Don't Drink and Punditize

You might forget whether or not there were any oil spills during recent hurricanes. Trent Lott became the latest in a long line of ignorant or lying, you guessed it, republican politicians, to claim there were no oil spills in the gulf during hurricanes Rita and Katrina. Here, here, and here. If you follow the links in the posts, the evidence seems quite overwhelming that they are wrong.

Monday Reading

Caught on tape, an offer of meetings with key bush admin people in exchange for cash for the Bush Library. It will be interesting to see if we get a peek at the logbooks.


Relief is in sight! Unveiling a bold plan to deal with high gas prices, George Bush has removed the ban on offshore drilling, and urged more drilling in Alaska, ANWR. Since the offshore ban by executive order #42 put in place is gone now, the only thing standing between the consumer and the offshore oil is Democrats not removing the congressional ban. Bush blames the problem on democrats in congress, for not having already removed the ban, one that has been in place for decades. Bush says it must be done now because of high gas prices. Don't believe the people who tell you there is no short term fix. Seeing as it would take close to a decade to get significant output, the time to have overturned it if there was one was close to a decade ago, or sometime during that 12 years republicans had congress. I think Bush was in the White House for a few of those years, maybe. As Bush said, there's a chance there could be as much as 10 years of oil production offshore. Add that up with the shale and the Alaskan oil he mentions and we can go another 30 or 40 years till we get back to where we are today importing oil, at which time the Middle Eastern reserves will have a bit less after a few decades of the rest of the world's consumption especially growing India and China. Nothing says presidential leadership like punting the ball a few decades down.


Obama writes intelligently for the NYT about Iraq. McCain is showing signs of Alzheimer's, I gave them some funny names.
#1-Czech yourself
#2-It's all muslim to me
#3-Green Bay Packers
#4-Disgraceful ignorance
#5-Phil McCracken
#6-Not a geography major(Or an Econ major)
#7-Cease paying attention
#8-General Confuse Us?

The ICC has for the first time charged a sitting leader with war crimes, Sudan's President. Will Bush get a turn in the future? One retired General thinks so.

No shame

Yes, we all have noticed that gas prices are high. Not one to see a golden opportunity wasted, president bush has 'demanded' that Congress lift the 27 year old ban on offshore drilling. It's been a while since heyday of bush's demands to Congress. Back in the day it was a sure fire way to get Congress to pass anything bush demanded of it. Invade someone? Done. Broad new spying powers? Done. Tax breaks for your buddies? Done. Legalize torture and include retroactive immunity for war crimes to the executive branch? Done.

If the democrats currently in the majority there had half a brain they would realize that those times (should) have passed, the public mood has changed. The president is no longer a valiant crusader keeping us safe from the evil Islamist minions. No longer a hero, bush is now a laughingstock at best.

Under the guise of helping ease the high fuel prices, bush is trying to use his bully pulpit one more time to demonstrate his contempt and disdain for Americans, using a real problem, high energy prices, to push through a fake solution to line his friends and supporter's pockets at the expense of the country's coastlines. Allowing offshore drilling will not help with gas prices. Any oil from this drilling is a decade away from getting to the world market, and isn't enough to make much of a dent anyway, even if we did have the refining capacity for it and a way to keep it in domestic use only.

The whole idea is simply a shameless ploy to trick the country into a non-solution designed to enrich his old oil buddies and his VP's company. Is it January yet?

Sharing is caring and the surge

A cult of personality has been built around General Patraus where both the both pundits and politicians can't help but fall over themselves to show they can suck his dick better than the rest and speak of him as a one-man phenom who will singlehandedly bring those 'raqi's into line. The standards seem to be so revised now that instead of leaving a country that is stable, with a democratic government, and an ally in the war on terror as Bush once said, a moderate drop in the level of violence is considered an oustanding success story.

The moderator at the debate yesterday, Charlie Gibson, argumentatively challenged (at about 5:00 below) the democrats at the debate to admit the surge is working and they should have supported it. He even talked of the de-baathification as if it were the best thing in the world instead of what mainly created the insurgency. They managed to keep their composure and bring the focus back to the big picture for the most part, or blame everything on the Iraqis like Hillary did.
ut while talking about that question the oil sharing law, which you may remember as one of the benchmarks congress made a few years ago for Bush to report on regarding progress in Iraq, was brought up a few times. Almost from the start of the war, this one particular benchmark was emphasized often as one of the most important. Though not much was ever said about the details in the mainstream media, which is surprising given the prominence of it in the debate here. It shouldn't be that hard, quite a few countries around the world use revenue from oil or other natural resources either to fund public projects or give it directly to their people as cash (The US is not one of them). The Iraqi oil law has yet to get passed. The US has had a heavy hand in shaping what that law might be, mainly PSA's, which most Iraqi's probably don't want since foreign companies would get most of the money.