During the next dip in oil prices between now and November, I'm buying.
Why?
Because I really think Bush will start something with Iran just prior to the election. He's got two chief reasons to do so. 1) to shore up his image as a tough guy willing to clean up the middle east and 2) to give McCain an advantage going into the election.
Click the links for evidence.
When is this guy going away?
Chris Matthews to Barack Obama on how to win white males:
You got to talk like a firebrand because if you‘re carrying their fight for them, they‘re going to like you. You know, a lot of white people root for black athletes because they‘re winning for the home team. People are quite willing to pick up black heroes, if they‘ll win for their side.
If you've read this blog, you know I'm not much of a fan of turning our food supply into ethanol. It's a terrible waste of resources and the energy return is miserable. But did you know that it's also not cost efficient?
Each day, the club posts not just the straightforward per-gallon price of so-called E85, the high-ethanol blend of fuel touted by fans as a potential substitute for gasoline, but also an adjusted E85 price to reflect how much a driver would have to spend on the corn-based fuel to drive the same number of miles as he or she would using conventional gasoline. The adjustment reflects a little-discussed quirk of chemistry: There’s less energy packed into one gallon of E85 than a gallon of gas.Can anyone tell me why we've embarked on such a policy? Oh. Yeah. I forgot. This ethanol program is essentially an arm of farm subsidies.While regular-grade gasoline hit a record $3.577 a gallon on average nationwide Friday, the adjusted price of E85 was even higher, at $3.855 a gallon. In fact, over the course of time that AAA has been tracking adjusted E85 prices, they’ve never fallen below the daily price of regular gasoline.
There's a lot of fluff in the news today .... again .... still .... about Iran supplying arms to Iraq.
Does anyone really doubt that Iran is intervening in Iraq? That's not the question as far as I'm concerned. In fact, were I an Iranian leaders I certainly would be intervening. Think about it. If _________ bad guys were taking over the Mexican government, is there any doubt that the U.S. would be heavily playing games there if not outright invading? And besides, what right do U.S. leaders claim to be appalled by intervention in Iraq? How many troops/guns/contractors do we have in Iraq?
John McCain on what he thinks of reverend Hagee saying Katrina was payment for New Orleans sins:
"It's nonsense, it's nonsense, it's nonsense, it's nonsense, it's nonsense. I dont have anything additional to say. It's nonsense, it's nonsense, it's nonsense, I don't have anything more to say....it's nonsense. I reject it categorically."Gee John, do you think it's nonsense? Articulate fella.
It's a free country alright.
Did you know that there's a nutbar who has leased property and is going to build a Disneyland style amusement park in Baghdad? Gen. Petraeus is said to be a big supporter of the project.
That's just what they need. If they get that far in building it, the roller coaster will make good target practice for those honing their skills with RPG's.
This is rich. Only in the age of the internet would you become aware of such ironies.
Today McCain is out vowing "never again" to the Katrina survivors in New Orleans.
NEW ORLEANS (AP) -- Republican presidential candidate John McCain took stock of still-hurricane-damaged areas of New Orleans on Thursday and declared that if the disaster had happened on his watch, he would have immediately landed at the nearest Air Force base, drawing a sharp contrast to President Bush's handling of the tragedy.Fair enough.
McCain called the response to Hurricane Katrina "a perfect storm" of mismanagement by federal, state and local governments.
It was Aug. 29, McCain’s 69th birthday, and on the tarmac, Bush presented his old political rival with a cake. The two posed, holding the cake up for cameras, and within seconds, went their separate ways. The cake, melting in the 110-degree Arizona heat, was left behind, uneaten.
Heckuva Job McCainy!
It's ironic that Hillary's win in Pennsylvania, being as narrow as it was (despite the media hype), actually makes it less likely she can win the nomination:
A Political Wire reader runs the math and notes that before the Pennsylvania, Sen. Hillary Clinton needed to get at least 63% of the vote in the remaining states to have a chance to win more delegates than Sen. Barack Obama.Added: Here is some more commentary/context on Pennsylvania that you're unlikely to ever hear on the teevee.
Clinton now needs 296 of the remaining 435 delegates up for grabs (or approximately 68% of the vote.) In contrast, Obama needs 140 of the remaining 435 to have the majority (or about 32% of the vote.)
Therefore, despite her win in the Keystone State, the results have in fact made it less likely Clinton can win.
Considering that most polls predict Obama should win North Carolina by a healthy margin and both campaigns think Indiana will be close, the chances of a Clinton victory are actually lower than ever.
Do you want an example of just how in-the-tank the media is these days? This is from an article about a press conference with Dana Perino, White House shill spokesperson. The questioner is Helen Thomas:
Q The President has said publicly several times, in two consecutive news conferences a few months ago, and you have said over and over again, we do not torture. Now he has admitted that he did sign off on torture, he did know about it. So how do you reconcile this credibility gap?Helen. Everybody is in the tank. None of your colleagues, and I use the term loosely, thinks it's a big deal that the Preznit authorized torture in the Oval Office. It's not a blow-job after all. Helen. This is not the 1960's when reporters actually did their jobs which included acting as the "fourth estate". It's the new century where the media is a corporate arm of government.
MS. PERINO: Helen, you're taking liberties with what the President said. The United States has not, is not torturing any detainees in the global war on terror. And General Hayden, amongst others, has spoken on Capitol Hill fully in this regard, and it is -- I'll leave it where it is. The President is accurate in saying what he said.
...Q You're denying, in this room, that we torture and we have tortured?
MS. PERINO: Yes, I am denying that.
Helen then turned in her seat, looked at her colleagues, shook her head in disgust, and asked sadly: "Where is everybody? For God's sakes!"
This is just a blather post. But I wanted to mentioned that I watched Frontline last night. The topic was the politics over the last 20 years around the issue of global warming.
It was striking that the current Bush administrations policy processes were almost identical to the lead up to the Iraq invasion/occupation. And I was shocked (although I shouldn't be by now) at just how powerful and influential Cheney has been. In the serious, key issues of the day, Cheney has been really acting as the defacto president.
I know. Duh. I guess a small part of me wondered if there wasn't a lot of hype built into the CW that Bush is a puppet. No longer.
The Israeli's are sure that North Korea has been assisting Syria in building a nuke:
The Washington Post leads with news that lawmakers will see a video today of North Koreans inside the suspected Syrian nuclear reactor site that was destroyed by Israel last September. This video is apparently what convinced Israel and the White House that Syria was receiving help from North Korea to build a nuclear reactor, particularly because of its striking design similarities to the reactor at Yongbyon.As with anything coming out of the Bush administration, there's a lot of doubt about this intelligence and it's meaning.
Israel apparently decided to show the Bush administration the video from inside the Syrian facility after U.S. officials openly expressed skepticism that North Korea was helping to build a nuclear reactor. Syria vigorously denies the claim. "If they show a video, remember that the U.S. went to the U.N. Security Council and displayed evidence and images about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq," the Syrian ambassador said. Others are also skeptical, particularly because officials will tell lawmakers that "there was no uranium for the reactor and no indication of fuel capability," which has led experts to wonder whether this was really part of a Syrian nuclear weapons program. Also, there is no evidence that Syria has tried to rebuild after the bombing, so the inevitable question is: Why now?Let's take a look at it assuming it's true (which is a ginormous assumption given this crowd). Two things stand out to me. First, the motivations for any developing country to get a nuke are huge. It's how you get taken seriously and prove your technological abilities. And this is all the more true since Bush has implemented a foreign policy that is so obviously predicated on those with the bomb vs. those who don't. Is it any wonder that Syria might be trying to get the bomb? Or Iran?
This is what happens when people start fearing shortages and price hikes:
The two biggest U.S. warehouse retail chains are limiting how much rice customers can buy because of what Sam's Club, a division of Wal-Mart Stores Inc., called on Wednesday "recent supply and demand trends."Think about it. I bought two airline tickets about a month ago. Both are now worth a lot more than when I bought them.
The broader chain of Wal-Mart stores has no plans to limit food purchases, however.
The move comes as U.S. rice futures hit a record high amid global food inflation, although one rice expert said the warehouse chains may be reacting less to any shortages than to stockpiling by restaurants and small stores.
I love it when well-informed and researched bloggers cut through the garbage and summarize a situation. Here is one on Elliot Spitzer:
The last month has been difficult for the Democrats. First, the wild and reckless behavior of Elliot Spitzer ended his promising political career. The press was so busy with breathless details about the lady in question that there was little mainstream reporting about the role of Roger Stone, the GOP hit man in that saga. Stone allegedly headed a $2.2 million undercover effort complete with private investigators aimed at Spitzer. Stone then turned his information over to the FBI. The Bush Justice Department would never engage in partisan politics, of course, but let us see when the FBI next wiretaps an escort agency.As they say, go read the whole thing about other atrocities revealed.
Want to know why this old fogey thinks the country is going to hell in a hand basket?
It's because of heliocopter parenting, the latest epidemic:
But in a follow-up column and podcast, Skenazy recounted her correspondence with parents nationwide, which proved that hovercraft parenting knows no geographical boundaries. A dad in Park Slope, Brooklyn won't let his 9-year old cross the street to go to the playground. An Atlanta mother doesn't allow her daughter to walk alone from the front door to the mailbox. A suburban lawyer makes his 11-year old call home immediately after walking one block from her own home to a friend's house. All this despite the fact that we now know "stranger danger" pales in comparison to the violence and sexual and emotional abuse too many children suffer at the hands of adult family members or acquaintances. And that the number of child abductions has been falling steadily for years.You musnt' forget, there's a boogie man around every single corner!
There's been a bit of hype in the media lately about oil being "discovered" in North Dakota. Big Ed Schultz was about to pee his pants over the whole thing a few shows ago .... you'd have thought we found enough oil there to supply the U.S. for decades.
Here are the facts.
The short version is that the oil in North Dakota, under the most optimistic projections, will only provide the equivalent of about six months of the U.S. oil needs. Meanwhile, production in other onshore facilities, i.e. in Texas, are depleting. Net, the U.S. will continue to need to import more and more oil.
I saw this yesterday and figured it was the beginning of the end:
Marcus Brauchli, who took over as [Wall St.] Journal managing editor less than a year ago, confirmed Tuesday he was stepping down. "Now that the ownership transition has taken place, I have come to believe the new owners should have a managing editor of their choosing," he said in a note to the staff.The Wall Street journal was (emphasis on past tense) simply one of the best newspaper in the United States. Yeah, I know, the editorial section is made up of a bunch of total nutbars. But the news portion of the paper has been doing really great reporting for years. Murdoch, when he bought the paper, said it would retain it's character, stay the same, yadda, yadda, yadda. Of course, few people who know him believed him.
Mr. Brauchli's departure likely heralds a more dramatic shake-up at the Journal, which has seen a shift in focus since News Corp. bought the Journal's parent, Dow Jones & Co., in December for $5.16 billion. In recent months, the paper has begun putting more emphasis on shorter news stories and more general news, as part of a push by News Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch to broaden readership and to compete more directly with the New York Times.
Mr. Murdoch was impatient with the pace of change, say people close to the situation, and whoever takes over is apt to speed up the change process. The identity of the next editor isn't clear. Dow Jones said in a statement it would "begin a search for Mr. Brauchli's replacement immediately."
I know it's not titillating, but the carnage in Iraq continues. U.S. deaths are up to five since Monday, including one of those "non-combat" deaths that usually turn out to be suicide. And Iraqis are living in hell.
On the other hand, tell me, what do you think of a kid getting a $100,000 second birthday party?
