Cynical Nation

I work in the pharmaceutical industry, and his name has become shorthand for unpredictable enforcement of one aspect of often-contradictory regulatory law. The personally tragic news isn't exactly cause for glee, but "ask your doctor if schadenfreude is right for you".

Ethics Crusader my ass.

"If Wall Street can't muster a rally on this news, the party's over." (BNJ)


It DID!!!

TODAY "the Dow Jones industrial average (.DJI) soared 416.66 points, or 3.55 percent, to 12,156.81 in its best one-day performance since March 2003."

When Clinton was president, all the Fed did was raise, raise, raise the prime interest rate to "cool off" the white hot economy.

Now the fed cuts and cuts the prime rate and gives away free money to the banker who greedily made ripoff loan deals that people can no longer pay under Chimp.

Kind of makes you wonder, doesn't it? It's almost as if the Fed would do ANYTHING to prop up a Repug administration, and sets out to destroy Dem administrations.

This artificial, bullshit rally is just the last gasp to help prop up the Repugs and stave off the now inevitable deep recession that Chimp caused through his stupidity, greed, and treason.

When the Fed prints $200,000,000,000 dollars and uses it to bail out banks, they are really stealing the money from the middle class and once again handing it to the filty rich.

This is Conservatism.

"If Wall Street can't muster a rally on this news, the party's over." (BNJ)

>>It DID!!!

TODAY "the Dow Jones industrial average (.DJI) soared 416.66 points, or 3.55 percent, to 12,156.81 in its best one-day performance since March 2003." (JMK)

But didn't the S & P and Nasdaq fall?

Some party--a one-day bender financed literally with cash dropped out of helicopters by the Fed. As of 10:10 Wednesday, the markets are down.

http://www.nbc.com/Saturday_Night_Live/video/play.shtml?mea=224714

Told ya. ;-)

Wall Street's euphoria over a $200 billion plan from the Federal Reserve turned to caution yesterday, leading stocks to retreat a day after their biggest rally in more than five years.

Volatile energy prices added to the market's anxiety. Oil prices initially fell after the Energy Department said crude and gasoline supplies rose by unexpectedly large amounts last week, but then they returned on their record-setting streak to briefly surpass $110 a barrel.

Looks like Chimp will have to invade Iran to keep people from seeing the obvious.

Hey Barry, aren't you going to cheer now that Obama is out of the election picture?

There is utterly no chance, zero, that he will survive his pastor of 20 years, who married him and baptised his children, shouting GOD DAMN AMERICA! GOD DAMN AMERICA!

This makes his wife's previous anti-America statements look like they weren't misconstrued at all. She meant what she said. She heard her pastor say things like that every week, to thunderous applause.

Celebrate JMK! Rush was right! He said liberal hate America, and by God, there it is!

Obama is politically dead. Americans are very patriotic. The vast majority of our population would have walked out of that church and never went back.

Obama is a smooth talker, but you know that in his heart he believes his pastor. He hates America, and he hates white people, deep down.

Even if he doesn't, he can't win. They will redo Michigan and Florida, and Hillary will win the nomination.

Obama swift-boated himself. He has no one else to blame.

What's to celebrate, Barely?

Reverand Wright's one of the LEAST of Barack Obama's skeletons.

His older brother Abongo ("Roy") is a Marxist Luo rebel in Kenya and a radical Islamist to boot. That's a lot juicier.

So is the deal between him and Chicago thug Tony Rezko, through whom the Obama's bought a house they admitted "they couldn't have afforded," on his Senate salary alone.

And NONE of this stuff that's come out now, has come from the Right...this is ALL the Clinton machine's work.

No, I'll celebrate when my beloved "Con-soiv-atives" (as James Carville calls'em) take back the Democratic Party, as is their birthright.

At any rate, Obama still leads the delegate tally and is far closer to the 2025 needed than HRC is...and they're NOT going to simply seat the FL and MI delegates, not without tearing that Party up....although THAT would be something to celebrate, blacks dissolving their relationship with Liberal whites, most of whom look down on them anyway.

Most American blacks are Church-going (Liberal whites revile that) and they're more socially Conservative than their Liberal white benefactors (white Liberals really revile that)...and more American blacks are seeing that clearer every day.

Obama will win the election and will be president if he plays it right. All he has to do is fight back strongly and attack the hypocrisy of far right. McCain has been supported and gladly accepted the support of a biggot who called the catholic church a whore (Haggee). The same guy (Haggee) has made clear-cut antisemtitic comments. McCain has a much bigger and real problem, because he accepted the support of that biggot.

Obama will be the nominee and the next president. He is the only sincere candidate left in the race. JMO.

No, Obama is done. This hook is set deeply. Haggee wasn't McCain's pastor, didn't perform his marriage or baptise his kids, and didn't scream "GOD DAMN AMERICA!", accuse the government of selling drugs to blacks, and say that we had 9-11 coming as payback for all the evil we did in supporting Israel and nuking Japan to end WWII.

Obama is on record calling this racist his "spiritual advisor" many, many times. He went to that church, and listened to that kind of hatred and lunacy for 20 YEARS. This isn't some endorsement from a guy he met once or twice.

I'll put it this way: I was going to vote for Obama. Now there is no way in hell.

I'm not sure if I can vote for Hillary either ... maybe. If not, I'll just sit this one out.

McCain really has no problem at all in that regard.

Obama explained very clearly that he denounces those comments. He even gave an interview on Fox News tonight.

By the way, it seems that the swiftboating of Obama by the lunatic extreme right works with some people, like you who believes their lies and smears, and you said you will not vote for Obama. That is exactly what they want. They lie, smear and try to intimidate and create an atmosphere of fear and hate. And you apparently bought it. Not good. Dont get into their game.

Lie? Smear? What I heard was played on Air America. Are they extreme right wingers now?

The racist pastor sells his sermons on the internet. He is proud of being a racist. Everything is whitey's fault. We made the blacks take drugs. Any time a black person doesn't succeed, it is because an evil white person. We white people build prisons just to we can put innocent black people away. The government engineered AIDS to kill off black people, only it didn't work right.

I heard the man say every one of these things. They weren't taken out of context. They were played right off of a CD he sells on the internet, by a progressive talking head on Air America.

Let me see if I have this right: the wingnuts made Obama's racist pastor put his racist CDs on the internet for money, and then they made a liberal talk show host play the CD on Air America ... right?

Wow, they really sucked me in on that one! There really is a vast right wing conspiracy!

Obama is a racist. Game over.

"...seems that the swiftboating of Obama by the lunatic extreme right works with some people..." (BW)


First off, all of this came from the Clinton machine (the far left, not the Right, there BW)....and it couldn't have been possible without the good Reverend Wright - who Married the Obama's, is called Barack Obama's "spiritual advisor," and whose congregation the Obama's belonged to for over 20 years.

The really "good stuff," the real slime is yet to come....and AGAIN, Obama's background and his family members are HIS, and bringing them up is fair game.

And Wright and Farrakhan aren't akin to the likes of the folks at Bob Jones University or Reverend Haggie, they're akin to Tom Metzger and those Aryan Nation folks.

Bottomline, anti-capitalism = anti-Americanism. You can be an extremist, and so long as you remain an avowed capitalist, you're not necessarily going against the principles America was founded on (private property, self ownership/responsibility, etc).

That's pretty much a given.

I know there are folks who'll say dumb shit like "Eugene Debbs and Emma Goldman gave thier lives to bring socialism to America and they LOVED this country and were good Americans."

The polite answer to that is "Bullshit! They were a lot of things, radicals, syndicalists, socialists, but they weren't 'Americans.' You can't be a socialist and be an American. There's just no such thing as an American who is also anti-capitalist. Those two things are mutually exclusive, given the principles this nation was founded on."

The problem with the entire Left-wing of the Democratic Party is that they tend to be socialistic, erroneously believing that human nature can be changed. Such people deserve whatever ill treatment they get. They bring it on themselves.

At any rate, none of this (the Rev Wright stuff) is dishonorable in my view.

Reverend Wright is indeed the Obama's minister, spiritual advisor and has been for more than 20 years.

Saying he "disagrees with some of his statements," is like a guy, having a twenty-plus year personal relationship with Tom Metzger (who advocates the mass murder of blacks and Jews) and claiming lamely, "Well, there are a number of things I disagree with Tom over," SAME EXACT THING.

"Let me see if I have this right: the wingnuts made Obama's racist pastor put his racist CDs on the internet for money, and then they made a liberal talk show host play the CD on Air America ... right?" (BH)


Actually, that's not so far fetched!

I hear they MADE Eliot Spitzer have sex with prostitutes, just to bring that slimey, POS down a peg.

Al Gore has said that those Right-wing extremists (pro-capitalists, pro-American types) have developped some kind of mind control. I believe he suspects they bought it from the Chinese.....very clever.

Personally, I think Al Gore's just jealous.

BH,
Everyone agrees that the statements of that pastor were terrible. That is not the point. The point is that Obama has nothing to do with them and he denounced them. Attempting to link Obama to these beliefs is a classic Rovian tactic involving lies and smears.

McCain has been endorsed by Haggee, who is probably worse than that pastor. He has called the catholic church the "great whore" and the "antichrist" and has blamed Jewish people for their own persecution by saying that it was their "disobedience" that caused their persecution throughout history. Haggee is a bigot with anticatholic and antisemetic views. McCain should have strongly denounced his endorsement. The way that Obama denounced the endorsement of Farrakhan and the views of that pastor. Instead, McCain welcomed his endorsement while making a very weak statement that he does not agree with all Haggee's views.

You made the outrageous statement that Obama is a "racist". So, how should McCain be characterized according to you?

Haggee isn't McCain's lifelong pastor, friend, and spiritual advisor, he didn't perform McCain's wedding and baptise his kids.

Obama is lying. His racist pastor says racist things from the pulpit, so there is ZERO chance that he isn't far more of a racist in privite.

Obama's wife makes the same kind of anti-American remarks that the pastor makes. Coincidence?

No ... mindset.

Everything is the White Man's fault.

I'm a white man.

So I won't vote for Obama. Fuck him.

"Haggee isn't McCain's lifelong pastor, friend, and spiritual advisor,"

BH,
What you wrote is totally ridiculous. What does this have to do with Obama beliefs? You extrapolate on what Obama may believe based on the beliefs of others, while ignoring what he says. I have some ultra-right wing republican friends and relatives, but that does not make me republican or conservative. Do I sound like one?

Believing that Obama is "racist" is beyond ridiculous. It reflects political illiteracy.

BW, I've heard supporters arguing to defend Obama using your tact ("some of the Christian-Right preachers are just as bad as Farrakhan and Wright") - sadly, that's an fallacy and an idiotic one, as Farrakhan and Wright can't be compared to ANY Christian-Right preachers, only with fellow racialists like Tom Metzger and perhaps David Dukes....but even Dukes is far more reserved and less strident in his overt bigotry than either of those two.

I've heard people say that "Wright's remarks were taken out of context." That too, is UNTRUE. Taking remarks out of context applies to when a person splices together two discordant sentences from the same speech to make it APPEAR as though the person is saying something he didn't actually say.

That's clearly not the case here. Wright said those things, apparently meant those things and his remarks reflect a cogent, coherent anti-American viewpoint, that actually adds a subtle context for what Michelle Obama said earlier about this being "the first time in her life that she was proud of her country."

And Barack Obama hasn't disavowed or cut off ties to Wright, he's still his "spirtitual advisor."

He said he "didn't agree with everything" that Rev Wright said....which is EXACTLY the SAME kind of, how'd you describe that(?)...Oh yeah, "weak statement" that McCain did....as he said the same thing about the Rev Haggie, whose Church he's never attended.

The problem for Obama is his close PERSONAL link to this man....he's been a member of that congregation for over two decades, Wright Married the Obama's and he serves as Barack Obama's "spiritual advisor."

Personally, I'd have preferred for this to come out in the general election with the full context of Barack Obama's brother Roy (Abongo) Obama, a Maoist, Luo rebel and radical Muslim, living in Kenya, currently supporting (engaging in?) the Muslim genocide against the Christians there?

THIS was ALL Hillary.

I guess the GOP is going to have to bank on the Spitzer mess throwing enough slime on her to damage her down the road.

Believe me, that resignation did no good as far as a prosecution goes. At least it shouldn't, given the gravity of it all.

He DID use public funds, if only to pay for his hotel rooms and for the NY State Trooper detail that was there to protect him....but there's more, lots more.

There are lots of people around who desperately WANT the sordid details of his "dangerous sexual proclivities" to come out....most of them for very personal reasons.

I almost feel sorry for you BW. Conservatives KNOW that government = corruption and are deeply disappointed when so-called Conservatives enage in reckless spending, government expansion and winking at illegal immigration. When the GOP turned away from the Gingrich plan, they turned away from smaller government and the "Gingrich economy" of the late 1990s." And Conservatives have lamented that, even though we KNOW that humans and (political) power is a recipe for corruption. Knowing that helps make sure we're never crest fallen, the way Liberals are, when politicians disappoint us.

"Believing that Obama is "racist" is beyond ridiculous. It reflects political illiteracy." (BW)

Not exactly an argument designed to convince or convert, is it BW???

Far be it from me to attempt to convince or convert BH....he tends to be pretty dogmatic in believing things that aren't so ("RICO allows for confiscation PRIOR to conviction, H-1Bs exploded AFTER 2001," etc), so I merely confront some of those inaccuracies. There's no hope of convincing BH of much.....BUT here he's a potential Obama supporter and...

You seem to try to bring a perceived Obama supporter back into the fold by....calling him stupid - his arguments ridiculous and his conclusions politically illiterate??? Is that a convincing, or winning strategy?

Now I'm not saying stop....far from it, quite the reverse. In fact, THIS is exactly why I believe Liberalism is doomed as a belief system. MOST Liberals do what you do - excoriate Red Staters for being stupid ("voting against their best interests") and mocking religious people as "Chrsto-fascists," etc.

They're great at calling other people names, sadly for them, they're not nearly so good at actually making affirmative arguments for what they themselves believe in.

I say By all means, KEEP IT UP!!! The day they stop that and begin actually making rational arguments, is the day I really start to worry.

JMK,
I am not trying to convince anyone. I am simply stating the obvious facts. Believing that Obama is a racist reflects political illiteracy.

BH's views on the subject start sounding remarkably similar to yours. And that says it all.

BW, talk is cheap. What you do in life and who you choose to associate with are much better indicators of who you really are than what you say when the cameras are rolling.

For instance, Chimp hangs around with the Saudi royal family and Big Oil tycoons, and then magically oil goes from $20 a barrel to $100 a barrel, making the people he hangs out with wealthy beyond belief.

Do you expect me to believe that his actions, and the people he chooses to associate with, are coincidental?

Remember what Chimp SAID he was going to do: restore honor to the White House, be president of ALL the people, jawbone OPEC until they lowered the outrageous price of gas below the incredible $2.00 a gallon we paid for a few months under Clinton?

Talk is cheap, isn't it?

I know who Barack chooses to associate with: black racists who hate white people and hate America.

I don't want to find out how his actions will coincide with his choice of spiritual advisors.

Do I want a full force return of Affirmative Action, courts that are forced to only convict the same percentage of blacks as white and asians, hey, maybe we could bring back busing!

Obama is hiding who he really is: a radical Liberal nutjob.

He got lucky on the war, and his smooth talk and the fact that he seems like one of the "good" black guys, and the fact that most people have a visceral hatred for Hillary made him the darling of the media.

Then his wife made her statements. Now his pastor. Next his brother. Then his criminal associates.

Sorry, it's going to be a bumpy ride down that cliff.

You have to admire Hillary. I always thought that Bill was secretly the vicious one, but now I think it is her -- maybe both of them.

Hillary we be the nominee.

"BH's views on the subject start sounding remarkably similar to yours...." (BW)


Really?

Then that shows a decided lack of basic reading comprehension on your part.

As I've noted, it doesn't really matter if Barack Obama is a bigot or not. The term "racist," is a canard. Most people oppose "ethnic bigotry" of all kinds, most people DO NOT oppose the very natural pride and affinity that most people exude for their own ethnic group, despite the fact that there's nothing much to be proud over, being born to a specific ethnic/racial group. And btw, whether you OR I agree with them or not, BH has every right to his views. He has laid out some very good reasons for his suspicions about Obama's racial predilections.

Oddly enough, you, yourself, are an ideological bigot.

Yeah, I'm one too, but at least I have a reason for mine. My mother's family is northern Italian and they fought against the "communistas" in Italy and killed other family members over that anti-human ideology. Some of them later joined the German Freikorps to fight the communist revolution in Germany led by immoral, misanthropes like Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht in their ill-fated Sparticist uprising.

As a youth, I spent some time there for "educational" purposes and was regularly regaled with the exploits of past family members who took up that epic struggle between good (anti-communists) and evil (communists).

Today, many of my cousins on mother's family side of the family represent American commercial interests (mostly in South America, some in Europe), where they are still, to this day rabid anti-communists/anti-socialists.

I understand full well WHY socialism ALWAYS leads to mass murder, why it CANNOT work economically and why its most ardent adherants are misanthropic goons who hate other humans.

In every single post I've offered here and elsewhere, I've steadfastly supported Liberty (self-ownership/responsibility), the private ownership of property and limited government. Those are ALL the things America's Founders espoused and though there were some very slight disagreements between the likes of Alexander Hamilton and his "federalists" and Jefferson, Franklin and Adams, those disagreeements were slight, in that they ALL believed in a basic "fend-for-yourself" kind of LIBERTY (self-ownership/responsibility) that they termed "freedom," and the inviolability of private property rights and the necessity for a very limited government.

I'm in complete sympatico with that belief system.

It is YOU and your fellow Leftists who are out of step with that view that supports FREEDOM for all.

I expect very little from the people who go into politics. They are humans after all and prone to abuses that political power gives access to.

There is no way to REFORM human nature or, for that matter, human beings, so the ONLY way to avoid political abuse and corruption is to abide by the genius of America's Founding Design. Limit government at every turn, and keep politicians FROM having access to the economy, as much as is humanly possible.

YOU were the first one to bring up Reverend Haggie against John McCain.

That's politics. It goes with the territory.

Now it turns out that Barack Obama was Married by and is a 20+ year congregant of a vile ethnic bigot (Rev Wright) whom he considers his "spiritual advisor."

That's politics too....he's got to take that on the chin. The fact that over 75% of the country is white and Wright's rabidly anti-white views may very well hurt Abama's chances with moderates and Independents, in fact with everyone EXCEPT radical Leftist whites and bigoted black separatists is merely a political reality.

Don't worry none. There'll be plenty of Spitzer-spooze to slime Hillary with down the line.

There IS a way out of all this BW, you could simply acknowledge that "America's Founders were right that private property and individual Liberty (self-ownership/responsibility) = "freedom and that such a system is predicated on market-based capitalism (which recognizes property rights, socialism does not) and LIMITED GOVERNANCE."

It's really not that hard and since you can't even make a valid argument in favor of Big Government Liberalism, I don't see where the switch should be so difficult for you to make!

Just something to think about.

"For instance, Chimp hangs around with the Saudi royal family and Big Oil tycoons, and then magically oil goes from $20 a barrel to $100 a barrel, making the people he hangs out with wealthy beyond belief." (BH)

Hey! Whaddaya know?

More "magical thinking," by Barely.

The Saudi Royal Family is not as much "the Bush's friends," as much as they are "America's friends."

I consider them a kind of batshit crazy uncle ("friend") who wants the rest of the family (that's US) to convert to Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormonism, or, as in this case, Islam.

As one Saudi Royal is fond of saying, Dere's nutting wrong wid DAT!"

And by the way, OBL and company AREN'T Saudis (at least, not really)....he and his fellow Saudi followers were exiled TWICE from Saudi Arabia...the second time all their Saudi assets were frozen.

The Saudi Royal Family, like the Musharef regime in Pakistan fears the radical Islamists as much as the West does. That's why those two governments had been as cooperative as they had been over the past few years.

That said, they rightfully revile Western values and actively work within our country and within the law (by forming and financing groups) that work to actively make America, England and the rest of the West far more "Muslim friendly."

And that is their right to do so. They are financing Muslim groups of citizens within those countries to advance a specific agenda, while they are also buying up a number of media outlets in such places....not a badly thought out strategy at all.

Moreover, neither the President of the United States (not even the U.S. Congess, which controls the American government's purse strings) NOR O.P.E.C. control the price of oil.

SUPPLY and DEMAND controls the price of oil.

Ironically enough, SUPPLY has gone way UP over the past ten years, but DEMAND has spiked even higher...in fact MUCH HIGHER due to over 1/3 of the world's population coming out of the veritable stone age, all at once.

India and China are driving the demand right now and will be for quite some time.

In fact,China will soon pull a very wicked "double reverse" on the USA economically and there's nothing much we're going to be able to do about that.

For over 100 years America's economy has been the Sun, around which all the rest of the earth's economies revolved, China started a plan and we didn't react to it quick enough (not that quicker action would've averted it, though it may have delayed it) that will make China's economy the earth's economic Sun and soon after that (very soon after) the USA will fall to third, when India becomes the world's second biggest economy.

You're going to live to see the U.S. Dollar pegged to the Yuan, we'll see the U.S. incresingly operating as China's and India's "junior partner" in various deals.

That doesn't mean misfortune for America (not at all)....at least so long as we play ball, and learn to play nice with the new Big Boys on the block.

Soon, very soon, it's going to be China directing international trade and they'll be telling America to "scale back our demand" for various commodities, just as we did that to others when we were the biggest economy on earth.

I think the politicians on both sides have been way too circumspect on this. They seem to fear anger and panic, perhaps even political reprisals over this, but why???

Seriously, I don't know why?

Americans are largely sensible people and if told the truth...that all this is inevitable...I believe that they'd not only accept it, I believe the vast majority of us would embrace the new opportunities (and they'd be many) that comes along with all this.

The world is changing.

We've always known that it was unsustainable for a nation of 300 million to lead a world of 6 BILLION around by the nose, but India's and China's agrarian status made that possible for a lot longer than it should've been feasable.

The first stage in this ultimate transition is India's and China's industrialization, which has been proceeding very rapidly over the past twenty years, accelerating sharply over the last ten.

They're in the market for oil...and natural gas, and gold, diamonds, sugar, etc. and they have much bigger stomachs than we do.

If those two elephants are at the troth, there's not going to be as much room for the smaller USA and Europe any more.

You act as if this dynamic surprises you and because it surprises you, you don't believe it's real.

It's very REAL and it's yours, mine and our reality going forward.

Consider the FACT that ALL of our Trade deals are made by Congress....that includes our dealings with O.P.E.C. and the Dems have controlled BOTH Houses of Congress for fourteen months.

If G W Bush was somehow able to have steered the previous GOP Congress to "raise the price of oil" by making deals that favored the energy companies and the Saudis, then why didn't the Pelosi/Reid Congress simply reverse those deals and bring the price back down?

Their own GREED?

Incompetence???

The answer is NEITHER, because the U.S. government DOESN'T control the price of oil, neither do the Energy Companies and neither do the Saudis, nor OPEC. It's world demand and commodity speculators that control the price of oil.

Actually it's world demand that increases it and then commodity speculators who jump on that, making it almost impossible (short of a prolonged reduction in demand, which is highly unlikely) to bring it back down. Speculators bid the price up and that price is then impacted by the emotions (confidence) of the speculators in the sustained value of that commodity. Speculators pay a price based upon what they BELIEVE oil is "going to be worth" tomorrow.

The short answer is that (1) oil will never be "cheap" again, and (2) despite that, there is more than enough oil to sustain us through the rest of this century on hand right now.

With oil over $80/barrel, oil from oil shale and oil sands becomes more practical to bring to market.

Alberta, Canada is booming because of the oil sands boom in that region.

JMK, I know you aren't that stupid, so surely you can see exactly why Chimp lied us into a war with Iraq.

Chimp doesn't give a shit about Iraqis, obviously. He did what he was told to do by his puppetmasters to make them the hundreds of billions they are making with $100 a barrel oil

There is plenty of oil. The trick is to make sure it doesn't get on the market. The "war" in Iraq, in collusion with the Saudi Royal Family and Kuwait, accomplished exactly what Chimp wanted.

Why the burning desire to quickly switch are mobilized war machine to Iraq?

Even a child could figure that one out.

Chimp's support of alternative energy (giving away billions to Archer Daniels Midland) is another way to take the attention away from the fact that there is actually plenty of oil, they simply refuse to pump it and refine it. Yeah, it's a win-win because corn ethanol is a joke. He's filling the pockets of Big Business with taxpayer dollars YET AGAIN!

Chimp is a traitor.

I've posted here in this comments section, MANY times, the proof, that there were no U.S. "lies" that led up to the invasion of Iraq.

In fact, even the NY Times reported it and I sourced their own account, which was reasonably accurate...must've been a Saturday edition (fewer people read the Saturday ediion).

At any rate, right up to March of 2003, Saddam's own Generals believed that Iraq had stockpiles of WMDs. That explains why the U.S., the British, the Germans, Italians, the UN, the Czechs, etc., all believed Saddam's regime had WMDs.

Saddam Hussein actively encouraged that belief, with a strategy called "deterrence by doubt."

Of course, after 9/11 the U.S. and England wouldn't/couldn't accept ANY doubt and when Hussein's regime refused to cooperate fully with UN weapons inspectors - the nation had to be invaded.

I guess you COULD say "lies" led to the invasion of Iraq, but they were Saddam Hussein's lies, not G W Bush's or Tony Blair's.


You're now claiming that Iraqi oil removed from the market has raised the world price of oil?

Is that a new tact on your part?

I believe it is!

But where are you geting that information from???

The fact is that, Iraq hasn't decreased the amount of oil it delivers to market, in fact, current Iraqi oil output is HIGHER than the pre-2003, pre-invasion levels.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7144774.stm

"Iraqi oil production is above the levels seen before the US-led invasion of the country in 2003, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA)."

So THAT portion of your post is inaccurate. Oil prices have risen DESPITE the FACT that MORE oil/MORE supply has hit the market, but that rising supply has been swamped by even higher/rising demand - mostly from India and China.

You are correct that "there is plenty of oil." You are also right that some of the current "alternative energy projects" have had some extremely deleterious effects on this economy, but again, it's NOT ADM, it's the use of corn-based ethanol that has risen the price of so many other food stuffs for growers, producers, etc.

As far as all that oil goes, there's both good news and bad, on that front. Unfortunately, for us, most of the new sources of oil are not nearly as pure or as easy to access as Mideast "sweet crude."

The good news on the oil front is that Canada and the U.S. have some of the world's largest oil reserves in oil sands and shale oil, not to mention our many offshore (ANWAR & the Gulf of Mexico) deposits that Liberals have been blocking access to for decades.

Canada has more oil reserves in oil sands than all of Saudi Arabia has...and so long as oil stays above $80/barrell, it is practical to invest in the technologies to bring that oil to market.

The U.S. also has huge reserves in shale oil and oil sands, but here again "environmental shills" acting as corporate stooges have been attempting to not only block access, but have tried to stymie attempts to even catalog those deposits in America.

You have a selective "Corporate outrage" BH, based mostly, it appears, on ignorance (the kind of ignorance that would claim that the lack of Iraqi oil coming to market is responsible for part of the rise in the price of oil, when Iraq is pumping MORE oil than it did pre-invasion)...Al Gore is a real "oil man."

His family is heavilly invested in Occidental Petroleum. As VP, he arranged the sale of the Navy's Oil Reserves at Elk Hills, CA sold to....Occidental Petroleum on the cheap.

GW Bush has made some ajor errors, including the current heavy investment in corn-based ethanol, which is impacting food prices very negatively.

We'll be IMPORTING wheat for the first time this coming year and grain prices are so expensive that many cattle ranchers are selling their stock early, which many analysts claim portends a steep rise in beef prices later this year and onward.

The use of corn-based ethanol has also made the summer blends of gasoline even more expensive, as some of those are ethanol-based additives.

But believing that Iraq was invaded to keep Iraqi oil from getting o market, in order to raise the price of oil, is as crazy an idea as the one that went, "Big Energy companies have bought up the patents to a car that would run on water, so that we keep needing the oil that makes them rich."

IF there were ever a car engine that could be fueled with pure water instead of gasoline...not a "fuel cell" battery that has to be charged, but an actual engine that ran on water instead of gasoline, then car makers in other countries would've found that blueprint, perhaps contracted with the actual inventor and tweaked it enough to avoid the looser internatioanl copyright laws and would've been marketing them for decades.

The people MOST responsible for the rising price of energy, by tirelessly working to limit the supply of oil coming to market, are the pseudo-environmentalists.

Why else would Al Gore (a true "oilman") whose family owes its wealth to its major stake in Occidental Petroleum be down with a group and an ideolgy that limits the oil coming to market and raises the price of oil???

You see the wrong people as villains.

So it isn't the speculators who're responsible for at least $20-$30 of the per barrel price? And it's not the increased costs (i.e., insurance) associated with greater shipping risks resulting from a more destabilized region? And it isn't China and India's increased demand for oil (higher demand usually equals higher prices)? And it isn't our own insatiable thirst for the stuff? And it isn't OPEC deciding to keep output as is?
It's all on the back of pseudo-environmentalists who somehow have managed to cow ExxonMobil and the Bush Administration into limiting the supply of oil coming into the US.

Fred, it seems you didn't read my post.

I said INCREASED DEMAND (mainly from CHINA & INDIA) amidst an INCREASING (but not fast enough) SUPPLY is MOST responsible for the rise in the price of oil over tha past few years.

My exact quote on that was, "Oil prices have risen DESPITE the FACT that MORE oil/MORE supply has hit the market, but that rising supply has been swamped by even higher/rising demand - mostly from India and China."

I've many times mentioned the impact of commodity speculators....oil futures speculators are key in pegging the price of oil.

BUT, and I believe you CANNOT possibly disagree, that the so-called environmentalists have played a major part in the shrinking of the world's supply of oil by lobbying againt drilling in oil-rich ANWAR, the Gulf of Mexico and now lobby against even cataloging our oil shale and oil sands inventories.

THAT agenda is certainly a "radical" one, and it's one that virtually guarantees a higher price for oil, which is very, VERY GOOD for the huge energy conglomerates.

In my view, in the absence of evidence (I can't find any) to the contrary, I don't see any reason to worry about any negative "environmental impact," or more importantly, any real adverse human health effects from more domestic oil drilling and refining.

It's for that very reason, that I believe that most of the contemporary environmentalists are actually corporate stooges, whose lobbying efforts are designed to raise the price of oil, but cutting the available supply.

The idea that the invasion of iraq cut world oil supplies, by keeping Iraq's oil from the market is wrong! As the BBC article above attests; "Iraqi oil production is above the levels seen before the US-led invasion of the country in 2003, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA)."

I've never insinuated that incredibly INCREASED DEMAND (mainly from India and China) that swamped an INCREASED world SUPPLY was NOT the primary reason for the major spike in oil prices....in fact, I've long noted that was the primary cause.

I've also noted, on many occasions, the critical role that commodity investors and speculators play in the rising price of oil.

Ironically enough, and not to make too much of this, but in EVERY case, BH has vehemently disagreed that those WERE the primary causes behind the rising price of oil....and (amazingly enough) you never had my back.

Now that I mention the insidious role that environmentalists (wittingly or not) also play in the rising price of oil, you respond as though I've never mentioned (I DID right HERE) the role of India's and China's huge demand AND the role commodity (oil) investors & speculators play in that rise.

Sorry, but that just seems like very selective outrage, perhaps even rigged outrage, given that I have often mentioned the role increased global demand, the role of commodity investors/speculators and the ironic result of the lobbying efforts of so-called "environmentalists," have all played in the rising price of oil.

Oh, you mean the environmentalists who have tried in vain for decades to get fuel economy standards raise, against fierce resistence from idiots like you? You mean environmentalists who have pushed for mass transportation, again resisted by idiots like you. You mean the environmentalists who tried in every way, FOR DECADES ON END, to try and limit our dependence on oil, but were fought bitterly by fucking idiots LIKE YOU!

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAA!

God you're delusional.

Yes Barely, the "environmentalists" who've argued AGAINST clean drilling in ANWAR and along America's coastline and kept new, much needed oil refineries from being built within the continental United States, as ALL those things have wittingly (if they are indeed "Corporate stooges") or unwittingly (if they're simply brain dead) DECREASED the supply of oil coming to the world market, and thereby INCREASING the value/PRICE of that oil.

Why do I have to simplify things to the power of ten to get nimrods like yourself to understand the basic mechanism at work?

Perhaps David Mamet is right, as he proclaimed recently, "I'm no longer a brain-dead Liberal," while lauding Thomas Sowell as "America's best contemporary philosopher," thereby implying that "all Liberals are brain-dead." It certainly would explain a lot.

The scary thing to people such as myself, is the chilling realization that there are tens of thousands, probably hundreds of thosands of people just as pathetically and mind-numbingly dumb as yourself, VOTING on a combination of emotion and misinformation.

That's a good argument in favor of poll tests.

Dumbass, you know that ANWAR, even if they drilled it dry, wouldn't make one bit of difference. That is just another distraction argument.

The environmentalists were right, for DECADES, while idiots like you were wrong, and kept us dependent on Islamofascist oil.

This entire mess was cause by idiots like YOU, not by environmentalists, who were RIGHT ALL ALONG.

Well, we can ANWAR to the list of things you THINK you know about, but aren't so....it would indeed make quite a bit of a difference.

So ANWAR is added to RICO, H-1Bs, the Carter years, the Reagan years....

Dumbass, we could drain ANWAR dry and leave it covered in spills, pollution, and toxic waste, but we would just burn it all up in a few months. In the long run, it wouldn't make a damn bit of difference, except for the permanent ecological damage.

It is only the asshole Big Oil companies that are desperate to get at it because they can make even more obscene profits on domestic sources.

Once again, there is JMK cheerleading for corporate profit that only benefit a few assholes like Chimp. Just another example of his hatred of America.

Even though it'd strain the patience of a Saint to keep on explaining very simple things like this, I really want you (for your own good, of course) to understand how such things work.

We DON'T know how much oil is in ANWAR....that's a fact that ANY reputable petroleum engineer would tell you. Current estimates are just that "estimates."

Those in favor of drilling say that there is 30 years-worth of Saudi imports of oil available, and point to the fact that in 1996 the North Slope oil fields produced about 1.5 million barrels of oil per day, or approximately 25 percent of the U.S. domestic production, while opponents say that the ANWR will supply less than 3% of US annual oil use.

If my backyard could produce just 2,000 barrel of oil a day (0.000002% 0f America's domestic needs), I would indeed be guilty of "needlessly keeping oil off the world market and conspiring to raise the global price of oil," even though that piddling amount of oil would barely impact the world price of oil.

That is so, because (1) any amount of a given commodity withdrawn from the global market will reduce the supply and put an upward pressure on the price of that commodity (which is exactly what the so-called "environmentalist movement" is doing) and (2) I say "needleesly" as current drilling technology is so clean that it would allow a person to live within 100 yards of an oil drilling platform without any appreciable long term health effects.

And I realize you have a very hard time understanding such things, but increasing the SUPPLY of oil, REDUCES the world price of oil and that would result in lower "Corporate profits."

Again, I'm offering this in the trust that your problem is rooted in ignorance (a lack of facts, or access to the facts), NOT in stupidity (the inability or unwillingness to comprehend the facts).

Has that helped?

JMK: "current drilling technology is so clean that it would allow a person to live within 100 yards of an oil drilling platform without any appreciable long term health effects."

My brother is a petroelum engineer and wonders where you got that from?

He admits that the new drilling equipment is incredibly clean and a huge improvement even over the equipment used just twenty years ago, but he wouldn't advise living that close to any such activity.

He said, you must have gotten that from and Exxon-Mobil source, as they're prone to making flambiyant statements, others won't.

My brother works for Chevron.

He does agree though that (1) the current drilling equipment is "very, very clean" and (2) that withholding any oil from the market would place an upward pressure (even if, as in your example, only a small one) on the world market price for oil.

WoW J D! My neighbor, Phil DOES work for Exxon-Mobil!

I think he said that to stress just how clean today’s drilling equipment really is.

I AM glad your brother signs onto the “economic gravity” known as Supply & Demand.

The other day, a friend of mine who’s a much bigger and better investor than I am (I’m learning and trying to work on that), was explaining why “oil speculation” (buying oil futures) is not “immoral” to his seventy-something Mom, who, mistakenly or not, thinks I’m one of his nicest friends.

He was explaining that merely buying oil futures DOES NOT make the price of oil rise, those investors are merely betting that it will go higher, just as others who “short” those futures are betting that the price will fall.

She’d thought that OPEC set the world price and recently read that oil speculation was responsible for some of the increase, so she wasn’t going to be easily convinced that it was wrong to bet on something happening that would hurt other Americans.

My friend then said, “Well, JMK owns oil futures too!”

His Mom looked over at me sternly, shaking her head. I felt I had to backtrack with a flippant, “Well, I don’t own nearly as many as Roger does, they’re expensive ($5,000 apiece), BUT Roger’s right! Buying a commodity future or “shorting” a commodity future is like betting, based on available information, what’s going to happen to the price of that commodity. For the past six or seven years I’ve bought unleaded gasoline futures in mid to late February, planning to sell them by mid-May. It’s been a very effective bet, based largely on the fact that March 1st tends to witness a price surge in gasoline prices as the dreaded “Summer blends” are mandated.”

I added, “Some people BUY futures at that time of year and SHORT the same futures later in the year. They call that 'timing the cycles.' "

“None of that controls the price of that commodity, although more investors looking to “park money” in oil or gold, or whatever CAN result in higher prices, based on “what the market will bear.”

"What really impacts the price of ANY given commodity is the global supply and demand of that commodity. Oil prices have risen over the past decade as India and China (with nearly half the earth’s population combined) have been rapidly industrializing and their demand for oil has skyrocketed."

I think...and hope she believes that, as it is the unvarnished truth. It's just that "OPEC and oil speculators ahve raised the price of oil" is a much more delectable soundbite.

JMK, just stop, please. There is no "supply and demand" going on. There is plenty of oil. You aren't going to pump any oil from your backyard, because even in the most Republican areas it is illegal. It is illegal because our government exists now only to protect corporate profit.

Oilmen Bush and Cheney got in, and now his terrorist supporting Saudi friends and Big Oil are raking in hundreds of billions.

If you are anyone else tries to stop it, you will end up like Saddam Hussein. Bush and the CIA even tried to kill Chavez. Plenty of other petty dictators are free to murder away. Bush only cares about the oil -- the money.

Get off your stupid "supply and demand" bullshit. I've destroyed your every attempt to invoke it like some sacred truth. If you want to see real "supply and demand" just look at holiday spending and housing. You see, when the middle class doesn't have any money left to donate to the rich, they can't buy anything.

Bush, to the cheers of idiots like you, crashed the economy.

When you say things like "India and China haven't driven up demand," (that's "between the lines" of what you posted) you prove that you're stupid (not able to comprehend) and not merely ignorant (not having acess) to the facts.

Since 2000, largely due to the increased thirsts of India and China (ONE THIRD of the earth's population) the world DEMAND for oil has more than quadrupled, while the SUPPLY has not even doubled.

Do we really NEED that oil from ANWR?

Yes, absolutely.

Do we really NEED to drill right off the coastline of America?

Again, absolutely YES!!!

Are we going to do it?

Ultimately we'll be forced to, no matter what.

That's NOT going to stop China from becoming the world's greatest economy and India taking 2nd place....but that's not a bad thing either.

We aren't going to be all that negatively effected by falling from being the world's "top dog" economy.

In fact, as those areas become more affluent, OUR OWN labor will become cheap by comparison!

At some point, WE'RE going to become China and India's dumping ground, for the factories and heavilly polluting industries that THEY no longer want. We are an industrious people who LOVE to work, and that's somethignthe Indians and Chinese are going to like, as they outpace us economically.

Again, ultimately that's NOT going to be a bad thing at all....for Americans that is.

Good job, JMK. Thanks for proving that your "Conservative" view of the future is nothing short of treason. Your Corporatist masters want you to get used to the idea that America is on the decline for completely natural reasons, not because multinational corporations no longer need America and the uber-rich are now "citizens of the world" no longer tied to American interests, only Corporate Profit.

There is plenty of oil. There is no shortage of oil. There is no supply and demand at work here.

I give you the facts and once again, you DON'T understand them.

America is NOT on "the decline."

China should've already been the world's largest economy, India its second largest....by my calculations, China SHOULD HAVE (if they'd embarked on the more market-based economic model they're now on, earlier in their existence) been the world's largest economy somewhere around 1939 and India SHOULD have (again, if they'd gone to a more market-based economic model earlier) moved into second place around 1942 0r 1943.

Their ascedence is NOT predicated on America's decline. In fact, by 2025, by which time, barring some cataclysmic action, China and India will have become established as the world's #1 and #2 economies, the American economy will have grown by nearly a thrid, some say even fifty percent from where it is today!

Might I suggest that you stick to your more amusing political rants championing Jimmy Carter and excoriating the failures of Ronald Reagan, rather than continuing to highlight your incredible ignorance of economic matters?

Seriously, your economic ignorance is more stultifying even than your inability to read a basic chart;

Remember the time you posted that chart that showed H-1B Visas exploding from under 50,000 in 1993 to just over 1 million by 2001...and used that to blame G W Bush for the explosion in H-1Bs?....priceless.

Or the time you posted the article on RICO that clearly stated exactly what I said and what you argued against - that RICO DOES NOT allow for the confiscation of assets prior to conviction?...too funny, I mean you just can't make that kind of stuff up!

At any rate, Barely PLEASE stick to OPINIONS, you don't have much of a track record with facts.

"There is no shortage of oil.There is no supply and demand at work here." (Barely Hanging)


Look, you 've already proven that your basic problem is stupidity (an inability to comprehend and process the facts) and not mere ignorance (a lack of access to knoweledge, or the facts).

There IS indeed a "finite amount of oil" able to be processed (refined) and brought to market.

The amount of oil being brought to market has increased dramatically over the past decade, but that increased SUPPLY has been dwarfed by the increased DEMAND - most of that coming from both India and China, which have since moved to more market-based economica models and are rapidly developping.

The question dolts like yourself (OK, slightly smarter, more inquisitive dolts), often ask of folks such as myself is, "Oh yeah, well since you admit that oil and other resources are finite, then you must also admit that wealth is finite and not the "expanding pie" you claim it is, making socialism (the equitable redistribution of all the accumulated wealth) a moral mandate, right?"

So, I'll answer that now, in order to preempt any such insipid questions, though I doubt you'd have even thought of asking that.

The answer is simply that; Human wealth is infinite BECAUSE human potential, human thought and human action are infinite. Man has the ability to think of new ways around existing problems and often "necessity is the mother of such innovation." Since human potential is unlimited, so is the wealth that potential creates."

Barely, some "Animal House" advice may be in order for you, at this point, "Fat, drunk and STUPID is no way to go through life son."

Sober up, wise up and think things through a little.

It is not a supply and demand issue, and you well know it.

Bush and his oil buddies are CONTROLLING supply. That isn't capitalism or a free market, stupid ass.

"It is not a supply and demand issue, and you well know it.

"Bush and his oil buddies are CONTROLLING supply." (Barely Hanging)


WoW! That's a stupidity that borders on clinical insanity.

The Bush folks DON'T control ANY foreign oil reserves. In fact, they've successfully gotten the Saudis to keep pumping out their normal high volume output, over the protests of their fellow OPEC members.

Of course, we in America, don't get much oil from Saudi Arabia (but it DOES add to the global SUPPLY)....you do know that, don't you?!

We get most of our oil from Canada, followed by Mexico.

Bush (who is NOT and never has been an "oilman") has fought, along with those Republicans you seem to hate, to INCREASE the global SUPPLY of oil by drilling off America's shores and in ANWR....but they've been blocked by Democrats led by AlGore (who actuall IS an "oilman") and his band of dipshit enviro-nazis.

So, YES, the SUPPLY of oil has indeed been suppressed, but there's where you break with reality (yet again), as those who are suppressing the SUPPLY are those evil and mostly anti-American people who oppose drilling along our coastline (I say, "who'd really notice?) and in ANWR (again, who goes up there???....that area only gets about 65 days of daylight a year!).

It would seem that those enviro-nazis "hate our freedoms," along with our oil-consuming lifestyles!!!

Bottomline the world NEEDS our oil output.

Even if there were some real health and environmental concerns related to such activities the WORLD NEEDS THAT OIL, so we have no business being so selfish about such things.

But of course, there are no real (at least any documented) health concerns related to drilling off America's coastlines, refining oil sands and shale oil that exist in huge deposits out West, etc. ...NONE.

In short even if there were some legitimate health concerns over domestic oil recovery, our NEED for oil would outweigh those concerns....BUT there are no such concerns, so there's absolutely really NO REASON at all for us not to, in effect, pitch in and do our part to increase the global SUPPLY of oil, by becoming more oil independent!

The guys doing what you blame Bush for are AlGore and the Democrats.

After reading the back and forth arguments set forth in this column, it saddens me to think that their are so many racist that are preventing America from being a great country. Hanging on to the hatred toward Americans who happen not to be white men is sinful and counterproductive.
Rev Wright is not running for office and is not making any laws.
This country is repleat with white men who have practically brought this country to its' knees with their greed and absolute power. This is the reason we are hated around the world.
This election has brought out the true racist attitudes of the MSM on TV and in print.
No one has spewed more unAmerican hatred that white supremist, conservative talk shows and the like, then blame it on minorities.
I truly believe that white men, especially poor ones are so afraid of loosing their non-meritorious positions and that this country is slipping from their control.
Do the Christian thing and treat others as you would like to be treated.

After reading the back and forth arguments set forth in this column, it saddens me to think that their are so many racist that are preventing America from being a great country. Hanging on to the hatred toward Americans who happen not to be white men is sinful and counterproductive.
Rev Wright is not running for office and is not making any laws.
This country is repleat with white men who have practically brought this country to its' knees with their greed and absolute power. This is the reason we are hated around the world.
This election has brought out the true racist attitudes of the MSM on TV and in print.
No one has spewed more unAmerican hatred that white supremist, conservative talk shows and the like, then blame it on minorities.
I truly believe that white men, especially poor ones are so afraid of loosing their non-meritorious positions and that this country is slipping from their control.
Do the Christian thing and treat others as you would like to be treated.