Iraq 4-eva!
Chaos was the plan; oil is the prize, just like Henry Kissinger said. Jim Holt in the London Review of Books does the math:
Iraq is ‘unwinnable’, a ‘quagmire’, a ‘fiasco’: so goes the received opinion. But there is good reason to think that, from the Bush-Cheney perspective, it is none of these things. Indeed, the US may be ‘stuck’ precisely where Bush et al want it to be, which is why there is no ‘exit strategy’.
Iraq has 115 billion barrels of known oil reserves. That is more than five times the total in the United States. And, because of its long isolation, it is the least explored of the world’s oil-rich nations. A mere two thousand wells have been drilled across the entire country; in Texas alone there are a million. It has been estimated, by the Council on Foreign Relations, that Iraq may have a further 220 billion barrels of undiscovered oil; another study puts the figure at 300 billion. If these estimates are anywhere close to the mark, US forces are now sitting on one quarter of the world’s oil resources. The value of Iraqi oil, largely light crude with low production costs, would be of the order of $30 trillion at today’s prices. For purposes of comparison, the projected total cost of the US invasion/occupation is around $1 trillion.
Well, if all this is true, it's going to be the first business venture that George W. Bush has ever succeeded in.
Hope from Australia
Political events in Australia have been moving so fast, no one has really caught up. A week ago, Labor looked very likely to win the election (held last Saturday) and there seemed a good chance that Liberal
(= pro-business right) Prime Minister John Howard would lose his own seat. Those things duly happened, and that seemed to be about as much as we could expect or hope for. Instead, there has been a meltdown of spectacular proportions on the losing side.
After a thoroughly uninspiring election campaign, characterised by lots of me-too promises and fence-sitting, we have ended up with a political scene that is utterly transformed, with the previously dominant hardline right not merely out of government but a marginalised minority within the opposition. It remains to be seen whether Labor can make anything of this. No one is expecting much in the short term, but suddenly there seems to be room to move, and the prospect of several terms in office in which to do it.
Maybe... Just maybe...
Edwards at the DNC: "Knock down that wall!"
- lambert's blog
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"To serve and protect"
"The Peacekeepers." That's the inscription on a USAF LE/SP Academy ring.
"To serve and protect." That's the motto painted or decaled on countless PD/SO vehicles across the nation.
"Courtesy. Service. Protection." That's the DPS take on it.
Given the frailties and foibles of human beings in general, those standards sometimes seem more honored in the breach than in the keeping.
So tell me, why do "progressives" hate police so much?
Jackbooting Suspects Threadology
When discussing the relative merits of whether or not to crush a suspect under the heel of one's jackboot, it is important to avoid intemperate or meandering rhetoric so as to keep the thrusts of one's arguments from being attenuated by "wild boot chases." I suggest to all who are interested in this subject that we lace up our Kickers and trifercate(sic) the discussion as follows, in three distinct threads:
Hostage situation at Clinton NH office
[The live video (WMUR).]
Yikes! (No, this is not irony. Edwards and Obama's offices have been evacuated as well.)
Big Orange coverage say the man has a duct tape bomb strapped to body (no source). Now front-paged. With source.
Why? Because they're all thieves!
Typed in from the Guardian, week of 11/16/2007:
A governmental audit of the Ronald Reagan presidential library and museum has failed to account for 80,000 to 100,000 items of White House memorabilia. Auditors the disapperances from the complex in Simi Valley, near Los Angeles, indicated the "near universal" breakdown of security.
Hey, freedom's untidy!
Stunning case of Wake Forest researcher as goto expert
What a coincidence... our previously discussed favorite zap-em researcher shows up in more news articles.
We just can't know about the risks. How could we? It's not like this guy has done some major research into this topic. Let's all just say stun guns and tasers are perfectly harmless (unless you happen to die from one).
Stun Gun Used on Pregnant Woman in Ohio [AP]
Dr. William Bozeman, associate director of research at Wake Forest University's Department of Emergency Medicine, said it isn't known whether electricity from a stun gun might pose a risk to a fetus.
It's beginning to look a lot like Huckabee
Is Mike Huckabee the Jimmy Carter of 2008 — the dark-horse southern evangelical that steams ahead and grabs the nomination (or more)?
Much of this analysis (DCOW) from a conservative site has the ring of truth, both as to Huckabee's growing appeal and the doom he would usher in:
I don’t disagree that Huckabee is basically another George W. Bush, or, more specifically, GWB on steroids....
E Coli Republicans -- Another Failure
As this fine editorial (scroll down) suggests, the Lessons Learned from Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle" have been forgotten -- if not deliberately,
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