fayfreethinkers.com

"Anyone who lived in New York under Giuliani has to be befuddled that his candidacy did not implode
in its earliest stages. Yes, he was a calming presence in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 - but that was
largely in comparison to the leadership of George W. Bush, who finished reading a children’s book
and then ran for a hidey-hole, before eventually appearing on television looking like a scared little bunny."
-- Tom Tomorrow LINK

Scott Pelley’s report on 60 Minutes shows the cleansing of Iraqi Christians. Pelley interviews Andrew White, a minister who runs one of the few remaining Christian churches left in the country. Transcript:

The situation now is clearly worse” than under Saddam, White replied.

“There’s no comparison between Iraq now and then,” he told Pelley. “Things are the most difficult they have ever been for Christians. Probably ever in history. They’ve never known it like now.”

“Wait a minute, Christians have been here for 2,000 years,” Pelley remarked.

“Yes,” White said.

“And it’s now the worst it has ever been,” Pelley replied.

LINK

DOUG
Yes, on 60 minutes they pastor said there was no comparison about how much better it was for Christians under Saddam Hussein. One of Saddam's top advisors was a Christian. Under the US occupation, Christians were getting killed at the rate of 500 a month for a long time. The numbers are now down because most of them are dead or have fled.

It's the Oil

"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."

Jim Holt in the London Review of Books

Darrel wrote:Jim Holt in the London Review of Books

Not to be confused with our Jim Holt...

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.

Which once again tells me the oil bubble will burst just as it did in the early 80s after the oil companies bilked us out of billions and sent the U.S. economy into a tailspin during the mid-late 70s. How many other nation's reserves are understated? No way to know.

LaWood wrote:

How many other nation's reserves are understated?

DAR
Or, conversely, how many other nations reserves are overstated? They had a clear incentive to overstate their reserves when OPEC went to a quota system allowing countries to produce based upon their stated "reserves." Many countries "reserves" doubled over night. Imagine that.

No way to know.

DAR
That's true. But I am with much more happy with oil up around $100 a barrel. High priced oil may let us coast out of the coming decline of easy oil and will spur the alternatives which will be what we will inevitably be relying on. How do I know? Lets take the super rosy best case Iraq estimate and do some math. At about 100 million barrels a per day (est. world use in just a decade or so) that Iraqi oil will supply the world's need for eight years. Then it's gone. Forever.
Forever is a long time, but not as long as it was yesterday.

D.

"Continuing its recent spree of criminality in the alleged pursuit of law enforcement, the Bush Justice Department formally advised a British Court last week that it is fully entitled to kidnap foreigners (i.e., Britons) off the street around the world and carry them off to secret prisons. The claim was formerly thought to relate to terrorists. But no longer. Now the Bush Justice Department asserts the right to kidnap anyone it suspects of a crime…"

Harpers

C&R:

"Huckabee was asked for his thoughts about the National Intelligence Estimate on Iran, arguably the biggest foreign policy news in months, if not the year. Huckabee said he’d never heard of it. This morning (12/6), on MSNBC, he tried to rationalize his ignorance."

“Well, I don’t blame my staff. It is a situation where a report was released at 10:00 in the morning, the president hadn’t seen it in four years and I’m supposed to see it four hours later.”

C & R responds:

That’s utter nonsense, and actually makes Huckabee look even dumber. As Kevin Drum explained, “The NIE was released Monday morning. He was asked about it Tuesday evening. That’s two days. Two days in which the NIE was on the front page of every newspaper; it was blanketing cable TV, talk radio, and the blogosphere; and the president of the United States addressed its conclusions in a press conference. It was blockbuster news on one of the most important foreign policy issues of the campaign and Huckabee didn’t even know about it.”

link

"I want Democrats to be back in the majority in Washington
and elect a Democratic president in 2008."
-- Lieberman in 2006, promisng to help elect Democrats in 2008 if he won, LINK


"I endorse John McCain for president."
-- Lieberman the liar in 2007, LINK

"The last year has been fascinating and challenging. The Bush administration and its supporters in Congress, like Chris Shays, have so wildly bungled nearly every aspect of governance that it is hard to know where to start. Our fiscal deficit has balooned, our credibility abroad has been destroyed, our economy is hostage to foreign creditors and spiralling oil prices, our Constitution has been tossed aside like so much used Christmas wrapping, and the really critical problems facing most of America--healthcare, education, rocketing energy prices--have been ignored. Seriously . . . where to start?"

Jim Hines

"The people don't matter to this gang. They pay no attention. They think in totalitarian terms. They've got the troops. They've got the army. They've got Congress. They've got the judiciary. Why should they worry? Let the chattering classes chatter. Bush is a thug. I think there is something really wrong with him." --Gore Vidal

Rudy Giuliani, speaking about his sixth place finish in Iowa yesterday:

"None of this worries me -- Sept. 11, there were times I was worried."

As one fellow put it, the man has "9/11 Tourettes." Can't help himself.

"The criteria to get into heaven is you have to be not good, but perfect. That's the real challenge in it,"
--Mike Huckabee at First Baptist North in Spartanburg

Here is the rest of the quote, our selective editor.....

"On that day, when I pull up, I'll be asked, 'Do you have what it takes to get in?"' Huckabee said. "And if I ask, 'Well, what does it take to get in?' 'Gotta be perfect."'

"Well, I'm afraid I don't have that, but you know what, I won't be there alone that day. Somebody is going to be with me. His name is Jesus, and he's promised that he would never leave me or forsake me," he said.

Jesus loves you to Darrel.

John Galt wrote:Here is the rest of the quote, our selective editor.....

DAR
Religious people swim in such a sea of contradictions they can't even see them anymore. Huckabee claims his personal imaginary heaven to a place where, to get in, "you have to be not good, but perfect." Is that true? Does he mean it? It seems not because as Huckabee goes on he imagines a Jesus character who is going to help him fudge the requirements. So in fact it is not true that in order to get into heaven "you have to be not good, but perfect" you just have to have an imaginary friend get you. So why did he say you have to be perfect to get in? Huckabee makes one claim and then contradicts himself later on. No doubt he contradicts himself again later, he is after all a minister giving a sermon.

GALT
Jesus loves you to Darrel.

DAR
And Darwin loves you too.

D.
------------------------------
"The truth is that when we die our bodies return to the dust from
which they were made, and the breath of life returns to the air
around us (Genesis 3:19, 22-24; Ecclesiastes 3:16-22; etc.). Any honest physician or veterinarian will tell you the same thing. This is what God promised to Adam and all his descendants (Genesis 2:7;
3:19). God made it clear that he does not want us to have eternal
life (Genesis 3:22-24). That explains why in the entire Hebrew Bible
(OT) not a single person dies and goes to heaven." –Ralph Nielsen

This is quite old but still important. I wanted to make sure and archive it here:

***
White House Web Scrubbing
Offending Comments on Iraq Disappear From Site

By Dana Milbank
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, December 18, 2003; Page A05

White House officials were steamed when Andrew S. Natsios, the administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, said earlier this year that U.S. taxpayers would not have to pay more than $1.7 billion to reconstruct Iraq -- which turned out to be a gross understatement of the tens of billions of dollars the government now expects to spend.

Recently, however, the government has purged the offending comments by Natsios from the agency's Web site. The transcript, and links to it, have vanished.

...

Steven Aftergood, who directs the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists, said the Natsios case is particularly pernicious. "This smells like an attempt to revise the record, not just to withhold information but to alter the historical record in a self-interested way, and that is sleazier than usual," he said. "If they simply said, 'We made an error; we underestimated,' people could understand it and deal with it."

For months after the April 23 Natsios interview on ABC's "Nightline," USAID.gov displayed the transcript. "You're not suggesting that the rebuilding of Iraq is going to be done for $1.7 billion?" an incredulous Ted Koppel asked Natsios.

"Well, in terms of the American taxpayers contribution, I do," Natsios said. "This is it for the U.S. The rest of the rebuilding of Iraq will be done by other countries who have already made pledges, Britain, Germany, Norway, Japan, Canada and Iraqi oil revenues. . . . But the American part of this will be $1.7 billion. We have no plans for any further-on funding for this."

LINK

“I believe it is the job of a President to confront problems, not pass them on to future Presidents and future generations.” Bush then

"The White House confirmed Wednesday that its new budget next month will not request a full year’s funding for the war in Iraq, leaving the next president and Congress to confront major cost questions soon after taking office in 2009."
Bush now

On the campaign trail McCain promises his warmonger base "more wars."

Sen. John McCain told a crowd of supporters on Sunday, "It's a tough war we're in. It's not going to be over right away. There's going to be other wars." Offering more of his increasingly bleak "straight talk," he repeated the claim: "I'm sorry to tell you, there's going to be other wars. We will never surrender but there will be other wars."
Link