I find media fascination with blame offensive and counter productive. In this as in most cases there is so much blame that few of us can escape a share.

Everything has risks and the way to minimize risks is to decide whether or not a worst case scenario like this one, has a reasonable likelihood of being contained. Government in my opinion, is remiss in its responsibilities if it takes on such a high risk with no forethought as to what might happen.

So if government is to blame we can blame both this administration and the last but I blame this administration more because it happened on their watch. What bothers me the most is the apparent lip service from Obama. When is he going to take off his campaign hat and simply speak the truth?

My take on the news conference was, he says he takes full responsibility but when asked why he did not regulate better he tries to blame the Bush administration for their unregulated mindset culture that he has been working hard to change but it will take time. The best follow-up question was from the NY times reporter who said to the affect, so if that is the case do you regret recently pushing for more offshore drilling? Obama’s answer had something to do with, well we need to get off of foreign oil.

In other words, to sum it up. Obama was no different then Bush with regulating properly risky deep sea drilling and he should admit the facts instead of always looking to throw out the best sales pitch, at the expense of others.

What about the September 2009 letter from Obama's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration accusing Interior's Minerals Management Service of understating the "risk and impacts" of a major oil spill? When you get a blowout 15 months into your administration, and your own Interior Department had given BP a "categorical" environmental exemption in April 2009, the buck stops.

YES president Obama is to blame, after all he is the MOTHER LAKSHMI of the western world. Surely with his 8 hands and 20 fingers and divinity he was more than capable of being on this like white rice on a paper plate and fixing this in less than 3 weeks.

We should issue diving gear to all the candidates in the last two elections who used the "drill, baby. drill" slogan to tr to get elected. Perhaps they can stop the leak in the Gulf of Mexico. Sen. McCain, where are you?

This administration cannot be the blame as this technology existied before this administration. BP is to blame for hording their profits and not preparing for this type incident. There are some agents of goverment that are aslo to blame but not obama. If you need to blame a president you blame Clinton, and both bushes for allowing the relaxation of regulation.

The republicans lost, but no on has seen what they have done since...

1. Bush was blamed for our downfall
Solution . Create a blame game and sharpen the guillotine to pressure Obama into failure (off with his head) He is not God...and if he was. I know the spill would have been handled BEFORE it happened

2. How did Obama win
Solution. Since the Spanish community is one of the largest..let's deport them so they will not have political power to go against republicans and start over with the general population putting fear into the Hispanic community

3. Poor people did not have healthcare before Obama because of republicans
Solution. I don't think he is smart enough to handle a BOYCOTT

He Was Supposed to Be Competent:

The spill is a disaster for the president and his political philosophy.

I don't see how the president's position and popularity can survive the oil spill. This is his third political disaster in his first 18 months in office. And they were all, as they say, unforced errors, meaning they were shaped by the president's political judgment and instincts.

There was the tearing and unnecessary war over his health-care proposal and its cost. There was his day-to-day indifference to the views and hopes of the majority of voters regarding illegal immigration. And now the past almost 40 days of dodging and dithering in the face of an environmental calamity. I don't see how you politically survive this.

The president, in my view, continues to govern in a way that suggests he is chronically detached from the central and immediate concerns of his countrymen. This is a terrible thing to see in a political figure, and a startling thing in one who won so handily and shrewdly in 2008. But he has not, almost from the day he was inaugurated, been in sync with the center. The heart of the country is thinking each day about A, B and C, and he is thinking about X, Y and Z. They're in one reality, he's in another.

The American people have spent at least two years worrying that high government spending would, in the end, undo the republic. They saw the dollars gushing night and day, and worried that while everything looked the same on the surface, our position was eroding. They have worried about a border that is in some places functionally and of course illegally open, that it too is gushing night and day with problems that states, cities and towns there cannot solve.

And now we have a videotape metaphor for all the public's fears: that clip we see every day, on every news show, of the well gushing black oil into the Gulf of Mexico and toward our shore. You actually don't get deadlier as a metaphor for the moment than that, the monster that lives deep beneath the sea.

In his news conference Thursday, President Obama made his position no better. He attempted to act out passionate engagement through the use of heightened language—"catastrophe," etc.—but repeatedly took refuge in factual minutiae. His staff probably thought this demonstrated his command of even the most obscure facts. Instead it made him seem like someone who won't see the big picture. The unspoken mantra in his head must have been, "I will not be defensive, I will not give them a resentful soundbite." But his strategic problem was that he'd already lost the battle. If the well was plugged tomorrow, the damage will already have been done.

The original sin in my view is that as soon as the oil rig accident happened the president tried to maintain distance between the gusher and his presidency. He wanted people to associate the disaster with BP and not him. When your most creative thoughts in the middle of a disaster revolve around protecting your position, you are summoning trouble. When you try to dodge ownership of a problem, when you try to hide from responsibility, life will give you ownership and responsibility the hard way. In any case, the strategy was always a little mad. Americans would never think an international petroleum company based in London would worry as much about American shores and wildlife as, say, Americans would. They were never going to blame only BP, or trust it.

I wonder if the president knows what a disaster this is not only for him but for his political assumptions. His philosophy is that it is appropriate for the federal government to occupy a more burly, significant and powerful place in America—confronting its problems of need, injustice, inequality. But in a way, and inevitably, this is always boiled down to a promise: "Trust us here in Washington, we will prove worthy of your trust." Then the oil spill came and government could not do the job, could not meet the need, in fact seemed faraway and incapable: "We pay so much for the government and it can't cap an undersea oil well!"

This is what happened with Katrina, and Katrina did at least two big things politically. The first was draw together everything people didn't like about the Bush administration, everything it didn't like about two wars and high spending and illegal immigration, and brought those strands into a heavy knot that just sat there, soggily, and came to symbolize Bushism. The second was illustrate that even though the federal government in our time has continually taken on new missions and responsibilities, the more it took on, the less it seemed capable of performing even its most essential jobs. Conservatives got this point—they know it without being told—but liberals and progressives did not. They thought Katrina was the result only of George W. Bush's incompetence and conservatives' failure to "believe in government." But Mr. Obama was supposed to be competent.

Remarkable too is the way both BP and the government, 40 days in, continue to act shocked, shocked that an accident like this could have happened. If you're drilling for oil in the deep sea, of course something terrible can happen, so you have a plan on what to do when it does.

How could there not have been a plan? How could it all be so ad hoc, so inadequate, so embarrassing? We're plugging it now with tires, mud and golf balls?

What continues to fascinate me is Mr. Obama's standing with Democrats. They don't love him. Half the party voted for Hillary Clinton, and her people have never fully reconciled themselves to him. But he is what they have. They are invested in him. In time—after the 2010 elections go badly—they are going to start to peel off. The political operative James Carville, the most vocal and influential of the president's Gulf critics, signaled to Democrats this week that they can start to peel off. He did it through the passion of his denunciations.

The disaster in the Gulf may well spell the political end of the president and his administration, and that is no cause for joy. It's not good to have a president in this position—weakened, polarizing and lacking broad public support—less than halfway through his term. That it is his fault is no comfort. It is not good for the stability of the world, or its safety, that the leader of "the indispensable nation" be so weakened. I never until the past 10 years understood the almost moral imperative that an American president maintain a high standing in the eyes of his countrymen.

Mr. Obama himself, when running for president, made much of Bush administration distraction and detachment during Katrina. Now the Republican Party will, understandably, go to town on Mr. Obama's having gone before this week only once to the gulf, and the fund-raiser in San Francisco that seemed to take precedence, and the EPA chief who decided to cancel a New York fund-raiser only after the press reported that she planned to attend.

But Republicans should beware, and even mute their mischief. We're in the middle of an actual disaster. When they win back the presidency, they'll probably get the big California earthquake. And they'll probably blow it. Because, ironically enough, of a hard core of truth within their own philosophy: When you ask a government far away in Washington to handle everything, it will handle nothing well.

Gulf Spill, Immigration, Markets Drag Obama Down in Polls:

Friday, 28

President Obama's job-approval rating just hit an all-time low. And there's a pattern behind the trifecta of issues that are driving the drop — the oil spill, the Arizona immigration-policing law, and the fallout from the Greek crisis.


After four months of hovering between a low of 46 percent approval and a high of 49 percent, Obama just fell to 42 percent in the daily Rasmussen polls. What's hurting him, and why?

The president originally seized on each of these issues to make populist political hay. But then the problem wouldn't go away — and voters began to realize that Obama is, in fact, the president and (logically enough) started giving him much of the blame.

When oil started to spill into the Gulf of Mexico, Obama seized the opportunity for a partisan attack — blaming Republicans who had chanted, "Drill, baby, drill," the whole summer of 2008 as high gasoline prices gave John McCain's candidacy new steam.

Even though the president had himself, with lamentable timing, moved to allow expanded drilling a few weeks before the rig exploded, the impetus for drilling was clearly seen as Republican, and the disaster hurt Republican ratings. Obama couldn't resist also piling populist scorn on British Petroleum, lambasting big oil for the spill.

But then the leak didn't stop — and the slick kept heading to shore. Now the public is wondering why it's seen no presidential action to stop the spill.

As the oil seeps onto the beaches of Florida, Louisiana, Alabama, and Mississippi, it also seeps into Obama's poll numbers and drags them down. His press conference yesterday was a clear effort to look decisive and effective and stop the bleeding — but it came awfully late in the crisis.

As soon as Arizona passed its law authorizing cops to pick up illegal immigrants, Obama jumped on the issue, trying to use it to drive up Latino turnout for Democrats later this year. But it became clear that the majority of Americans strongly backs the law — and now he's sending 1,200 National Guard troops to the border to stop the bleeding in his polls.

Then there's the stock market.

After the crash of 2008, Obama was quick to blame banks and other big businesses for their irresponsible behavior and then to take credit for averting a global collapse in the aftermath. So when Greece exploded due to its top-heavy debt load and dragged the market below 10,000, people wondered if Obama's populist treatment of the financial markets and his big spending and borrowing were subjecting America to economic peril.

When Moody's announces that it is considering downgrading the credit rating of the United States — the richest nation, by far, on Earth — it raises understandable alarm.

Of course, Obama's polls will rise and fall in the weeks, months, and years ahead; today's 42 percent may prove a long-forgotten blip. But it's a bit like noticing the line of seaweed on the beach. The tide comes in and goes out — but the seaweed marks where it will likely return to.

Look at it this way: Obama got 52 percent of the vote in 2008 — so his 42 percent approval means that one in five of his voters has turned on him.

And it's a traumatic event for someone who voted for Obama and had stuck with him since, saying he approved of the president's policies, to finally turn and say he doesn't approve. That voter may go back to approving of his president again — but it gets easier and easier to voice disapproval.

Especially if the oil keeps spilling, the illegals keep coming — and the market keeps tanking.

The first BIG disaster happened when Obama was voted into office.
Now to stop the flow of BS,we have to elect him out

Gulf Spill, Immigration, Markets Drag Obama Down in Polls

=================

Bill F. you right wingers said the same things about Bill Clinton that he was all washed up and he was reelected in a landslide victory over Robert "Corporate" Dole.

1996

Electoral vote 379 159

"Bill F. you right wingers said the same things about Bill Clinton that he was all washed up and he was reelected in a landslide victory over Robert "Corporate" Dole."

Caspian, I'd like to weigh in on your comment.

One man does not run the country it also takes Congress and Senate. This country right now is divided and seems dysfunctional because of the policies of this administration. If the Republicans win the majority in November and that balance starts to unite us and help us to move forward in a direction the majority agrees with then Obama certainly has a chance to be re-elected.

On the other hand, if the election were held today or if this Administration as a whole were to continue with these same unpopular policies and programs, I don't see any way Obama would be re-elected. Don't forget Clinton had a Republican majority in the house in 1995 which was the first time since 1954. That would not have happened if people liked the way Clinton and the Democrats were working together but I think it helped him to be re-elected.

This country right now is divided and seems dysfunctional because of the policies of this administration

=============

Mike G. this government was always dysfunctional but thanks to the Internet the masses are learning more of what goes on.


I'm afraid "YOUR" Tea Bags are in for a rude awakening "WHEN" another corporate Bush Republican wins the White House.

The Liberals are waking up to Obama and his Wall Street administration. The liberals were thrown under the bus.

Globalism rules over all and most of these recent presidents believe in New World Order.

The Powers That Be like it when the masses are ignorant or don't believe in what they know is true.

The comparison would be like the old La Cosa Nostra was always denying that the Mafia is not real and doesn't exists.

Wall Street and Congress plays the same games except without the murder.

I guess he will be blamed for what ever goes wrong.I guess he will have to put on a diving suit,that seems to be where all the arguments are heading from those who can't deal with the fact that he is the President.

Amazing!!

What is Memorial Day?

May 31,2010


Memorial Day is a great and wonderful way to remember our patriotic heroes who sacrificed their lives to help us breathe the air of freedom. This day is observed with families and friends visiting cemeteries and memorials to pay homage to their loved and forgotten ones.

“Your silent tents of green
We deck with fragrant flowers;
Yours has the suffering been,
The memory shall be ours.”
–Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Memorial Day was first celebrated on May 30, 1868. It was observed by placing flowers on the graves of Union and Confederate soldiers during the first national celebration. Gen. James Garfield made a speech at Arlington National Cemetery, after which around 5,000 participants helped to decorate the graves of the more than 20,000 Union and Confederate soldiers who were buried there.

Three years after the Civil War ended, on May 5, 1868, the head of the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR) established Decoration Day as a time for the nation to decorate the graves of the war dead with flowers. Maj. Gen. John A. Logan declared that Decoration Day should be observed on May 30. This date was chosen because flowers would be in bloom all over the country.

The alternative name of “Memorial Day” was first used in 1882. It did not become more common until after World War II, and was not declared the official name by Federal law until 1967. On June 28, 1968, the United States Congress passed the Uniform Holidays Bill, which moved three holidays from their traditional dates to a specified Monday in order to create a convenient three-day weekend. The holidays included Washington’s Birthday, now celebrated as Presidents’ Day; Veterans Day and Memorial Day. The change moved Memorial Day from its traditional May 30 date to the last Monday in May. The law took effect at the federal level in 1971.

Red Poppies are a tradition inspired by a poem in 1915, “In Flanders Fields,” Moina Michael replied with her own poem:

We cherish too, the Poppy red
That grows on fields where valor led,
It seems to signal to the skies
That blood of heroes never dies.

Memorial Day is a day of remembrance of those who have died serving our country. I tear at the sound of “Taps” played at ceremonies on Memorial Day. “We come, not to mourn our dead soldiers, but to praise them.” –Francis A. Walker.

It is the VETERAN, not the preacher, who has given us freedom of religion.
It is the VETERAN, not the reporter, who has given us freedom of the press.
It is the VETERAN, not the poet, who has given us freedom of speech.
It is the VETERAN, not the campus organizer, who has given us freedom to assemble.
It is the VETERAN, not the lawyer, who has given us the right to a fair trial.
It is the VETERAN, not the politician, Who has given us the right to vote.

I will tear up as well. We will be with our son, Scott, at his gravesite in Bigfork, Montana in memory of his service to our country.

Have a fun, safe, and memorable Memorial Day.

God Bless America and our great United States.

Being a veteran myself,this is how it should be everyday:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6iAMiJUu5g&feature=related

The Enemy From Within:

Obama and the Democratic/Progressive left.
A must read


http://apathetic-usa.com/

The Enemy From Within: DUH!

YEAH RIGHT! YOU CONVENIENTLY FORGOT TO INCLUDE THAT THE BANKSTA'S AND THEIR SNAKE OIL ENERGY CONTINGENT WHO HAVE INCREASED THEIR HOLDINGS OF OUR NATIONS WEALTH FROM 6%GDP IN 2001- TO AN ASTOUNDING 63%GDP, AS HAS BEEN PRESENTLY ASSESSED SENT US HEADLONG INTO ALL THE FINANCIAL CRISISES THAT OUR NATION IS NOW FACING.

THAT'S 1% CONTROLLING 63% OF OUR NATIONS WEALTH, ADDED AND ABETTED BY LEGISLATIONS BY BOTH PARTIES TO IGNORE THE CORRUPTION AND SIPHON THE GUARANTEES OF SSI, AND INVESTMENT AWAY FROM THE MASSES AND TYING THE DEBTS FROM THEIR LUDICRIS "CRIMINAL" SPENDING HABITS TO THE PUBLIC LONG AFTER EXTRACTING ALL OF THE WEALTH.

IS IT ABSURD FOR THE GENERAL PUBLIC TO ASK OR DEMAND APPROPRIATE RESTITUTION RECOVERED FROM ILL GOTTEN GAINS.

-CORPORATE FRAUD ($3.4TRILLION PLUS INTEREST... AND COUNTING. THE ACTUAL FIGURES OF OUTSTANDING CREDIT DEFAULTS REMAINING ON THE BALANCE SHEETS INCURRED FROM 70-700X LEVERAGING OF ASSETS HAS NOT BEEN TABULATED- SO AS, NOT TO UPSET THE PUBLIC.
-WARS WITHOUT END ($1TRILLION PLUS INTEREST. PROJECTED TO MULTIPLY EXPEDENTUALLY AS THESE NEVER ENDING WARS CONTINUE)
-10 MILLION ILLEGALS ENTERED OUR BORDERS DURING THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION. GEE ISN'T IT AMAZING THAT THE FIGURE IS DIRECTLY IN CONJUNCTION WITH THE NUMBER OF AMERICANS DISPLACED FROM THEIR JOBS?

THE BANKSTA'S, BIG OIL, AND THE FINANCIALS USED DEFINED CRIMINAL TACTICS AND PROTECTED THEM BY LAW. IT IS THEY ALONE WHO HAVE SADDLED OUR NATION WITH THE $12.7TRILLION DOLLAR DEFICIT, NOT ACORN WHOSE WAYWARD EMPLOYEES GOT CAUGHT FOR LESS THAN A BILLION- IN TOTAL.
IT WAS THE MERGING OF SOLID INSTITUTIONS AND THEIR ASSETS WITH THE UNSUPERVISED AND UNAUDITED FREE REIGN THE BANKS ALLOWED THE FINANCIALS TO GAMBLE AWAY OUR RESOURCES OFFSHORE WHILE NOT INVESTING A SINGLE PENNY TOWARD DOMESTIC CONCERNS AND NECESSITIES-
-US PORTS
-20% NASDAQ
-DUBAI WORLD
-OIL SPECULATION ($32 OIL INFLATED TO $140 PER BARREL)
-APPROVING CRIMINAL RATE EXTORTIONS OF 30% FROM THE CREDIT CARD INDUSTRY.
-THE UNBRIDALED TRANSFER OF AMERICAN FAMILY WEALTH TO "ILLEGAL" ALIENS.

-SSI TO CHINA
-PAYMENT FOR WARS TO CHINA
-ALLIANCES WITH WORTHLESS CRIMINAL MILITARY DICTATORS WHO CAME TO POWER VIA "COUP DE ETAT" THAT WEAKENED OUR POSITIONS WITH TRUSTED ALLYS-

(MUSHAREFF, KHADAFY, OLMERT, CALDERON, PUTIN, AND CHINA'S HU). ALL OF THEM RADICAL. NONE OF THEM BELIEVE IN DEMOCRATIC VALUES. ALL OF THEM PART AND PARCEL IN THE SCAMS TO SIPHON AMERICAN WEALTH AND SECURITY.
----------------------
DISMANTLE THE FED!
DISMANTLE TWO PARTY RULERSHIP!
GET RID OF ALL NWO POLITICIANS!
DEMAND TRANSPARENCY OF ALL FINANCIAL HOLDINGDS AND CAUCUS ALLEGIANCES FROM ALL INCOMING ELECTED OFFICIALS!

REAL BANKING & FINANCIAL REGULATIONS MUST INCLUDE "GLOBAL ENTITIES" "SWFS" AND "FOREIGN TREASURIES".
--------------------------
WE STAND TO LOSE 1/3 OF OUR NATURAL FOOD SUPPLY FOR DECADES IN THIS GULF CALAMITY.
WE ARE NOT THE WORLDS DOORMATS!
OBAMA MUST NATIONALIZE ALL BP ASSETS FOR "THE PEOPLE" OF THIS COUNTRY- NOW! WITHOUT DELAY.
WHEN ALL IS SETTLED WITH SATISFACTORY JUDGMENTS AND ALL DAMAGES ARE PAID IN FULL- THEN BP CAN RESUME ITS CONTROL WISER AND HELD WHOLLY ACCOUNTABLE.

NATIONAL HEALTHCARE WITH A PUBLIC OPTION SHOULD HAVE BEEN PAID IN FULL- BY THE CORPORATE SLIME WHO ALLOWED THE SCHEMERS TO BANKRUPT US. ...BUT NOOOOOOO. THE GAME WAS TO EXTRACT AMERICAN FAMILY WEALTH AND RE-POSITION IT ELSEWHERE. WISE UP!

OBAMA MUST "freeze" then NATIONALIZE ALL BP ASSETS FOR "THE PEOPLE" OF THIS COUNTRY- NOW! WITHOUT DELAY.

Nuttin'yahoo has blown any strategic advantage Israel had with the US alliance with his latest indiscretionary misadventure that defies sensible logic or comprehension.
Now that they have offended Turkey, Israel has no Arab friend or buffer left.
Boy! Did I see this coming but, nothing this bad.

Nuttin'yahoo has blown any strategic advantage Israel had with the US alliance with his latest indiscretionary misadventure that defies sensible logic or comprehension.
Now that they have offended Turkey, Israel has no Arab friend or buffer left.
Boy! Did I see this coming but, nothing this bad.

Look for an agreed settlement before the years end.

BLESSED ARE THE MEEK FOR THEY SHALL INHERIT THE EARTH.

"The Enemy From Within: DUH!"

Since no names went with the label in my post it was good of you, for a change, to step forward and be counted, or was that good old fashion guilt or maybe paranoia taking over?

"OBAMA MUST NATIONALIZE ALL BP ASSETS FOR "THE PEOPLE" OF THIS COUNTRY"


Nationalize a British company genius?
Why not kidnap the Queen and hold her for ransom, while we are at it? Besides, this is Obama's Katrina, don't pass the buck solely to BP. Obama has made Bush's handling of Katrina look like Bush was Einstein. Obama and the left are utilizing this unfortunate
calamity, playing politics with off shore drilling that will cost hundreds of thousands of jobs, just to score points with the left. That is all Obama is concerned about. If it weren't for the environmental leftist kooks in this government in the first place the oil companies wouldn't have had to drill in mile deep water where the conditions are such......They are not allowed to drill in shallower water closer to the coast where the technology was proven. Great hih! Obama and the Democratic/Progressive Left Congress needs to be nationalized and FIRED "FOR "THE PEOPLE" OF THIS COUNTRY- NOW! WITHOUT DELAY."

"If it weren't for the environmental leftist kooks in this government in the first place the oil companies wouldn't have had to drill in mile deep water where the conditions are such......They are not allowed to drill in shallower water closer to the coast where the technology was proven. Great hih!"- Bill F
____________________________

I'll just leave your words as "proof certain" of a mind hellbent on destruction. Destruction of cultures. Destruction of human beings. With hatreds for all who don't think with the same banal and toxic ideology.

Regarding BP & the OIL MOGULS: Let them reap what they have sown for the same careless and inhumane disregard for "life" lived in harmony with their fellow man and nature.
What they have done to this planet, disrupting the natural course of evolution toward a world coexisting in peace- ...all on their own gluttonous self interest is deserving of having the book of "crimes against humanity" land firmly at their doorstep. Alliances with the Taliban, Osama, Saddam tell one sordid tale. The quest for wars everlasting against all other oil producing nations under their complicit totalitarian umbrella is quite another. Reducing the slaughter of innocents, embargoes denying food, water and sustenance to survivors delves even deeper into the toxic morass. Leaving and holding our sons and daughters many of whom are fathers and mothers themselves hostage to protect their booty in depleted uranium contaminated Iraq for 8yrs is beyond criminal. It is genocidal.

And lest I forget, adding a more moderate tone is the callous disregard for our lives, our food supply, and our nations future when they had absolutely no proven way to contain the poison release that will invariably disrupt the natural order of the food chain for decades elevates BPs lying negligence to that of releasing a weapon of mass destruction- a threat to our safety and well being as an independent nation and in effect has the potential to cause a far worse domino affect than any war declared or otherwise.
Asking us if we should be caring more about BP being outside of the parameters of US law, is like saying that you have already conceded to the prospects of a NEW WORLD ORDER, whereby we as citizens must pay for both a military and a government that neither serves nor protects its own people.
Screw that! In plain English. Since when is it, that we must allow the tools that monitor and protect our very existence to be held by foreigners?

-US ports? SOLD! See: Dubai ports by Bush Lite
-Aerospace dominance? SOLD See: Dubai AeroSpace
-Satellite technology- See: China and the attempted sale of UNOCAL by Bush Carlyle Group.
-Who has orchestrated the financing for DubaiWorld Central as the hub for UNITY WORLD GOVERNANCE- THE CARLYLE GROUP

-Farming out strategic military operations to corporate foreign mercks- Who thought up that diabolical bullshit>
Let's see all the benefits of paying these A-holes 10x the salary of our own sons and daughter who were left as targets to protect these assorted miscreants around the world.
BLACKWATER: Abu Ghereb. Slaughters in the square. NOW OPERATING UNDER A NEW PSEUDONYM "Xi" STILL SUCKING US DRY ANDMAKING IT HARDER FOR OUR TROOPS TO GAIN TRUST AND RESPECT FROM THOSE THEY OCCUPY.
ZETAS: Also sponsored and trained under the Bush Jr Admin. NOW THE #1 DRUG DEALING AND MURDERING CARTEL IN MEXICO

-Whose cartel and minions has opened the door to OFFSHORE BANKING? Whose main man and financial guru who is the lightning rod for all the greatest implosions to our financial systems, PHIL GRAMM who placed restrictions on our own elected officials ability to maintain control and stability in our own energy grid and turned it over to Dubai, where Halliburton now resides. Are they off-limits? TransOcean? Are they European too?

Yap all you want with your little sound-byte accusations. I can point out to you every single way that our nation is being dismantled.
How US citizens are neither served nor protected by the institutions you call military, Intel or government. All of which are merely revolving door private business opportunists opening the doors to the next ponzi scheme upon exit, just before the shit hits the fan. Just in a nick of time, all avoiding criminal prosecution. Then resurfacing time and time again to instigate the next wave of maniacal offenses against the rights and sensibility's of free thinking people.

HEY! HOW ELSE COULD SO FEW GAIN SO MUCH IN JUST A 10YR SPAN, WHILE THE REST OF AMERICA WHO STILL SWALLOW THE SWILL LIE IN RUINS?

Hey Bill, one last guess at what is coming next as justice finally catches up with your realities.

LET'S GET READY TO RUMBLE! THE ENTIRE WORLD IS SAYING IT IS TIME JUSTICE.

*Will the Euro fall by the wayside?
*Will the BP turbulence that is a major underpinning in so many markets cause the fragile Euro to go kaput?
*Will criminal prosecutions in the corporate world be expanded to the shadow orchestrator's?
*Will Europes leaders be able to fend off worker revolts with 20% unemployment levels threatened to be increased?
*Will criminal prosecutions in the corporate world be expanded to the shadow orchestrators?
*Will the shadow bankers be able to control their losses as governmental puppets just as Japan's are felled by their people who are just as fed up with corruption and decadence as we are?
*Will Americans take the lead in the upheaval for just living standards or fall in behind Europe's lead?
*Has Israel's military fascist government met its own demise by taking on one inhumanely oppressive action too many. Hmmmmmm?
Guess this one right and regain the opportunity to match wits with the rest of us in the finals.
PS: YOU WON'T FIND THE ANSWERS IN FRONT PAGE MAGAZINE OP-EDS. THESE QUESTIONS AREN'T DARED TO BE PRINTED ABOUT IN MSM FORMATS EITHER.

YOU ARE ON YOUR OWN THIS TIME, ...Sancho!

"I'll just leave your words as "proof certain" of a mind hellbent on destruction. Destruction of cultures. Destruction of human beings."


Confidently assuming you and your entire family, friends and acquaintences all own cars
and routinely fill them with gas and oil, not to mention the plastics and endless multitude of other petroleum based products that you consume with a vengence as part of you daily life, it seems that you all are the real culprits and not the oil companies who are merely feeding your ravenous and ongoing appetite for oil.

Another warped mind comes out of the woodshed- just like clockwork. Hmmmmmmmm! Depleted Uranium... sniff, sniff. Aaaah! By your last assessment, one can surely anticipate your response to the the disclaimer that troop lives have been radically altered by its primary, side and after affects with another hearty endorsement of the product itself; teamed with a sweetening such as "it smells like victory", except where's the victory? Where's the commitment to the troops and their families? Where are the protections?
Out of sight, out of mind?

Let's just commit ourselves to staring into nothingness and pretend that doing nothing about this concerted effort to lay waste tohuman life is patriotic as well. Don't fool yourself. The big man upstairs The Great Father Almighty has your number- and he doesn't need your protection or your intrusion into his business.

Key word: Depleted Uranium! Sends in the "thought police" Code Name: BFWH JOB DESCRIPTION: Website Surveillance/ assessing the possible damage/ reassigning the blame/minimalizing the facts/ and intimidation.
Gee, whiz. What would happen in "dumbed down" America- without such vigilance?
Do we really need KGB surveillance tactics, here in America? Doesn't that typified apparatus fly in the face of the notion that we are all free people in these United States?

If we are to being forced or cohersed into accepting this form of intrusion and dumbing down as a necessity to portray and sustain the illusion of freedom and above board behavior- then isn't the battle you are fighting lost already?
Explain away at how STOP LOSS UNITS a another variant form of false imprisonment and hostage taking, aren't a form of high wire death defying intimidation manuever that in any other profession in this beloved country of ours would warrant automatic racketeering and extortion charges? How the paycheck loan parasites tthat are setup all around our bases are allowed to prey on, swallow up, and consume the families left behind.
IS THAT HOW THE BUSINESS/PROTECTION RACKET CONSTRUCT IS GEARED TO WORK?

SO WHY WOULD BILL F WANT TO SUGGEST THAT WEE THROW THE QUEEN OF ENGLAND UNDER THE BUS?
WHY DOES BFWH SUGGEST THAT WE ARE TO BLAME FOR CORPORATE MALFEASANCE AND THE ABANDONMENT OF OUR PROTECTIONS FOR OUR COASTAL WATERS? Hmmmmmmmm! Let's see what else our diabolical corporate masters have kept deeply hidden from the general publics awareness.
What use is an Intel Dept when it constantly defies logic and remains intractably "stuck on stupid"?
Supposing as we must that in their view that Ignorance is their perception of bliss- then any interruption of these intentional deceptions must be the wolfbane of their existance.
-------------------------------

Published on Thursday, April 20, 2006 by Vanity Fair

While Washington Slept
The Queen of England is afraid.

International C.E.O.'s are nervous. And the scientific establishment is loud and clear. If global warming isn't halted, rising sea levels could submerge coastal cities by 2100. So how did this virtual certainty get labeled a "liberal hoax"?

by Mark Hertsgaard
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Ten months before Hurricane Katrina left much of New Orleans underwater, Queen Elizabeth II had a private conversation with Prime Minister Tony Blair about George W. Bush. The Queen's tradition of meeting once a week with Britain's elected head of government to discuss matters of state�usually on Tuesday evenings in Buckingham Palace and always alone, to ensure maximum confidentiality�goes back to 1952, the year she ascended the throne. In all that time, the contents of those chats rarely if ever leaked.

So it was extraordinary when London's Observer reported, on October 31, 2004, that the Queen had "made a rare intervention in world politics" by telling Blair of "her grave concerns over the White House's stance on global warming." The Observer did not name its sources, but one of them subsequently spoke to Vanity Fair.

"The Queen first of all made it clear that Buckingham Palace would be happy to help raise awareness about the climate problem," says the source, a high-level environmental expert who was briefed about the conversation. "[She was] definitely concerned about the American position and hoped the prime minister could help change [it]."

Press aides for both the Queen and the prime minister declined to comment on the meeting, as is their habit. But days after the Observer story appeared, the Queen indeed raised awareness by presiding over the opening of a British-German conference on climate change, in Berlin. "I might just point out, that's a pretty unusual thing for her to do," says Sir David King, Britain's chief scientific adviser. "She doesn't take part in anything that would be overtly political." King, who has briefed the Queen on climate change, would not comment on the Observer report except to say, "If it were true, it wouldn't surprise me."

With spring arriving in England three weeks earlier than it did 50 years ago, the Queen could now see signs of climate change with her own eyes. Sandringham, her country estate north of London, overlooks Britain's premier bird-watching spot: the vast North Sea wetlands known as the Wash. A lifelong outdoorswoman, the Queen had doubtless observed the V-shaped flocks of pink-footed geese that descend on the Wash every winter. But in recent years, says Mark Avery, conservation director of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, she also would have seen a species new to the area: little egrets. These shiny white birds are native to Southern Europe, Avery says, "but in the last 5 to 10 years they have spread very rapidly to Northern Europe. We can't prove this is because of rising temperatures, but it sure looks like it."

Temperatures are rising, the Queen learned from King and other scientists, because greenhouse gases are trapping heat in the atmosphere. Carbon dioxide, the most prevalent of such gases, is released whenever fossil fuels are burned or forests catch fire. Global warming, the scientists explained, threatens to raise sea levels as much as three feet by the end of the 21st century, thanks to melting glaciers and swollen oceans. (Water expands when heated.)

This would leave much of eastern England, including areas near Sandringham, underwater. Global warming would also bring more heat waves like the one in the summer of 2003 that killed 31,000 people across Europe. It might even shut down the Gulf Stream, the flow of warm water from the Gulf of Mexico that gives Europe its mild climate. If the Gulf Stream were to halt�and it has already slowed 30 percent since 1992�Europe's temperatures would plunge, agriculture would collapse, London would no longer feel like New York but like Anchorage.

The Queen, says King, "got it" on climate change, and she wasn't alone. "Everyone in this country, from the political parties to the scientific establishment, to the Archbishop of Canterbury, to our oil companies and the larger business community, has come to a popular consensus about climate change�a sense of alarm and a conviction that action is needed now, not in the future," says Tony Juniper, executive director of the British arm of the environmental group Friends of the Earth.

At the time of his meeting with the Queen, Blair was being attacked on climate change from all ideological sides, with even the Conservatives charging that he was not doing enough. Yet Blair's statements on the issue went far beyond those of most world leaders. He had called the Kyoto Protocol, which has been ratified by 162 countries and requires industrial nations to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions 5 percent below 1990 levels, "not radical enough." The world's climate scientists, Blair pointed out, had estimated that 60 percent cuts in emissions were needed, and he committed Britain to reaching that goal by 2050.

But it wouldn't matter how much Britain cut its greenhouse-gas emissions if other nations didn't do the same. The U.S. was key, not only because it was the world's largest emitter but because its refusal to reduce emissions led China, India, Brazil, and other large developing countries to ask why they should do so. All this Blair had also said publicly. In 2001 he criticized the Bush administration for withdrawing from the Kyoto Protocol. In 2004 he said it was essential to bring the U.S. into the global effort against climate change, despite its opposition to Kyoto.

It was no secret that Bush opposed mandatory emissions limits, but Blair, who had risked his political future to back the deeply unpopular war in Iraq, was uniquely positioned to lobby the president. Bush owed him one. At the same time, Blair needed to show his domestic audience that he could stand up to Bush, that he wasn't the presidential "poodle" his critics claimed.

To compel Bush to engage the issue, Blair made climate change a lead agenda item at the July 2005 meeting of the Group of 8, the alliance of the world's eight richest nations. A month before the meeting, which was held at Gleneagles, in Scotland, Blair flew to Washington to see Bush face-to-face. That same day, the national academies of science of all the G-8 nations, as well as those of China, India, and Brazil, released a joint statement declaring that climate change was a grave problem that required immediate action.

On the morning of July 7, the summit was interrupted by the shocking news that four suicide bombers had set off explosions in London, killing 56 people. Blair rushed to the scene, but he returned that night, still determined to secure an agreement.

In the end, however, Bush held firm. Washington vetoed all references to mandatory emissions cuts or timelines, and the climate-change issue was overshadowed by African debt relief, which had been publicized by Bob Geldof's Live 8 concerts.

"There were no tough targets at Gleneagles because we would not have got all signatures on the document," says King, who adds, "We might well have" gotten seven�that is, every nation but the U.S. The farthest the G-8 leaders went�and even this required a battle, says King�was to include a sentence that read, in part, "While uncertainties remain in our understanding of climate science, we know enough to act now."

But seven weeks later, nature acted first, and it was the United States she hit.

No one can say for sure whether global warming caused Hurricane Katrina, which slammed into the Gulf Coast on August 29, 2005. But it certainly fit the pattern. The scientific rule of thumb is that one can never blame any one weather event on any single cause. The earth's weather system is too complex for that. Most scientists agree, however, that global warming makes extra-strong hurricanes such as Katrina more likely because it encourages hot oceans, a precondition of hurricane formation.

"It's a bit like saying, 'My grandmother died of lung cancer, and she smoked for the last 20 years of her life�smoking killed her,'" explains Kerry Emanuel, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who has studied hurricanes for 20 years. "Well, the problem is, there are an awful lot of people who die of lung cancer who never smoked. There are a lot of people who smoked all their lives and die of something else. So all you can say, even [though] the evidence statistically is clear connecting lung cancer to smoking, is that [the grandmother] upped her probability."

Just weeks before Katrina struck, Emanuel published a paper in the scientific journal Nature demonstrating that hurricanes had grown more powerful as global temperatures rose in the 20th century. Now, he says, by adding more greenhouse gases to the earth's atmosphere, humans are "loading the climatic dice in favor of more powerful hurricanes in the future."

But most Americans heard nothing about Hurricane Katrina's association with global warming. Media coverage instead reflected the views of the Bush administration�specifically, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which declared that the hurricane was the result of natural factors. An outcry from N.O.A.A.'s scientists led the agency to backtrack from that statement in February 2006, but by then conventional wisdom was set in place. Post-Katrina New Orleans may eventually be remembered as the first major U.S. casualty of global warming, yet most Americans still don't know what hit us.

Sad to say, Katrina was the perfect preview of what global warming might look like in the 21st century. First, Katrina struck a city that was already below sea level�which is where rising waters could put many coastal dwellers in the years ahead. In 2001, the U.N.-sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (I.P.C.C.), a peer-reviewed, international collaboration among thousands of scientists that is the world's leading authority on climate change, predicted that sea levels could rise as much as three feet by 2100. By coincidence, three feet is about how much New Orleans sank during the 20th century. That was because levees built to keep the Mississippi River from flooding also kept the river from depositing silt that would have replenished the underlying land mass, explains Mike Tidwell, the author of Bayou Farewell: The Rich Life and Tragic Death of Louisiana's Cajun Coast. "You could say that in New Orleans we brought the ocean to the people," Tidwell adds, "which is pretty much what global warming will do to other cities in the future."

What's more, Katrina was a Category 5 hurricane, the strongest there is. Such extreme weather events will likely become more frequent as global warming intensifies, says the I.P.C.C. Yes, Katrina's winds had slowed to high�Category 3 levels by the time it made landfall, but it was the hurricane's storm surge that killed people�a surge that formed in the Gulf of Mexico when the storm was still Category 5. Thus, Katrina unleashed 10 to 15 feet of water on a city that was already significantly below sea level.

To envision global warming's future impacts, the illustrations accompanying this article reflect this and other scenarios. [For illustrations, see the May 2006 issue of Vanity Fair. The three large-scale illustrations are an artist's interpretations of projections generated for Vanity Fair by Applied Science Associates Inc. (appsci.com), a marine-science consulting firm based in Rhode Island. The projections do not account for small-scale features such as coastal-protection structures.

The effects of a three-foot sea-level rise compounded by a storm surge from a Category 3 hurricane are shown in the image of the Hamptons, which would suffer severe flooding. The image of Washington, D.C., shows the effects of a 20-foot sea-level rise, which is what scientists expect if the entire Greenland ice sheet melts. The ice sheet has shrunk 50 cubic miles in the past year alone, and is now melting twice as fast as previously believed.

Finally, the image of New York City shows the effects of an 80-foot rise in sea levels. That's what would happen if not only the Greenland ice sheet but its counterpart in the Antarctic were to melt, says James Hansen, the director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies. Hansen, who put climate change on the media map in 1988 by saying that man-made global warming had already begun, made headlines again earlier this year when he complained that White House political appointees were trying to block him from speaking freely about the need for rapid reductions in greenhouse-gas emissions. Hansen warns that, if global emissions continue on their current trajectory, the ice sheets will not survive, because global temperatures will increase by 2 to 3 degrees Celsius by the end of this century. "The last time the earth was that warm, sea levels were 80 feet higher than today," he says. It will likely take hundreds of years for sea levels to rise the full 80 feet, but the process would be irreversible, and the rises would not be gradual. "You're going to be continually faced with a changing coastline, which will force coastal dwellers to constantly relocate," he says.

This article's smaller, aerial-view illustrations are based on simulations by the National Environmental Trust, a nonprofit group in Washington, D.C. N.E.T. relied on data from the I.P.C.C., the U.S. Geological Survey, and the N.O.A.A. Additional N.E.T. simulations are available at net.org. Philip Clapp, N.E.T.'s president, says, "The U.S. government has never released its own simulations. The Bush administration doesn't want these pictures in front of the American people because they show that a three-foot sea-level rise plus storm flooding would have catastrophic consequences."

In New York, it would leave much of Lower Manhattan, including the Ground Zero memorial and the entire financial district, underwater. La Guardia and John F. Kennedy airports would meet the same fate. In Washington, D.C., the Potomac River would swell dramatically, stretching all the way to the Capitol lawn and to within two blocks of the White House.

Since roughly half the world's 6.5 billion people live near coastlines, a three-foot sea-level rise would be even more punishing overseas. Amsterdam, Venice, Cairo, Shanghai, Manila, and Calcutta are some of the cities most threatened. In many places the people and governments are too poor to erect adequate barriers�think of low-lying Bangladesh, where an estimated 18 million people are at risk�so experts fear that they will migrate to neighboring lands, raising the prospect of armed conflict. A Pentagon-commissioned study warned in 2003 that climate change could bring mega-droughts, mass starvation, and even nuclear war as countries such as China, India, and Pakistan battle over scarce food and water.

These are just some of the reasons why David King wrote in Science in 2004, "Climate change is the most severe problem that we are facing today�more serious even than the threat of terrorism." King's comment raised hackles in Washington and led a top press aide to Tony Blair to try to muzzle him. But the science adviser tells me he "absolutely" stands by his statement. By no means does King underestimate terrorism; advising the British government on that threat, he says, "is a very important part of my job." But the hazards presented by climate change are so severe and far-reaching that, in his view, they overshadow not only every other environmental threat but every other threat, period.

"Take India," King says. "Their monsoon is a fact of life that they have developed their agricultural economy around. If the monsoon is down by 10 percent one year, they have massive losses of crops. If it's 10 percent over, they have massive flood problems. [If climate change ends up] switching off the monsoon in India, or even changing it outside those limits, it would lead to massive global economic de-stabilization. The kind of situation we need to avoid creating is one where populations are so de-stabilized�Bangladesh being flooded, India no food�that they're all seeking alternative habitats. These, in our globalized economy, would be very difficult for all of us to manage."

The worst scenarios of global warming might still be avoided, scientists say, if humanity reduces its greenhouse-gas emissions dramatically, and very soon. The I.P.C.C. has estimated that emissions must fall to 60 percent below 1990 levels before 2050, over a period when global population is expected to increase by 37 percent and per-capita energy consumption will surely rise as billions of people in Asia, Africa, and South America strive to ascend from poverty.

Yet even if such a reduction were achieved, a significant rise in sea levels may be unavoidable. "It's getting harder and harder to say we'll avoid a three-foot sea-level rise, though it won't necessarily happen in this century," says Michael Oppenheimer, a professor of geosciences and international affairs at Princeton. Oppenheimer's pessimism is rooted in the lag effects of the climate system: oceans store heat for a century or longer before releasing it; carbon dioxide remains in the atmosphere for decades or longer before dissipating.

According to King, even if humanity were to stop emitting carbon dioxide today, "temperatures will keep rising and all the impacts will keep changing for about 25 years."

The upshot is that it has become too late to prevent climate change; we can only adapt to it. This unhappy fact is not well understood by the general public; advocates downplay it, perhaps for fear of fostering a paralyzing despair. But there is no getting around it: because humanity waited so long to take decisive action, we are now stuck with a certain amount of global warming and the climate changes it will bring�rising seas, fiercer heat, deeper droughts, stronger storms. The World Health Organization estimates that climate change is already helping to kill 150,000 people a year, mainly in Africa and Asia. That number is bound to rise as global warming intensifies in the years ahead.

The inevitability of global warming does not mean we should not act, King emphasizes: "The first message to our political leaders is, action is required. Whether or not we get global agreement to reduce emissions, we all need to adapt to the impacts that are in the pipeline." That means doing all the things that were not done in New Orleans: building sound levees and seawalls, restoring coastal wetlands (which act like speed bumps to weaken hurricanes' storm surges), strengthening emergency-preparedness networks and health-care systems, and much more.

Beyond this crucial first step�which most governments worldwide have yet to consider�humanity can cushion the severity of future global warming by limiting greenhouse-gas emissions. Hansen says we must stabilize emissions�which currently are rising 2 percent a year�by 2015, and then reduce them. Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change, a book based on a scientific conference convened by Tony Blair before the G-8 summit, estimates that we may have until 2025 to peak and reduce.

The goal is to stop global warming before it crosses tipping points and attains unstoppable momentum from "positive feedbacks." For example, should the Greenland ice sheet melt, white ice�which reflects sunlight back into space�would be replaced by dark water, which absorbs sunlight and drives further warming.

Positive feedbacks can trigger the kind of abrupt, irreversible climate changes that scientists call "nonlinear." Once again, Hurricane Katrina provides a sobering preview of what that means. "Hurricanes are the mother of all nonlinear events, because small changes in initial conditions can lead to enormous changes in outcomes," says Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, the director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and the former chief environmental adviser to the German government. "A few percent increase in a hurricane's wind speed can double its destructiveness under certain circumstances."

Although scientists apply the neutral term "climate change" to all of these phenomena, "climate chaos" better conveys the abrupt, interconnected, wide-ranging consequences that lie in store. "It's a very appropriate term for the layperson," says Schellnhuber, a physicist who specializes in chaos theory. "I keep telling politicians that I'm not so concerned about a gradual climate change that may force farmers in Great Britain to plant different crops. I'm worried about triggering positive feedbacks that, in the worst case, could kick off some type of runaway greenhouse dynamics."

Among the reasons climate change is a bigger problem than terrorism, David King tells me, is that the problem is rooted in humanity's burning of oil, coal, and natural gas, "and people don't want to let that go." Which is understandable. These carbon-based fuels have powered civilization since the dawn of the industrial era, delivering enormous wealth, convenience, and well-being even as they overheated the atmosphere. Luckily, the idea that reducing greenhouse-gas emissions will wreck our economy, as President Bush said in 2005 when defending his opposition to the Kyoto Protocol, is disproved by experience. "In Britain," King told the environmental Web site Grist, "our economy since 1990 has grown by about 40 percent, and our emissions have decreased by 14 percent."

Ultimately, society must shift onto a new energy foundation based on alternative fuels, not only because of global warming but also because oil "will get harder and costlier to find" in the years ahead, says Ronald Oxburgh, the former chairman of the British arm of Royal Dutch Shell oil. "The group around President Bush have been saying that, even if climate change is real, it would be terribly costly to shift away from carbon-based fuels," Oxburgh continues. "Of course it would, if you try to make the change overnight. But that's not how you do it. If governments make the decision to shift our society to a new energy foundation, and they make it clear to everyone this is what we're doing by laying out clear requirements and incentives, corporations will respond and get the job done."

The opening move in this transition is to invest massively in energy efficiency. Amory Lovins, co-founder of the Rocky Mountain Institute, a think tank that consults for corporations and governments around the world, has demonstrated that measures such as insulating buildings and driving more fuel-efficient vehicles could reduce humanity's consumption of energy and natural resources by a factor of four. And efficiency investments have a demonstrated record of creating jobs and boosting profits, suggesting that emissions can be reduced without crippling economies.

One of the first moves Angela Merkel announced as the new chancellor of Germany last fall was the extension of a Green Party initiative to upgrade energy efficiency in the nation's pre-1978 housing stock. Most of that housing is in the former East Germany, where unemployment approaches 20 percent. Replacing old furnaces and installing efficient windows and lights will produce thousands of well-paying laborers' jobs that by their nature cannot be outsourced.

Corporations, too, have discovered that energy efficiency can be profitable. Over a three-year period beginning in 1999, BP invested $20 million to reduce the emissions from its internal operations and saved $650 million�32 times the original investment.

Individuals can cash in as well. Although buying a super-efficient car or refrigerator may cost more up front, over time it saves the consumer money through lower energy bills.

Efficiency is no silver bullet, nor can it forever neutralize the effects of billions of people consuming more and more all the time. It can, however, buy humanity time to further develop and deploy alternative-energy technologies. Solar and wind power have made enormous strides in recent years, but the technology to watch is carbon sequestration, a method of capturing and then safely storing the carbon dioxide produced by the combustion of fossil fuels. In theory, sequestration would allow nations to continue burning coal�the most abundant fuel in the world, and the foundation of the Chinese and Indian economies�without worsening the climate problem. "If carbon capture is not feasible, our choices are much less good, and the cost of climate change is going to be much higher," says Jeffrey D. Sachs, the director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University and a special adviser to the United Nations.

No one pretends that phasing out carbon-based fuels will be easy. The momentum of the climate system means that "a certain amount of pain is inevitable," says Michael Oppenheimer. "But we still have a choice between pain and disaster."

Unfortunately, we are getting a late start, which is something of a puzzle. The threat of global warming has been recognized at the highest levels of government for more than 25 years. Former president Jimmy Carter highlighted it in 1980, and Al Gore championed it in Congress throughout the 1980s. Margaret Thatcher, the arch-conservative prime minister of Britain from 1979 to 1990, delivered some of the hardest-hitting speeches ever given on climate change. But progress stalled in the 1990s, even as Gore was elected vice president and the scientific case grew definitive. It turned out there were powerful pockets of resistance to tackling this problem, and they put up a hell of a fight.

Call him the $45 million man. That's how much money Dr. Frederick Seitz, a former president of the National Academy of Sciences, helped R. J. Reynolds Industries, Inc., give away to fund medical research in the 1970s and 1980s. The research avoided the central health issue facing Reynolds�"They didn't want us looking at the health effects of cigarette smoking," says Seitz, who is now 94�but it nevertheless served the tobacco industry's purposes. Throughout those years, the industry frequently ran ads in newspapers and magazines citing its multi-million-dollar research program as proof of its commitment to science�and arguing that the evidence on the health effects of smoking was mixed.

In the 1990s, Seitz began arguing that the science behind global warming was likewise inconclusive and certainly didn't warrant imposing mandatory limits on greenhouse-gas emissions. He made his case vocally, trashing the integrity of a 1995 I.P.C.C. report on the op-ed page of The Wall Street Journal, signing a letter to the Clinton administration accusing it of misrepresenting the science, and authoring a paper which said that global warming and ozone depletion were exaggerated threats devised by environmentalists and unscrupulous scientists pushing a political agenda. In that same paper, Seitz asserted that secondhand smoke posed no real health risks, an opinion he repeats in our interview. "I just can't believe it's that bad," he says.

Al Gore and others have said, but generally without offering evidence, that the people who deny the dangers of climate change are like the tobacco executives who denied the dangers of smoking. The example of Frederick Seitz, described here in full for the first time, shows that the two camps overlap in ways that are quite literal�and lucrative. Seitz earned approximately $585,000 for his consulting work for R. J. Reynolds, according to company documents unearthed by researchers for the Greenpeace Web site ExxonSecrets.org and confirmed by Seitz. Meanwhile, during the years he consulted for Reynolds, Seitz continued to draw a salary as president emeritus at Rockefeller University, an institution founded in 1901 and subsidized with profits from Standard Oil, the predecessor corporation of ExxonMobil.

Seitz was the highest-ranking scientist among a band of doubters who, beginning in the early 1990s, resolutely disputed suggestions that climate change was a real and present danger. As a former president of the National Academy of Sciences (from 1962 to 1969) and a winner of the National Medal of Science, Seitz gave such objections instant credibility. Richard Lindzen, a professor of meteorology at M.I.T., was another high-profile scientist who consistently denigrated the case for global warming. But most of the public argument was carried by lesser scientists and, above all, by lobbyists and paid spokesmen for the Global Climate Coalition. Created and funded by the energy and auto industries, the Coalition spent millions of dollars spreading the message that global warming was an uncertain threat. Journalist Ross Gelbspan exposed the corporate campaign in his 1997 book, The Heat Is On, which quoted a 1991 strategy memo: the goal was to "reposition global warming as theory rather than fact."

"Not trivial" is how Seitz reckons the influence he and fellow skeptics have had, and their critics agree. The effect on media coverage was striking, according to Bill McKibben, who in 1989 published the first major popular book on global warming, The End of Nature. Introducing the 10th-anniversary edition, in 1999, McKibben noted that virtually every week over the past decade studies had appeared in scientific publications painting an ever more alarming picture of the global-warming threat. Most news reports, on the other hand, "seem to be coming from some other planet."

The deniers' arguments were frequently cited in Washington policy debates. Their most important legislative victory was the Senate's 95-to-0 vote in 1997 to oppose U.S. participation in any international agreement�i.e., the Kyoto Protocol�that imposed mandatory greenhouse-gas reductions on the U.S.

The ferocity of this resistance helps explain why the Clinton administration achieved so little on climate change, says Tim Wirth, the first under-secretary of state for global affairs, who served as President Clinton's chief climate negotiator. "The opponents were so strongly organized that the administration got spooked and backed off of things it should have done," says Wirth. "The Kyoto negotiations got watered down and watered down, and after we signed it the administration didn't try to get it ratified. They didn't even send people up to the Hill to talk to senators about ratifying it."

"I wanted to push for ratification," responds Gore. "A decision was made not to. If our congressional people had said there was even a remote chance of ratifying, I could have convinced Clinton to do it�his heart was in the right place.� But I remember a meeting in the White House with some environmental groups where I asked them for the names of 10 senators who would vote to ratify. They came up with one, Paul Wellstone. If your most optimistic supporters can't identify 10 likely gettables, then people in the administration start to ask, 'Are you a fanatic, Al? Is this a suicide mission?'" (Clinton did not respond to e-mailed questions.)

James Hansen, without singling out any individual, accuses global-warming deniers of "acting like lawyers, not scientists, because no matter what new evidence comes in, their conclusion is already decided." Richard Lindzen responds that Hansen has been wrong time and time again and operates "one of the worst climate models around." Lindzen agrees that both global temperature and atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide have increased over the last century. But temperatures won't rise much further, he says, because humans aren't the main driving force in the climate system. The reason most scientists disagree with him, Lindzen explains, is simple careerism. "Once President Bush the elder began spending $2 billion a year on climate science, scientists developed a self-interest in maintaining this is an urgent problem," he says, adding that the scientific community's fixation on climate change will be remembered as an episode of "mass insanity."

Among many rebuttals to the deniers' arguments, perhaps the most authoritative collection is found on the Web site of Britain's national academy of science, the Royal Society. But such rebuttals have little impact on true believers, says Robert May, the Society's former president. "[Nobel Prize�winning physicist] Max Planck used to say that people don't change their minds [because of evidence]," he adds. "The science simply moves on and those people eventually die off."

But if the deniers appear to have lost the scientific argument, they prolonged the policy battle, delaying actions to reduce emissions when such cuts mattered most. "For 25 years, people have been warning that we had a window of opportunity to take action, and if we waited until the effects were obvious it would be too late to avoid major consequences," says Oppenheimer. "Had some individual countries, especially the United States, begun to act in the early to mid-1990s, we might have made it. But we didn't, and now the impacts are here."

"The goal of the disinformation campaign wasn't to win the debate," says Gelbspan. "The goal was simply to keep the debate going. When the public hears the media report that some scientists believe warming is real but others don't, its reaction is 'Come back and tell us when you're really sure.' So no political action is taken."

Representative Henry Waxman, the California Democrat who chaired the 1994 hearings where tobacco executives unanimously declared under oath that cigarettes were not addictive, watches today's global-warming deniers with a sense of d�j� vu. It all reminds him of the confidential slogan a top tobacco flack coined when arguing that the science on smoking remained unsettled: "Doubt is our product." Now, Waxman says, "not only are we seeing the same tactics the tobacco industry used, we're seeing some of the same groups. For example, the Advancement of Sound Science Coalition was created [in 1993] to debunk the dangers of secondhand smoking before it moved on to global warming."

The scientific work Frederick Seitz oversaw for R. J. Reynolds from 1978 to 1987 was "perfectly fine research, but off the point," says Stanton A. Glantz, a professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, and a lead author of The Cigarette Papers (1996), which exposed the inner workings of the Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corporation. "Looking at stress, at genetics, at lifestyle issues let Reynolds claim it was funding real research. But then it could cloud the issue by saying, 'Well, what about this other possible causal factor?' It's like coming up with 57 other reasons for Hurricane Katrina rather than global warming."

For his part, Seitz says he was comfortable taking tobacco money, "as long as it was green. I'm not quite clear about this moralistic issue. We had absolutely free rein to decide how the money was spent." Did the research give the tobacco industry political cover? "I'll leave that to the philosophers and priests," he replies.

Seitz is equally nonplussed by the extraordinary disavowal the National Academy of Sciences issued following his most visible intervention in the global-warming debate. In 1998 he urged fellow scientists to sign an Oregon group's petition saying that global warming was much ado about little. The petition attracted more than 17,000 signatories and received widespread media attention. But posted along with the petition was a paper by four global-warming deniers that was presented in virtually the same layout and typeface used by the National Academy of Sciences in its scholarly journal. The formatting, combined with Seitz's signature, gave the clear impression that the academy endorsed the petition. The academy quickly released a statement disclaiming any connection with the petition or its suggestion that global warming was not real. Scientific American later determined that only 1,400 of the petition's signatories claimed to hold a Ph.D. in a climate-related science, and of these, some either were not even aware of the petition or later changed their minds.

Today, Seitz admits that "it was stupid" for the Oregon activists to copy the academy's format. Still, he doesn't understand why the academy felt compelled to disavow the petition, which he continues to cite as proof that it is "not true" there is a scientific consensus on global warming.

The accumulation of scientific evidence eventually led British Petroleum to resign from the Global Climate Coalition in 1996. Shell, Ford, and other corporations soon left as well, and in 2002 the coalition closed down. But Gelbspan, whose Web site tracks the deniers' activities, notes that key coalition personnel have since taken up positions in the Bush administration, including Harlan Watson, the State Department's chief climate negotiator. (Watson declined to be interviewed.)

ExxonMobil�long the most recalcitrant corporation on global warming�is still spending millions of dollars a year funding an array of organizations that downplay the problem, including the George C. Marshall Institute, where Seitz is chairman emeritus. John Passacantando, executive director of Greenpeace USA, calls the denial campaign "one of the great crimes of our era." Passacantando is "quite confident" that class-action lawsuits will eventually be filed against corporations who denied global warming's dangers. Five years ago, he told executives from one company, "You're going to wish you were the tobacco companies once this stuff hits and people realize you were the ones who blocked [action]."

The public discussion about climate change in the U.S. is years behind that in Britain and the rest of Europe, and the deniers are a big reason why. "In the United States, the Chamber of Commerce and National Association of Manufacturers are deeply skeptical of climate-change science and the need to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions," says Fiona Harvey, the environment correspondent for the Financial Times. "In Britain, the equivalent body, the Confederation of British Industry, is absolutely behind the science and agrees on the need to cut emissions. The only differences are over how to do that."

America's media coverage is also well behind the curve, says Harvey. "In the United States you have lots of news stories that, in the name of balance, give equal credence to the skeptics. We don't do that here�not because we're not balanced but because we think it's unbalanced to give equal validity to a fringe few with no science behind them."

Prominent right-wing media outlets in the U.S., especially the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal, continue to parrot the claims of climate-change deniers. (Paul A. Gigot, the page's editor, declined to be interviewed.) Few beat reporters are still taken in, but their bosses�the editors and producers who decide which stories run, and how prominently�are another matter. Charles Alexander, the former environmental editor at Time, complains that, while coverage has improved recently, media executives continue to regard climate change as just another environmental issue, rather than as the overriding challenge of the 21st century.

"Americans are hearing more about reducing greenhouse emissions from BP ads than from news stories in Time, The New York Times, or any other U.S. media outlet," Alexander says. "This will go down as the greatest act of mass denial in history."

In 2002, Alexander went to see Andrew Heyward, then the president of CBS News, after running into him at a Harvard reunion. "I talked to him about climate change and other global environmental threats, and made the case that they were more dangerous than terrorism and CBS should be doing much more coverage of them," Alexander recalls. "He didn't dispute any of my factual points, but he did say the reason CBS didn't do more of that coverage was that 'people don't want to hear all that gloom and doom'�in other words, the environment wasn't a ratings winner. He seemed to think CBS News's job was to tell people what they wanted to hear, not what they need to know, and I think that attitude is increasingly true for the news business in general."

"That's bullshit," responds Heyward, who left CBS in 2005. "I've never been one of those guys who thinks news has to be light and bright. And in talking to Charles, I wasn't stating the policy of CBS News. I was just trying to explain to an old college classmate why there isn't more coverage of the environment on TV. Charles is an advocate, and advocates are never happy with the amount of coverage their cause gets."

American television did, however, give prime-time coverage to the latest, and most famous, global-warming denier: novelist Michael Crichton. ABC's 20/20 broadcast a very friendly interview with Crichton when he published State of Fear, a novel arguing that anyone who bought into the phony scientific consensus on global warming was a modern equivalent of the early-20th-century eugenicists who cited scientific "proof" for the superiority of the white race.

When Crichton was invited to testify before the Environment and Public Works Committee, observers in Britain were floored. "This is fairyland," exclaims Michael Meacher, the member of Parliament who served as Tony Blair's environment minister from 1997 to 2003. "You have a science-fiction writer testifying before the United States Senate on global-warming policy? I mean, you can almost see the little boy off to the side, like in the story of the emperor's clothes, saying, 'But he's a science-fiction writer, isn't he?' It's just ludicrous."

The man who invited Crichton, committee chairman James M. Inhofe, a Republican from oil-rich Oklahoma, had already said on the floor of the Senate that global warming was "the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people." In an e-mail interview, Inhofe defended Crichton's appearance, noting that the writer holds a medical degree from Harvard. (Crichton is also a post-doctoral fellow at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies.) The senator added that he stood by his hoax statement as well.

David King responded that Britain's climate-science research is headquartered within the Ministry of Defense, "and you wouldn't find a group of people less likely to perpetrate a hoax than the people in the Ministry of Defense."

King has "extremist views," Inhofe replied. If the I.P.C.C. and the world's leading academies of science echo King's views, he argued, it is because they actively silence dissidents: "Scientists who believe warming trends are naturally occurring, or benign, are almost always excluded from climate-change conferences and meetings because their conclusions do not support the political agendas of the others who host the conferences." (The I.P.C.C. denies this accusation.) The truth, Inhofe continued, is that "there is no consensus on the science of global warming." As proof, he cited�what else?�Frederick Seitz's Oregon petition.

Paul H. O'Neill, who served nearly two years as George W. Bush's secretary of the Treasury, does not buy the common notion that Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney resist taking action on global warming because they are oilmen. "I don't think either one of them is an oilman," insists O'Neill. "You have to have success to be an oilman. It's like saying you're a ballplayer, but you never got on the field."

In 1998, while running the aluminum giant Alcoa, O'Neill was among the first U.S. business leaders to recognize the enormity of climate change. He says Bush asked him, early in the first term, to put together a plan of action, but it was ignored. Like Bush, O'Neill opposed Kyoto, so he proposed other ways to move forward. But instead, he says, the administration "cherry-picked" the science on climate change to justify taking no action, "just like it cherry-picked the intelligence on weapons of mass destruction" to justify the invasion of Iraq.

"The United States is the only entity on this planet turning its back on this problem," says Massachusetts senator John Kerry. "Even as he talks about protecting the security of the nation, the president is willfully choosing not to tackle this problem. History will record it as one of the greatest derelictions of duty ever."

Bush-administration officials counter that they are doing more to fight global warming than anyone else�just with different tools than those favored by supporters of the Kyoto Protocol. James L. Connaughton, the head of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, starts by pointing out that Bush has raised federal mileage standards for S.U.V.'s and light trucks. When I point out that the increase is tiny (a mere 0.3 miles per gallon, says Dan Becker of the Sierra Club), Connaughton maintains that over time further increases will result in substantial energy savings, especially when paired with the administration's new tax credits for efficient vehicles. It's also important, he says, to "keep personal income taxes in check" to encourage people to buy these new cars. What's more, the administration recently provided $10 billion in incentives for alternative-energy development and $40 billion over 10 years to encourage farmers to plant trees and preserve grassland that can soak up carbon dioxide.

The administration opposes the Kyoto Protocol, Connaughton claims, because its mandatory emissions cuts would punish the American economy, costing as many as five million jobs. It would also dry up the capital needed to fund the technological research that will ultimately solve global warming.

"It's important not to get distracted by chasing short-term reductions in greenhouse emissions. The real payoff is in long-term technological breakthroughs," says John H. Marburger III, the president's science adviser. Besides, "there is no question that mitigating the impact of climate change as it takes place will be much less [expensive] than the costs of reducing oil and coal use in the short term."

"The world is now on a trajectory to slow the growth in greenhouse-gas emissions," concludes Connaughton, who as a lawyer represented mining and chemical interests before joining the administration. "I'm highly confident we will stabilize [those emissions]." He says that's exactly what happened over the last 80 years with air pollution. He seems to take pleasure in observing that, under Bush, the U.S. has actually reduced its annual emissions, which, he says, is more than some of its harshest critics overseas have done.

It's a cheerful story, but virtually no one else believes it. Waiting 80 years to eliminate greenhouse-gas emissions would guarantee runaway global warming, says James Hansen. In January, six former chiefs of the Environmental Protection Agency, including five who served Republican presidents, said Bush needed to do much more to fight climate change. In Britain, Peter Ainsworth, the Conservative Party's shadow secretary of state for the environment, says his party is "saddened" by the Bush administration's approach. "We would have preferred the Bush administration to take a leadership position on this problem � instead of allowing itself to be seen as foot-dragging."

Outsiders doubt President Bush's desire to confront the issue, pointing out that his right-wing political base agrees with Inhofe that global warming is a liberal hoax. Critics also question the administration's faith in volunteerism. They argue that imposing mandatory timelines and emissions limits would put a price tag on carbon and push corporations and individuals to use less of it. "Long-term research is fine, but to offer that as a substitute for the stark necessity of near-term cuts in emissions is a kind of magical thinking�trusting that something will happen to make everything all right," says Donald Kennedy, the editor in chief of Science. In fact, despite Bush's call to end our "addiction" to oil, his 2007 budget actually reduced funding for alternative energy and efficiency.

Nor has the Bush administration cut short-term emissions, says a European diplomat who requested anonymity because he has to work with Bush officials. Citing data from the Energy Information Administration, the diplomat says Connaughton is correct to say that U.S. greenhouse-gas emissions declined, but only in the single year following the 2001 terrorist attacks, owing to the ensuing economic recession. U.S. emissions increased in every other year of Bush's presidency, making it "complete hokum" to claim that Bush's policies are cutting emissions, the diplomat says, adding of Connaughton, "I'm afraid Jim has drunk the Kool-Aid."

As for John Marburger's assertion that it will be cheaper to adapt to climate change than to try to head it off, Michael Oppenheimer says, "It's a sad day when the president is being told by his science adviser that climate change isn't worth avoiding. It may be possible for rich nations and people to adapt, but 90 percent of humanity doesn't have the resources to deal with climate change. It's unethical to condemn them just because the people in power don't want to act."

"I think it is a slam dunk that we are on a path of dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate, and it is also absolutely clear that what this administration has proposed so far will not get us off that path," says Jeffrey Sachs. "The administration says several things I agree with: technology is extremely important, global warming is a long-term issue, and we can't do it without China and India [because their greenhouse-gas emissions will soon outstrip our own]. But none of this adds up to taking no action. The fact that China and other developing economies have to be involved doesn't mean the United States refuses to commit to specific actions; it means the U.S. should commit itself, in part to help bring the others in.

"I've had discussions with leaders in China and India," adds Sachs. '�They are very concerned about climate change because they see the effects it could have on them. We should help to set up prototype carbon-capture-and-sequestration power plants in China and India, and the rich countries should help to finance them. It's hard to ask poor countries to bear the full financial burden of these technologies, especially when it is the rich countries' past burning of carbon fuels that has created most of the problem. But the U.S. takes every opportunity to do virtually nothing to engage in practical steps with the developing countries."

Ask Al Gore how to avoid dangerous climate change and, despite his wonkish reputation, he doesn't begin by talking about hybrid cars or carbon sequestration. No, says Gore, the first imperative is to "punch through the massive denial and resistance" that still exist in the United States.

But the rest of the world is no longer waiting for the Bush administration. At the international climate conference held in Montreal last year, European nations called the administration's bluff when it refused to commit even to the breathtakingly modest step of someday discussing what framework might follow the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012. At past summits, the administration's stubbornness led other nations to back down in hopes of keeping America involved in the process. At Montreal, the world quit waiting for Godot and recognized, as Elliot Morley, Tony Blair's minister of the environment, says, "there are a lot of voices in the United States in addition to the Bush administration, and we will work with all of them to address this problem."

The same thing is happening inside the U.S. "It is very clear that Congress will put mandatory greenhouse-gas-emission reductions in place, immediately after George W. Bush leaves office," says Philip Clapp of N.E.T. "Even the Fortune 500 is positioning itself for the inevitable. There isn't one credible 2008 Republican presidential candidate who hasn't abandoned the president's do-nothing approach. They have all adopted the approach the rest of the world took at the Montreal talks�we're moving forward, you're a lame duck, and we have to deal with it."

Regardless of what happens in Washington, D.C., state and local governments across America are aggressively confronting the problem. Two hundred and eight mayors have committed their cities to meet or exceed the emissions reductions mandated by the Kyoto Protocol, and some have gone further. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has committed California to 30 percent cuts by 2020.

California officials have also held talks with their counterparts in Oregon and Washington about launching a so-called carbon-trading system like the one currently in force in Europe. Such a system allows efficient users to profit while wasteful users must pay for burning more fuel. A similar mechanism worked in the 1990s to dramatically reduce emissions of sulfur dioxide�the cause of acid rain�at far less cost than industrialists or environmentalists anticipated.

New York and seven other northeastern states, which together with California amount to the third-biggest economy in the world, are also considering a carbon-trading system. Their collective actions�investing in energy efficiency, installing wind turbines, sequestering carbon�could boost production runs and lower costs to the point where the green technologies needed to fight global warming become affordable for everyone.

At the same time, investors and others worried about global warming are pressuring corporations and Wall Street to take the problem seriously. The Investor Network on Climate Risk, a coalition of pension-fund managers and institutional investors representing $3 trillion in assets, has put corporations on notice that its members will reconsider investing in companies that don't pay enough attention to climate change. In 2005, investment-banking giant Goldman Sachs pledged to embrace carbon trading and invest $1 billion in renewable energy.

"To use a term coined by George W. Bush in the context of the Iraq war, I think this coalition of the willing might be much more successful than the Kyoto process," says Hans Schellnhuber. "I've been to a lot of these international conferences, and it's a pretty frustrating experience that usually produces little more than cheap talk. Whereas a true coalition of the willing can bring together regional governments, enterprises, and individuals and show that it is technologically and economically possible to take meaningful action."

No matter what happens, the global warming that past human activity has already unleashed will make this a different planet in the years ahead. But it could still be a livable, even hospitable, planet, if enough of us get smart in time. If we don't, three feet of water could be just the beginning.

Mark Hertsgaard is the environmental correspondent for The Nation. His article on American nuclear-weapons sites, "Nuclear Insecurity," appeared in V.F.'s November 2003 issue.

© Condenet 2006

...Amen.

So you see, it will not be oil that takes humanity into the future but, hydro- and the ability to convert *hydro(salt water) into our next principal energy source, that will ultimately prevent the world from drowning in its stupidity.
The conversion of salt water back into a gaseous state will also ultimately repair the ozone, cleanse some of the toxicity out of ocean waters, and put the rising tide to good use. Instead of waiting for the inevitable, losing our coastline populations as only the selfish would define as "they should have known" this is war on the grand scale- a matter of survival of the fittest. Or as Bilderberg has clearly defined in its studies- "that will take care of the *excess billions" and surely we can't be blamed for that. Greed- is to be perceived as benevolence and acquiesence. HAIL TO YOU, OH MIGHTY CORPORATE MASTERS OF THE UNDERWORLD. YOU "SKULLS AND BONES" AND PURVEYORS OF MASS DEATH AND DESTRUCTION. HOW FOOLISHLY YOU PERCEIVE YOURSELVES AS GODS.

Guess what happens next? It's not cool to mess with mother nature, or momentum.
Change is coming, like it or not.

*2 billion being their maximum quotient for indentured servant population tolerance on their NWO planet.

Oil spill is our fault:
We want cheap energy and no consequences

June,1, 2010

With the possible exception of the tobacco industry, no industry is held in more contempt and scorn than big oil. This is strangely foolish in that tobacco has been proved to cause cancer and has no beneficial use whatsoever, whereas oil literally fuels the American dream. Another clear example of the disconnect that brought us President Barack Hussein Obama.

This clueless condition is a direct result of woefully ignorant Americans with hypocritical attitudes. Surely the unprecedented quality of life in the United States has spoiled too many Americans, who insist on driving gas-guzzling sport utility vehicles and also demand to fill them up with cheap gas. Similarly, some other irresponsible Americans eat massive quantities of junk food, refuse to exercise, poison their once-sacred temples at every opportunity and then demand that someone else pay for their health care. Maybe the band Green Day had it right with its song "American Idiot." Takes one to know one.

When gas prices go up, Americans condemn big oil for making profits. When catastrophes happen, such as the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, Americans demand that big oil be severely fined, demand more government oversight of the industry by a proven incompetent Fedzilla and demand that more safety features be implemented to prevent another oil spill while expecting gas prices to stay low.

Mining for energy has always been a very dangerous and risky business. Future oil spills will happen, and more coal miners will get killed. It's the nature of the beast and also true because man has his imperfect hand involved. We should all be thankful these horrible things don't happen more often. We should thank the energy companies for that.

I'm convinced the energy business could make mining for energy virtually risk-free, thereby making the risk of an oil spill very low. Few if any coal miners would ever get hurt or killed again. However, if such a risk-free model were adopted, the cost of energy would skyrocket and kill the American economy. Seven dollars or more for a gallon of gas, anyone? BP and other energy companies are not evil enterprises that are out to rape the environment. They are in business to make a profit and provide us affordable energy while taking prudent measures to protect the environment. Consumer demand drives production, pure and simple. No one escapes guilt from this guaranteed cause and effect.

When catastrophes such as the oil spill in the Gulf occur, energy companies should be required to clean them up, and BP has stated it will. If Fedzilla weren't strangled by corruption, a multitude of contingency plans would have been in place for any and all scenarios such as leaks, ruptures, spills and explosions. I've never had a fire in our home, but we have fire extinguishers in every room. It is insane to think the time to put together a fire plan is after a fire breaks out. In essence, it appears that is what BP did. Fedzilla has done nothing. Bizarro.

Fedzilla, with all its redundant, counterproductive bureaucracies, is just as guilty for not demanding such precautions and safety measures. How's that EPA working out for you? Environmental Protection Agency, my foot.

The facts about green energy are in, and they are uglier than an oil spill in your living room. All the wind, sun and hydro energy currently provide us with about 5 percent of our energy needs. That's all the energy they are going to provide for many years to come. At this point, green energy is a fool's game that will not provide us with meaningful energy that our energy-gluttonous, unsophisticated society requires.

Nuclear energy is also despised by energy empty heads, yet it is the cleanest, safest and most efficient energy on the planet. America hasn't built a nuclear power plant in more than 30 years because of completely unfounded fears and sleeping bureaucrats, yet the 104 nuclear power plants we do have provide roughly 20 percent of America's energy needs.

America still moves by petroleum mined by BP and other petroleum companies. All the produce and goods in your grocery store got there by truck. You drive to work because of the oil that was mined and refined into gas that is in the tank of your automobile.

We can't have it both ways when it comes to energy. The goal remains for America to be energy-independent. Don't be an American energy idiot.

Drill, baby, drill; demand state-of-the-art intelligent preparation and hold the ineffective, criminal decision-makers accountable.

Putting the oil spill in historical perspective:

June,2 2010

Green activists like to declare that we’re addicted to oil. I think we’re addicted to drama. (…)

Regarding the oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico here are a few facts:

Half of all the oil entering the world’s oceans is totally unconnected to humans. According to research published in a peer-reviewed academic journal in 2003: “Crude oil seeps are natural phenomenon over which humankind has little direct control.” (…)

In early 1996, an oil tanker ran aground off Britain, polluting 200 km (124 miles) of coastline. Three years later, when the BBC reported on the aftermath, it observed that visitors to the region could “see no evidence today of the dismal predictions some were making at the time of the spill.”

Oil spills are not uncommon. This one is by no means anywhere near the largest. It’s not even the largest in the Gulf of Mexico. It’s the second largest. That doesn’t make it okay. I don’t want anybody to misunderstand me here. It’s bad as it is, but the planet’s still here, people are still alive and animals are still alive where all these things have happened, and that will be the case here as well. It’s not going to be easy. There’s going to be a tremendous amount of pain, and there ought to be steps being taken now that aren’t being taken to plug this well or do something like Jindal wants to do with these sand berms. There are a number of steps that could be taken. We don’t need to be sending Eric Holder down there, a lawyer, meeting with prosecutors. We don’t need to be sending commissions down there or setting commissions up. We need to find the best and brightest engineers possible in the private sector and get ‘em all working on this.

Netanyahu Defends Military's Raid on 'Hate Boat' Bound for Gaza:

June 02, 2010

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday defended his military's deadly raid on an aid flotilla bound for the Gaza Strip, saying the international community condemning his country is rushing to judgment about the self-defense measures Israeli naval forces were forced to undertake.

The comments came hours after all remaining pro-Palestinians activists from the aid ships were sent to Ben-Gurion airport near Tel Aviv to be deported. Three ambulance planes heading to Turkey were the first to take off, with four other planes ready to embark, Israeli officials said.

In all, 527 activists were being deported by air, Interior ministry spokeswoman Sabine Haddad said, and seven wounded activists were remaining behind in Israeli hospitals.

About a dozen female activists scuffled with security officers at the airport but were quickly subdued by authorities, Israeli officials said. Officials said no charges would be filed and the women were to be deported as planned.

"This wasn't a love boat. This was a hate boat," Netanyahu said. "I regret to say for many in the international community, no evidence is needed. Israel is guilty until proven guilty."

A number of nations have condemned Israel for using deadly force, killing nine activists, aboard one of the six boats in the flotilla Monday. The United States has urged caution, calling for an investigation before any conclusions are reached.

Netanyahu, responding to the outrage, said Wednesday that Israeli forces were not met by any "serious violence" on the other five ships and so no serious injuries occurred. But he said on the Turkish-flagged ship where the fighting broke out, "Something very different happened."

"They were met with a vicious mob. They were stabbed. They were clubbed. They were fired upon," Netanyahu said. "The attackers had prepared their violent action in advance. ... These weren't pacifists. They weren't peace activists. These were violent supporters of terrorism."

The prime minister said the Israeli soldiers had to act in self defense -- he said that he talked to one who had been shot in the stomach and knee.

Netanyahu, citing the activists' support for Hamas, said Israel will continue to assert its right to inspect cargo headed for the Gaza Strip out of concern that weapons could be smuggled in for groups like Hamas.

"Israel regrets the loss of life but we will never apologize for defending ourselves," he said.

Turkey, meanwhile, has led the charge against Israel, with Prime Minister Recep Tayyid Erdogan calling the clash a "bloody massacre" and describing Israel's actions as "murder." More aid ships could arrive in the region later in the week.

The Associated Press contributed to this report

Why No One Wants to Be Director of National Intelligence Under Obama:

June 2, 2010, 7:19 am

Little noticed before the holiday weekend was this piece in the Washington Post, where Obama administration officials bemoaned the fact that they can’t find anyone to accept the job of Director of National Intelligence (DNI). After floating the name of General James Clapper, the Obama administration is apparently looking elsewhere because of pressure from Capitol Hill to appoint a civilian. Problem? Apparently no qualified civilian intelligence experts are interested. The Post quotes an intelligence official saying, “Nobody who knows this stuff wants this job.”

Now why is that? Could it be the fact that the Obama administration has effectively declared war on the intelligence community—taking away the tools our intelligence professionals need to protect the country and then blaming them for their failure to anticipate and prevent plots like the Christmas Day and Times Square attacks?

In a piece entitled “Setting impossible standards on intelligence,” the Post’s Walter Pincus explains that blaming the Office of Director of National Intelligence for the Christmas Day attack, as the Senate Intelligence Committee recently did, “would set a standard that no future head of any intelligence agency could meet. The failures were, in the first instance, human errors, and there will be more, over which no DNI could have direct responsibility. It would, in some ways, be much like calling for Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton to resign or be fired if sanctions against Iran do not work, or the Arabs and Israelis don’t reach agreement in their talks.”

As I have explained here before, the intelligence community is being given a nearly impossible task: they are being asked to put together a 1,000-piece puzzle without being allowed to see the picture on the cover of the box. The only way to get that picture, so they can connect the dots, is to allow them to capture and interrogate top terrorist leaders who know what the picture looks like. That does not necessarily require waterboarding. But it does require some capability to hold and effectively question high-value detainees in U.S. custody. America does not have that capability today. Until that changes, the intelligence community will have their hands tied. And they will get the blame for failing to connect the dots, when the blame really lies with the president who took away their capability to do so.

All the blame if you fail without the tools you need to succeed—no wonder nobody wants the job.

Take another look at the last article that was left here for your observation and everything should be coming quite clear as to the modus of operations, and why this administration has rightly chosen work with and align BP rather than against it. Thanks for the heads up and inadvertantly bringing me to the Queen for the incite.
On further review after reading the article- I will agree with you for the moment that it is not BP that needs to be told of its responcibility to our people, and the world as a whole, for safeguarding our planet. Let me stop there, ... because, there is nothing else about your cavalier attitude regarding this planet or its people that can ever be reconciled.
-----------------------

Caspian, Mike G, Mike Q, robert: PLEASE READ DEEPLY INTO THE EXTENDED ARTICLE LEFT ABOVE.
There is plenty of connective tissue and residual spillback that ought to have THE PRINCE OF DARKNESS, AKA/ the Gollum, "Shooter" worried heading back to his bunkered cave hands wringing in that blackened ooze and evidence that blackened his heart, took over his soul, and caused him to do all of those wicked, wicked things for the object of his desires- CODE NAME: "My PRECIOUS". Perhaps he should have read- The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien
-------------------------------
*If Dick Cheney and his brood were as smart as he thinks he was, then right about now he'd be making plans for showing his master "the demon" his contract authenicated and signed in the blood of millions, cashing in all of his ill-gotten chips, and demanding early exit, and placement deep in the darkest depths of the netherworld where he won't be found.
---------------------------

POLL QUESTION: Do you think he should get a partnership, or VP position. Or do you think he might be too dangerous and treacherous for Satan to keep by his side for any length of time?

Would Satan cast Cheney out of the underworld- to sleep with the fishes that are now tarred and feathered? Hmmmm! You know, like a Dante's Inferno Revisited where the punishment fits the crime.

Would Cheney adapt well to the role of Dracula's Renfield in the demons world reaping in likeminded dead souls?
YOU BETCHA!

Could Satan safely turn his back on or count on Cheney to watch his back?
SEE: The Adventures of Shooter and Leaving the scene of an accident. Hmmmm!

Would Cheney deny ever knowing Satan, satanic rituals and penchant for blood letting if the Good Lord allowed him to plead his case?
SEE: Scooter Libby, Abu Ghereb, Chalabi, collateral damage, WMDs, partnerships with Saddam and the Taliban, that 30 pieces of silver aka/ political capital that sold our nation into foreign debt captivity.
YOU BETCHA'

Would Cheney count on all his presumed accrued powers, political capital and terror associations to enter mortal combat against the protectors of Gods green earth- or would he bunker up, citing his heartless condition, and 4F status as preclusions for sending someone elses son or daughter in his stead?
Of course, we all know that he would send them into battle going on the cheap 1. without a realistic plan 2. without the tools needed 3. and deny knowing anything about it when all is lost but leaving a trail of bread crumbs leading back to him that is miles wide. But hey, that's Cheney. THE GRINCH THAT STOLE AMERICA with that devil may care attitude about life, liberty and the right to pursue happiness. To him its all about PRECIOUS!
---------------------------
Hmmmmmmmmmmmm! Perhaps Bill F was right afterall. The only way out for Cheney now is to kidnap the Queen, and get rid of all the evidence, Tony Blair and BP persons in the know about his reign as ENERGY DICTATOR. Perhaps we might find a former Auto CEO that will be brave enough to divulge the mechanisms that were behind the enforcements of such low CAFE mileage standards during wartime, since restricting the amount of dependence on Arab fuel has always been deemed so critical in assuring that our money could not be used against us.
Oxymoron after oxymoron hangs on the oilslickened Cheney that the suit now weighs upon him like a tarbaby...

Much like the curious implosion behind the collapse of 7WTC and the loss of the original Enron files, and the multitude of other ENERGY HIGH CRIMES involving the CFTC inserting clauses in the energy bill that usurped Congressional powers , the UBS scandals, as well as being the mastemrind behind the "deregulation WMD"- ...If I were England, I wouldn't let "the Bush/Cheney hitman" stealthy 9 lives cat burglar Phil Gramm and his wall of immunities anywhere near their country.

John my good friend, all your observations seem accurate too me.

It is written in the Scriptures that 1/3 of the waters, 1/3 of the land, and 1/3 of the air will be poisoned.

Could be oil spills? Nukes? Asteroids? Pestilence?

Throw in New World Order and One World Government for good measure.

Revelation 8:1-13

McCartney Is Honored at White House
June 2, 2010 / http://tinyurl.com/2cpzm36
A few minutes after the concert, Mr. McCartney returned to the microphone, thanking the Library of Congress and adding, “After the last eight years, it’s great to have a president who knows what a library is.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/03/arts/music/03mccartney.html?src=mv

Oil spill is our fault:
We want cheap energy and no consequences

CORRECTION: "WE THE PEOPLE" WANT CHEAP, EFFICIENT, AND ENVIRONMENTALLY FRIENDLY ENERGY.
IT WAS CHENEY & HIS MINIONS WHO WANTED "NO CONSEQUENCES".
_____________________________
It was Bush/Cheney who kept efficiency standards low when we already had the technology for 47mpg efficiency.

It was Bush who pushed the tax rebates to businesses and professionals for the sale of monster vehicles to insure maximum consumption at maximum cost.

It was Bush/Cheney who furthermore, guaranteed the need for increased dependence on foreign fuel by enetering a war of choice in Iraq, and doubling our oil consumption for 8yrs running on a mindless excursion that served only beneficial and profitable in the purposes of increasing "their profits" while completely neglecting the needs of our troops, our country and our citizens.

Cheap, cheap, cheap, short and steal from American families for Specialized no-bid contracting firms with no consequence at all when caught. Then pad the bill again with another layer of ponzischemes and "brown bag cash bribe" surges.

Cheap, cheap, cheap. Why worry about insuring the highest standards of protection for our shorelines. Lets farm that responcibility out to BP too. [heh heh]

$150 dollar per barrel oil? Hell no, the sky is the limit. Don't worry about a thing we will insure that oil is the standard. If fact lets delude it, make it even less efficient with corn. Whoa! Hey Brazil, whatcha doing with that sugar? Cut that out. Use corn. Corn depletes the soil of nutrients. Without nutrients soil turns to dust. Dust is carried away more easily in storms leaving land more highly susceptable to becoming barren. heh heh

Oil spills and rig failures?
-Out of sight out of mind. heh heh
-worse comes to worse let the public pay for us to come clean it up. heh heh heh

Dead zones in our coastal waters?
-Great! More money for us. Food will have to be shipped in or transported from overseas. Our good friend Dubai can then place increased tax levies at the ports and the increassed payment will be guaranteed to be paid in full by "consumers". heh heh heh

Constitution my ass. The sooner those people get that "citizen" shit out of their heads the better.
Just keep pounding that word "consumer" into their skulls until it is imprinted on their foreheads like cattle.

C'mon Halliburton, let's get out of here. Aaaaah, hmmmmmm immunity safety on the shores of Dubai.
Transocean you guys plant some of yourselves in Switzerland and avoid paying taxes from there.

The rest of you suckers are on your own.
heh heh

Whoa! Wait an oil slick minute. I am immune, untouchable. I am Dick...

Caspain: The Book of Revelations: Chapters 1-22

Caspian:

Revelations 1:3-20
2:1-19 *8(9-11), ...
Is (9-11) the Warning to others to take flight from the purveyors of death and destruction?


...9/11? Hmmmmmm! Now that's too eerie. Or is it? verse 8 precedes and is aligned with 9/11, and so it has been written
--------------
****[8] And unto the angel of the church in Smyrna write; These things saith the first and the last, which was dead, and is "alive";

“It is written in the Scriptures that 1/3 of the waters, 1/3 of the land, and 1/3 of the air will be poisoned.”




After the flood of Noah God said he would never again destroy the Earth with a flood, most think it will be with fire but perhaps he will simply allow us to destroy our own planet? If enough oil where to pollute the ocean there would be less water to evaporate for rain, less rain, less food. Famine, drought, pestilence all by the hand of man or we could change our evil ways and follow the way of God and LIVE. The choice is ours you know. It was always our choice from the days of Adam and Eve but without believing and living in Christ, we always make the choice that results in pain and heartache.

Revelations 2:(9-11) The warning to the faithful of Israel to stand firm in the face of their convictions come back into the kingdom of righteousness and stand clear of the ideology professed by the purveyors of death and malevolent destruction.

Mike G/ Caspian: Let the music and the lyrics which were attached to this song lift your spirits as we pass through this journey as friends united in the mission to bring a form of peace, understanding and heaven to this earth.
Music: Gods gift of love. WOW! There ain't nothing better to soothe the savage beast.

Vintage Jimmy Page
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NFik1D1zPhQ&feature=related
----------------------
There's a lady who's sure
All that glitters is gold
And she's buying a stairway to heaven

When she gets there she knows
If the stores are all closed
With a word she can get what she came for

Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh
And she's buying a stairway to heaven

There's a sign on the wall
But she wants to be sure
'Cause you know sometimes words have
Two meanings

In a tree by the brook
There's a songbird who sings
Sometimes all of our thoughts are
Misgiven

Ooh, it makes me wonder

Ooh, it makes me wonder

There's a feeling I get
When I look to the west
And my spirit is crying
For leaving

In my thoughts I have seen
Rings of smoke through the trees
And the voices of those
Who stand looking

Ooh, it makes me wonder

Ooh, it really makes me wonder

And it's whispered that soon
If we all call the tune
Then the piper will lead us to reason

And a new day will dawn
For those who stand long
And the forests will
Echo with laughter

Oh, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, ooh, whoa, oh

If there's a bustle in your hedgerow
Don't be alarmed now
It's just a spring clean
For the May queen

Yes, there are two paths you can go by
But in the long run
There's still time to change
The road you're on

And it makes me wonder

Aw, uh, oh

Your head is humming and it won't go
In case you don't know
The piper's calling you to join him

Dear lady, can you hear the wind blow?
And did you know
Your stairway lies on the whispering wind?

(Solo)

And as we wind on down the road
Our shadows taller than our soul
There walks a lady we all know
Who shines white light and wants to show
How everything still turns to gold
And if you listen very hard
The truth will come to you at last
When all are one and one is all
To be a rock and not to roll

And she's buying a stairway
To heaven...

John, there is only one thing I can't figure out:

Whats a bustle in your hedgerow and why should I be alarmed?

Does anybody remember laughter?

LOL

Mike G: even tho it may sound sexual in content or innuendo it isn't.

bustle: Definition, Synonyms from Answers.com

bustle intr. & tr.v. , -tled , -tling , -tles . To move or cause to move energetically and busily.

hedgerow: Definition from Answers.com
hedgerow ( ) n. A row of bushes, shrubs, or trees forming a hedge.

ITS NOT TOO LATE TO STRAIGHTEN UP & CLEAN UP OUR ACTS, AND CHANGE THE ROAD WE ARE ON, ...THE PIPERS CALLING YOU TO JOIN HIM.

GWB unplugged!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZtsvsS2Ys0

Never Letting a Serious Crisis Go to Waste:

On June 3, 2010

White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel gained notoriety for declaring his credo: “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste [1].” In other words, when there is tragedy and suffering, intense human pain and disaster, a political expert enjoys a unique opportunity to push the least popular parts of his agenda past a distracted electorate.

No sooner had President Barack Obama entered the White House than the Emanuel Doctrine was put into motion with the 1,073-page $787 billion “stimulus bill” that had to be rushed through Congress, seemingly overnight [2]. As Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) said [3]: “We have not had a single hearing on anything in front of us….We’ve been told that even one hearing would be one too many, and that we have a single day to approve these five complex propositions that will affect the lives of millions.”

Faced in January 2009 with a looming national financial catastrophe, as a crash in the residential real estate market prompted a grave Wall Street crisis, the Obama White House detected cover to raid the public till and reward staunch Democrat loyalists under the rubric of a “stimulus bill.” Beneath the public radar and buried within the bill’s 1,073 pages [4], the “stimulus” allocated inter alia $50 million to the National Endowment for the Arts, nearly half a billion dollars for people interested in researching “global warming,” even at least $18 million for the website [5] that reports how the “stimulus” funds are allocated. Overturning a prime achievement of the Clinton Administration, the “stimulus” restored key elements of the welfare practices [6] that America had abandoned. Over time, the “stimulus” has trickled down to fund $233,825 for explaining voting patterns in Africa [7] and $363,760 for two jobs “[d]evelop[ing] ‘real life’ st[or]ies [8] that underscore job and infrastructure related to [the Stimulus Bill] research findings.”

In sum, there was crisis – thus opportunity. The sweaty-palms sense of crisis that demanded virtually overnight passage before Congressional representatives could read its encyclopedic contents has long since proven exaggerated. The vast majority of the bill’s funds still have not stimulated anything. Much of it still has not been infused into the economy.

This is the Emanuel Doctrine: never let a crisis go to waste. This doctrine similarly was implemented after the ObamaCare health measure had been all-but-abandoned [9] when Scott Brown surprisingly defeated Attorney-General Martha Coakley in the race for United State Senator from Massachusetts. Soon after, unexpectedly, a national pseudo-crisis emerged when Anthem Blue Cross, a California health insurer, sought to raise its health premiums by as much as 39 percent [10]. The crisis was not wasted by Washington. Within days, ObamaCare was rushed back onto the House calendar. Forgotten amid the federal legislative carnage that followed – most recently credited with helping bring down Rep. David Obey [11], Rep. Bart Stupak [12], and Sen. Arlen Specter – is that Anthem Blue Cross ultimately withdrew their rate-hike request [13] as the California insurance oversight system effectively regulated as intended.

Considered in the light of this prior experience, it becomes understandable why the Obama Administration has opted to curtail oil-exploration, suspending and rescinding permits, in response to the tragic Deepwater Horizon oil rig spill off the Gulf of Mexico. The story is fresh in the public mind. In raw numbers, eleven have died, and between 18 million and 39 million gallons [14] of oil have gushed along America’s Gulf Coast, already exceeding the Exxon Valdez disaster that spilled nearly 11 million gallons of oil into the waters along Alaska. One of America’s fiercest Democrat partisans, New Orleans resident James Carville, went on an extraordinary tear [15] last week against the Obama Administration: “The President of the United States could’ve come down here. He could’ve been involved with the families of these 11 people….These people are crying. They’re begging for something down here, and it just looks like he’s not involved in this. Man, you got to get down here and take control of this. Put somebody in charge of this and get this thing moving. We’re about to die down here.” Observing that “[t]he political stupidity of this is just unbelievable,” Carville emphatically repeated his call: “There’s a thousand things that he could do. He just needs to get down here and start doing something, people are dying.”

By last Thursday, the daily Rasmussen tracking poll [16] revealed that 26 percent of Americans strongly approve of the President’s job performance, while 42 percent strongly disapprove, giving Mr. Obama a Presidential Approval rating of minus-16. A USA Today/Gallup survey [17] found that 53 percent of Americans rate his handling of the crisis as “poor” or “very poor” while only 43 percent still are satisfied. Nevertheless, Americans continue to support oil exploration. By a significant margin, Texas voters [18] still want more offshore oil drilling. Similar percentages hold nationally. [19] However, for this White House, proceeding with new drilling would “waste” the crisis.

If Obama’s goal were to evaluate ecologically responsible alternatives to drilling for oil a mile below the gulf’s surface, the White House could reconsider exploring for oil and natural gas in ANWR [20], the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in the north Alaskan coast. Of ANWR’s 19 million acres, there is enormous potential in a small section, the “10-02 Area,” which still would leave 92% of ANWR untouched. Only one-ten-thousandth of ANWR – a section smaller than LAX airport – actually would have surface drilling rigs. ANWR exploration could pump scores of billions of dollars into the national economy, create half a million great-paying jobs, and reduce American fuel-import expenditures by hundreds of billions of dollars. Moreover, the local caribou population fare better around oil pipelines [21] than environmentalists ever expected.

The Obama White House also could focus its response to the Deepwater Horizon disaster by intensifying federal efforts to clean the environmental catastrophe to Louisiana’s fishing waters, and by moving rapidly to approve [22] Gov. Bobby Jindal’s almost-frantic pleas for federal permission to erect more protective sand berms [23] along the coast. However, prior crisis behavior by this White House – whether prompted by a devastating Wall Street collapse or an outlier health insurer inordinately applying to raise rates by 39 percent – reflects that President Obama deems moments like these as unique opportunities for “transformative [24] social change.” Thus, we may well anticipate an intensified effort in the near term to resuscitate the moribund “Cap and Trade [25]” bill which would add between $1,761 and $3,100 in annual energy costs [26] for most American homes.

For the President’s longer-range vision [27] of this crisis, we again encounter his determination to pursue ideological goals that clash with the American people’s concerns [28]. He is now stopping new oil exploration: suspending plans for exploratory drilling off the Virginia and Alaska coasts; stopping 33 exploratory drilling projects in the Gulf of Mexico, and; continuing a six-month moratorium on all permits for offshore drilling. Although our Outer Continental Shelf contains as much as 86 billion barrels of oil [29], with possibly 130 million barrels off the coast of Virginia [30] alone, the President’s response means that we instead will continue importing approximately 13.5 million barrels daily [31] – more than twenty percent of that from the Persian Gulf dictatorships [32] – at prices that now hover around $70 a barrel. We will send Arab Gulf despots some $175 million daily or some $65 billion a year, even as our deficit-driven economy starves for capital, and as our unemployed search for good-paying jobs at home.

Our nation consumes more than 20 million barrels of oil daily [33], importing nearly sixty percent [34] from foreign countries whose production standards are far less friendly to the polar ice caps than ours. Saudi Arabia, for example, ranks last [35] as the dirtiest emitter of greenhouse gases among the 57 countries rated on one NGO’s “Climate Change Performance Index.” Moreover, our imported oil necessarily arrives in tankers – the petroleum obviously cannot be delivered any other way – and those tankers pose even more extreme environmental risks [36]. The 1979 Atlantic Empress tanker spilled 88.3 million gallons of oil. The ABT Summer tanker spilled 78 million off the Angola Coast in 1991. The Castillo de Bellver spilled 78.5 million. The Amoco Cadiz tanker lost 68.7 million gallons off France’s Brittany coast. The Odyssey spilled 43 million off Nova Scotia. The Haven poured 42 million gallons in the waters outside Italy. The list goes on. [37] Yet oil-importing tankers have not been suspended from sailing America’s waters. Nor do we suspend air travel after a tragedy in the sky nor rail transportation after a train wreck.

President Obama has long opposed new oil exploration. In November 2005 [38], he voted against oil and gas leasing in the Alaskan Coastal Plain. On April 20, 2007, rolling out his “Initiative to Combat Global Warming,” he told students in New Hampshire that “[i]t will take a grassroots effort to make America greener and end the tyranny of oil [39].” Weeks later, he told a crowd: “The age of oil must end [40].” In his second Presidential Debate [41] against John McCain, he stated: “[W]e can’t simply drill our way out of the problem. And we’re not going to be able to deal with the climate crisis if our only solution is to use more fossil fuels that create global warming.”

Now, with a crisis too opportune to waste, the President has chosen not to respond with a comprehensive proactive approach to America’s energy choices. He could have encouraged safe new exploration by directing his Interior Secretary henceforth to administer and enforce competently the safety regulations already on the books, but which his Minerals Management Service ignored on his watch [42] during the construction of Deepwater Horizon. He could reconsider opening ANWR to drilling, encourage efforts to expand clean-coal technology, and even order a prioritized review aimed at reviving the construction of nuclear power plants in America. (America has not built a new nuclear power plant in more than thirty years [43], even as France’s sixteen nuclear power plants generate nearly 80 percent [44] of that country’s electricity.) Instead, this Administration, which knows that it can take ten years [45] from licensing exploration until newly discovered oil reaches market, is prepared to risk laying the foundations for a future crisis by presently deterring new exploration and instead tilting disproportionately at windmills.

Terrorists at the helm:

June 2, 2010


Turkey's Islamist prime minister, Tayyip Erdogan, knows better than most why Israel found it necessary to confront that phony "peace" flotilla off Gaza Monday.

Certainly he knows that the convoy was organized and manned by the Foundation for Human Rights & Humanitarian Relief -- as bloody-handed a terrorist gang as exists in the Mideast.

Known by its Turkish acronym, IHH, the group has strong and enduring ties to Hamas and al Qaeda.

Indeed, the Turkish government itself raided IHH's Istanbul office in 1997, uncovering guns, explosives, bomb-making manuals and jihadist flags -- along with documents showing that its members had been dispatched to war zones like Afghanistan, Bosnia and Chechnya.

And a 2006 report by the Danish Institute for International Studies linked IHH to a foiled al Qaeda bombing plot against Los Angeles International Airport.

No surprise, then, that the one vessel whose passengers violently resisted boarding by Israeli commandos seems to have been the IHH flagship -- and that most, if not all, of those who died in the ensuing struggle were IHH members.

Nor that IHH leaders stated openly that the flotilla's real purpose was to provoke a confrontation with Israel that would further damage Jerusalem's already frayed diplomatic and military ties with Turkey -- not that Ankara needs much encouragement in that regard.

All of which makes Prime Minister Erdogan a flaming hypocrite.

But wait -- there's more. There is no "humanitarian crisis" in Gaza in the first place: This year alone, more than a quarter-million tons of medicine, food and other supplies have already moved from Israel to Gaza.

More to the point, Israel offered to send the flotilla's supplies to Gaza once they'd been inspected for weapons and other contraband.

The offer was flatly rejected.

As was a similar offer from Egypt, which also maintains a Gaza blockade -- for essentially the same reason: The Islamist lunatics who make up Hamas also pose a mortal threat to Cairo.

All this adds up to sufficient justification for Israel to have intercepted the flotilla.

The fact is, the convoy's purpose was to break a blockade of Hamas-run Gaza that is fully supported under international law -- even if Israel chose to act in international waters. And, as a government spokesman said, given Hamas' constant effort to import weapons into Gaza, "If this blockade is broken, every man, woman and child in Israel will pay a price."

Not that the crisis has passed.

The media is in full-throated condemnation mode, as is the "international community." No surprise there -- that's what they do best.

Then there was news yesterday of two new "aid" ships under way in the Mediterranean, bound for Gaza.

Has a seaborne intifada now begun?

If so, its purpose is not peace, but rather the destruction of Israel and the eviction of democracy and human rights from the Middle East.

Neither Israel -- nor America -- can flinch.

Bring Back Bush!

With much of the temporary "stimulis" abruptly ending as scheduled, and
with tody's jobs report showing the only gains in jobs being the temporary census worker's hired by the Federal Government and a double dip recession looming, as real as ever, then Obama's and the Democratic left's moronic tax and spend method of stimulating us into recovery has fizzled out on schedule. It seems that the right wing media was right on target and it is the left wing loons who are destroying America and the Bush tax cuts haven't even been phased out yet. Just wait!