December 27-28, 2006
Dec 27 02:26 Gerald R. Ford, RIP Dec 27 02:51 Iraqi Judge: Execute Saddam Within 30 Days Dec 27 03:44 Oil In Short Supply? Don't Bet the Ranch on That Dec 27 10:11 Carter's Book: Frank Speech About Israel-Palestine? Dec 27 11:01 Oil In Short Supply? Don’t Bet the Ranch on That, Part II Dec 27 16:12 More Proof Of Bush's Failed Economic Policies Dec 27 16:45 Another SCBA Social Event In the Books Dec 28 09:02 Good News From Somalia Dec 28 15:01 The End Is Nearing
Gerald R. Ford, RIP
Gerald R. Ford, our nation's 38th president and the only man to occupy the Oval Office without having been elected to it or the Vice Presidency, died Tuesday night at the age of 93. Betty Ford issued the following statement from her husband's office in Rancho Mirage:
"My family joins me in sharing the difficult news that Gerald Ford, our beloved husband, father, grandfather and great grandfather has passed away at 93 years of age." "His life was filled with love of God, his family and his country."I will always remember the graciousness and dignity with which President Ford conducted himself as our President. It was a difficult time, a time that we've never truly recovered from. Not only did President Ford have to deal with Watergate but also with Vietnam and the Soviet threat in eastern Europe.
Another thing that I'll always remember was the time that President & Mrs. Ford invited the Humphreys to dinner at the White House. Humphrey had been diagnosed with terminal cancer that would eventually take his life. Humphrey was already thin and weak. He was nearing the end of his struggle. Ford had been defeated by Jimmy Carter.
If ever there was a pair of Washington politicians with more justification to feel sorry for themselves than President Ford and Sen. Humphrey, I can't imagine who it might be. Instead, Hubert wrote in his book that he and his beloved wife Muriel had a wonderful evening with President and Mr. Ford. Mind you that this was just months after Humphrey had stumped for Jimmy Carter, saying of Ford that Ford was a center on the University of Michigan football team and that "As a center, even if you your job right, you're still seeing everything upside down."
Can you imagine two political heavyweights getting together after such a stinging defeat and having a wonderful time these days? It's impossible to imagine.
It's for these reasons why we should be thankful for the life that Gerald Ford led in those difficult times. Coming out of Watergate, we needed a man of integrity. I can't think of better adjective to describe Gerald Ford.
Posted Wednesday, December 27, 2006 2:26 AM
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Iraqi Judge: Execute Saddam Within 30 Days
That's what an Iraqi judge ruled Tuesday, according to this AP article.
Iraq's highest appeals court on Tuesday upheld Saddam Hussein's death sentence and said he must be hanged within 30 days for the killing of 148 Shiites in the central city of Dujail. The sentence "must be implemented within 30 days," chief judge Aref Shahin said. "From tomorrow, any day could be the day of implementation."It's amazing that a court would rule that decisively and with that specificity. Let's just say that that isn't typical in American courts. This is further proof that the Iraqis are governing themselves within the framework of the constitution that they wrote and that they ratified.
Under Iraqi law, the appeals court decision must be ratified by President Jalal Talabani and Iraq's two vice presidents. Talabani opposes the death penalty but has in the past deputized a vice president to sign an execution order on his behalf, a substitute that was legally accepted.I can't wait to watch this execution on TV or on the internet. If ever there was a man deserving of execution, the "Butcher of Baghdad" would certainly be at or near the top of the list. Based on all the mass graves that were found; based on all the heinous acts that he sanctioned on his own people during Operation Desert Storm, my only regret is that this didn't happen 20 years sooner.
The appeals court also upheld death sentences for Barzan Ibrahim, Saddam's half brother and intelligence chief during the Dujail killings, and Awad Hamed al-Bandar, head of Iraq's Revolutionary Court, which issued the death sentences against the Dujail residents. The appeals court concluded the sentence of life imprisonment given to former vice president Taha Yassin Ramadan was too lenient and returned his file to the High Tribunal. Ramadan was convicted of premeditated murder in the Dujail case. "We demand that he be sentenced to death," said Shahin, the appeals judge.It's good to see that the Iraqis will finally get justice for the oppression they lived under Saddam's tyrannical regime.
Posted Wednesday, December 27, 2006 2:52 AM
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Oil In Short Supply? Don't Bet the Ranch on That
That's the main message from this Newsweek article. I've never bought into the environmental extremists' claims of just how much oil is left under the earth's surface. Here's a key section in Newsweek's article:
How much oil lies beneath the Earth's crust? The only thing we know for sure is that history is littered with estimates so far off the mark, usually below the mark, that they border on the comical. In the 1920s, for instance, the Anglo-Persian Oil Co. (now BP) refused to take a stake in Saudi Arabia, thinking that the country didn't hold a single drop of oil. In 1919, the U.S. Geological Survey predicted that the United States would run out of oil in nine years. Yet by the time nine years had passed, huge discoveries, topped by the Black Giant field in Texas, had created a massive oil glut that almost destroyed the industry. In the 1970s, the consensus turned grim again: oil production would peak in the mid-1980s and then drop precipitously. A famous CIA report predicted the "rapid exhaustion" of accessible fields, while President Jimmy Carter warned that oil wells were "drying up all over the world." Instead, in 1986, oil prices collapsed in the midst of a huge supply boom, as they had done many times before.I'm willing to give the early oil drillers the benefit of the doubt because they didn't have the technology to accurately predict what lied beneath the earth. I'm totally unwilling to give today's naysayers that same benefit. Instead, I'll rip the environmental extremists for lying through their teeth about the supply of oil.
I remember how the extremists predicted that the Alaskan Pipeline would destroy the caribou herds for a few measly years of crude oil. Thirty years later, they're still pumping it through that original pipeline, with no end in sight.
I remember how people predicted the end of oil supply in Saudi Arabia, telling us that the oil was still there but that the oil couldn't be extracted because it was too deep under the earth's surface to be able to pump it all the way to the surface. Reagan told the innovators to innovate, which they did. The result was that the oil that was deemed too far beneath the earth's surface to be extracted was soon extracted. They're still getting oil from those wells a quarter century later.
Now doomsday forecasts are back, predicting the end of oil in this decade or the next. The verdict of the new catastrophists may appear more convincing because they use statistical and probability models that appear to penetrate the mysteries of our planet's subsoil. In fact, they do no such thing. In sum, what little is known about the world's underground resources justifies a positive view of the future.Based on their history of predictions, why on God's green earth should we listen to these extremists? I mean, seriously. There isn't a justification for trusting them. The only conclusions we can arrive at is that they're either woefully inept in their predictions or they're simply lying through their teeth. I tend towards the latter rather than the former because, although they are liberal extremists without a lick of common sense, the truth is that they aren't that stupid.
Given our fundamental ignorance of what lies below, the best bet is that the oil market will remain cyclical, characterized by boom-and-bust periods, for decades. We are in a period of high prices similar to the '70s, yet there are critical differences. Today more than 90 percent of oil reserves are under the control of producing countries, many embracing a policy of resource nationalism. Aimed at sustaining prices, this nationalist tendency could choke off new development. It could also raise the already growing tension we see between producing and consuming nations, pitting the West against Russia, the United States against Venezuela and so on. Put simply, the oil problem is not beneath the surface but above it.Who would've thought that this type of reporting would be found in Newsweek? To their credit, they willingly approved this article. To his credit, Leonardo Maugeri wrote this article based on facts and logical conclusions rather than on the environmental extremists' talking points. We should thank Mr. Maugeri for his diligence and his painstaking accuracy.
The reason we have seen so many bad guesstimates is that even the most advanced technology can't tell us how much crude the Earth holds. No method has been devised to search for new reserves with precision, or even to gauge the true size of known reservoirs. While the mainstream view is that oil resources are finite, no one knows just how finite they are. And to complicate matters further, we are witnessing a minor revival of interest in an old Russian theory that oil can be born of chemical reactions in deep inner Earth, not of fossils decaying closer to the surface. This holds the dim but intriguing prospect that oil might be a renewable resource. (See the interview with Nobel laureate Dudley Herschbach for a critique.)I strongly recommend that everyone follows the link above to the article and reads it for themselves. I suspect that there will be alot of heads turned by the article's logic and the honesty in Mr. Maugeri's reporting.
Posted Wednesday, December 27, 2006 10:35 AM
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Carter's Book: Frank Speech About Israel-Palestine?
So says this CAIR News Brief. Follow this link to read the entire text of the editorial. Forgive me if I don't agree with this editorial's assessment.
President Carter has done what few American politicians have dared to do: speak frankly about the Israel-Palestine conflict. He has done this nation, and the cause of peace, an enormous service by focusing attention on what he calls "the abominable oppression and persecution in the occupied Palestinian territories, with a rigid system of required passes and strict segregation between Palestine's citizens and Jewish settlers in the West Bank."What the editorialist doesn't talk about is that Israeli policies would change if terrorist groups like Hamas and al-Aqsa and Fatah didn't use those areas for initiating terrorist attacks from. What the editorialist doesn't bother considering is that Israel established policies designed to protect Israelis. But that's of little or no consequence to this editorialist, or CAIR for that matter.
In Israel's history, no Arab-led party has ever been asked to join a coalition government. And, among scores of Jewish ministers, there has only ever been one Arab minister, of junior rank.Might this history have something to do with the fact that Arab-led parties couldn't be trusted to work as part of the team in strengthening Israel's right to exist?
I'd further suggest that Carter hasn't contributed anything meaningful to the Israeli-Palestinian debate because he's relied on revisionist history and pure fantasy. I'd support that with the fact that he isn't even man enough to debate Alan Dershowitz on the subject. If Carter had the truth on his side, he should welcome a debate so that he could win the argument. If Carter had the truth on his side, he'd welcome a debate so that he could win the argument. He won't do that because he knows he'd get taken to the proverbial woodshed by Prof. Dershowitz.
Posted Wednesday, December 27, 2006 10:18 AM
Comment 1 by chris30338 at 29-Dec-06 10:46 PM
Carter's right about Apartheid in the Occupied Territories. Here are a few questions to ask: How much land has been confiscated from Jewish landowners to build all those settlements? Zero. Can Israeli Arabs (Israeli citizens) buy property in any of those settlements? No. How many Israeli Arabs live in those settlements? Zero. Why don't Arab citizens of Israel don't take advantage of all those special tax breaks to move those settlements? Answer: They don't get any. Smells like Apartheid, looks like apartheid,..... There is more debate in Israel than in this country regarding this issue. Why is that?
Oil In Short Supply? Don’t Bet the Ranch on That, Part II
After a closer examination of Leonardo Maugeri's Newsweek article, I found this gem:
Today the average recovery rate for oil is about 35 percent of the estimated "oil in place," which means that only 35 barrels out of 100 may be brought to the surface. And only a part of those 35 barrels is considered "proven reserves," which means they are immediately available for production and commercialization. The role of technology is critical. Over the decades, technology has greatly expanded the quantity of oil that can be extracted, through the injection of water and natural gas as well as horizontal drilling, hydraulic fracturing and more. All this progress has boosted the average recovery rate, which was only around 20 percent as late as 30 years ago, and less than 15 percent 60 years ago. In the future, further gains are expected from technologies that are still in their infancy.Here's what I said in the first article:
Simply put, new exploration methods have increased existing reserves over time, even without any new discoveries. The oil literature is full of examples. A most astonishing one is the Kern River field in California, discovered in 1899. In 1942 its "remaining" reserves were estimated at 54 million barrels. Yet from 1942 to 1986 it produced 736 million barrels, and still had another 970 million "remaining."
I remember how the extremists predicted that the Alaskan Pipeline would destroy the caribou herds for a few measly years of crude oil. Thirty years later, they're still pumping it through that original pipeline, with no end in sight.In short, the most logical thing to conclude is that we have vastly more oil to power our factories and automobiles, etc. than the extremists claim we have. The extremists would have you believe that the earth wasn't created with all the natural resources that we need. Simply put, they've been proven wrong on such a consistent basis that their experts aren't worthy of expert status. In fact, they're only worthy of scorn and ridicule.
I remember how people predicted the end of oil supply in Saudi Arabia, telling us that the oil was still there but that the oil couldn't be extracted because it was too deep under the earth's surface to be able to pump it all the way to the surface. Reagan told the innovators to innovate, which they did. The result was that the oil that was deemed too far beneath the earth's surface to be extracted was soon extracted. They're still getting oil from those wells a quarter century later.
Let me be clear about something. This isn't an argument to be wasteful of our energy resources. Rather, it's an argument in favor of listening to the true experts who have long histories of being the most accurate. It's an argument against wasting time listening to the extremists' experts. It's an argument for making decisions based on facts. It's an argument against making decisions based on hyperventilating myths and suppositions.
Let's make something else clear. Mr. Maugeri's article should be seen as a shot across the environmental extremists' proverbial bow. This should be the point of telling the Al Gore-like extremists that their scare tactics and propaganda don't work in a world where so much truly reputable information is at a person's fingertips thanks to the internet Gore 'created'.
Just once, I'd love to watch someone like Mr. Maugeri or Michael Crichton utterly dismantle Robert Kennedy's arguments on stage in a debate. I'd pay to watch that because ending Kennedy's fanaticism would be a huge first step in destroying the extremists' agenda and their power base.
Posted Wednesday, December 27, 2006 11:02 AM
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More Proof Of Bush's Failed Economic Policies
Check out this headline:
DOW HITS 12,500 FOR FIRST TIME...
Chalk this up as more proof of President Bush's failed economic policies, especially his tax cuts. What a disaster he's been for businesses and retirement accounts. NOT!!!
Posted Wednesday, December 27, 2006 4:14 PM
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Another SCBA Social Event In the Books
This afternoon, I had the good fortune of getting together with fellow SCBA members King Banaian & Leo Pusateri for another sit down get together, this time getting together at Paneira Breads. If you've never been to Paneira before, don't wait long before getting there. They make great soup, tasty salads, terrific sandwiches & fantastic breads & pastries.
As usual, the conversation stepped along pretty lively, with the three of us talking about Gerald Ford's passing to the great Newsweek article I'm writing about to who the GOP presidential nominee will be when they convene in the Twin Cities two years hence to how scared people would be if they knew about the terrorists that are living in the US.
King made a great point in his post about President Ford's passing that ford's first chief of staff was Don Rumsfeld & that Dick Cheney was his other chief of staff.
One thing that we quickly agreed upon was that John McCain has no chance of winning the GOP nomination. Leo cited his 'landmark' legislative achievement, BCRA, as a point of betrayal of conservative principles. I added that his involvement in the Gang of 14 doomed him with movement conservatives who worked for a quarter of a century trying to get originalist justices appointed to the bench.
Another thing that we agreed upon is that Rudy Giuliani's great strength is that he's a true leader. That's something that will play well with conservatives who demand a real leader on the GWOT. It doesn't hurt that Giuliani has said that he'd nominate justices like Alito & Roberts if elected.
My apologies to Larry Schumacher, the other member of the SCBA. We threw this together at the last minutes & I simply didn't remember to shoot off an email to Larry in time.
I'd also like to take the time to encourage more St. Cloud people to start their own blogs & to join the prestigious ranks of the SCBA (St. Cloud Bloggers Association). There's plenty of room for all St. Cloud, Sartell, Sauk Rapids, St. Augusta or St. Joe bloggers of all political persuasions. For that matter, we don't care if you're even interested in politics. We're a 'broad tent' organization.
Posted Wednesday, December 27, 2006 4:57 PM
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Good News From Somalia
Captain Ed has posted this good news on the Islamists abandoning Mogadishu after vowing to fight to the death there. Perhaps they don't think that their 72 virgins are worth it. LOL Seriously, here's what Capt. Ed posted:
While they can always find a few crazies willing to commit suicide, the fact is that there doesn't seem to be an appetite for the Islamists to wage all out warfare against an opponent who's willing to use smash-mouth tactics and force. Pussyfooting around just emboldens them. Let's hope that the US decision-makers notice this and apply the Ethiopians' tactics to Iraq, especially to Muqtada al-Sadr.The Islamist forces who have controlled much of Somalia in recent months suddenly vanished from the streets of the capital, Mogadishu, residents said Wednesday night, just as thousands of rival troops massed 15 miles away.This shows the result of a full military response to Islamist provocations. After watching half of their comrades torn to pieces by combat helicopters, one deserter told the Times that the Islamists assumed that the war would be fought like the others in their experience, which meant hardly fought at all. Ethiopia had no intent to allow the Islamists to give tit-for-tat terrorist responses to measured military action, and the Islamists quit when they started dying in droves.
Posted Thursday, December 28, 2006 9:04 AM
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The End Is Nearing
That's the only conclusion that can be drawn from this AFP article.
Iraq was preparing for the rapid execution of former dictator Saddam Hussein, with the US-backed government eager to bring his chapter in the country's bloody history to an end.It's time that Iraq rid themselves of Saddam. That said, Saddam's execution won't cure the violence inside Iraq. That won't subside until Moqtada al-Sadr is marginalized or exterminated & until Iran's influence is eliminated. Exterminating al-Sadr is definitely doable in the short term but eliminating Iran's influence will be a much more difficult project.
Justice Minister Hashem al-Shibli said Saddam's death sentence for crimes against humanity, upheld by an Iraqi appeal court on Tuesday, would be rubber stamped by the presidency and the prison service would hang him.
One thing that might happen as part of Saddam's execution is that it might tamp down the Sunni-initiated violence. That might happen independent of what al-Sadr's militias do.
Tension was boiling up further south in the holy city of Najaf after an American soldier killed a senior ally of Sadr during a raid on his house. Sadr supporters and local police told AFP that US and Iraqi soldiers had stormed the family home of Sahib al-Ameri, the president of a pro-Sadr political foundation in the holy city of Najaf, and shot him dead.Let's hope that Sadr gets the message that American troops aren't waiting on Maliki's blessing with regards to Sadr. This is a clear message to Sadr that he isn't immune to American attacks. He can't depend on Maliki protecting him anymore.
Posted Thursday, December 28, 2006 3:03 PM
Comment 1 by MariesTwoCents at 29-Dec-06 12:29 PM
High Time Indeed.
Let the Butcher of Baghdad Swing!
