming.
And then comes the parts about Barbour:
Haley Barbour, one of the main lobbyists for Southern Company, when Bush took office, played a crucial role in persuading him to back away from his original campaign promise to reduce CO2 emissions when he first ran for president in 2000.
According to FrankO'Donnell of Clean Air Watch, after Mr Bush became president, "he was got at by Haley Barbour, who said, 'Hey, Mr President we didn't elect you to have high energy costs'". Mr O'Donnell said: "Southern Company Lobbyists treated the president as if he was someone to give orders to and he took them. The upshot is that America's biggest polluters used their chequebooks effectively to block actions to stop global warming."
The American stories had quotes from the polluting companies, whereas foriegn news accounts extensively quote environmentalists. Interesting contrast.
By the way, the most polluted parts of the US? Texas, the Southeast (that's us), and the Ohio Valley. Those energy companies know where to go to find local yokels who welcome polluters.
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2 comments:
For starters, West is an idiot. Second, nothing Bush and Barbour do shocks me anymore.
I was surprised at the tone of the Cooper editorial...sounds like West's article got under his skin. He spent the first part of his rebuttal talking about how many typos the Mayor made...that's pretty much the pot calling the kettle black! The Democrat is notorious for its errors. I though what the Mayor said (partiularly throwing in the comment about race) was inappropriate and childish but Kevin matched him tit for tat. Both of them need to take their personal arguement out of the public arena. And Kevin needs to grow a much thicker skin if he is going to continue in the newspaper business. The Natchez Democrat is privately owned so they are under no obligation to publish unbiased opinions. For example, they crucified Binkey Vines but have never mentioned any wrongdoing of certain other public officals that is common knowledge in the community. They bash one group and turn a blind eye to another. So the idea that they "speak for the community", as many of the bloggers on their website seem to think is ludicrous.
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