The Staton Jones Report

The Washington Post published a story about suburban sprawl and American obesity. A new study shows that living in suburbs, where one is encouraged to drive everywhere, significantly increases one's chances of being overweight. People living in mixed usage communities (typically urban) walk far more (but not that far) than their SUV driving counterparts.

As the number of people who are overweight and obese has reached epidemic proportions in the United States, evidence has mounted that one of the main causes may be suburban sprawl. Such neighborhoods make walking or other exercise more difficult because they often lack sidewalks, road patterns that encourage travel on foot, or shopping areas that are accessible without cars.

Looking forward to the South Bronx diet.

President Bush keeps Saddam's side arm as a trophy in the Oval Office. The Iraq War was just a grudge match between Shrub and Saddam, and now that Georgie has Saddam's pistol, he won.

"He really liked showing it off," says a recent visitor to the White House who has seen the gun. "He was really proud of it."

I hope that sinks in with the military families who lost loved ones delivering this gun to Shrub when they go vote this November.

The New York Times is running a story about grumblings within the GOP in Congress that the Bush Administration is not being watched closely enough (horrors!). Naturally, Democrats in Congress have been harshly critical of the almost complete rubber-stamp that GOP Congressional Leaders have given Bush/Cheney, but now it appears that some moderate GOP members are getting queasy about the "Don't Ask, Don't Look" policies of DeLay and Frist.

To other lawmakers and outside experts, the feud over how far to go in examining the scandal is symptomatic of the deeper question of whether the Republican Congress is being aggressive enough in monitoring the administration when their political fortunes are so closely linked.

"The Republican dominance of Congress and the White House has led to an attitude of 'We can keep it within the fold; it is our team and our team will understand us,' " said Senator Jack Reed, a Rhode Island Democrat who sits on the Armed Services Committee.

Democrats and others say Congress should have looked more closely at the administration's failure to provide full estimates of the cost of the new Medicare drug law and the leak of the identity of a covert C.I.A. worker, among other matters.

"Party has trumped institutional responsibility," said Thomas E. Mann, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. "The sense of shared political stakes bridging either end of Pennsylvania Avenue has overwhelmed any sense of institutional responsibility."

From where I stand, this last Congress has dropped the ball so many times I want it to forever be known as the Lucy Van Pelt Congress. For you kids out there ... Lucy Van Pelt is the girl in Peanuts who always, but always, pulled the ball away when Charlie Brown went to kick it.

This story on CNN via The SANS Institute:

California Secretary of State Kevin Shelley says that ten of his state's counties have agreed to meet an array of conditions so that they may use touch screen voting systems in the upcoming election. The conditions include precautions against tampering and providing paper ballots to voters who prefer them. Four counties remain banned from using touch screen system in the election because Diebold machines used there in the March election did not have federal approval.

I don't know if the counties allowed to vote are the ones not using Diebold equipment.

This from Salon's "The Fix":

Manhattan real estate lawyer David Richards, who tapped George W. Bush to join the secret society Skull & Bones at Yale in 1967, now says he'd like nothing more than to see him ousted from the Oval Office. "I think it's pretty grim, I think he has trashed the economy, and I think he has conducted foreign policy badly, and I think he is a bad President. I don't know what he has done well," Richards says in the new book "Ambushed." Adds Richards, "My personal choice is [Sen.] John Kerry" -- Yale class of 1966 and also a Bonesman, of course.

Read the NY Daily News story here.

A coworker pointed out this story which states that the video of Nick Berg's execution was fake, and worse yet, was created by the U.S. to distract from the Abu Ghraib prison scandal.

Many doctors have looked at the video and it is questionable. when you cut someone's head off blood can spray up to 10 feet.

Now we learn that he was under investigation by the FBI right after 9/11 for having the same password as one of the al-CIAeda decoys.

On top of it all, we now learn that he had done work at the infamous Abu Ghraib prison.

Don't forget who stands to gain from all of this. Right when Bush's bacon needs to be pulled out of the fire this video magically pops up -- Al-CIAeda helping, as usual.

Now, I'd be the first to admit that the Staton Jones Report is biased, but this story is so incredible and inflamitory that I urge you, dear reader, to do your own investigating. But if there's any truth to it, it begs the question: did the U.S. kill Nick Berg and blame it on al Qaeda?

That's too much for me to handle right now. It goes lower than all the cynical thoughts I have about the U.S., yet still lies in the realm of possibility.

It's official: For the sixth year in a row, Dallas has the highest crime rate among U.S. cities with more than a million people.

Six years in a row! Woo Hoo! We are sooo much more criminal than y'all!

An old saying says that those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it. There seems to be a corollary: the depth of your ignorance is proportional to the similarity of the events that are repeated. If you are fairly aware of history, you may do something only vaguely like a previous event. If you are Bush-league ignorant, you'll do exactly the same damn thing.

Everything you need to know about what's happening in Iraq can be found in its history. For example, in the early 20's, Iraq was occupied by British troops who had recently "liberated" the Iraqis from a totalitarian regime, the Ottoman Empire. The Iraqis were quite grateful at first, but turned hostile quickly when the Brits wouldn't leave. The insurgency grew to the point where British troops ended up staging a brutal suppression, which included wanton "shock and awe" attacks on civilians and — you gotta love this — dropping nerve gas on the Kurds.

Only a group of complete imbeciles would make that mistake again, and only the kind of imbeciles that comprise the Bush adminsitration would have staged such a near-perfect recreation of those years.

After Iraq was "launched" and the Brits left, the next thing that pissed off the Iraqis was the government they left behind. Were they upset that it was a monarchy? Not entirely, that wasn't unusual for the region. Were they upset that it kowtowed to British interests? Well, obviously. The final straw, however, was that the newly appointed King wasn't even from Iraq. He was a member of the Jordanian royal family, the Hashemites.

Everyone, including the Bush Administration, expects that the U.N. will take an increasingly central role in Iraq as events progress. An interesting history-sorta-repeating itself event has created an image problem for Lakhdar Brahimi, the U.N. envoy overseeing efforts in Iraq. His daughter, Rym, announced last month that she is marrying — wait for it — Jordanian King Abdullah II's half brother, Prince Ali.

The engagement was celebrated in an early April gala in Paris; although there is no reason to expect this union to have any effect whatsoever on events in Iraq, the Iraqi's are a little tweaked about it. Why can't they just calm down and trust the nice foreign governments to take care of them? Hmmmm?

It's the Locnar. It has to be the damn Locnar!

Is it just me, or does Shrub seem to be 'channelling' former President Gerald Ford?

First he's nearly killed by a pretzel (no doubt the Secret Service "took it out" in their usual brutal manner), and now he's tumbling off his bike (presumably after setting an example to Iraq by removing the training wheels). This guy is either plagued by a dexterity of 1 or 2 (speaking D&D here), or there's another, more ugly truth.

Like, say, he's still drinking.

This theory has been put on the table before, so I won't rehash it in any detail. But it sure seems like the problems he's had would be explained by hitting the sauce behind the curtain. No doubt this is the same curtain that Cheney and Rove use to cover their direct control of Shrub. I'm fairly confident that he's back in his cups (or bottles) and the pressure of "leading" is driving him insane with desire for booze.

I almost feel sorry for him, until I remember the thousands he's killed, the trillions he's squandered, and the horrors that will be carried out in his name for the next fifty years.

Conservative columnist David Brooks comments on Bush's speech last night in the NY Times:

It's a huge gamble to think that the solution to chaos is liberty. But it's fitting that during the gravest crisis of his presidency, President Bush reverted to his most fundamental political belief. He began this war in Iraq repeating the sentiment embodied in the Declaration of Independence, that our creator has endowed all human beings with the right to liberty, and the ability to function as democratic citizens. He said last night with absolute confidence that the Iraqis are democrats at heart.

Bush is betting his presidency, and the near-term future of this nation, on that central American creed.

It's an epic gamble...

It is a huge gamble. It's also a really stupid gamble. It's as if your spouse liquidated all of your assets and decided to risk them at the blackjack table.

If this gamble fails to come off, then that mission will seem, to many, false. Perhaps democracy and freedom are not really universal values, some will say. Perhaps they are just the outgrowths of a specific culture. People on the left and right will race to withdraw from the world. It will become difficult to take on the tyrants who will menace the world.

On the other hand, if we muddle through in Iraq and some semidemocratic nation slowly emerges, it won't be because of American skill. It will be because the democratic creed is so strong it can withstand the highest incompetence...

Well, he's right about the highest incompetence, but what does he mean by a semi-democratic nation? Perhaps something along the lines of Iran, where a few clerics have veto power over elected officials?

Looks like some bad boy in the administration has been passing off highly classified information to Ahmed Chalabi, who has been feeding it to Iran. From Josh Marshall:

Newsday, which continues to be one of the two best papers on the entire Iraq-intel story (along with related matters), has a new article out this morning following up on the Chalabi revelations and his multiple appearances yesterday on the Sunday talk shows.

But the big story is contained in this sentence: "An intelligence source confirmed to Newsday reports in Time and Newsweek that the FBI had launched an investigation into who in the administration had passed the classified material to his Iraqi National Congress."

Perhaps we'll find out that Chalabi got his classified info from some obscure analyst at DIA or a Colonel in the field. But both of those possibilities seem highly unlikely.

Chalabi's interlocutors in the US government were a fairly small and well-known group, stacked heavily toward the top of the totem pole and very much on the appointive, civilian side -- start with the acronyms OSD and OVP. For those who know the nature of the relationship it would, quite frankly, be hard to imagine that they weren't sharing highly sensitive information with him.

If one of those guys gets pegged for giving Chalabi info that later ended up in the hands of Iranian intelligence, everything up till now will seem like it was a breeze.

Many news outlets are reporting that despite the Saudis' offer to increase production by 600K bbls./day, the price of oil has shot up to nearly $42/bbl. Worse still, even though the Saudis can crank up to 2M bbl./day more than they currently do, their impact on the world price is considerably less than they expected. The market is clearly behaving as if the Saudi increase is already a given, thus the price is rising regardless of the increase in Saudi production. So if the Saudis cannot (or will not) deliver the extra production, we can expect even higher prices come the fall election cycle.

I cannot believe the Saudis are going ahead so early with their quid pro quo production increase to ensure Bush's re-selection. The Iraq situation is forcing them to move sooner, and thus washing out their actual impact on the price of oil and gasoline for the cruical fall election season (crucial, that is, for Bush).

Say good bye to 90% approval, Shrub.

Say hello to 41%. I suggest going lower to show up the old man. After all, attacking Iraq was part of the "my balls are bigger than yours, Dad" inner child rage you are experiencing. Now that you've sunk to his low approval rating just before Bill Clinton trounced him, you need to go a few more points down to clinch the deal.

You have our wholehearted support.

Here is an interesting piece by the London Telegraph (Warning: contents of article not vetted by the Bush Administration) detailing the unravelling of the Bush Administration's Iraq effort.

... Infighting over Iraq within the Bush administration and on Capitol Hill has reached such a pitch and ferocity that, according to one official within the Coalition Provisional Authority, Washington DC is now referred to as "Sunni Triangle, West".

On Thursday, Mr Bush made an unexpected visit to Congress, in an attempt to persuade increasingly restive Republican representatives that events in Iraq are under control.

According to one member, the President's visit was intended to head off a "full-scale revolt".

Could it really be true that the GOP membership outside of its maddog leaders (DeLay, Frist, Hastert) is panicking about the fall election season? Could the White House be falling apart with many members of Cheney's staff "ducking and covering" (e.g. "Scooter" Libby, the man most likely to have tipped off Novak about CIA agent Plame) to avoid fallout, if not criminal prosecution? Could the mad, insane and power crazed administration be imploding?

God I hope so!

There's a depressing story in the Washington Post about two different men in Sturtevant, Wis., one who will vote for Bush and the other who will not.

The one who is voting for Bush is a classic example of the working poor, a group of people in the U.S. who have received the brunt of Bush's tax cut punishment, and as a group have contributed more to the military deployed over seas as well. This, well I can't think of a nicer way to put it, fucking idiot, will vote for Bush come hell or high water, or even (in his case) desperate economic conditions and with children out of wedlock (he claims to be an ardent Conservative [at twenty years of age] but he hasn't married the woman he's fathered two kids with). When I read about these people, it's hard to feel sympathy for them because they are so utterly incapable of the merest beginnings of the kind of selfish mindset that is so typical of an upper-middle class Republican. Their ability to vote for their own self-preservation is almost completely missing. The GOP is killing them off (economically and in the case of Iraq, literally) and they keep supporting it.

Madness.

Oh wait! Maybe he thinks that someday the wealth fairy will bless him like it has so many he admires in the GOP. Yeah, like I said, Madness.

NPR did a story on the relatively high success rate of military recruiting in the U.S. The piece is thoughtful and has the typical NPR touches, but listening to it, I was struck by the consistency of the theme.

Young Americans are signing up for the military because they cannot afford college or they cannot find work in their (predominately) red state home towns.

The recruiter interviewed in the piece keeps repeated the mantra "it's the luck of the draw" when confronted by anxious parents with regard to their child and Iraq. I think that's the most disgusting thing in the whole story. Of course their kid is going to Iraq, that's where we have a terrible shortage of troops, where we are forcing soldiers and reservists to serve double-terms of duty, and where our leaders grossly and disastrously underestimated troop deployments.

When I was in college, I knew a few people in the ROTC. At the time, President Reagan began a not-so-subtle shift away from Federal programs that supported middle class aid for college and towards the ROTC program. Almost all the people I met in ROTC were there because it was the only way to get funding to attend RPI. I actually went to Washington on a protest by college students for the defunding of student aid in March of 1982.

The recession of 1982 was also raging across America.

This was no coincidence. Whenever a chickenhawk is in the oval office, policies are put in play that force middle class and poor college students to enter the military to help pay for their education, often deferring that education for several years (or entirely when the former student is killed in action). President Bush is the first president since Nixon to pursue these policies during actual war.

The New York Times is reporting that Michael Moore's latest documentary, Fahrenheit 9/11, has won the top prize at Cannes. The last documentary to do this was Jacques Cousteau's The Silent World in 1956.

Hats off to Michael and we look forward to seeing this film, if not in Amerika, at least in Canada, eh.

The Washington Monthly has published an essay by General Wesley Clark (Ret.) that paints a very different picture of the Middle East in comparison with the Soviet Union. The Neo-cons have argued that the techniques that were used by Reagan to "topple" the Soviets will work in the Middle East. Clark deconstructs the myth of Reagan, and then shows how the West really ran the clock out on the Soviets. Then, while showing the reasons for Eastern Europe's quick adoption of Western democracy, he shows that the Middle East isn't ready and why.

Joe Bob sez "check it out".

The Washington Post is running a damning story detailing the horrific shit we did to Iraqis in Saddam's old torture palace. When I read about what our troops did there, and then I think about the suffering we've caused hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, I can only feel one thing.

Shame.

Too bad the Bush Administration has never felt this emotion. This may turn out to be one of the most evil governments in our long history of saddistic purges.

I urge everyone to read this essay by none other than Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. He talks about the human condition, tosses in some real politik, and then plants a 2 by 4 to your forehead at the very end. As always, if you are pregnant or on heart medication, this ride is not advised! But Kurt remains one of my favorite writers of all Time.

Remember those news reports explaining how the Medicare reform bill passed at the last minute in the middle of the night (and not without threats of extortion) would help Americans save on their medication bills? No doubt you do. Many TV stations ran the news story.

Do you remember seeing the follow on news stories explaining how the original news story was all a fabrication by the Bush Administration? I didn't think so.

Well today the GAO declared the ads illegal. Yes, ads. You thought it was the nightly news, but it was just a new kind of political double-speak. With this kind of crap coming out of Rove's head, what's next? Product placement during the State of the Union Address? I can just see Chimpy coming on to the podium dressed like a NASCAR driver (Halliburton, Enron, and The Southern Companies buying the higher profile vest pocket spots).

The General Accounting Office said that a specific part of the videos, a made-for-television "story package," violated the prohibition on using taxpayer money for propaganda.

People seeing the videos in a newscast would "believe that the information came from a nongovernment source or neutral party," it said.

William A. Pierce, a spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services, who helped develop the videos, said: "We disagree. It's not covert. TV stations knew the videos came from us and could have identified the government as the source if they had wanted to."

The accounting office dismissed that argument. The intended audience, it said, was not news directors, but viewers, and "the video news releases did not alert viewers that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services was the source."

Moreover, it said, "some news organizations indicated that they misread the label or they mistook the story package as an independent journalist news story."

Two videos end with the voice of a woman who says, "In Washington, I'm Karen Ryan reporting." A third video is narrated, in Spanish, by a man who identifies himself as "Alberto Garcia reporting." The scripts were prepared by the Bush administration at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, a unit of the Department of Health and Human Services.

This is so mendacious I can barely contain my contempt for it. When the Bush Administration cannot stifle speech (like they did with the UN family planning commission, which they defunded to the tune of $34M -- a drop in the bucket -- for daring to discuss abortion as a family planning option) they create their own propaganda and present it as "news" or worse, "scientific fact". I'm more willing to believe in intelligent design than this video bile about the Medicare bill. And I don't believe in ID whatsoever.

Ahmad Chalabi isn't the only guy getting spanked today.

President Bush had to go meet with the GOP Congressional Leadership (you know these guys, they're the ones telling the other half of Congress -- who don't follow their lead -- to piss off while they rule the Nation instead of governing it) for his annual paddling for being a bad boy. Turns out that the GOP leaders are just a tad bit upset about their re-selection plans.

President "Chimpy" is widely quoted as saying that it's time to "take the training wheels off" the Iraqi quasi-government and let Iraqis rule themselves. I guess he didn't read about how "civilization, as we know it" started there over 5,000 years ago. Afterall, that's gotta be within minutes after Jesus created the world, right? Isn't it time the U.S. took the "training wheels" off of Chimpy (and by that, I do mean Crashcart himself)?

So, back to the important issue which is getting re-selected:

It was the second year in a row that Bush met privately with his fellow Republicans just ahead of the congressional break. The stakes were especially high this year: Bush and most lawmakers face re-election, and Iraq is still plagued by chaos and violence six weeks before the handover.

Several GOP lawmakers who attended the meeting said Bush told his audience to brace for more violence after June 30 and he predicted insurgents would try to disrupt subsequent elections.

The lawmakers, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Bush sought to reassure them that despite his sagging poll numbers, he is eager for the re-election fight. They said the president defended his record on the economy, education and Medicare, all of which are targets for Democratic attacks.

Nice to know the emphasis is on saving their own bacon, rather than actually launching a new democracy in the Middle East (which, as the adverts have said, was our goal all along, right?). And by all means, Shrub, run on your record, instead of the lies your election team pumps out.

Read this article in Salon written by real Economist James K. Galbraith. He savages Greenspan's career:

Here is a man who spent the first half of his central-banking career fighting an inflation that did not exist. In so doing, the chairman of the Federal Reserve triggered the stock market crash of 1987, the recession of 1990-1991 and a "preemptive strike" on the dead beast in 1994. He had one period of glory, the late 1990s, when by doing nothing for four years he managed to bring on full employment without inflation. This was against the almost-unanimous received wisdom of the "real" economists, it should be said, and for this Greenspan should always be honored.

Joe Bob sez "check it out."

Several media outlets are reporting that Ahmad Chalabi is being ousted from the IRC, and that his offices in Baghdad and his home in an exclusive neighborhood were raided by U.S. forces today.

Most stories are reporting that his feuding with Paul Bremer has lead to this radical turn of events for Chalabi, but I have to wonder if his clandestine ties to Iran's rulers and the fact that Chalabi has been fingered as the source of the bad ("bad? Try utterly ridiculous", methinks) intel that Bush used to "justify" his war.

Payback's a bitch.

Oh, and there's a scandal brewing with regard to currency revaluation that sounds suspiciously like the banking fraud that got Chalabi prison time in Jordan (fear not, dear reader, his ass has never been in danger — yet). He's double-crossed the U.S. (and the neo-cons in particular), Israel (no pipeline deal — it was all lies), and of course, Iraqis (pretty much all of them). Get this man a Nobel Peace Prize application.

This just in ...

Salon has a follow on story claiming that Chalabi got the DEA treatment ("knock knock" ... "who's there?" ... Boot to Head) because he was plotting to create a splinter government to challenge the U.S. backed "hand off" government which no longer planned to feature ol' Ahmad in charge.

"Ahmed is gathering groups to bring this new government down even before July 1. He is in a very destructive phase, mobilizing forces to make sure the U.N. initiative -- due to be announced in 10 days -- fails." Chalabi has reportedly been inflaming his recruits with reports that veteran Algerian diplomat Brahimi is part of a Sunni conspiracy bent on undermining the rights of Iraqi Shiites to hold power in Iraq.

Remember, sports fans, this is our hand picked guy to lead Iraq up until last week.

Worst. Takeover. Ever.

The New York Times did a piece in their Automobile section about the Hummer's slacking sales and fan sites [Note: Not "family friendly"].

As Hummer dealers are being forced to build ever more grandious dealerships for the Edsel of the 21st Century, sales are plummenting (down 24% this year). Most Hummer buyers don't balk at the obscene cost of fueling the H2 (11 MPG, EPA estimates) at $2 or even $3/gal. You gotta wonder at what price does the SUV cost more to drive than to buy?

(Answer: at $4/gal., fuel costs would equal the zero-interest monthly payment of an MSRP priced H2 on a 6 year 0% note and if you drive 25K a year, which is typical for a suburban commuter in America. By comparison, my VW Golf TDI would require gas to be $62/gal. -- well, diesel -- to equal the equity cost of the vehicle on the same loan/miles driven terms as the H2.)

Salon has an OpEd piece by Sidney Blumenthal called Smiting the Infidels, which is about Gen. William "Jerry" Boykin, the infamous military leader who compared "his God" to the "Muslim God" and found it lacking.

Boykin was recommended to his position by his storied résumé in the elite Delta Force. He was a commander in the failed effort to rescue U.S. hostages in Iran in 1980, tracked drug lord Pablo Escobar in Colombia, advised the gas attack on barricaded cultists at Waco, Texas, and lost 18 men in Mogadishu, Somalia, while trying to capture a warlord in the notorious "Black Hawk Down" fiasco in 1993. Boykin told an evangelical gathering last year how this fostered his crisis of spirituality. "There is no God," he said. "If there was a God, he would have been here to protect my soldiers." But he was thunderstruck with the insight that his battle with the warlord was between good and evil, between the true God and the false one. "I knew that my God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was a real God and his was an idol."

Even more disturbing his how this career military man (who's resume looks awful, IMHO) has blended his religion with his job. It certainly seems like everything he touches turns into a disaster (and no doubt, Bill Clinton's fault!).

Just before Boykin was put in charge of the hunt for Osama bin Laden and then inserted into Iraqi prison reform, he was a circuit rider for the religious right. He allied himself with a small group known as the Faith Force Multiplier that advocates applying military principles to evangelism. Its manifesto, "Warrior Message," summons "warriors in this spiritual war for souls of this nation and the world ... God has given us the stewardship and accountability of FAITH as our strategy for this time to mobilize an exceedingly great army."

As the head of the Special Warfare Center and School at Fort Bragg, N.C., Boykin invited Southern Baptist ministers for prayer meetings that would be highlighted by demonstrations of Special Forces hand-to-hand combat and guided tours of the "Shoot House" and "Snake Room."

This is the man who brough the illegal torture methods to Abu Ghraib prison. Is it any wonder?

The sacred Locnar was used to summon the dark powers of the Lovecraftian god, Oolatec, in an arcane ceremony at the Houston Center facilities in downtown Houston yesterday.

Better known to the public as the "Haliburton Shareholders Meeting," it was really a pretty incremental incident in the cornucopia of evil belching swill onto America these days.

I wouldn't mention it at all, except that the event also served as an occasion for an anti-Bush protest. At the left is a protester from a digital photo I took myself. I stopped by this inspirational example of American freedom in action, and chatted with the folks a bit. Nice people, especially the guy in the "Buck Fush" T-Shirt.

I'll tell ya, there's no better way to start your day than to have a spirited dialog with fellow American citizens about getting Prince Regent Chimpy out of office this November — if for no better reason than to get the world's most vile corporate parasite off the American tax-dollar-teat.

Anyway, back at the Haliburton meeting, some excutive was quoted as saying, "You die, the girl dies, everybody dies."

Sounded reasonable to me.

Or is that from a movie?

The anti-semite canon contains an ironic compliment to the Jews: the depiction of Jews as fiendish, conspiratorial schemers contains a tacit attribution of intellectual superiority — apparently part of hating Jews involves admitting that they're smarter than you. It's not a stretch — I have dryer lint smarter than most bigots.

Sadly Jews are just as dumb as the rest of humanity, and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) is eager to prove it. These geniuses want all American Jews to vote for Bush. On the bright side, this puts to bed both the myth that Jews are inherently smarter than non-Jews and the myth that Jews are greedy (Bush's place in the history books will probably be next to Hoover in the section on economic downturns).

Well, what, then, would inspire Jews to want George Bush in office? My first theory was that they were hoping Yiddish, which has about six dozen different words for "bumbling idiot," would make a big comeback. That's not it.

According to an LA Times Story:

Bush won about 17% of the Jewish vote in 2000, but supporters are aiming to raise that to about 30% in this election, based largely on his support for Israel.

"By defending the freedom and prosperity and security of Israel, you're also serving the cause of America," Bush told the AIPAC delegates Tuesday.

His 39-minute speech was interrupted repeatedly with cheering and applause. On two occasions, at least a third of the audience burst into chants of "Four more years!"

Yesterday's raid on Gaza nets a dangerous terrorist... or future terrorist... yeah, that's it.

Yup, these geniuses want Bush to bring his zealous anti-terrorist efforts to Israel — after all, they've been so successful. Just ask the (Jewish!) family of Nick Berg. As readers of SJR know, Berg was killed by a Jordanian terrorist, Zarqawi, that Bush let fester in Iraq because his presence strengthened the case for invading. Now that millions have watched the screaming, terrified Berg have his head sawed off by Zarqawi, Bush will get a much higher ratings bump for nabbing the bastard. Thanks, Nick! Hope Dubya gives you a shout-out at the convention.

Anyway, as the photo to the left amply demostrates, the Israelis are already applying an approach similar to Bush's sharply-focused anti-terrorism strategy. This should work great.

This only leaves one question: Can the Republicans convince Jews in South Florida to vote against Pat Buchanan?

Salon has a review of The End of Oil by Paul Roberts. He accuses the U.S. consumer of being "energy illiterate" (no argument there) and places both the blame and the responsibility on them.

And it's not just the U.S. government that doesn't care. It's the individual consumer, as well, who appears remarkably indifferent to price jumps. Roberts compellingly argues that it will take more than a temporary spike at the pump, or even the ongoing Iraq war, to wean Americans from their energy-hog habits, much less mobilize the country to confront global warming.

Roberts puts the dilemma this way: "In the simplest terms, the energy challenge of the twenty-first century will be to satisfy a dramatically larger demand for energy, while producing dramatically less carbon." He analyzes the possible options for alternative energy sources -- including the clean dream of hydrogen fuel-cell cars -- that could help the world consume less of the CO2- and pollution-rich energy we're currently bingeing on. By charting the history of energy consumption -- from wood and biomass fuels to coal and then oil and natural gas -- he makes a convincing case that massive energy infrastructures can change.

But he is not optimistic that any of the alternative fuels can compete with the entrenched fossil-fuel establishment in time to stem the impact of global warming. Every alternative source of energy has its flaws and hurdles to overcome, but their overall failure can't be pinned to specific technical issues with, for example, solar and wind power, or to the drawbacks of hydrogen as a form of energy storage. The real problem is that consumers -- and the governments that represent them -- are not yet feeling the economic pressure to inspire them to invest in such a switch.

I think letting the U.S. government, especially one run by oil industry CEOs, off the hook for this is ridiculous. Only President Carter seriously proposed energy efficiency, and Reagan promptly reversed all his earnest measures (except, ironically, the infamous 55 MPH speed limit). Allowing car manufactures to sell SUVs with subsidies (both overt and hidden), waging a war to steal access to the last easy oil and letting energy executives decide national policy, in secret, are only some of the choices that the Bushies have made that have resulting in things getting worse, not better.

And the end of oil comes ever closer.

Let's say you are a legitimate news service and former CIA storefront operation, like — what's a good example.... ah, yes — Reuters. So, then let's say that three people in one of your news teams in Iraq were imprisoned by U.S. authorities for three days and released without being charged with anything. Then let's say that the three employees claimed that they — and others — were sexually abused and tortured during their three day incarceration for (apparently) doing nothing. Wouldn't you tell everyone in the world?

Well, only if you could verify the story — after all, three pissed off guys might exaggerate. So, when the Army officials come back and say there was "no evidence that the Reuters staff had been tortured or abused," you'd probably just drop it.

You might, though, want to bring it up again after thousands of photos documenting sexual abuse and torture flooded into the media:

LONDON, May 18 (Xinhuanet) — The Reuters news agency said on Tuesday that three of its local staff in Iraq were allegedly subjected to sexually degrading treatment after being detained in January.

It was unveiling the ordeal of its employees after the US military had concluded there was no evidence that the Reuters staff had been tortured or abused, the news agency said.

The Reuters employees were allegedly abused at two US military bases, after being detained for covering the shooting down of a US helicopter near the flashpoint city of Falluja.

Earlier reports said Baghdad-based cameraman Salem Ureibi, Falluja-based freelance TV journalist Ahmad Mohammad Hussein al-Badrani and driver Sattar Jabar al-Badrani were held for three days before being released without charge.

The three detainees were quoted by the Reuters as saying that they were forced to make demeaning gestures as soldiers laughed, taunted them and took photographs.

Among other things, they were allegedly deprived of sleep, had bags placed over their heads, were kicked and hit and forced to remain in stress positions for long periods.

The Reuters report came in the wake of the scandal involving the mistreatment of detainees at Abu Graib prison near Baghdad.

Chimpymust be censured, if not impeached.

Stage and screen veteran, Tony Randall, died today at age 84. He leaves behind a wife and 7-year-old daughter and 5-year-old son. What a dude.

Last September, Randall was booked as a speaker at the National Funeral Directors Association, where he made some controversial remarks about his own funeral:

WASHINGTON (AP) - Actor Tony Randall has a fantasy: when he dies President Bush and Vice President Cheney show up to pay their respects but they're turned away — because his family knows he didn't like them. Feeling his own mortality while suffering a cold, Randall, 83, made his remarks as the National Funeral Directors Association announced a new code of ethics for its members, beginning in 2004.

Funerals should be planned as a celebration of life and "a touch of humor doesn't hurt a bit," Randall said.

A comedian, Randall is best known for his role as Felix Unger in the 1970s sitcom "The Odd Couple."

He said his 6-year-old daughter, Julia, is old enough to appreciate the subject of death, and actually revels in it.

"She loves to talk about death," Randall said. "She loves stories about death. If I start a story, she says 'Does anyone die in this?' and I say 'No,' she doesn't want to hear it."

Not surprisingly, I have a fantasy about Tony Randall's funeral as well. I show up to the wake early, piss in his casket, and leave a bad Thai meal shit on his chest.

Fifty bucks says W doesn't even know who this fucking fart is, or if he does, it's as an anal-retentive teabagger in a shitty TV show.

Fuck Tony Randall.

Free Republic — as it sometimes does — managed to scrape up a lone conservative who could bump the needle on an EEG:

Tony Randall is a classic - this is a cheap shot by him, but I have always been a fan.

Randall is 'Mr. New York.' I've bumped into him at the opera and classical music room at the W 4th St Tower Records, on the Subway, etc.

He is an oldschool NYer - hopelessly liberal, in that NYC way. I wish he wasn't, but he clearly is.

His is a cool guy and a class act, notwithstanding this cheap shot.

Thanks, Tony, whereever you are (or aren't) for all the film and T.V. we'll be enjoying in digital clarity for years to come.

Time has a review of Fahrenheit 9/11, Michael Moore's new documentary about Bush's war on Iraq. The review is surprisingly complimentary, and reiterates many of the kudos that other (less corporate) reviewers have noted. In particular, that the depiction of the human loss in both the U.S. and Iraq because of both Gulf Wars is devistating.

The film has its longueurs. The interviews with young blacks and a grieving mother in Moore’s home town of Flint, Michigan, are relevant and poignant, but they lack the propulsive force and homespun indignance of the rest of the film. “Fahrenheit 9/11” is at its best when it provides talking points for the emerging majority of those opposed to the Iraq incursion. In sum, it’s an appalling, enthralling primer of what Moore sees as the Bush Administration’s crimes and misdemeanors.

Time ends the piece by referring to Moore's film as the first salvo in his "War on Error". Cute. Sad that it's not the "War on the Lack of Outrage".

Salon's review is here.

Three times, they could have gotten him, and three times they failed to act?

I'm talking about Clinton and Usama bin Laden, right? No, that's just Conservative propaganda. No, this time it's the latest scandal about the Bushista Regime letting a vicious terrorist walk away unharmed three times so that they could bolster their case for war in Iraq.

We've all heard the feeble cases about Abu Musab Zarqawi and his Al-Qaeda camp in Iraq. Apparently, this is the "connection" between Saddam Hussein and Al-Qaeda. Of course, the Al-Qaeda outpost was in areas controlled by the Kurds, so Saddam Hussein couldn't have had anything to do with it.

Wait a minute — weren't the Kurds on our side? And didn't we have effective control over Northern Iraq? Yes, and yes. So why didn't we take out the camp, then? Simple: if the camp wasn't there anymore, that we would lose a major pillar of our invasion rationale.

According to an MSNBC article published last night, the Bush Adminsition squashed three (count 'em!) DOD strike plans against Al-Zarqawi, allowing him to continue menacing peaceful citizens worldwide, and finally to vivisect poor Nick Berg (now playing on a web browser near you).

“People were more obsessed with developing the coalition to overthrow Saddam than to execute the president’s policy of preemption against terrorists,” according to terrorism expert and former National Security Council member Roger Cressey.

The Washington Post is running a grim story on the lawlessness, terrorism and precision assassinations happening in Iraq, a scant six weeks before the "hand over" by the U.S. The "hand over" is looking more and more like a rich kid throwing a damaged toy back at the store vendor and telling him he doesn't want it any more.

With stunning brazenness, pinpoint timing and devastating force, the suicide car bomber who killed the head of Iraq's Governing Council on Monday gave shape to a feeling among Iraqi and U.S. officials and common citizens that the country is almost unmanageable.

The IRC President was blown to smithereens right in front of the U.S. "Green Zone" entrance. That sends a pretty stark message, if not to Shrub, at least to ordinary Iraqis: you are not safe. The next guy appointed President (a former "engineer", now soon to be a former "living person") should review his copy of The Empire Strikes Back and pay special attention to the Darth Vader School of Management (and particularly, the way to "move up" in the Empire's space navy).

If Bush can screw up Iraq this badly, I wonder what he'd do to the U.S. ?

If you're old enough to remember the brilliant British puppet-based political and current events satire telly prog Spitting Image, then you'll be glad to read this. If you've never seen it, hope that this deal comes through. The Spitting Image shows were scathingly brilliant (many in the US probably best know the puppets from the mid-80s Genesis video Land Of Confusion), and they gave us the immortal RS-232 Interface Lead song. Which, dammit, I cannot find on the Web.

It takes a repressive regime to bring out the best satire. The return of Spitting Image would be a mithril lining within a global thundercloud the color of crude oil.

Edit: here is the best clip from Land Of Confusion easily available, to see the puppets in action.

The Medium Lobster explains how gay marriage will bring about the end of civilization:

Sadly, Western civilization - and all civilized culture - is doomed. Marriage is the social force that binds individuals together into the basic building blocks of civilization, families, which higher beings recognize as "Familions." However, the pervasively corrosive force known to metaphysicians in crosstemporal planes as Gay has now been allowed to intermix with Marriage, allowing Individutrons of any gender combination to form Familions, creating unstable, or "nega-matter" Familions. These Familions emit waves of radiation that cause stable, or "Straight" Familions to decay at the sub-Familion level. Eventually all Familions throughout Civilization will break up and decay into their base components, meaning that they will never be able to form Neighborhooditrons, Citinos, or Governmenticons, leaving the western world in chaos and anarchy.

We are left, then, with the memory of what once was: the splendid, shining ediface of the West, torn to pieces by the unnatural desire for civil equality. As we stand amidst its crumbling piles of dust and mortar, the Medium Lobster would like to leave a fond farewell:

Western Civilization: Born 3500 B.C. in early Mesopotamian city-states, Western Civilization developed numerous complex systems of political governance, conquered most of the inhabited world, and invented the hot air balloon, the nuclear bomb, and the ice cream cone. Died May 17, 2004, of a gay agenda in a Massachusetts court house. It is survived by isolated anarchist survivalist camps and nomadic bands of flesh-eating zombies.

According to CNN Money, Greg Mankiw says that oil reaching nearly $42/bbl. is "no significant risk" to the U.S. recovery. Isn't the cost ratio "$1/bbl. increase equals $70B more the U.S. spends on oil"? So, since Wed. (when oil crossed $40/bbl.) we've had to add twice the amount we blew on Iraq last year to the cost Americans will spend on petroleum. Did I miss something? How does that sound in light of this quote?

According to U.S. officials, the oil spike does not appear to have stunted that growth. Gregory Mankiw, chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisors, told Reuters the U.S. economy remained on track for a robust recovery and current oil prices did not pose a significant risk.

Coming soon to midnight TV ads: Soldiers Gone Wild!™ (Disclaimer: Not Really).

Don't believe me? Take a look at the NY Post article about the sex video escapades at Abi Ghraib Prison.

Photo of Pfc. England and her paramour and father of her illegitimate child, Spc. Charles Graner from the New York Post.

"There was a bed found in one of the abandoned buildings. There was a mattress on the ground. They had chairs all circled around it and candles all over the place," said Bischel, adding the chairs were "obviously for an audience."

Need I say more?

In this week's Democractic Underground Top Ten Consevative Idiots is a gem of a line that sums up why Bush won't fire Rummy (or anyone else in his neocon secret society):

I guess you don't change horsemen in the middle of an apocalypse.

That really, truly nails it on the head.

The New York Observer (one of the journals that publishes the likes of Joe Conason) has a hilarious faux memo describing the new Bush Administration vernacular.

1) "Shock and Awe." Deleted. Archaic. Please resist the urge to describe the goings-on in the soon-to-be-renamed Abu Ghraib prison (see below) as "Shock and Flaw," "Shocking and Awful," etc., etc.

2) Abu Ghraib prison. Henceforth, this will be known as the "Khalil Gibran/Dale Earnhardt Jr. vocational-training facility and recreational center." As John Kerry himself has asked: "Who among us does not like NASCAR?"

3) "Mission Accomplished." Unoperative. And please avoid the alternate punctuation: "Mission accomplished?"

4) "Bringing peace, freedom and democracy to the Iraqi people." To better reflect our current goals, please substitute "Protecting the American homeland from vicious Al Qaeda terrorists."

5) Ahmad Chalabi is no longer "the legitimate voice of the Iraqi people." Please update your records to cite U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi in this role, and avoid quoting his recent speech on French radio blaming the whole mess over there on "the Israeli policy of domination and the suffering imposed on the Palestinians."

6) "High moral ground." We’ve lost it. Lose it from your vocabulary.

From Salon:

The first time I noticed an indication of a radio frequency bouncing between the brains of Bush and Hughes was during Gov. Bush's initial State of the State speech in Texas. Still a simple press hack, Hughes did not take to the riser in the Texas House of Representatives, instead standing off to the side, behind the shiny brass railing rimming the chamber's floor.

"Look at Karen," I said, nudging a colleague.

"Oh, my God. You've got to be kidding me."

As Gov. Bush read the text of his speech from a teleprompter, his communications director was silently mouthing the words along with him. The synchronized delivery suggested a parent sitting in the audience of an elementary school pageant while mouthing forgotten lines as her child stood dumbstruck onstage.

This thing between Bush and Hughes just has a weird vibe to it, similar to his unusually close relationship to Condi Rice.

I was going to answer a comment about the fact that Lynndie England, the world's most famous female war criminal, was knocked up by another soldier in the Abu Ghraib prison. Checking to see whether he was a superior officer — he is an enlisted rank ("Specialist") which may supervise other enlisted personnel by appointment — I came across a very nice blog entry at The London News Review pointing out some rather disturbing facts about England's pregnancy.

It took four months to come out, but Lynndie knew, back in January, that she was facing trouble over the torture photographs. Big trouble. So what did she do...? Did she panic? No. Did she give vent to her anxiety by forcing some naked Iraqis prisoners to masturbate each other? Probably. But that’s not all.

Lynndie suspected she was going to face serious charges over her maltreatment of prisoners, so the clever little war criminal took drastic action: she got herself knocked up. By her war criminal fiancé, Charles Graner.

In 2001, Staci Graner filed a five-page, handwritten affidavit. She said that Charles Graner had come to her house and "yanked me out of bed by my hair, dragging me and all the covers into the hall and tried to throw me down the steps."

Good to know that when this Iraq mess is over, Graner may return to his job here in the United States; he's a prison guard. Ah... maybe Iraq is being turned into an America-style democracy.

There's been a lot of controversy about displaying images of our fallen soldiers. Some people — myself included — take the "Vietnam War Memorial" view that we showing the personal identity of each casualty is the least we can do in rememberence of their sacrafice in the line of duty.

The Rabid Right disagrees. The people we are supposed to be showing honor and deference to are the scumbags in the Whitehouse who got us into this Iraq debacle, not those bravely trying to survive it. Also, if we show all those picture of guys (and gals) who look like our friends, neighbors, and family, we might stop thinking in the video game terms — and I'm not taking "Splinter Cell," I'm talking "pong" — that the Bushista regime is using to promote their bumbling in Babylon.

The the left are just a few images in a montage. You can get the whole montage in two sizes:
Medium-sized
Full-sized

Well, it's a little off the beaten SJR path, but Christian Today has an alarmist story about young Christians pirating MP3s of Christian music.

A poll taken by the Barna Group, which performs tracking and surveying from a religious perspective, says just one in 10 Christian teens surveyed considered online music piracy to be morally wrong, and 64 percent of them said they had participated in some kind of music piracy.

Anyway, I'm wondering why they have to sell the music at all? Don't you think if Jesus had a rock band he'd let people record his concerts and distribute the recording for free, like the Grateful Dead did? He'd probably call His band "The Grateful Risen" or something.

Or maybe Jesus wouldn't be into popular music, á la the joke:

Q: What did Jesus say in the disco?

A: Help! I've risen and I can't get down!

This commentary by Sidney Blumenthal in Salon talks about the depths of dissatisfaction in the professional military with the "leadership" of Rumsfeld. Rusmfeld is the last link in the chain of Neocons who started the whole Iraq boondoggle (itself probably a staggeringly successful con by Chablis).

Retired Gen. William E. Odom, a former staff member of the National Security Council and now at the Hudson Institute, a conservative think tank, reflects the depth of dismay in the upper ranks of the military. "It was never in our interest to go into Iraq," he told me. He calls that war a "diversion" from the war on terrorism; the rationale for the war, finding WMD, "phony"; the U.S. Army overstretched, being driven "into the ground"; and the prospect of building a democracy in Iraq "zero." In Iraqi politics, he says, "legitimacy is going to be tied to expelling us. Wisdom in military affairs dictates withdrawal in this situation. 'We can't afford to fail' -- that's mindless. But the danger has been done. The issue is how we stop failing more. I'm arguing [for] a strategic decision."

Is Bush/Rove so stupid they'll hang on to Rummy even if it kills his Presidency?

Check out this link to a list of Bush's accomplishments in his first three and one-half years. Now, just imagine what he can accomplish with a blank check (Again?) and all the "experience" he's gained. Then think about the most important thing you can do on Nov. 5th, 2004. Think hard. Think. THINK!

I'm seeing a wave of stories that soft pedal the torture at Abu Ghraib prison. USA Today is running a story that tries to downplay the U.S. torture by comparing it to worse regimes. Like John Stewart said on The Daily Show last night, "So we're less evil than Saddam? Is that how we are presenting ourselves? (with the usual mock suprise and shock). That's the best the Bushinistas can do? "Less evil than Saddam" is our new slogan?

One thing that is clear is that the GIs being accused of perpetrating the torture are not that different from other soldiers ordered to do illegal and inhuman acts. They don't know they can refuse an illegal order, or they fear reprisals if they don't. In the case of Pfc. England, it looks like she was screwed either way, because it's clear the military will prosecute her to the full extent. But why wouldn't she reveal the names of the brass who ordered her to pose in the infamous photos? Is her lawyer saving that for the trial? Or does the Military Intelligence (or Halliburton) division scare her that much?

Editor's Note: Thanks to Winston's comment, we can confirm that Pfc. England was impregnated by her superior office at Abu Ghraib prison. I'm no expert on military law, but I'm pretty sure that will get her superior in deep shit too.

Today's USA Today (hey, I couldn't find a single copy of The Globe and Mail today) has a story about college commencement speakers that have political agendas. Without exception, the "liberal" speakers were booed and disrespected by conservative students, even if they were not talking about politics, whereas conservatives were more often protested against in the local papers and more often than not used the opportunity to promote their politics of hate (e.g. Dick "head" Cheney).

Ithica College, Ithica, NY
Ice cream entrepreneurs Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield were booed, and some people walked out, when the subject turned to the war in Iraq.

North Carolina State University, Raleigh NC
Talk-show pioneer Phil Donahue was booed when he asked students to "bring America back to basic Constitutional values" and to stress civility rather than a "trend to the sword."

In western Canada, gasoline is nearing the dreaded $1/litre mark ($2.55/gal.), closing at 98 cents in some markets yesterday, according to The Globe and Mail. Diesel, however, remains calm at around 70 cents a litre (and yes, I'm feeling very smug about my TDI engine now).

Nicholas Berg was a Bush supporter who believed Shrub's lies about bringing democracy to Iraq. He paid for his belief with his life.

His family back in the U.S. opposes the war. They have to live with the images of his beheading for the rest of their lives, the price they pay every day for Bush's Folly.

Damn, how 'bout that crazy price of oil, eh?

Despite OPEC's announcement yesterday that they would consider raising output, I am highly skeptical that any actual change in production will be realized. Most likely, what we will see is a modification of OPEC's price target, and perhaps a slight increase in output quotas.

But, these changes mean nothing. The only thing that will have any effect would be more oil. So, since Saudi Arabia is the only OPEC member to claim any real spare capacity, perhaps we will see whether they really can increase output like they've been assuring us all this time. My prediction is, though, that they won't, because they can't. I think they're maxed out, capacity-wise, and the loss of western workers due to safety concerns can't be helping. So, while there'll be all sorts of blustery talk of raising this price band or that output quota, which will play all sorts of havoc with the hyper-volatile price of oil, don't look for Saudi Arabia to make any promises of significantly increased output, let alone actually increase their output.

And, even if they could increase output, it would have little effect on the price of gasoline in the U.S., as refiners, having retooled to produce our special, more expensive "environmental" formulations of gasoline, are already running at near full capacity. Gasoline demand is on the rise, and gasoline stocks are low. There are very few sources from which we can import gasoline that meets our stringent formulation requirements, and the domestic refining industry, having incurred the expense of retooling, is unwilling to let the EPA relax its requirements on imported gasoline formulations, as that would put them at a competitive disadvantage. While Democrats may find political leverage in urging the President to release oil from the National Strategic Petroleum Reserve (NSPR), it really wouldn't serve much practical purpose to do so.

My feeling is that our oil situation is critical beyond belief at this point. And, one would imagine that the likes of Al Qaeda must know this. All it would take is one lunchbox packed with C4 at one of the major oil processing terminals in Saudi Arabia to bring the U.S., and the world, to its knees economically.

Luckily, we've been able to depend on abundant natural gas!

Andrew Weissman, Publisher of EnergyBusinessWatch.com, writes on EnergyPulse.com that the prices of natural gas, contrary to what economists might predict, have significant upside potential over the remainder of the year. Interesting to read that our stalwart supplier, Canada, is unlikely to meet U.S. demand for natural gas. This seems an ominous sign to me.

What I find a little interesting is that, while I have long predicted increasing natural gas prices, my reasoning was based on presumed shortages resulting from increased demand from the 200,000 MW of new gas-fired power plants that have been built over the past five-ten years. But, it turns out that these new plants remain idle -- because of the high cost of natural gas.

Thank god, we have coal to save us!

Reuters reporter Steve James, writing in Forbes, has recently reported on the low coal inventories of U.S. power plants. Coal demand is up significantly due to increased steel production to satisfy industrial growth for both a recovering U.S. economy and, perhaps even more important, booming demand for U.S. steel in China. Power generators typically store their own purchased coal for later use, but with higher coal prices, they have chosen to wait, gambling that the price will come down.

To make matters worse, the U.S. rail industry has fallen into neglect in recent years, and currently have their hands (and railcars) full supplying transport of coal to steel plants, and steel to port. If the power companies suddenly decided to bite the bullet and buy the coal they needed to satisfy demand, perhaps because they realized their gable wasn't going to pay off, physically getting the coal to their plants will be a challenge.

Luckily, our oil-rich pals in Iraq are going to help us out -- all according to plan, eh?

George Will starts to preach to the choir today in a Washington Post editorial:

The first axiom is: When there is no penalty for failure, failures proliferate. Leave aside the question of who or what failed before Sept. 11, 2001. But who lost his or her job because the president's 2003 State of the Union address gave currency to a fraud -- the story of Iraq's attempting to buy uranium in Niger? Or because the primary and only sufficient reason for waging preemptive war -- weapons of mass destruction -- was largely spurious? Or because postwar planning, from failure to anticipate the initial looting to today's insufficient force levels, has been botched? Failures are multiplying because of choices for which no one seems accountable.

The problem with this paragraph is that Valerie Plame (and god knows how many other unnamed CIA people) did lose their jobs because of the State of the Union lies. So while George Will is leaping from the safety of Bush's arms to the shores of America, he's still NOT GETTING IT. Bush lies, and no one calls him on the carpet for it. Rummy lies and the same happens. And Cheney ... well micromanages the lying so badly that everyone knows it is happening but no one will stand up to him.

Kind of reminds me of the mindset of most Baathist Party members ("Do you want to tell Saddam he has no WMD?" they must have asked themselves leading up to the U.S. invasion). Will praises Rummy as an "honorable" man, despite the mountains of evidence.

While reading this month's Mother Jones magazine, I came across this quote:

The cost of the Bush tax cuts this year alone is enough to give $93,793 to each of the 2.9 million people who've lost their jobs since he took office.

That's the salary I made in the U.S. when Bush took office, and it's also the salary that I cannot earn in the United States anymore. I am one of those 2,900,000 who lost their job.

Comedy Central's The Daily Show neatly encapsulates the whole Iraqi mess with this episode titled "GIANT Mess O'Potamia" which features the Iraqi reaction to Abu Ghirabi prison and "Aw Shucks" Rumsfield. Don't miss it (requires Real Player to see -- works on Linux, Windows and Mac).

Fareed Zakaria in Newsweek:

Since 9/11, a handful of officials at the top of the Defense Department and the vice president's office have commandeered American foreign and defense policy. In the name of fighting terror they have systematically weakened the traditional restraints that have made this country respected around the world. Alliances, international institutions, norms and ethical conventions have all been deemed expensive indulgences at a time of crisis...

The basic attitude taken by Rumsfeld, Cheney and their top aides has been "We're at war; all these niceties will have to wait." As a result, we have waged pre-emptive war unilaterally, spurned international cooperation, rejected United Nations participation, humiliated allies, discounted the need for local support in Iraq and incurred massive costs in blood and treasure. If the world is not to be trusted in these dangerous times, key agencies of the American government, like the State Department, are to be trusted even less. Congress is barely informed, even on issues on which its "advise and consent" are constitutionally mandated.

Leave process aside: the results are plain. On almost every issue involving postwar Iraq—troop strength, international support, the credibility of exiles, de-Baathification, handling Ayatollah Ali Sistani—Washington's assumptions and policies have been wrong. By now most have been reversed, often too late to have much effect. This strange combination of arrogance and incompetence has not only destroyed the hopes for a new Iraq. It has had the much broader effect of turning the United States into an international outlaw in the eyes of much of the world.

Whether he wins or loses in November, George W. Bush's legacy is now clear: the creation of a poisonous atmosphere of anti-Americanism around the globe. I'm sure he takes full responsibility.

Who didn't love Jello Biafra's oddly high, nasal vocals gushing smugly ironic lyrics about how Ronald Reagan was destroying freedom in America and the world. Now, it seems so naive. The Dead Kennedys' song, Chemical Warfare, which is about stealing chemical munitions from a local National Guard Armory and deploying them on a golf course would probably land them in Gitmo these day.

Well, Jello's still at it. Join the fun at http://www.punkvoter.com.

Many members of the Rabid Right hate the U.N. They spew slogans such as "Drop the U.N. &mdash on Paris!" Witty. Another Rabid Right feature is that they love guns. They love 'em a lot. Don't get me wrong, I own firearms myself, but I don't have back issues of Guns and Ammo with pages stuck together.

So, you got a bunch of people who hate the U.N. and love guns — and violence, can't forget that. As ardent supporters of Operation Screw Up The Planet, they have never seen a politcal problem that couldn't be solved with a high body count. Freepers — the Rabid Rightists who congregate on FreeRepublic.com — generate prolific posts like this:

Just kill them all. A dead Islamoterrorist will never hurt innocents anymore.

Well, now there is!

Usama bin Laden, spiritual leader of bloodthirsty morons worldwide is offering 10,000 grams of gold for the head of Kofi Annan, his Iraqui envoy, Ladkhar Brahimi, or Colonial Overlord, Paul Bremer.

OK, leave Bremer out of it — awww hell, why not leave Bremer in? — and lock and load, boys! 10,000 grams of gold — and thanks to crystal meth and oxycontin, rednecks now know what a gram is — is worth $137,000! You can buy a double wide!

Bottom line: the more this "war on terra" continues, the less difference I see between the two sides.

What do you do if you are a private security firm and need a bunch of new interrogators in a hurry? Just hire people at random! What do you do if you are one of these randomly chosen interrogators and you can't find the suspected insurgents you are looking for? Just grab the neighbors and interrogate them! Let's show these Iraqis how capitalism works.

From the Guardian via Josh Marshall:

Mr Nelson said he had come forward to speak now because he believed that military intelligence was seeking to blame the Abu Ghraib scandal on a handful of soldiers to divert attention away from ingrained problems in the military deten-tion and interrogation system.

As a witness in an ongoing investigation, Mr Nelson said he could not talk about the abuses of specific prisoners at Abu Ghraib, but he said the nature of the detention system makes the imprisonment and abuse of innocent people all but inevitable.

"A unit goes out on a raid and they have a target and the target is not available; they just grab anybody because that was their job," Mr Nelson said, referring to counter-insurgency operations in Iraq. "The troops are under a lot of stress and they don't know one guy from the next. They're not cultural experts. All they want is to count down the days and hopefully go home.

"I've read reports from capturing units where the capturing unit wrote, 'the target was not at home. The neighbour came out to see what was going on and we grabbed him'," he said.

Interrogators "weren't interested in going through the less glamorous work of sifting through the chaff to get to the kernels of truth from the willing detainees; they were interested in 'breaking' tough targets", he said.

Much of the problem lay in the quality of the interrogators, Mr Nelson said; only the youngest and least experienced intelligence officers actually question detainees.

As the number of suspects sucked into the system exploded, the Pentagon came to rely increasingly on interrogators from private contractors to question them. Mr Nelson was one of a roughly 30-strong team in Abu Ghraib employed by a Virginia-based firm, CACI International. He believes his decade of experience in military intelligence made him well qualified to do the job, but he had growing doubts about his colleagues.

"I'd say about of the contractors that it's kind of a hit or miss. They're under so much pressure to fill slots quickly ... They penalise contracting companies if they can't fill slots on time and it looks bad on companies' records. If you're in such a hurry to get bodies, you end up with cooks and truck drivers doing intelligence work."

This is the Krugman column I've been waiting years for:

Before the start of the Iraq war his media empire did so much to promote, Rupert Murdoch explained the payoff: "The greatest thing to come out of this for the world economy, if you could put it that way, would be $20 a barrel for oil." Crude oil prices in New York rose to almost $40 a barrel yesterday, a 13-year high.

Those who expected big economic benefits from the war were, of course, utterly wrong about how things would go in Iraq. But the disastrous occupation is only part of the reason that oil is getting more expensive; the other, which will last even if we somehow find a way out of the quagmire, is the intensifying competition for a limited world oil supply.

MoveOn.org is sponsoring a campaign to call our elected &mdash and "elected" — government overlords to fire Donald Rumsfeld. That would certainly go a long way toward making the Bush administration somewhat tolerable as the seat of American authority. Light from "acceptable" might reach Planet Bush years ahead of schedule. Of course, there's Perle, Wolfowitz, Feith, Cheney... oh fuck it, we need to clean house.

But you can start by calling Dubya's office at (202) 456-1111 or (202) 456-1112. Call from work, it's free. This page on MoveOn.org's site has more links to some juicy editorials with stuff like this:

The abuses that have done so much harm to the U.S. mission in Iraq might have been prevented had Mr. Rumsfeld been responsive to earlier reports of violations. Instead, he publicly dismissed or minimized such accounts. He and his staff ignored detailed reports by respected human rights groups about criminal activity at U.S.-run prisons in Afghanistan, and they refused to provide access to facilities or respond to most questions. In December 2002, two Afghan detainees died in events that were ruled homicides by medical officials; only when the New York Times obtained the story did the Pentagon confirm that an investigation was underway, and no results have yet been announced. Not until other media obtained the photos from Abu Ghraib did Mr. Rumsfeld fully acknowledge what had happened, and not until Tuesday did his department disclose that 25 prisoners have died in U.S. custody in Iraq and Afghanistan. Accountability for those deaths has been virtually nonexistent: One soldier was punished with a dishonorable discharge.

Damn, I hate that guy.

According to a Newsfactor Network story on the rise of the Bluetooth technology:

Among the more exotic applications, Toyota offers Bluetooth as an option for the 2004 Prius. Bluetooth connects the driver's cell phone to the car, allowing the driver or passenger to make calls using the car's speakers and microphone, or upload addresses to the Prius' GPS.

A few days ago, Microsoft leaked what their new system specifications will likely be for the next major Windows release, codenamed Longhorn, expected to reach beta in late 2005. You can read the full article, but here's the money graf:

Microsoft is expected to recommend that the "average" Longhorn PC feature a dual-core CPU running at 4 to 6GHz; a minimum of 2 gigs of RAM; up to a terabyte of storage; a 1 Gbit, built-in, Ethernet-wired port and an 802.11g wireless link; and a graphics processor that runs three times faster than those on the market today.

This is an admirable rocketbox for today's Q2'04 home computing needs, to be sure -- we'd all like a Tbyte of storage -- but dang, Bill, this is the minimum? The graphics processor is 3X of today's market best is only half an order of magnitude improvement, but it's not trivial. Moore's Law says that it will be achievable, and it's probably already on the benchtop and just waiting for the right time to be released into the market (the semiconductor biz has learned a little bit from how much extendibility it gave away back in the hotshot 1990s); and the improvement in uP speed is likewise non-trivial but highly achievable. As hardware specs go, this set is challenging but readily possible.

But let's ask, what the hell does Longhorn do that needs this much platform?

sigh. I probably don't wanna know. I genuinely love the monumental leaps that technology makes, and the right-thinking apps which make our lives richer in tiny ways. Such creativity manifest is simultaneously entertaining, useful, and affirming that real, live people brought forth something new(er). That we tend, eventually, to ruin a good thing and leave behind heaps of waste is testament to the tunnelvision of the non-creative types who creep in and force-fit a world of wonderment into a perpetuable form.

So ask yourself, when the time comes, do you really need a Longhorn? You can answer yes, but don't fear answering no. Technology should fulfill needs, not mere wants.

With that in mind, those readers who are of sufficient certain age (and this scribe is staring down, in mere days, rolling his tens digit from III to IV) may have fond memories of simpler times, when an Apple ][ or other boxes of its generation would demand all-night, pizza-and-cola fueled hacking sessions, whether solving a game, coding a program, cracking some protection scheme, or just trying to get 300 baud audible connectivity to the campus mainframe (luxury!). Many of those nights (and days) were accompanied by some of the funkiest new-wave electro-pop of the 80s, so when you click here, think back, and see if you hear the long-distance echos of Madness, XTC, or perhaps even Chumbawamba. Enjoy.

This is a propagandist animation, but it's my kind of propagandist animation.

President Bush fulfilled another Pat Robertson fantasy by appearing on Christian TV in advance of "National Day of Prayer".

For Bush, the broadcast is an opportunity to address a sympathetic evangelical audience without the risk of alienating secular or non-Christian viewers, because it will not be carried in full by the major television networks. Frank Wright, president of the National Association of Religious Broadcasters, said more than a million evangelicals are expected to see the broadcast.

Some civil liberties groups and religious minorities charged that the National Day of Prayer has lost its nonpartisan veneer and is being turned into a platform for evangelical groups to endorse Bush -- and vice versa.

"Over the years, the National Day of Prayer has gradually been adopted more and more by the religious right, and this year in particular there is such an undercurrent of partisanship because for the first time they are broadcasting Bush's message in an election year," said the Rev. Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

The event's organizers denied that it amounts to a tacit political endorsement.

"We're in an election year, and we believe God cares who's in those positions of authority," said Mark Fried, spokesman for the National Day of Prayer Task Force. "But we're not endorsing a candidate -- just praying that God's hand will be on the election."

Well I can tell you who's hands are clearly on this stunt: Karl Rove's. Sucking up to the Evangelican wingnuts is a core function in the Rove Operating System. Trotting Bush out in front of the TV cameras that non-Xtians won't see is pretty much the same thing that Louis Farrakhan does with his Nation of Islam followers. Away from the rather incurious national news spotlight, Bush can regurgitate the usual religious spew that got him the Xtian vote last time around without taking flak from moderates (or for that matter, anyone who isn't expecting to leave behind a fancy sedan and a nice (but empty) suit of clothes real soon now). He can "preach to the choir" and not take hit points because CNN won't run the more incendiary parts of the speech, despite the word "news" in the network's name.

At this rate, we'll need nanotechnological tools in order to be able see the increasingly mythic "separation of Church and State".

Get this quote from a Wal-Mart PR goon in an article from the New York Times:

Mr. Bisio said that Wal-Mart was not anti-union, and that "the reason our associates haven't wanted third-party representation is because they have faith in the company, and it provides them with tremendous opportunity."

That's right. Wal-Mart is just so goddamned good to it's employees ... excuse me ... associates, that they don't want to unionize. Right. And "these aren't the droids I'm looking for" either. Like the Bushinistas they back with cold hard cash, these guys subscribe to the Big Lie theory, too. Tell that whopper enough and even hard working people who have to put in two extra hours a day at "Mega-Low Mart" for no pay will believe that Unions are the Worst Thing That Could Happen to them.

How did Corporate America so utterly tarnish Unions such that the very people they can help hate them? And just exactly when did Wal-Mart stop being anti-union? Afterall, their PR goon said it. They said they're "not anti-union", but they don't actually act like it. Wal-Mart spends as much crushing unionization efforts as it does bashing through local zoning restrictions. Liars. Big, fat liars. Coming to a polluted, vacant lot near you!

Now that the occupation of Iraq is going so well, it seems like an opportune time to ask for more money to keep it going, right? Well, kinda — our troops could use some more real support, but the Bu__sh__ administration has been trying to hide the real cost, even when they were egregiously underestimating it.

Today, the Revisionican party asked for another $25 billion dollars. Stupid, stupid, stupid! They should ask for their largesse in Euros to keep the numbers down. Anyway, maybe when the American public will finally get sticker shock at the cost of this war and ask a very simple question: Hey, should we even be doing this?

And speaking of cost, let's not forget the lives of fallen soldiers. Can we get to 1004 in 2004? Easily. Whatever (valid) criticism you have of John Kerry, one thing is clear: of the two major-party candidates, only Kerry has the experience and the vision to get us the fuck out of Iraq.

Yesterday, USA Today had a story titled Some Moms Quite as Offices Scrap Family-Friendliness. You'll have to pay for the archive, but here's a juicy bit from the story:

Companies that once touted family-friendly benefits are cutting back on them in this tight job market, slashing programs that let employees telecommute, work part time, share jobs or take paid family leave. The reversal is having a profound impact on a number of working moethers now struggling with whether to leave jobs for their families.

The labor force participation rate of mathers ages 15-44 with infant children — under 1 year old — slid from a record 59% in 1998 to 55% in 2002, part of the first downward slide since the Census Bureau began tracking the figure in 1976.

Congradulations, America! You finally tipped the two ton mark on the scales. According to this article in the New York Times, American cars and light trucks weigh more than 4000 lbs. on average (4,021 lbs., to be exact).

Detroit was recently ranked as the nation's most obese city by Men's Fitness magazine. Perhaps it is no surprise, then, that the Motor City's chief product is also losing the battle of the bulge.

The average new car or light-duty truck sold in the 2003 model year tipped the scales at 4,021 pounds, breaking the two-ton barrier for the first time since the mid-1970's, according to a report released by the Environmental Protection Agency last week.

Now we have the lard-ass vehicles to go along with our lard asses. That's just freaking brilliant. Go celebrate at McDonalds you gluttonous pigs! Better yet, eat a 2" thick steak at your local steak house, and be sure to drive your Belchfire 9000 there and don't forget to idle the engine in the parking lot for ten minutes.

Bigger is not safer for the guy you T-bone on the road.

Editor's Note: this appears to refer to the same article the Heimie published earlier. I wish to keep this posting active because it sets a tone that's more in tune with how we feel about this situation.

The New York Times is reporting that Walt Disney Corp. is presuring Miramax from releasing the next Michael Moore documentary, which links the Bush family with the bin Laden family of Saudi Arabia.

The Walt Disney Company is blocking its Miramax division from distributing a new documentary by Michael Moore that harshly criticizes President Bush, executives at both Disney and Miramax said Tuesday.

The film, "Fahrenheit 911," links Mr. Bush and prominent Saudis — including the family of Osama bin Laden — and criticizes Mr. Bush's actions before and after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

This is yet another example of corporate consolidation closing the voice of dissident Americans and further eroding our rights of free speech. Maybe it's time to get serious about banning the Mouse from my House.

...or maybe a Volkswagon.

I just got back from paying a huge repair bill for our old family minivan, and it's becoming more apparent that, since I can't convince my wife and kids to give up the car culture completely and rely on bikes and (gasp!) walking to get around (but, I have to mention that I really shouldn't complain, as my family is really pretty progressive and cool as these things go, and certainly don't complain about my lame bike-riding ass even when it inconveniences them or when I rag on and on about cars and whatnot, kinda like I do in this blog, y'know... but, anyway, where the heck was I? Oh yes...), we need to start thinking seriously about getting a different (if not new) car. Oh, the irony.

So, this morning I noticed this article in the NYTimes about the dismal new car sitch in the U.S., and its deleterious impact on health -- namely, via air pollution and crashes. Nicely ties together most of the important themes highlighting how screwed up we are in the U.S. -- at least, regarding our dependence on cars.

Trying to cut back on the morning caffeine, -Heime

PS Investment banking firm Raymond James & Associates has evidently developed their own analysis of world oil supply, and predict that a peak betwen 2010 and 2022. (I trust everyone has been watching the recent oil prices holding at 13-year highs...?)

The title really says all you need to know ... but I have to quote this Salon 'graph:

President Bush rode across Ohio on Monday in a bus emblazoned, "Yes, America can." It turns out the bus was made in Canada.

Foreign-made vehicles are a touchy topic in the job-strapped industrial Midwest – states like Michigan and Ohio, which Bush has been touring for two days.

"Seeing the president drive around in this Canadian-made luxury bus is just another reminder of George Bush's failed economic policies and underscores that it's time for a change," said Phil Singer, a spokesman for Democrat John Kerry's campaign.

Sometimes, it just seems like the Bushinistas can't get anything right. Where are your mystical powers now, Mr. Rove? As an aside, I'd rather fancy a Canadian bus about now!

If — like all good and true Americans — you've been enjoying the latest docudrama running on CNN and Faux News, "Iraq War 2: This Time It's Personal," then you've probably been wondering how the hell they're going to end this season. Also, why did they get a new guy to play President George Bush when the guy in the first season did OK? Anyway, for those who have been watching "Joe Lying About Something to Women" or whatever, here's a summary of this season:

• We had to invade Iraq because of Saddam Hussein's WMD's
• This turned out to be a convenient segue from Season I, and was awkwardly abandoned as a premise in favor of a "liberating the Iraqi people" theme.

This time we've learned a lot more about what a bad man Saddam Hussein is. Under Saddam's rule, the Shia in the south were repressed and denied basic freedoms, such as freedom of the press. Worse still, thousands of innocents were slaughtered in bloody reprisals against "insurgents" in campaigns lead by brutal military leaders such as Major-General Jassim Mohammed Saleh. Also, political detainees were routinely tortured and abused in places like the Abu Ghraib prison.

In a plot twist I totally predicted, all these things (including the General Saleh character) are back in place under American rule. OK, guys, we get it! You don't have to beat us into a stupor with the irony! Gee whiz! Right, so now that they've set up this pickle, how are they going to resolve it by for the announced late-June season finale?

I think I know.

Who's already in the cast who is an expert at running Iraq as a brutal dictatorship? Well, duh! Saddam Hussein!

It's sooooooooo obvious. So, viewers, look for the return of Saddam Hussein — and the obvious premise for Season III — in June. Either that, or Jeff Goldblum will defeat the insurgents by uploading a virus from an iBook.

From What We Now Know week of 5-3-2004

ARMY IN TROUBLE

Recently, we have heard increasing chatter in political circles about bringing back the draft. The latest comments came from Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.), telling the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that deteriorating conditions in Iraq might make the draft inevitable. On April 15, US Rep. Charles B. Rangel (D-N.Y.) called for the draft in a speech at the National Press Club in Washington.

Most pundits find it unlikely that the White House would take such a drastic step in an election year, inviting not only criticism from political adversaries but public outrage from voters. The Department of Defense has denied the possibility of a draft, but in late 2003 an ad on the DOD website asked for volunteers to serve on draft boards. After the media got wind of the ad, it was withdrawn without explanation.

All this seems to be an indicator that our military is overstretched. "The military's people, its equipment, its supplies and spare parts, its logistic systems, and all its other assets are under pressure they cannot sustain," reports the Atlantic Monthly in a March 2004 article. "Everything has been operating on an emergency basis for more than two years... The situation was serious before the invasion of Iraq; now it is acute."

The clearest indication of how acute the shortage is: thousands of soldiers whose time in the military would have been up by now are being kept in the military under "stop-loss" orders forbidding them to resign. To wit, their service is no longer voluntary. In January, the Marines put a stop-loss order on the entire service. Nicholas Confessore, editor of The Washington Monthly, stated, "large swathes of the U.S. military ... no longer meet the definition of a volunteer force."

After the end of the Cold War and the fall of the Soviet Union, demobilization was the name of the game. When Bush senior launched his operation "Desert Storm" in 1991, 2 million Americans were on active duty; by the time Bush junior started his conquest of Iraq, the Army had shrunk to 1.4 million, a 30% reduction.

Even after 9/11, the Pentagon resisted attempts to increase the size of the Army, mainly because of Donald Rumsfeld's vision of a downsized military in the corporate sense of "lean management"; from his first days in office, Rumsfeld has promoted a strategy of further mechanizing warfare which would save a lot of money now used for manpower maintenance. However, the new realities have now sunk in, and in January 2004 the DOD endorsed a bill before Congress that would allow for an additional 30,000 troops.

But if there are 135,000 soldiers on the ground in Iraq and we have 1.4 million altogether, where's the problem? The problem is that, as the world's self-appointed policemen, we're spreading ourselves thin. US troops are stationed in over a hundred countries: 75,000 US soldiers in Germany, 41,000 in Japan, 41,000 in Korea, 13,000 in Italy, 12,000 in the UK, etc. Some call it necessity, some call it imperialism. Officers on Army bases sarcastically refer to the recruiting slogan "An Army of One", stating, "that's how many soldiers are left for new assignments now." And new cases for the world police keep coming in.

Increasingly, the military has been trying to fill the gap with reservists and National Guard members who have previously been enticed into service with stylish TV commercials (remember the "Let's Roll" party missile?) which promise that "most serve two days a month and one month a year". Since 9/11, many Guards have been separated from their families and forced to serve up to one year in Iraq. In 2004, almost 40% of the troops in Iraq will be from the Reserves and National Guard... people who probably never expected having to fire a gun in their lifetime. The Denver Post reported that recruiting of reservists is dropping. While the desired retention rate is 85 percent, it dropped to as low as 71 percent in Colorado last year.

In October 2003, the military newspaper Stars and Stripes conducted an informal survey that showed that nearly 50% of the soldiers didn't plan to re-enlist; in comparison with re-enlistment rates in 1996 when 68% of all military personnel chose to sign up again. Retired general and former Army Secretary Thomas White told AM reporter James Fallows they were "in serious danger of breaking the human-capital equation of the Army" and "once you break it, it takes a long time to put it back together."

In our view, when you get to the point that you are forcing soldiers to remain in the service against their will, it is time to review not only the current state of our military, but also the continued wisdom of trying to provide a global police force.

According to The New York Times, "The United States has started to lose its worldwide dominance in critical areas of science and innovation, according to federal and private experts who point to strong evidence like prizes awarded to Americans and the number of papers in major professional journals."

All of you out it the Red States (I like to think of you as "Bushylvanians") are going to benefit immensely from the drop in science ... just like Europe did during it's Dark Ages. Just keep teaching Creationism, er, "Intelligent Design" and don't let the Bible get tossed out of school, or your children might accidentally increase their awareness of the real world in all it's infinite complexity and wonder.

Samsam Bakhtiari has published an article in the 26 April 2004 issue of Oil and Gas Journal predicting a world oil production peak occurance in the 2006-2007 timeframe. The article is copyrighted and subscription access only, so I can't reproduce it here, but I've seen it. Evidently, the analysis is based on Campbell's conventional reserve estimates, and concludes that the peak will occur at 81 million barrels per day +/- 1 million b/d, while OPEC doesn't actually peak until the middle of the next decade.

This work contrasts with a Wood Mackenzie estimate that Russian production will not peak until over 10 million b/d around 2010, and will carry non-OPEC upward until that time, indicating that a world-wide peak would not occur until sometime after 2010. Look for output numbers by this year's end to settle the dispute.

I confess, though, that I'm a little confused about the 81 million b/d number as a peak estimate, as I think we may already be beyond that now. I'll have to look into that. Interesting, though, that Bakhtiari mentions that "Saudi Aramco's defense of its future oil potential ... simply cannot be taken seriously."

There is a story in The Washington Monthly that all home owners should read.

Greenspan's rather ham-handed effort to get them to go for ARMs, is a sign not of the chairman's own eccentricity or advanced age, but, instead, of the economy's current unsteadiness. Greenspan knows, perhaps better than anyone, that this economy is perched nervously on top of a wobbly, Dr. Seuss-like tower. Our recovery is propped up by consumer spending, which is in turn propped up by mortgage refinancing, and if that refinancing dries up before more props can be put in, the whole edifice could fall. "Since long-term interest rates cannot fall low enough to facilitate another wave of fixed-rate refinancings, he is trying to encourage homeowners to refinance one last time: fixed to ARM," Peter Schiff, president of Euro Pacific Capital in Los Angeles told the San Francisco Chronicle.

Bottom line: you kept spending through the Bush Recession because Greenspan kept lower interest rates, and that allowed you to (in some extreme cases) refinance each year. And everytime you did, you "paid off" some debt, but at the expense of your home's equity and based on a rising (and if the bubble bursts, fake) property value. What happens when that bubble bursts? Banks will be holding trillions in notes that are not backed by real estate worth the paper. Sound familar? I remember the late 1980's well.

So if (or when) the bubble bursts, expect the "jobless recovery" to come crashing down because the Feds will have to step in to prop up Fannie Mae (among others) and a mere $500B won't cover this check this time like it did in 1990. The U.S. government will be facing literally trillions of debt. That could lead to a currency crisis ... HERE. The rest is ... a great depression.

One year ago today ( from the Whiskey Bar ):