GLOBAL INTERVENTION

It's my personal opinion that Homeland Security was formed to deal with an already out-of-control abduction problem. Terrorism was only the cover story. It was president Reagan that talked about how an outside alien threat would unify mankind.

Ted Twietmeyer

www.data4science.net

 
***

Humans are animals.

Shakespeare penned that we are the Paragon of Animals

But it’s a jungle out there.

The fittest and strongest survive, according to Charles Darwin and Dick Cheney.

The world is a huge jungle with finite sources of food, water and petroleum.

Bizarre weather and the rise of global temperatures are making the jungle more unstable and unpredictable.

It is not an asteroid or extraterrestrials that threaten the big jungle.

It is ourselves.

The current crowd in charge of “our” government (albeit not for much longer), decided that IT would be less than the Paragon of Animals, and just BE a generic and preying animal.

Protecting the species and one’s own country should not be synonymous with ruthless exploitation and consumption of the Earth.

Conquering another nation to obtain its oil to feed our cars and other machines doesn’t necessarily make the Homeland safer.

It doesn’t even necessarily deter other dangers to the Homeland that come from Islamic terrorists.

These other animals in the jungle react.

They become defensive.

They get upset.

They become more and more aggressive and offensive.

Exploitation through war is self-defeating in the long run, but in the short term, its sweet riches flow to those who are doing the exploiting.

Of course, Preventive and Pre-emptive war is not called exploitation.

It is done in the names of (and in defense of) Democracy, Liberty, and Freedom…

With the blessings of God!

Don’t ask…

WHICH ONE!

IT’S THE OIL STUPID!

***

P.S. I've added this excellent and succinct essay on the background for Bush's wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

What Scott McClellan (and Jay Rockefeller) Didn't Tell Us

The Story Behind George Bush's Lies

By RICHARD W. BEHAN

From

Long accused of signature dishonesty, the Bush Administration now stands twice indicted, by Scott McClellan’s book and by two damning reports from Jay Rockefeller’s Senate Select Committee on Intelligence—the “Phase II” documents. These sources confirm beyond any doubt the Bush Administration, with propaganda and outright lies, deliberately misled the U.S. Congress into authorizing war.

That is the truth, but not the whole truth, and the backstory is no less appalling.

As much as seven months before the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the Administration was deeply involved in planning and mobilizing for the invasion and military occupation of both Iraq and Afghanistan. None of the activity was remotely related to Osama bin Laden or counterterrorism of any stripe.

This is the fundamental truth, it is beyond dispute, and it is fully documented.

The incursions into Afghanistan and Iraq were premeditated, hegemonic wars of conquest and territorial occupation, to gain the geostrategic control of Middle Eastern energy resources. Bald acts of unprovoked military aggression, they are direct violations of the charter of the United Nations. The wars are therefore international crimes, but they were not undertaken until the horror of September 11, 2001 provided a spectacular smokescreen. A fraudulent label--the “war on terror”—was concocted to disguise the premeditated violence, and it was quickly unleashed.

The facts

Iraq
Beginning in 1992 and spanning the two Bush Administrations, repeated written proposals to invade Iraq were prepared and issued. Four men who served in both Administrations—Richard Cheney, Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Paul Wolfowitz, and Zalmay Khalilzad—were the source of the first proposal (expressly seeking “…access to vital raw materials, primarily Persian Gulf oil”) and direct participants in the iterations to follow. Herein is the story of the origin and development of the Project for the New American Century and its tragic ideology of American global hegemony.
(For an excellent treatment of this history, see “Empire Builders: Neoconservatives and Their Blueprint for U.S. Power,” in the Christian Science Monitor, June, 2005.)

On January 20, 2001, 29 members of the Project for the New American Century joined the incoming Bush Administration at the highest levels—notably including Richard Cheney as Vice President, Libby as his Chief of Staff, Donald Rumsfeld as Secretary of Defense, and Wolfowitz as Rumsfeld’s Deputy. The PNAC triumphed when the National Security Council ten days later, on January 30, legitimized the invasion of Iraq. (Read an account of the meeting in Ron Suskind’s book, The Price of Loyalty: the White House and the Education of Paul O’Neill.)

Four days later, on February 3, 2001 the Security Council received a top-secret memorandum from a “high level official.” The memo
“…directed the NSC staff to cooperate fully with [Richard Cheney’s] Energy Task Force as it considered the ‘melding’ of two seemingly unrelated areas of policy: ‘the review of operational policies toward rogue states’ such as Iraq, and ‘actions regarding the capture of new and existing oil and gas fields.’”

(Quoted from Jane Mayer, “Contract Sport,” in The New Yorker, February 16, 2004.)

By early March, 2001, Cheney’s Energy Task Force was studying maps of the Iraqi oil fields, refineries, pipelines, and tanker terminals, and lists of the foreign oil companies—none of which were American or British majors—negotiating with the Hussein regime for exploration and development rights.
(See the maps and the lists at http://www.judicialwatch.org/.)

At least a year before the invasion, the State Department was designing the deconstruction of Iraq’s nationalized oil industry.
(Source: Gregg Mutitt, Crude Designs: the Ripoff of Iraq’s Oil Wealth, The Platform Group, UK.)

Paul Bremer’s Coalition Provisional Authority, with the invited participation of American and British oil companies, drafted a “hydrocarbon law” for Iraq, codifying the State Department’s design.
(See Gregg Mutitt and Erik Leaver, “Slick Connections: U.S. Influence on Iraqi Oil,” in Foreign Policy in Focus, July 18, 2007.)

In January of 2007 President Bush, in announcing the troop surge, demanded as a mandatory “benchmark” the enactment of the hydrocarbon law by the Iraqi Parliament. (See a transcript of the speech at http://www.whitehouse.gov/.)

Exxon/Mobil, Conoco/Phillips, Royal Dutch/Shell, and BP/Amoco are now poised to profit immensely from 81% of Iraq’s undeveloped crude when the hydrocarbon law is passed.
(Source: Joshua Holland, “Bush’s Petro-Cartel Almost Has Iraq’s Oil,” published on the website of AlterNet, October 16, 2006.)

Meanwhile, the UK Independent reported on June 21, 2008 the imminent signing of three $500 million contracts with Exxon/Mobil, Royal Dutch/Shell, and BP/Amoco by the Iraqi Oil Ministry. These are repair and technical “service contracts” covering some of Iraq’s largest oilfields. The companies can elect to be paid in crude oil. (See “Big Oil Returns to Iraq,” by Patrick Cockburn, the UK Independent, June 21, 2008.)

Afghanistan
Upon taking office, the Bush Administration brushed off explicit warnings about al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden. Counterterrorism was nowhere on the new Administration’s agenda. (Read Richard Clarke, Against All Enemies: Inside America’s War on Terror.)

Instead, throughout the spring and summer of 2001 the Bush Administration, on behalf of the Unocal Corporation, was negotiating with the Taliban for pipeline rights-of-way across Afghanistan. A rich package of foreign aid was offered, but the negotiations failed.
(See Wayne Madsen, “Afghanistan, the Taliban, and the Bush Oil Team,” CounterPunch, November 1, 2004, and Paul Sperry, Crude Politics: How Bush’s Oil Cronies Hijacked the War on Terrorism.)

Finally, after threatening the Taliban—“Accept our offer of a carpet of gold or we bury you under a carpet of bombs”—the Bush Administration notified Pakistan and India it would attack Afghanistan “before the end of October.” This took place five weeks prior to the events of 9/11. (Sources: Anon., “Afghanistan: A Timeline of Oil and Violence,” at www.ringnebula.com , and Larry Chin, “Parts I and II: Players on a rigged chessboard: Bridas, Unocal, and the Afghanistan pipeline,” Online Journal, March, 2002.)

On October 7, 2001 the “carpet of bombs” was delivered to Afghanistan as threatened and on schedule. Mr. Hamid Karzai, a former Unocal consultant, was soon installed as President of the country. The first U.S. ambassador was John J. Maresca, a Unocal vice president. He was succeeded by Zalmay Khalilzad, another former consultant for Unocal. (See “Oil War III: the Engineering of Oil Profits Through War and Arbitrary Monetary Standards,” at http://www.whale.to/b/sw1.html ; and “Afghanistan: A Timeline of Oil and Violence,” cited above.)

On February 8, 2002, four months after the carpet of bombs, Presidents Hamid Karzai and Perves Musharraf sign an agreement for a pipeline across Afghanistan and Pakistan.
(See “U.S. Afghan Aid Package Fuels Pipeline Politics,” in Asia Times Online, May 29, 2002; and Crude Politics cited above.)

Within a year an oil industry trade journal reports the Bush Administration is standing ready with financing to build the pipeline and to protect it with a permanent military presence. (See Alexander’s Gas and Oil Connections, February 23, 2003.)

On June 22, 2008 the Toronto Sun reported the signing of a “major deal” by Afghanistan to build an $8 billion, 1,680km pipeline, called “TAPI.” (The Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India pipeline.) Construction will begin “…once Taliban forces are cleared from the pipeline route by U.S., Canadian, and NATO forces.” (See Eric Margolis, “These Wars Are About Oil, Not Democracy,” Toronto Sun, June 22, 2008.)


The objectives of the “war on terror,” were twofold, we were told: to apprehend Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan and to effect a change of regime in Iraq.

But the trademark deceit of the Bush Administration was involved here, too. Osama bin Laden could have been brought to justice easily and without armed conflict, and regime change in Iraq could have been achieved with equal facility.

Awaiting on his desk when George Bush took office was a standing offer from the Taliban to surrender Osama bin Laden. (This had been negotiated by the Clinton Administration after the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole.) Intent on the invasion and military occupation of Afghanistan, however, the Bush Administration rejected the handover three times before 9/11 and twice thereafter. (The tragic speculation: with bin Laden in custody early in 2001, could 9/11 have been avoided?)
(Sources: Anon., “Bush Rejects Taliban Offer to Hand bin Laden Over,” UK Guardian Unlimited, October 14, 2001; Andrew Buncombe, “Bush Rejects Taliban Offer to Surrender bin Laden,” the UK Independent, October 15, 2001; Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair, “How Bush Was Offered bin Laden and Blew It,” CounterPunch, November 1, 2004.).
Saddam Hussein, hoping to forestall warfare, yielded a series of increasingly attractive concessions to the Bush Administration, finally offering to leave his country for exile in Egypt. Intent as well on the invasion and military occupation of Iraq, the Administration ignored the offer.
(Sources: George Monbiot, “Dreamers and Idiots: Britain and the US did everything to avoid a peaceful solution in Iraq and Afghanistan,” The UK Guardian, November 11, 2003,; and Anon., “Llego el momento de deshacerse de Saddam,” El Pais (Spain), September 26, 2007. This is a transcript of a conversation between George Bush, Condoleezza Rice, and Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Anzar in Crawford, Texas, February 22, 2003. The President acknowledges the prospective exile, but vigorously rejects it, declaring, “We will be in Baghdad at the end of March.”)


The truth

Plainly there is a huge disconnect between the incursions into Afghanistan and Iraq and the terrorist attacks of 9/11. But the Bush Administration knowingly and dishonestly joined them into the fraudulent conflation known as the “war on terror.”

This is not a “war on terror.” Afghanistan and Iraq today are occupied countries, administered by puppet governments and dotted with permanent military bases securing the energy assets. Not a by-product of the Bush Administration’s warmaking, this was its purpose.

The Congress is at least vaguely aware. The Defense Authorization Act of 2008 included a Section 1222, prohibiting expenditures for the “permanent stationing of United States Armed Forces in Iraq,” or “to exercise United States control of the oil resources of Iraq.”

President Bush nullified Section 1222 with a signing statement.


Richard W. Behan lives and writes on Lopez Island, off the northwest coast of Washington state. He has published on various websites over two dozen articles exposing and criticizing the criminal wars of the Bush Administration. The work is summarized in an electronic book, The Fraudulent War, available in PDF format at http://coldtype.net/Assets.08/pdfs/
He can be reached at rwbehan@rockisland.com.

THE LEGACY FROM OUTER SPACE

GO:

Government Official

GWB:

 George W. Bush

GO:

 Hello.

GWB: 

This is The Decider.

GO:

Mr. President. What can I do for you?

GWB:

I want to know the status on my new Outer Space Surveillance program---the one that’ll take pictures of the good and bad people here in the Homeland?

GO:

Well, sir, we have “Birds” ready to fly the Satellites and equipment up into orbit.

GWB:

Good. This new Domestic Spying program is important for my legacy. I’ve got to get an American Totalitarian State ready for the next president. We can’t be too careful about potential evil ones in the Homeland.

GO:

Right, Mr. President.

GWB: 

What’s the name of this new agency in charge of my outer space surveillance program?

GO:

 It’s called the National Applications Office, sir.

GWB:

 I don’t like the sound of that. Can we spice it up a little? Maybe call it the George W. Bush Outer Space & Overhead Imagery Office?

GO:

 Sure, Mr. President.

GWB: 

Good. Well, back to my pretzels and beer, then go out and scare some more Armadillos. Let me know when we’ll start photographing critters in this big, beautiful, brave and free country!

GO:

Yes sir.

IT’S THE OIL STUPID!
 

By Spencer S. Hsu

Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, April 12, 2008; Page A03

The Bush administration said yesterday that it plans to start using the nation's most advanced spy technology for domestic purposes soon, rebuffing challenges by House Democrats over the idea's legal authority.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said his department will activate his department's new domestic satellite surveillance office in stages, starting as soon as possible with traditional scientific and homeland security activities -- such as tracking hurricane damage, monitoring climate change and creating terrain maps.
Sophisticated overhead sensor data will be used for law enforcement once privacy and civil rights concerns are resolved, he said. The department has previously said the program will not intercept communications.
"There is no basis to suggest that this process is in any way insufficient to protect the privacy and civil liberties of Americans," Chertoff wrote to Reps. Bennie G. Thompson (D-Miss.) and Jane Harman (D-Calif.), chairmen of the House Homeland Security Committee and its intelligence subcommittee, respectively, in letters released yesterday.
"I think we've fully addressed anybody's concerns," Chertoff added in remarks last week to bloggers. "I think the way is now clear to stand it up and go warm on it."
His statements marked a fresh determination to operate the department's new National Applications Office as part of its counterterrorism efforts. The administration in May 2007 gave DHS authority to coordinate requests for satellite imagery, radar, electronic-signal information, chemical detection and other monitoring capabilities that have been used for decades within U.S. borders for mapping and disaster response.
But Congress delayed launch of the new office last October. Critics cited its potential to expand the role of military assets in domestic law enforcement, to turn new or as-yet-undeveloped technologies against Americans without adequate public debate, and to divert the existing civilian and scientific focus of some satellite work to security uses.
Democrats say Chertoff has not spelled out what federal laws govern the NAO, whose funding and size are classified. Congress barred Homeland Security from funding the office until its investigators could review the office's operating procedures and safeguards. The department submitted answers on Thursday, but some lawmakers promptly said the response was inadequate.
"I have had a firsthand experience with the trust-me theory of law from this administration," said Harman, citing the 2005 disclosure of the National Security Agency's domestic spying program, which included warrantless eavesdropping on calls and e-mails between people in the United States and overseas. "I won't make the same mistake. . . . I want to see the legal underpinnings for the whole program."
Thompson called DHS's release Thursday of the office's procedures and a civil liberties impact assessment "a good start." But, he said, "We still don't know whether the NAO will pass constitutional muster since no legal framework has been provided."
DHS officials said the demands are unwarranted. "The legal framework that governs the National Applications Office . . . is reflected in the Constitution, the U.S. Code and all other U.S. laws," said DHS spokeswoman Laura Keehner. She said its operations will be subject to "robust," structured legal scrutiny by multiple agencies.

 

P.S.
by Mad Plato

I personally don't see how these newest satellites can be used "against" Americans [Since I wrote this we have seen how much surveillance REALLY DID go on!], but when porous borders and cargoes remain (reports say) 95% uninspected, how can more eyes in the sky help that much?
Unless the new satellites can detect radiation and toxins from up there.
That would be terrific.
Maybe the satellites can...but it's TOP SECRET.

MUSINGS

Would Barack Obama be so popular if he did not have one parent who was white?

Hillary Clinton can write a book about her run for the presidency to pay off her debts.

This country is not really that serious yet about saving the planet or getting off of its oil addiction.

We’ll continue to pay lip service to Global Warming until we don’t have any food or water.

Then it will be too late.

When will E.T.’s finally do whatever they’ve been planning to do?

Iraq and Afghanistan have become like that giant man-eating plant in the movie The Little Shop of Horrors.

The longer we stay the bigger the plant is going to get.

Here’s the perfect CYA rationalization for Bush’s WARS:

“The progress is tenuous and could be reversed.”

IT’S THE OIL STUPID!

WAR

Tears fall

Children cry

Blood splatters

Mothers die

Fathers die

The corpses rot

The sun is hot.

Who is really the terrorist?

And who is not the terrorist?

Tears fall

Children cry

Mothers die

Fathers die

Blood spatters

The corpses rot

The sun is hot.

IT’S THE OIL STUPID!

From The White Whale on Bush's Rejection of Knowledge

By E.L. Doctorow

This article appeared in the July 14, 2008 edition of The Nation.

When the ancient Hebrews broke their covenant, they suffered a loss of identity and brought disaster on themselves. Our burden, too, is covenantal. We may point to our 200-some years of national survival as an open society; we may regard ourselves as an exceptionalist, historically self-correcting nation, whose democratic values locate us just as surely as our geography--and yet we know at the same time that all through our history we have brutally excluded vast numbers of us from the shelter of the New Roof, we have broken our covenant again and again with a virtuosity verging on damnation and have been saved only by the sacrificial efforts of Constitution-reverencing patriots in and out of government--presidents, senators, justices, self-impoverishing lawyers, abolitionists, muckrakers, third-party candidates, suffragists, union organizers, striking workers, civil rights martyrs.

Because this President's subversion of the Constitution outdoes anything that has gone before, and as it has created large social constituencies ready to support the flag-waving ideals of an incremental fascism, we're called upon to step forward to reaffirm our covenant like these exemplars from the past.

The President has said the war with terrorists will last for decades and is a confrontation between "good and evil." Whether he means the evil of specific terrorist organizations or the culture from which they spring, his vision is necessarily Manichaean. There is immense political power in such religiously inspired reductionism. Thus, no matter how he lies about the reason for his invasion of Iraq, or how badly it has gone, bumblingly and tragically ruinous, with so many lives destroyed, and no matter how many thousands of terrorists it has brought into being, to criticize his policy or the architects of it is said to aid the enemy.

For some time now we have been confronted by a religiously inspired criminal movement originated in the Middle East that advertises its values by suicidal bombings, civilian massacres and the execution of arbitrarily selected victims by the sawing off of their heads. However educated, well-to-do and politically motivated the leaders of this conspiracy may be, they have invoked an extreme fundamentalist reading of their sacred text to mentally transport their rank and file back into the darkness of tribal war and shrieking, life-contemptuous jihad.

So that history, as we look to that part of the world, seems to be running backward, as if civilization is in reverse, as if time is a loop.

This is not to suggest that our waterboarding and sensory-deprivation torture techniques, that Abu Ghraib and the incarceration in perpetuity without trial of terrorist suspects at Guantánamo, are the moral equivalent of 9/11. Only that a declared enemy with the mind-set of the Dark Ages throws his anachronistic shadow over us and awakens our dormant primeval instincts.

Apart from this uncanny synchronous spin, the domestic political fantasy life of these past seven years finds us in an unnerving time loop of our own making--in this country, quite on its own, history seems to be running in reverse and knowledge is not seen as a public good but as something suspect, dubious or even ungodly, as it was, for example, in Italy in 1633, when the church put Galileo on trial for his heretical view that the earth is in orbit around the sun.

From those fundamentalist leaders who proclaimed 9/11 as just deserts for our secular humanism, our civil libertarianism, our feminists, our gay and lesbian citizens, our abortion providers, and in so doing honored the foreign killers of nearly 3,000 Americans as agents of God's justice... to the creationists, the biblical literalists, the anti-Darwinian school boards, the right-to-lifer antiabortion activists, the shrill media ideologues whose jingoistic patriotism and ad hominem ranting serves for public discourse--all of it in degradation of the thinking mind, all of it in fear of what it knows--these phenomena are summoned up and enshrined by the policies of this President. At the same time he has set the national legislative program to run in reverse as he rescinds, deregulates, dismantles or otherwise degrades enlightened legislation in the public interest, so that in sum we find ourselves living in a social and psychic structure of the ghostly past, with our great national needs--healthcare, education, disaster relief--going unmet. The President may speak of the nation in idealistic terms, but his actions demonstrate that he has no real concept of national community. His America, like that of his sponsors, is a population to be manipulated for the power to be had, for the money to be made. He is the subject of jokes and he jokes himself about his clumsiness with words, but his mispronunciations and malapropisms suggest a mind of half-learned language that is eerily compatible with his indifference to truth, his disdain for knowledge as a foundation of a democratic society.

It will take more than revelations of an inveterately corrupt Administration to dissolve the miasma of otherworldly weirdness hanging over this land, to recover us from our spiritual disarray, to regain our once-clear national sense of ourselves, however illusory, as the last best hope of mankind. What are we become in the hands of this President, with his relentless subversion of our right to know; his unfounded phantasmal justifications for going to war; his signing away of laws passed by a Congress that he doesn't like; his unlawful secret surveillance of citizens' phone records and e-mail; his dicta time and time again in presumption of total executive supremacy over the other two branches of government; his insensitivity to the principle of separation of church and state; his obsessive secrecy; his covert policies of torture and extraordinary rendition, where the courtroom testimony of the tortured on the torture they've endured at our hands is disallowed on the grounds that our torture techniques are classified; his embargoing of past presidential papers, and impeding access to documents of investigatory bodies; his use of the Justice Department to bring indictments or quash them as his party's electoral interests demand.... Knowledge sealed, skewed, sequestered, shouted down, the bearers of knowledge fired or smeared, knowledge edited, sneered at, shredded and, as in the case of the coffins of our dead military brought home at night, no photography allowed, knowledge spirited away in the dark.

I realize, in the tenor of these times, that anyone who speaks of the broad front of failure and mendacity and carelessness of human life in so much of our public policy, in terms any louder than muted regret, is usually marginalized as some sort of radical--that is, as someone so "out of the mainstream" as not to be taken seriously. But I believe what I have described so far is an accurate and informed account of the present state of the Union.

We must ask if this rage to deconstruct the Constitution and the Bill of Rights has any connection with the prevalence of God in the mind of this worshipful President. We must ask to what extent, and at however unconscious a level, a conflict arises in the pious political mind when it is sworn to uphold the civil religion of the Constitution.

Q & A

Would John McCain’s selection of a woman as V.P. help him get some of Hillary Clinton’s supporters?

Unlikely.

It would be another lame gimmick, like the car-contest, concocted to acquire votes.

It would be so transparently obvious to voters---Dems and Repubs---that McCain picked a woman to offset the Clinton effect.

Will Libertarian Bob Barr take conservative votes from McCain?

With the right VP running mate Barr could flush McCain down the drain.

Neither McCain nor Barr (especially Barr) is very captivating or inspiring.

Voters also vote for the better-looking candidate.

Some outside force is the only thing that might stop Obama from prevailing in November.

Do you agree with Alan Greenspan that the U.S is on the brink of a recession or are we already there?

Yes and yes.

I was shocked to hear today that 950 United pilots will lose their jobs beginning this summer in addition to an already announced plan to cut 1,600 salaried positions.

What will these new unemployed Americans do?

I guess the Pentagon can hire them.

Dick and George will need more pilots to finish their job in Iraq and start a new one in Iran.

Do you believe in miracles?

Yes. I also believe in Miracle Whip and Extraterrestrials.

What does it say about our society if almost 1 in 5 Americans will be getting cosmetic surgery within 7 years?

This portion of our society is a collection of insecure people who have the money to burn on their Vanity.

I'd rather see the REAL THEM than see the unnatural alterations that, frankly, sometimes scare me.

After cosmetic surgery, some of these people look like veritable zombies.

What does it mean if Barack Obama is opening up a double-digit lead over John McCain in some polls?

It means that John McCain is too old and too much like George W. Bush.

The country is ready for new blood, not new wine in the same, old bottles.

Obama is the most hopeful presidential candidate since Robert F. Kennedy.

McCain will continue to fall behind Barack Obama , and as McCain does, count on him to swiftly send out his swift boats and cavalry of fear to besmirch and denigrate Obama.

It won't work this time.

How are gasoline prices changing your life?

I’m trying not to swallow when I’m siphoning gas from my neighbor’s tanks.

Prices aren’t changing my life that much right now, but the way ALL OF US live on this planet must change, and digging more holes for more petroleum is not going to be a change for a better and cleaner world.
Unless you like the weather we’ve been having and will continue to get.

IT'S THE OIL STUPID!

A SHOCKING AND AWFUL EXIT

Dick & George

Are getting ready

To Cut & Run

Into the Sun

After having

All their fun.

No Impeachment---No Investigation---

For Shameful Lies & Sinful Deception---

No Impeachment---No Investigation---

For their Wiretapping & their Torture---

No Impeachment---No Investigation---

For their Offensive War and Occupation.

It’s now Ducks for Dick

(No Lies to Cherry Pick)

And it’s Dillos for Bush

(No more cold Hindu Kush).

Laura & Lynn

Now have their men

To have & to hold

With their bags of gold.

It’s time

To leave a Battered and Broken nation---

---An Eviscerated Constitution---

Go back to the Ranch and Halliburton---

Escape Prosecution and Damnation---

No Impeachment or Investigation---

At least not in this World!

IT’S THE OIL STUPID!

MY BROTHER ME AND SUNSPOTS: A DIALOGUE

AFTER READING The Sunspot Enigma: The Sun is “Dead”—What Does it Mean for Earth?

[http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2008/06/the-sunspot-mys.html] 

MY BROTHER:

Could the lack of sunspots derive from the pollution on Earth?
The End approaches us quickly...

ME:

This puny, polluted planet is not an influence upon the sun, but the sun is upon the Earth.

A quickening "ice age" might offset global warming.

MY BROTHER:

The earth does influence the Sun.

General relativity says it is so.

ME:

Humm...give me the precise relationship.

The sun is so massive that the effects that Earth might have on this star shining on our polluted faces would seem to be negligible (except while wearing a negligee) compared to what effects its heavenly rays have.

We can say that everything has an effect of some sort on everything, but just WHAT and to WHAT EXTENT does our little, watery marble influence Mr. Sun?

I will lose sleep pondering this.

Hold it...

I see Sun Spots before my eyes!

MY BROTHER:

Our puny earth warps space/time and helps the sun roll around the wrap (gravity) in space/time, for one.

The space/time warp also bends light received from the sun.
Maybe the sunspot light rays have been bent, missing the telescopic eyes.
The sun also intercepts and gobbles up all the polluted eruptions leaving the earth's atmosphere.
It causes the sunspots to get so many spots that they become invisible.

ME:

Ask.com gave me 2,761,000 web sites in response to my question: Does the earth influence the sun?

After reading 2,000,000 sites, I gave up.

Only SUN to EARTH effects and affect were given.

The space/time narration is impressive, but enigmatic.

The notion that Earth helps the sun roll around sounds pretty convincing.

Like a cosmic egg roll wrap?

Or billiards?

That the sunspot light rays have been bent, and somehow been missed by the "telescopic eyes", is hard to see as possible.

Not saying it hasn't occurred---just gotta' give time to these top-notch physicists to tell us what's going on.

BUT that...the sun takes the time and space to "intercept and gobble up all the polluted eruptions (ALL OF THEM?) leaving the earth's atmosphere"?!!!

Oh, but I finally knew that you were waxing poetic with tongue-in-cheek when I read, "It causes the sunspots to get so many spots that they become invisible."

I can see that happening.

Well, maybe not.

MY BROTHER:

Every mass curves space/time (and is the explanation of gravity by general relativity.)
The earth has mass.
The earth curves/warps space/time.
The warp creates gravity that has the sun and earth rotating within it.
That is, gravity is not a force but a warping in the fabric of space/time.
Missing the earth, the sun loses part of its gravity.

IT'S ABOUT RENEWABLE RESOURCES 

Q & A

How much does it matter that Barack Obama is opting out of public campaign financing?

IT MATTERS IN THE MILLIONS AND MILLIONS.

I can forgive and forget Obama's reneging on his signature that said he would stay with public financing.

I don't blame him for choosing the best method to get the most campaign dollars.

And anyway, McCain can get a lot of loot from his wife.

What does it mean that Barack Obama is already leading John McCain in Pennsylvania, Ohio and Florida?

It means that he will "swing" higher than McCain at election time, receive more delegates, and become the next President.

This scenario may be too early to assert with certainty, but my "gut feelings" (not the kind that Bush gets) tell me that Obama is going to win in November, unless Israel bombs (with the help of Bush) Iran.

Then, it's a whole different ball of wax, and it will be time to spin the roulette wheel---

or in this case, time to spin bullets in the pistol chamber for Russian Roulette.

How do you plan to survive the presidential campaign?

It is quite easy for me to endure the remaining moments of this election for a new president, because it is a very, very important moment for the future of this nation.

I can also endure the Impeachment of Cheney and Bush in order to purge and cleanse the plague of this administration.

No pain, no gain.

Impeach the current crooks while we read, watch, and listen to McCain and Obama compete for this nation's most powerful political position.

After impeachment, I will feel confident and comfortable voting for a new president...after all the pain.

IT'S THE OIL STUPID!

EXECUTIONER'S PRIVILEGE

Reporter 1: President Bush, can you tell us anything new about the recent discovery of tainted tomatoes?

GWB: No. That’s Executive Privilege.

Reporter 2: Sir, what can you tell us about your conversations with Pope Benedict XVI on your recent visit to the Vatican?

GWB: Nothing. Executive Privilege.

Reporter 3: Mr. President, do you have any comments on the recent sworn testimony given to Congress by Scott McClellan?

GWB: No. Executive Privilege.

Reporter 4: Sir, what are your thoughts on the report from NASA that Mars has ice?

GWB: No thoughts. Executive Privilege.

Reporter 5: Mr. President, is it true that Barney might have kidney stones?

GWB: That’s Executive Privilege.

IT’S THE OIL STUPID!

MARS

The world now knows (if NASA scientists are correct) that Mars has eyes.

Earth has been watching Mars a long time, but Mars has also had its eyes on Earth for a long time.

The Moon may be a harsh mistress, but Mars is a spy.

H.G. Wells warned us:

The Eve of the War No one would have believed in the first years of the twenty-first century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man’s and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinized and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinize the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. With infinite complacency men went to and fro over this globe about their little affairs, serene in their assurance of their empire over matter. No one gave a thought to the older worlds of space as sources of human danger, or thought of them only to dismiss the idea of life upon them as impossible or improbable.

But wait, I have just been informed that Mars has ice…

Not EYES!

SORRY.

IT’S THE OIL STUPID!

WHERE'S THE BEEF?

President Lee Myung-bak: I apologize to the people of South Korea for saying that I would import cows from America.

Reporter: But Mr. President, don’t you want to import younger cows?

President Lee Myung-bak: The people have spoken. No cows---young or old---from the United States.

Reporter: What will our people eat instead of meat?

President Lee Myung-bak: Kim chi…

And a lot of it.

Reporter: But shouldn’t we also eat meat?

President Lee Myung-bak: Yes, and that’s why I’ve been talking to the Australian government. I’m jumping on the opportunity to replace cows with kangaroos.

Reporter: There’s no chance of getting any mad kangaroos?

President Lee Myung-bak: No. They’re very good pugilists, but they’re not mad like Americans...that is, like American cows.

IT'S THE OIL STUPID!