carapace – Not your father's america

USA Military Officers Challenge Official Account of September 11

22 May 2008

Twenty-five former U.S. military officers have severely criticized the official account of 9/11 and called for a new investigation. They include former commander of U.S. Army Intelligence, Major General Albert Stubblebine, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense, Col. Ronald D. Ray, two former staff members of the Director of the National Security Agency; Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski, PhD, and Major John M. Newman, PhD, and many others. “A lot of these pieces of information, taken together, prove that the official story, the official conspiracy theory of 9/11 is a bunch of hogwash. It’s impossible,” said Lt. Col. Robert Bowman, PhD, U.S. Air Force (ret). With doctoral degrees in Aeronautics and Nuclear Engineering, Col. Bowman served as Director of Advanced Space Programs Development under Presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter.

At:

http://tinyurl.com/4qg442   (www.daily.pk)

From: CLG News

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Why the Bush Administration “Watergated” Eliot Spitzer

by F. William Engdahl
 

Global Research, March 18, 2008

The spectacular and highly bizarre release of secret FBI wiretap data to the New York Times exposing the tryst of New York state Governor, Eliot Spitzer, the now-infamous “No.9,” with a luxury call-girl, had less to do with the Bush Administration’s pursuit of high moral standards for public servants. Spitzer was likely the target of a White House and Wall Street dirty tricks operation to silence one of its most dangerous and vocal critics of their handling the current financial market crisis.

A useful rule of thumb in evaluating spectacular scandals around prominent public figures is to ask what and who might want to eliminate that person. In the case of Governor Eliot Spitzer, a Democrat, it is clear that the spectacular “leak” of government FBI wiretap records showing that Spitzer paid a high-cost prostitute $4,300 for what amounted to about an hour’s personal entertainment, was politically motivated. The press has almost solely focused on the salacious aspects of the affair, not least the hefty fee Spitzer apparently paid. Why the scandal breaks now is the more interesting question.

Spitzer became Governor of New York following a high-profile record as a relentless State Attorney General going after financial crimes such as the Enron fraud and corruption by Wall Street investment banks during the 2002 dot.com bubble era. The powerful former head of the large AIG insurance group, Hank Greenburg was among his detractors. He made powerful enemies by all accounts. He was bitterly hated on Wall Street. He had made his political career on being ruthless against financial corruption. Most recently, from his position as Governor of the nation’s second largest state, and home to its financial industry, Spitzer had begun making high profile attacks on the complicity of the Bush Administration in covertly arranging bailout if its Wall Street financial friends at the expense of ordinary homeowners and citizens, paid all with taxpayer funds.

Curiously, Spitzer, who had been elected governor in 2006 defeating a Republican by winning nearly 70 percent of the vote, has been not charged in any crime. However, the day the scandal broke New York Assembly Republicans immediately announced plans to impeach Spitzer or put him on public trial were he to refuse resignation. Spitzer could be asked to testify in any trial involving the Emperors Club prostitution ring. But so far he hasn’t been charged with a crime. Prostitution is illegal in most US states, but clients of prostitutes are almost never charged, nor are their names usually leaked in a case in process. The Spitzer case is in the hands of Washington and not state authorities, underscoring the clear political nature of the Spitzer “Watergate.”

The New York Times said Spitzer was an individual identified as Client 9 in court papers filed last week. Client 9 arranged to meet with “Kristen,” a prostitute who officially charged $1,000 an hour, on February 13 in a Washington hotel. Whatever transpired, Spitzer paid her $4,300, according to the official documents. The case is clearly political when compared with more egregious recent cases involving Republicans. Republican Mark Foley was exposed propositioning male interns in Congress and Rudolph Giuliani was discovered cheating on his wife, but no or few Republican calls for resignations were heard.

Why the attack now?

…

Complete article at:

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=8376

F. William Engdahl is the author of Seeds of Destruction, the Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation  recently released by Global Research. He also the author of A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order, Pluto Press Ltd.. To contact by e-mail: info@engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net.

William Engdahl is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG). His writings can be consulted on www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net and on Global Research.

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U.S. Economy: The Worst is Yet to Come

By Mark Weisbrot

This op-ed was distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services on May 23, 2008, and published in The Charlotte Observer and various other newspapers.

Since the U.S. economy showed positive growth for the last quarter, some commentators in the business press are saying that we are not necessarily going to have a recession, or that if there is one it will be mild. This is a bit like the proverbial story of the man who jumped out of a window 60 floors up, and then said “so far, so good,” as he passed the 30th floor.

The United States accumulated a massive, $8 trillion housing bubble during the decade from 1996-2006. Only about 40 percent of that bubble has now deflated. House prices are still falling at a 20 percent annual rate (over the last quarter). This means that the worst is yet to come, including another wave of mortgage defaults and write-downs. Even homeowners who are not in trouble will borrow increasingly less against their homes, reducing their spending.

President Bush says we are not in a recession. One commonly-used definition of a recession is two consecutive quarters of declining output (GDP). The first quarter of 2008 came in at 0.6 percent, although it would have been negative if not for inventory accumulation. So by this definition we cannot say with certainty that the recession has started, although it could well have started this quarter. Of course, for most Americans it has felt like a recession hit some time ago, with real wages flat since the end of 2002, and household income not growing for most of the six-and-a-half year economic expansion.

The National Bureau of Economic Research will eventually decide on the official onset of the recession, but even its definition is arbitrary. All the indicators of a serious recession are swirling around us. The economy has lost jobs for four months in a row, which has never happened without a recession. Consumer confidence has dropped to a 28 year low – a level not seen since Jimmy Carter was president. Home foreclosure filings are up 65 percent over last year. And now commercial real estate prices are heading south, dropping 6.2 percent in the first quarter.

With oil prices hitting record highs, and the Fed beginning to worry more about inflation, more restrictive lending practices and other fallout from the credit crunch, the near-term economic future looks even dimmer.

Complete article at:

Center for Economic and Policy Research  www.cepr.net

Mark Weisbrot is Co-Director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, in Washington, D.C.

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ENRON AND UBS LOBBYIST IS MCCAIN’S ECONOMIC ADVISOR

By Christy Hardin Smith, Firedoglake

More shady lobbyist connections on the straight talk express.

http://www.alternet.org/blogs/peek/86725/

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CFTC Announces Multiple Energy Market Initiatives News release:

“The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC or Commission) today announced a number of initiatives to increase transparency of the energy futures markets. The measures will expand the amount and quality of information received from energy traders to further the integrity and oversight of our nation’s futures markets. The recent dramatic increases in the price of crude oil traded on futures exchanges make these efforts paramount. The implementation of today’s measures will improve oversight of the energy futures markets to ensure they reflect fundamental economic forces of supply and demand, free of manipulation and fraud.”

http://tinyurl.com/5cmtgg    (www.cftc.gov)

Oil prices to be probed by US regulator CFTC

By James Quinn, Wall Street Correspondent
30/05/2008

America’s leading commodities regulator has launched an unprecedented investigation into possible market manipulation in the US crude oil market amid record prices which continue to cripple various parts of the global economy.

The Commodities Future Trading Commission (CFTC), working closely with other international regulators including the Financial Services Authority in the UK, has begun a series of detailed inquiries over concerns that energy speculators are behind the rising oil price.

In a detailed statement, the CFTC admitted for the first time that it began its investigation in December, taking what it called the “extraordinary step” of disclosing the probe “because of today’s unprecedented market conditions”.

The CFTC declined to discuss the specifics of the investigation, but stressed that all of its enforcement inquiries were focused on “ensuring that the markets are properly policed for manipulation and abusive practices”.

Walt Lukken, acting chairman of the CFTC, admitted: “In addition to the CFTC’s ongoing examination of the role of fundamental economic forces and new investors in the recent commodity market price increases, the agency continues to pursue one of its primary missions – to deter, detect and punish futures market manipulation.”

The development adds fuel to the view that the recent surge in oil prices – which hit record highs of $135.14 a barrel last week – has been largely the work of speculators in the energy markets rather than any actual increase in demand.

…

Complete article at:

http://tinyurl.com/434b59   (www.telegraph.co.uk)

 

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CNN’s Yellin: Network execs killed critical White House stories

29 May 2008

On Wednesday night, CNN’s Jessica Yellin talked to Anderson Cooper about Scott McClellan’s tell-all memoir and agreed with the former press secretary that White House reporters “dropped the ball” during the run-up to war. But Yellin went much further, revealing that news executives — presumably at ABC News, where she’d worked from July 2003 to August 2007 — actively pushed her not do hard-hitting pieces on the Bush administration. “The press corps was under enormous pressure from corporate executives, frankly, to make sure that this was a war presented in a way that was consistent with the patriotic fever in the nation and the president’s [sic] high approval ratings,” Yellin said.

At:

http://tinyurl.com/5a9n4h   (www.politico.com)

From: CLG News

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Critical Voices on Scott McClellan

VINCENT BUGLIOSI, via David Kass, dkass@hmieast.com,

http://www.prosecutionofbush.com

Bugliosi is a former prosecutor who successfully prosecuted 21 murder convictions without a single loss. His previous best-selling books include “Helter Skelter” about the Charles Manson case, which he successfully prosecuted.

He has authored the just-released “The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder.” Bugliosi said today: “I have not had an opportunity to read Mr. McClellan’s book, but I read a quote from it in the New York Times in which McClellan says ‘Iraq was a series of strategic blunders.’ If this is his position, he and I couldn’t be further apart. A blunder is a mistake. Mistakes are by definition innocent and never criminal. In my book I present incontrovertible evidence that George W. Bush knowingly and deliberately took this nation to war on a lie, under false pretenses, and is therefore guilty of murder. So my position is diametrically opposed to Mr. McClellan’s.

“In taking us to war in Iraq, not only were George Bush’s allegation that Saddam Hussein was an imminent threat to the security of this country and his unmistakable allegation by implication that Hussein was involved in 9/11, false, but also and much more importantly, Bush knew that both allegations were untrue.

“In his first nationally televised address on the Iraqi crisis on October 7, 2002, President Bush told millions of unsuspecting Americans the exact opposite of what the CIA and 15 other U.S. intelligence agencies had told him on October 1, just six days earlier, in a top-secret, classified report — that Hussein was not an imminent threat to this country and would only use force against us if he feared he was in imminent danger of an attack on him by us. This was a monumental lie
by Bush to the nation and the world.”

From: Institute for Public Accuracy

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Is Bush Becoming Irrelevant? 

by Patrick J. Buchanan

05/30/2008

After losing both houses of Congress in the 1994 election, Bill Clinton expostulated: The president of the United States is not irrelevant!

On learning his trusted aide from Texas Scott McClellan has denounced as an “unnecessary war” the same Iraq war McClellan defended from the White House podium, George Bush must feel as Clinton did.

The synchronized savagery of the attacks on McClellan as turncoat suggests he drew blood. For what he has done is offer confirmation to the president’s war critics, from within the White House inner circle, that Bush’s motive in going to war was not a clear and present danger of attack by Iraq with weapons of mass destruction, but to advance a Bush crusade to impose democracy on the Middle East.

Neoconservative ideology, not U.S. national interests, McClellan is saying, motivated Bush to launch one of the longest and most divisive wars in U.S. history.

When loyalists defect and seek to profit from that defection, it is usually a sign of a failing presidency. And, indeed, events suggest that history is passing Bush by.

…

Complete article at:

http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=26753

Mr. Buchanan is a nationally syndicated columnist and author of “The Death of the West,” “The Great Betrayal,” “A Republic, Not an Empire” and “Where the Right Went Wrong.”

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And now for the important news ….

By Argus Hamilton

St. Paul’s minor league baseball team announced it will give Larry Craig Bobble-Foot Dolls to fans next week, with doll-sized toilet stalls sold separately. That’s just not right. It’s the senators that are for sale, the toilets have always been free.

http://www.JewishWorldReview.com

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three thousand words

Ann Telnaes: now McClellan tells us …

http://img.slate.com/media/2/080529_ed.gif

Steve Benson: … his choice for vice-president

http://www.azcentral.com/php-bin/commphotos/view.php?id=153983

Chuck Asay: I voted for the bloated farm bill because …

http://editorialcartoonists.com/cartoons/ASAYC/2008/ASAYC20080530_low.jpg

International Monetary Fund.

Crude oil prices : trends and forecast / Noureddine Krichene

[Washington] : International Monetary Fund, May 2008.  (IMF working paper ; WP/08/133)

http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/wp/2008/wp08133.pdf

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EIA Petroleum Supply Monthly

Petroleum Supply Monthly (05/28/2008): “Supply and disposition of crude oil and petroleum products on a national and regional level. The data series describe production, imports and exports, movements and inventories

http://www.eia.doe.gov/oil_gas/fwd/psm.html

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Oil tumbles on supply explanation, dollar, demand

May 29, 2:06 PM EDT

By JOHN WILEN
AP Business Writer

NEW YORK (AP) — Oil prices fell sharply Thursday after the Energy Department reported unexpected declines in crude oil and gasoline supplies last week, but said the drop in crude inventories was due to temporary delays in unloading oil tankers along the Gulf Coast. A stronger dollar and concerns about gas demand also weighed on prices.

Retail gas prices, meanwhile, rose to a new record above $3.95 a gallon.

Light, sweet crude for July delivery fell $4.23 to $126.80 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, their lowest level since early last week. Prices were more than $2 lower in morning trading before the EIA report was issued, but shot up by more than $2 a barrel immediately after the report’s release before turning lower again.

In Washington, meanwhile, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission revealed that it is six months into a wide-ranging investigation of U.S. oil markets, with a focus on possible price manipulation.

The CFTC said it started the probe in December and was publicizing the investigation “because of today’s unprecedented market conditions.”

The market’s initial ambivalent reaction to Thursday’s inventory report partly reflects a deeper battle between investors who believe prices have risen far beyond levels that can be justified by underlying supply and demand fundamentals, and those who believe speculative money will continue flowing into oil futures, sending prices higher regardless of the market’s fundamentals.

“You’re seeing some big funds in there throwing money around on both sides of the market,” said Jim Ritterbusch, president of Ritterbusch and Associates in Galena, Ill.

In its weekly inventory report, the department’s Energy Information Administration said crude oil inventories fell by 8.8 million barrels last week, while gasoline supplies fell by 3.2 million barrels. Analysts surveyed by energy research firm Platts had expected slight increases in supplies of both.

But the EIA also offered a rare explanatory note on the Gulf Coast tanker problems. That could mean there will be a big jump in crude inventories in next week’s report, analysts said. Gulf ports have closed many times in recent months due to fog, said Phil Flynn, an analyst at Alaron Trading Corp. in Chicago.

“This is the worst year I can remember for fog,” Flynn said.

…

Complete article at:

http://tinyurl.com/4nkjjf  (hosted.ap.org)

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McCain economic policy shaped by lobbyist –Swiss bank paid McCain co-chair to push agenda on U.S. mortgage crisis

27 May 2008

Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain’s national campaign general co-chair was being paid by a Swiss bank to lobby Congress about the U.S. mortgage crisis at the same time he was advising McCain about his economic policy, federal records show. “Countdown” reported Tuesday that lobbying disclosure forms, filed by the giant Swiss bank UBS, list McCain’s campaign co-chair, former Texas Sen. Phil Gramm, as a lobbyist dealing specifically with legislation regarding the mortgage crisis as recently as Dec. 31, 2007.

At:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24844889/

From: CLG News

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Armey’s Angry Renters

Source: Wall Street Journal, May 16, 2008

“AngryRenter.com looks a bit like a digital ransom note, with irregular fonts, exclamation points and big red arrows — all emphasizing prudent renters’ outrage over a proposed government bailout for irresponsible homeowners,” writes Michael M. Phillips. In fact, however, “the people behind AngryRenter.com are certainly not renters. Though it purports to be a spontaneous uprising, AngryRenter.com is actually a product of an inside-the-Beltway conservative advocacy organization led by Dick Armey, the former House majority leader, and publishing magnate Steve Forbes, a fellow Republican. It’s a fake grass-roots effort — what politicos call an AstroTurf campaign — that provides a window into the sleight-of-hand ways of Washington.”

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There’s a spate of bad publicity on Bush from his former spokesperson. So, a new ‘al-Qaeda’ video will be posted today! Al Qaeda Supporters’ Tape to Call for Use of WMDs –Authorities: New Tape to Urge Use of Weapons of Mass Destruction on Civilians

27 May 2008

Intelligence and law enforcement sources tell ABC News they are expecting al Qaeda [al-CIAduh] supporters will post a new video on the Internet in the next 24 hours, calling for what one source said is “jihadists to use biological, chemical and nuclear weapons to attack the West.” “There have been several reports that al Qaeda will release a new message calling for the use of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) against civilians,” FBI spokesman Richard Kolko told ABC News in an e-mail.

At:

http://abcnews.go.com/TheLaw/FedCrimes/story?id=4941724

From: CLG News

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Veterans History Project: National Guard in Afghanistan and Iraq

In 2007, researcher Larry Minear published, through Tufts University’s Feinstein International Center, a study of the National Guard’s role in the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq. Minear found abundant source material for his study in the collections of the Veterans History Project, drawing on dozens of interviews with Guard personnel and active duty soldiers and on their photographs. This feature highlights some of the collections he employed.

http://www.loc.gov/vets/stories/ex-war-waronterror.html

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Accountability: Scott McClellan

The Washington Post has on its front page a piece headlined “Ex-Press Aide Writes That Bush Misled U.S. on Iraq.”

RICHARD FALK, rfalk@princeton.edu,

http://www.transnational.org/SAJT/tff/people/r_falk.html

Falk is professor emeritus of international law at Princeton University and distinguished visiting professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is the author of more than 20 books
including “The Costs of War: International Law, the UN, and World Order after Iraq.”

He said today: “As we see from today’s news, even former White House spokesperson McClellan is admitting that the administration orchestrated events and information to push for the invasion of Iraq in defiance of the UN Charter. This amounts to an aggressive war. Attempts by citizens like George Monbiot to hold officials accountable stem from the fact that the governmental institutions have failed in their duty to hold such individuals accountable for violations of international law. The Center for Constitutional Rights formally urged the prosecution of Rumsfeld in Germany and France, but those cases were dismissed for political reasons. There were attempts to do citizen arrests against [then-Secretary of State Henry] Kissinger and other U.S. officials during the Vietnam War. Having structures to ensure accountability of government officials for international crimes of state are an elementary facet of a real democracy in our globalized world.”

From: Institute for Public Accuracy

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Borowitz Report – McClellan Book Shocker

Bush Refuses to Read McClellan’s Book, Calling It ‘A Book’
Puts Chances of Reading Book at Zero

On a day when Washington was abuzz with the news that former White House spokesperson Scott McClellan had published a tell-all memoir, President George W. Bush offered his personal reason for not reading it.

“I have no intention of reading Scott McClellan’s book,” Mr. Bush told reporters, “because it’s a book.”

Mr. Bush said he was “surprised” that Mr. McClellan had written a book to criticize him because “if you’re trying to communicate some criticism to me, a book is pretty much the last place you’d put it.”

The president said that he thought the chances of his someday reading Mr. McClellan’s book were “zero,” adding, “If I didn’t read the Iraq Study Group’s report, I really don’t think I’m about to read Scott McClellan’s little book.”

Presidential historian Davis Logsdon of the University of Minnesota observed that if Mr. McClellan honestly expected his memoir to somehow reach Mr. Bush’s nightstand, “that demonstrates just how little he knows George W. Bush.”

“Scott McClellan would have had a much better shot if he had put his memoir in Xbox 360 format and then slipped it into a package labeled ‘Grand Theft Auto 5,’” he said.

For his part, Mr. Bush said that there was in fact a book published this week that had caught his eye: the new James Bond thrilled entitled “Devil May Care.”

“Now, that book looks like it could be good,” he said. “Maybe I’ll have Laura read it to me.”

Andy in NYC Thursday Night – May 29

Andy hosts “The Moth,” a night of storytelling, this Thursday, May 29, at Symphony Space in NYC. 7:30 PM; Broadway and 95th Street. For tickets go to www.worldsciencefestival.com

Andy with Jeffrey Toobin and Joy Behar – October 22

Andy hosts “Countdown to the Election, with special guests Joy Behar (The View) and Jeffrey Toobin (CNN, bestselling author of “The Nine”) at the 92nd Street Y in NYC on October 22 at 8 PM. For tickets go to www.92y.org .

http://www.borowitzreport.com/

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three thousand words

Tom Tomorrow:  Wisdom of Rove

http://action.credomobile.com/comics/OriginalImage052808.gif

Nick Anderson: the book review

http://editorialcartoonists.com/cartoons/AnderN/2008/AnderN20080529_low.jpg

Trouble Town (Lloyd Dangle): jury duty

http://troubletown.com/cartoons/cartoons/ttown.728.gif

Tiger Woods Caddies for Chevron

Source: The Nation, May 22, 2008

In early April, the global oil company Chevron announced that it has entered into a five-year deal with the foundation created by the professional golfer, Tiger Woods. Woods proclaimed that “Chevron has a track record and a commitment to bettering the communities where they operate.” Chevron’s record, such as its partnership with the Burmese military dictatorship on the Yandana gas pipeline is “certainly nothing with which Woods should want his name attached,” writes Dave Zirin in The Nation. Asked about Chevron’s record, the president of the Tiger Woods Foundation, Greg McLaughlin, stated that its partners share its mission to help young people. “President McLaughlin should think more seriously about what Chevron is and what they do: they pollute, they destroy, they conspire with dictators, and heaven help anyone who gets in their way. Now they want to burnish their ‘brand’ by partnering with Tiger Woods,” Zirin concluded.

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THE MOST SAVAGE SHOCK JOCK OF THEM ALL

By Rory O’Connor, Aaron Cutler, AlterNet Books

As this excerpt from the new book, Shock Jocks: Hate Speech & Talk Radio, makes clear, host Michael Savage promotes hatred.

http://www.alternet.org/mediaculture/86237/

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Plan Mexico: Plan Colombia Heads for Mexico

By Stephen Lendman
Global Research, May 27, 2008

It’s called “Plan Mexico,” or more formally the “Merida Initiative,” and here’s the scheme. It’s to do for Mexicans what Plan Colombia has done to that nation since 1999, and, in fact, much earlier. Since then, billions have gone for the following:

– to establish a US military foothold in the country;

– mostly to fund US weapons, chemical and other corporate profiteers; it’s a long-standing practice; in fact, a 1997 Pentagon document affirms that America’s military will “protect US interests and investments;” in Colombia, it’s to control its valuable resources; most importantly oil and natural gas but also coal, iron ore, nickel, gold, silver, emeralds, copper and more; it’s also to crush worker resistance, eliminate unions, target human rights and peasant opposition groups, and make the country a “free market” paradise inhospitable to people;

– it funds a brutish military as well; already, over 10,000 of its soldiers have been trained at the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC) – aka the School of the Americas (SOA) at Fort Benning, Georgia; its graduates are infamous as human rights abusers, drugs traffickers, and death squad practitioners; they were well schooled in their “arts” by the nation most skilled in them;

– it lets Colombia arm and support paramilitary death squads; they’re known as the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC); for more than a decade, they’ve terrorized Colombians and are responsible for most killings and massacres in support of powerful western and local business interests;

– it funds drug eradication efforts, but only in FARC-EP and ELN areas; government-controlled ones are exempt; trafficking is big business; laundering drugs money reaps huge profits for major US and regional banks; the CIA has also been linked to the trade for decades, especially since the 1980s; after Afghanistan’s invasion and occupation, opium harvests set records – mostly from areas controlled by US-allied “warlords;” the Taliban’s drug eradication program was one reason it was targeted; Colombia’s drug eradication is horrific; it causes ecological devastation; crop and forest destruction; lives and livelihoods lost; large areas chemically contaminated; bottom line of the program – record amounts of Colombian cocaine reach US and world markets; trafficking is more profitable than ever; so is big business thanks to paramilitary terror;

– it’s to topple the FARC-EP and ELN resistance groups; Latin American expert James Petras calls the former the “longest standing (since 1964), largest peasant-based guerrilla (resistance) movement in the world;” it’s also to weaken Hugo Chavez, other regional populist leaders and groups, and destabilize their countries; and

– it supports the “Uribe doctrine;” it’s in lockstep with Washington; its policies are hard right, corporate-friendly and militarized for enforcement.

Plan Colombia turned the country into a dependable, profitable narco-state. Business is better than ever. Violence is out of control and human rights abuses are appalling.

It gets worse. Two-thirds of Columbians are impoverished. Over 2.5 million peasant and urban slum dwellers have been displaced. Thousands of trade unionists have been murdered (more than anywhere else in the world), and many more thousands of peasants, rural teachers, and peasant and indigenous leaders have as well. Paramilitary land seizures are commonplace. Colombian latifundistas profit hugely. Wealth concentration is extreme and growing. Corruption infests the government. Many thousands in desperation are leaving. Colombia’s “democracy” is a sham. So is Mexico’s. Plan Mexico will make it worse. That’s the whole idea, and it’s part of the secretive Security and Prosperity Partnership – aka the North American Union.

It’s planned behind closed doors – to militarize and annex the continent. Corporate giants are in charge, mostly US ones. The idea is for an unregulated open field for profit. The Bush administration, Canada and Mexico support it. Things are moving toward implementation. Three nations will become one. National sovereignty eliminated. Worker rights as well. Opposition is building, but moves are planned to quash it. That’s the militarization part.

Business intends to win this one. People are to be exploited, not helped. That’s why it’s kept secret. The idea is to agree on plans, inform legislatures minimally about them, get SPP passed, then implement it with as few of its disturbing details known in hopes once they are they’ll be too late to reverse.

SPP is ugly, ominous and hugely people destructive. Hundreds of millions in three countries will be affected. Others in the region as well. Plan Mexico is a contribution to the scheme. Below is what we know about it.

…

Complete article at:

www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=9084

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net .

Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to The Global Research News Hour on RepublicBroadcasting.org Mondays from 11AM to 1PM US Central time for cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests. All programs are archived for easy listening any time.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=9059

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Biofuels and Food Prices

27 May 2008

In case you’ve been sleeping on this front, the battle to frame the biofuel debate is in full force. Oil companies are pointing to biofuel production’s role in rising food prices as proof of its dark underbelly. Producers are denying that claim, and pointing to biofuel’s role in reduced oil consumption as proof of its benevolence. A recent report from the US Department of Agriculture suggests that our government is, for once, opposing the oil-men. Unfortunately, it may be doing so at the expense of the truth.

The report attributed rising food prices to increasing global demand, drought, high energy prices and other factors, largely clearing biofuels of culpability in the process. In light of the evidence directly linking ethanol production in the US to rising food prices in Mexico, and the UN’s call for international guidelines on biofuel production, it’s hard to avoid the suspicion that politics motivated the US government’s contrary findings.

US Agriculture Secretary Ed Schafer’s comments accompanying the report, which adeptly side-step the issue of rising food prices by touting reduced oil consumption, seem to confirm that suspicion:

“Developing diversity in our portfolio of fuels is if anything an even more urgent matter than it has been in the past. And it is one that remains central to our energy security and our national security. The policy choices we have made on biofuels will deliver long-term benefits.”

Schafer pointed to International Energy Agency data that show global biofuels production has cut consumption of crude oil by 1 million barrels a day, offering savings of $120 million dollars a day.

The National Biodiesel Board praised the Secretary for speaking out on the recent attacks on biofuels. “There has been a feeding frenzy on biofuels as the reason for higher food prices, and those accusations are unfounded,” said Joe Jobe, CEO of the NBB. “It is encouraging to see USDA documenting some of the real reasons for increased food prices. The American public is being duped on this issue.”

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva offered his two cents on the “feeding frenzy” at an EU-Latin American summit a few weeks back:

“Obviously, the oil industry is behind it.”

Forgive me — reassurances from the president of an ethanol-producing nation and the CEO of the National Biodiesel Board don’t set me at ease. Neither does the fact that the Secretary of the Department of Agriculture seems more concerned with a reduction in oil consumption than the rise in food prices.

The UN seems to accept the link between increased biofuel production and rising food prices as fact. Common sense agrees. But once again the US government is determined to let special interests dictate its logic. Until the evidence becomes too convincing to ignore (a la global warming), watch out for the spin. Honesty is of little currency in the debate surrounding the production of biofuel, particularly our corn-based variety here in the US.

http://www.theseminal.com/2008/05/27/biofuels-and-food-prices/

                          ==========

U.S. FTC REPORTS 14 DEALS TO DELAY GENERICS IN ’07

Fri May 23, 2008
Reuters
By Diane Bartz

WASHINGTON, May 23 (Reuters) – Brand name pharmaceutical companies struck 14 deals that led to delayed sale of cheaper generic drugs in the 2007 fiscal year, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission said.

The FTC considers the controversial deals a violation of antitrust law but the courts have split on whether they are legal. Sen. Barack Obama, the Illinois Democrat running for president, is among 10 sponsors of Senate legislation to bar them.

In a report released on Wednesday, the FTC did not name the drugs affected by deals during the 2007 fiscal year, which ended on Sept. 30.

Of the 33 agreements made by brand name companies and generics in 2007, 14 resolved patent litigation on over 13 brand name drugs, the report said.

In the 14 deals, the generic companies received some sort of compensation in order to delay production of a generic version of a drug, which can be 90 percent cheaper than the brand name version.

In 11 cases, the big drug company pledged not to produce its own generic drug once a patent expired, and in three cases there was a side deal on an unrelated issue which benefited the generic.

FTC Commissioner Jon Leibowitz, commenting on the report, said: “What it shows is that this problem is persistent. It’s becoming the new way to do business. It means that consumers in need of affordable drugs are going to get generics later, not sooner.”

Neither the Senate bill to ban the deals nor its companion in the U.S. House of Representatives has made much headway because of opposition from pharmaceutical companies and makers of generic medicines.

Michael Ortiz, one of Sen. Obama’s staffers, said that Obama continued to oppose “reverse payments,” as the practice is known by its opponents.

“As a member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, Senator Obama is committed to working to ensure Americans have access to affordable medicine,” Ortiz said in an e-mail.

The FTC has fought the deals. It filed suit against Cephalon (CEPH.O: Quote, Profile, Research) in February, accusing it of paying $200 million to four generic drug makers to delay production of its sleep disorder drug Provigil. Cephalon has said it did nothing wrong.

The FTC is also investigating possible agreements made to delay marketing of Solvay’s (SOLB.BR: Quote, Profile, Research) testosterone cream AndroGel, Shire’s (SHP.L: Quote, Profile, Research) attention deficit drug Adderall XR and King Pharmaceutical’s (KG.N: Quote, Profile, Research) high blood pressure medication Altace.

The reverse payment deals sprang up following passage of the 1984 Hatch-Waxman Act, which was designed to speed generic drugs to market.

Canadian generic company Apotex Corp is alone among the drug companies in publicly opposing the settlements.

It has been lobbying Congress to change the law so that if one settlement blocks a generic entry, a second generic company can step up and try to enter the market.

“Obviously the law is not working the way Congress intended it to,” said Steve Giuli, Apotex’s director of government affairs. “Instead of facilitating competition, it is blocking it.”

(Reporting by Diane Bartz; Editing by Tim Dobbyn)

From: News for Suddenly Seniors  http://www.suddenlysenior.com/

                          ==========

The Government’s Statistical Whopper of the Year

Daily Article 5/27/2008

by Robert P. Murphy

Consumers shell-shocked by ever higher records for oil and gasoline prices may have been surprised by the mild Producer Price Index (PPI) update recently issued.

The Labor Department reported that from March to April, wholesale prices rose only 0.2 percent, half of what the markets had been expecting. The primary cause for this tame reading was that energy prices fell 0.2 percent, and in particular gasoline prices fell by 4.6 percent.

What, you think I misunderstood the news?

I’ll reproduce the exact quote from the CNBC article linked above, just so you believe me:

The slower than expected overall inflation was due to falling energy prices and flat food prices, categories that boosted inflation in the previous month.

Energy fell 0.2 pct, the largest drop since December, while food was unchanged in the month. Within the energy sector, gasoline fell 4.6 pct, the largest drop since December.

This struck me as odd. It reminds of a line from Chico Marx: “Who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes?”

I do a lot of work in energy economics, and so I follow oil and gas prices fairly closely. Despite the official figures, I was pretty sure gasoline prices went up from March to April; they certainly didn’t fall 4.6 percent! I had to get to the bottom of this mystery.

First Stop, EIA

The first thing I did was check the price history at the Energy Information Administration. Yes, this is a government entity, but I’ve met some of their current analysts, and they are just the sort of retentive geeks you want crunching boring but important numbers. (If any are reading, I hope they realize that is a compliment.) Lo and behold, the EIA table shows that the lowest average weekly gasoline price in April was higher than all of the weekly averages in March. Clearly gasoline was more expensive in April than in March, just as I (and every motorist in the country) would have guessed. Hmm.

To Every Price, There Is a Season

After asking some colleagues and nosing around, I hit upon the answer. No, we weren’t living in 1984, you see, it was that the Bureau of Labor Statistics (which calculates CPI and PPI) had made a seasonal adjustment to the raw gasoline prices that people actually paid and that the EIA recorded. As a different CNBC article explains:

Typically, gasoline prices rise sharply in April as the arrival of warmer weather encourages people to drive more. The government data is adjusted to reflect that pattern so that it can highlight variations from the trend. Because gas prices did not rise as much last month as they typically do in April, the seasonal adjustment showed that prices fell.

Now before we see whether this can explain the anomaly, a brief digression: The paragraph quoted above is a bit too simplistic. To correctly make a seasonal adjustment, one doesn’t simply look at how much prices typically rise from the prior month to the month in question. This rule might make sense if annual prices were constant, but with a backdrop of ever higher prices year after year, the rule isn’t quite right.

For example, suppose that, each and every month, the price of a widget always rises by 0.3 percent, year in and year out. According to the explanation given in the CNBC article, one might think then that if we look at widget prices last month and see that (as usual) they rose exactly 0.3 percent, then we would conclude, “Ah, that’s normal; they always do that from March to April. So really widget prices were flat.”

But to reason in this fashion would be wrong, of course, because we would reach the same conclusion for every month, and end up thinking widgets had stayed the same price throughout the year. (In other words, every month we would say, “Oh, that 0.3 percent rise is just due to the change in month; it did that this time last year, as well.”) Yet in reality, widget prices would be about 3.7 percent higher after a twelve-month cycle, so clearly we wouldn’t want to seasonally adjust all the price hikes away.

The correct way to do seasonal adjustments is actually rather complicated, and different econometricians could use different approaches. (For example, how far back do you go? Do you look at the change in gasoline prices from March to April 1924 to help interpret the monthly rise in 2008?) I’m not faulting the CNBC writer for the explanation given above — notice that I’m not trying to give a better description — but I still thought it worth mentioning that the analysis wasn’t quite right.

…

Complete article at:

http://mises.org/story/2994

Robert Murphy is an economist with the Institute for Energy Research and author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Capitalism.

                          ==========

Virginia senator: McCain ‘missing the boat’ on veterans’ benefits bill

By Andy Leonatti and Humberto Sanchez, CongressDaily

Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va., said Tuesday that opponents of his revamped GI Bill, including presumptive Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain of Arizona, were “missing the boat” by ignoring the fact that a large majority of soldiers leave after their first enlistment. “Seventy-five percent of the Army and 70 percent of the Marine Corps leave before or at the end of their first enlistment, and these people need to be taken care of,” Webb said in a radio interview on The Diane Rehm Show. “They’re getting out no matter what.” Webb added that if he could sit down with McCain for “15 minutes and explain to him how this works,” McCain would come on board. Webb added he has tried to keep politics out of the bill and attracted Republican co-sponsors, and said McCain “needs to calm down a little bit and join us on it.”

Under Webb’s amendment, which the Senate approved last week as part of the war supplemental budget, recent war veterans would get a four-year scholarship to any public university after a three-year deployment. It would provide enough to cover the cost of a four-year degree at the most expensive public university in any state — about $1,700 a month, according to some news reports — and is estimated to cost $52 billion over a decade.

Speaking at a Memorial Day event in Albuquerque, N.M., McCain said Monday that the measure would hurt the military’s ability to retain troops and decimate the ranks of noncommissioned officers. “At a time when the United States military is fighting in two wars, and as we finally are beginning the long overdue and very urgent necessity of increasing the size of the Army and Marine Corps, one study estimates that Senator Webb’s bill will reduce retention rates by 16 percent,” said McCain, referring to a recent CBO analysis. Webb and others have seized on that same report, however, noting that it projects the Webb measure would likely raise recruitment levels by 16 percent.

Full story: http://www.govexec.com/story_page.cfm?articleid=40093&dcn=e_gvet

                          ==========

Wartime PTSD cases jumped roughly 50 pct. in 2007

27 May 2008

The number of troops with new cases of post-traumatic stress disorder jumped by roughly 50 percent in 2007 amid the military buildup in Iraq and increased violence there and in Afghanistan. Records show roughly 40,000 troops have been diagnosed with the illness, also known as PTSD, since 2003. Officials believe that many more are likely keeping their illness a secret.

At:

http://tinyurl.com/6kndga

From: CLG News

                          ==========

And now for the important news ….

By Argus Hamilton

Congress vowed Monday to delay a big arms sale to Saudi Arabia to try to force them to increase oil production. Arms dealers have an irresistible sales pitch to countries in the Middle East. Those who live by the sword get shot by those who don’t.

http://www.JewishWorldReview.com

                          ==========

three thousand words

Mike Keefe: … technically we’re not in a recession!

http://editorialcartoonists.com/cartoons/KeefeM/2008/KeefeM20080528_low.jpg

Jeff Danziger: Lindsey Graham, Veterans Benefits, Reenlistment

http://danzigercartoons.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/dancart3609.jpg

Peterson: hang on! there’ll be another president in a few months!

http://img.slate.com/media/39/080527_ed.gif

IRAQ WAR MAY HAVE INCREASED ENERGY COSTS WORLD WIDE BY A STAGGERING $6 TRILLION

By Geoffrey Lean, The Independent

The Iraq War means oil costs three times more than it should. How are our lives going to change with oil heading toward $200 a barrel?

http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/86515/

                          ==========

Iraq Oil Report has posted a new item, ‘Iraq Oil Ministry extends deadline for pipeline to and from Iran…’ and more

Plus:
*John McCain and the confusion over war and oil
*Children at War — two looks by War News Radio and Alive in Baghdad
*Turkey, Iraq’s Kurds and the PKK
*Iraq Press Roundup
*Much, Much more…

Iraq’s Oil Ministry has extended the deadline for companies to submit plans to design and supply the equipment for pipelines to and from Iran. The [...]

You may view the latest post at

http://tinyurl.com/4h7luy  (iraqoilreport.com)

Iraq Oil Report has posted a new item, ‘Iraq Oil Ministry waiting on Big Oil to submit oil deal proposals…’

Plus:

*Iraq oil production drops in April
*Companies with KRG deals see boost
*Oil pipeline security contract under fraud scrutiny
*Iraq Press Roundup
*Turkish-Iraq relations improve on Kurd meetings
*Much, much more…

Iraq has asked major international oil companies to submit their final contract proposals to boost production at the country’s largest oil fields after several rounds of talks in the Jordanian [...]

You may view the latest post at

http://tinyurl.com/3jj7tb  (iraqoilreport.com)

Iraq Oil Report – ‘Iraq’s Kurdistan region signs an unknown number of new oil deals…’

Plus:

*Iraq to pre-qualify more companies for bidding on smaller fields
*Controversy over status of new oil law…
*…and what it means for a new state oil company
*Iraq oil profits up as production takes hit in April
*Shahristani in the news
*Iraq’s Refugees overlooked
*U.S. troops speak out against war
*Iraq Oil Report has the new Pentagon audit claiming nearly all of [...]

You may view the latest post at

http://tinyurl.com/5hzmce  (iraqoilreport.com)

                          ==========

Congressman Ron Paul’s Texas Straight Talk

Salute to Veterans

“Most of my efforts on Capitol Hill are focused on reducing the federal government’s size and scope, but I make an exception for a very important group of people. Our nation’s men and women in uniform commit a selfless act of patriotism when they take up arms in defense of our country. As a veteran myself, I salute all those currently serving, or who have served in our armed forces. Our nation owes them a debt of gratitude for their sacrifices, their courage, their time away from friends and family, and the dangers they undertake. This Memorial Day we honor our soldiers and vets, we remember those who never came home, or who have since passed on. Above all, we acknowledge our respect for all who have served in the military.”

Click here for the full article:  http://www.house.gov/paul/tst/tst2008/tst052508.htm

                          ==========

The Bushes and Hitler’s Appeasement

by Robert Parry

Global Research, May 20, 2008
Consortium News

The irony of George W. Bush going before the Knesset and mocking the late Sen. William Borah for expressing surprise at Adolf Hitler’s 1939 invasion of Poland is that Bush’s own family played a much bigger role assisting the Nazis.

If Borah, an isolationist Republican from Idaho, sounded naive saying “Lord, if only I could have talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided,” then what should be said about Bush’s grandfather and other members of his family providing banking and industrial assistance to the Nazis as they built their war machine in the 1930s?

The archival evidence is now clear that Prescott Bush, the president’s grandfather, was a director and shareholder of companies that profited from and collaborated with key financial backers of Nazi Germany.

That business relationship continued after Hitler invaded Poland in 1939 and even after Germany declared war on the United States following Japan’s bombing of Pearl Harbor in December 1941. It stopped only when the U.S. government seized assets of Bush-connected companies in late 1942 under the “Trading with the Enemy Act.”

So, perhaps instead of holding up Sen. Borah to ridicule, Bush might have acknowledged in his May 15 speech that his forebears also were blind to the dangers of Hitler.

Bush might have noted that his family’s wealth, which fueled his own political rise, was partly derived from Nazi collaboration and possibly from slave labor provided by Auschwitz and other concentration camps.

A more honest speech before the Knesset – on the 60th anniversary of Israel’s founding – might have contained an apology to the Jewish people from a leading son of the Bush family for letting its greed contribute to Nazi power and to the horrors of the Holocaust. Instead, there was just the jab at Sen. Borah, who died in 1940.

President Bush apparently saw no reason to remind the world of a dark chapter from the family history. After all, those ugly facts mostly disappeared from public consciousness soon after World War II.

Protected by layers of well-connected friends, Prescott Bush brushed aside the Nazi scandal and won a U.S. Senate seat from Connecticut, which enabled him to start laying the foundation for the family’s political dynasty.

In recent years, however, the archival records from the pre-war era have been assembled, drawing from the Harriman family papers at the Library of Congress, documents at the National Archives, and records from war-crimes trials after Germany’s surrender.

Managers for the Powerful

One can trace the origins of this story back more than a century to the emergence of Samuel Bush, George W. Bush’s great-grandfather, as a key manager for a set of powerful American business families, including the Rockefellers and the Harrimans. [See Consortiumnews.com's "Bush Family Chronicles: The Patriarchs."]

That chapter took an important turn in 1919 when investment banker George Herbert Walker teamed up with Averell Harriman, scion to a railroad fortune, to found a new investment banking firm, W.A. Harriman Company.

The Harriman firm was backed by the Rockefellers’ National City Bank and the Morgan family’s Guaranty Trust. The English-educated Walker assisted in assembling the Harriman family’s overseas business investments.

In 1921, Walker’s favorite daughter, Dorothy, married Samuel Bush’s son Prescott, a Yale graduate and a member of the school’s exclusive Skull and Bones society. Handsome and athletic, admired for his golf and tennis skills, Prescott Bush was a young man with the easy grace of someone born into the comfortable yet competitive world of upper-crust contacts.

Three years later, Dorothy gave birth to George Herbert Walker Bush in Milton, Massachusetts.

Lifted by the financial boom of the 1920s, Prescott and Dorothy Bush were on the rise. By 1926, George Herbert Walker had brought his son-in-law in on a piece of the Harriman action, hiring him as a vice president in the Harriman banking firm.

By the mid-Thirties, Prescott Bush had become a managing partner at the merged firm of Brown Brothers Harriman. The archival records also show that Brown Brothers Harriman served as the U.S. financial service arm for German industrialist Fritz Thyssen, an early funder of the Nazi Party.

…

Complete article at:

http://www.globalresearch.ca/

Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, “Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush”, was written with two of his sons, Sam and Nat, and can be ordered at neckdeepbook.com . His two previous books, “Secrecy & Privilege: The Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq” and “Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & ‘Project Truth’” are also available there.

                          ==========

Bank of Canada.

The global effects of U.S. fiscal policy / by Kimberly Flood

Ottawa : Bank of Canada, May 2008.  (Discussion papers ; 2008-08)
http://www.bankofcanada.ca/en/res/dp/2008/dp08-8.pdf

                          ==========

Borders: Technology and Security–Strategic Responses to New Challenges.

Authored by Dr. Douglas V. Johnson, II.

The following points were put forth by colloquium participants. The concept of a border as a line on the ground is insufficient for today’s realities. The concept of border security obscures larger issues of control and humane management. The European Union approach to interior border management differs from that of exterior border management and may offer a useful model for insight into alternative policies and practices. While the threat from terrorists is real, the over-security with regard to the border control process has generated greater problems than it may have solved. A great deal of room remains for improving management of the issues in both theory and practice, including the effective use of technology; however, this is ultimately a human issue. Practitioners and theorists see very different dimensions of the issues, but acknowledge the utility of colloquia such as this as a means to bring about unity of purpose and practice.

http://www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pubs/display.cfm?pubID=865

                          ==========

Blaming Workers for Their Bosses’ Incompetence

Robert Samuelson told readers this morning that, “today’s retired and well-pensioned autoworkers have condemned those who followed to lower-paid jobs or no jobs at all.” As a matter of economic theory, it is almost impossible to imagine what Samuelson could be thinking. How does a worker get less money because someone of a prior generation received a good pension? Is the worker’s marginal product now lower?

Presumably Samuelson is arguing that pensions and health care benefits have been a major drain on the big auto companies. This is of course true, but this was due to the incompetence of highly paid pension fund managers and their Wall Street consultants who were too dumb to recognize a stock bubble in the mid-90s.

Let’s keep the evil-doers straight. The company’s 7-figure executives control the pension fund. The fact that they didn’t know what they were doing weakened the big three. The problem is with the 7-figure crew, not the people who worked for a living on the assembly line.

–Dean Baker

The ‘Beat the Press’ Weekly Roundup, 5/27/08

http://prospect.org/csnc/blogs/beat_the_press

                          ==========

Prescription Drug Ratings

HealthGrades

http://www.healthgrades.com/drug-ratings/

This website, which rates hospitals, nursing homes and doctors, has added prescription drugs to its mix. It has safety, pricing and background information on more than 4,300 prescription drugs, including whether their use is on the upswing or downswing, and how they rank among drugs in the same class in terms of prescriptions written.

                          ==========

And now for the important news …. 

By Argus Hamilton

The Phoenix Mars lander will land on the red planet’s northern pole Sunday and begin searching for signs of life. It’s an administration pet project. Republicans believe as an article of faith that there has to be cheaper labor out there somewhere.

http://www.JewishWorldReview.com

                          ==========

three thousand words

John Trever: congress – gas price solutions

http://editorialcartoonists.com/cartoons/TreveJ/2008/TreveJ20080527_low.jpg

Mike Keefe: Libertarian Party and McCain

http://www.intoon.com/toons/2008/KeefeM20080525.jpg

Dan Wasserman: … I am rounding them all up …

http://images.ucomics.com/comics/tmdwa/2008/tmdwa080521.gif

May 2008 Southwest Climate Outlook

The May Southwest Climate Outlook is online. This month’s outlook provides recent drought conditions and the latest seasonal forecasts. The feature article is entitled “Anticipating summer heat.”  This month’s cover photo was provided by John J. Capuano III.

You can both view the latest Southwest Climate Outlook in html format or view the printer-friendly PDF file at:

http://www.climas.arizona.edu/forecasts/swoutlook.html

Highlights from the May 2008 Outlook

Drought – Short-term drought conditions remain normal for much of Arizona. However, in the southeast, conditions remain abnormally dry and conditions in the central section of Cochise County have degraded to moderate drought levels. Most of New Mexico continues to experience elevated drought conditions.

Temperature – this month Arizona and New Mexico temperatures generally hovered within 2 degree F of average. In Arizona, the southeast region has experienced temperatures slightly above average, while the northeastern section has seen below-average temperatures. In New Mexico, the higher elevations in the Northwest have experienced lower temperatures; the eastern half has seen slightly higher temperatures.

Precipitation – For the past thirty days, virtually all of Arizona and New Mexico has received below-average precipitation. Precipitation for large swaths of area in Arizona and western New Mexico has been less than 5 percent of average. The San Francisco Peaks area in Arizona is one of only a few locations that received more than the average precipitation.

Climate forecasts – Seasonal climate forecasts suggest an enhanced probability that Arizona and New Mexico will experience above-average temperatures through the summer and fall. The forecast for precipitation is more ambiguous, with equal chances that the Southwest will experience above- or below-average precipitation.

The Bottom Line – Typical La Niña conditions were reflected in Arizona and New Mexico last month when the region saw far below-average precipitation. Although forecasts call for an equal chance of above-, near-, or below-average precipitation for the ensuing months in the Southwest, models suggest temperatures will be above average. With hotter temperatures and abundant dry fuels, expect a higher potential for fires.

Kristen E. Nelson
Associate Editor
Institute for the Study of Planet Earth
715 N. Park Ave., 2nd Floor
Tucson, AZ 85721

                          ==========

The Coming Collapse of Oil Prices

by Dom Armentano

Bold economic predictions are dangerous, and I’ve been wrong before, but here goes: Oil prices are about to tumble.

There are several important reasons to believe that crude oil prices of roughly $130/barrel are simply not sustainable. The first is that world-wide economic growth, and hence the demand for crude oil, has slowed markedly due to the credit crunch and the bursting real estate bubble. The second reason is that the Federal Reserve has finally decided to stop lowering interest rates and/or creating credit as if it were the Tooth Ferry; a stronger dollar will mean lower oil prices. Third, the already record high crude oil and gasoline prices have created strong incentives for consumer and business conservation and that has lowered overall demand.

Yet the most fundamental reason to expect prices to fall is that the gap between the price of crude oil and the cost of producing it is just way, way too large to be sustained long-run.

According to the Energy Information Administration, the average cost (in constant dollars) of finding, lifting, and storing onshore domestic and/or foreign oil between 1980 and 2004 has been approximately $20 per barrel; between 2004 and 2006 that average cost rose to approximately $25 per barrel and is slightly higher now. (The cost of producing offshore oil is more than double onshore costs). Yet the price of crude oil has risen to approximately $130 per barrel (doubling in the last year alone) creating large profits for most producers and integrated oil companies.

Marginal suppliers around the world with costs above $30 per barrel but still far below current prices now have overwhelming incentives to uncap wells, engage in secondary and tertiary techniques to recover more oil from existing wells, drill additional wells, and otherwise expand production. (Houston is currently booming with oil production investment as is Brazil). Any serious output expansion will take time but the increasing supply coupled with lower demand will lead inexorably to lower prices; indeed, sharply lower prices.

To be sure, speculators have helped bid up the price of crude oil. Most of the speculation centers around legitimate concerns about “supply disruptions” and some wider war in the Middle East Gulf region. My guess is that roughly 20% of the current price is a supply disruption premium while another 10% is associated with our own debasement of the currency (the dollar) by our own central bank. (This can be proven by comparing oil prices in dollars with oil prices in Euros). When (if) these speculations prove unwarranted, oil prices will decline sharply into (my guess) the $80 per barrel range. But if we get a new war, all bets are off.

…

Complete article at:

http://www.lewrockwell.com/armentano-d/armentano13.html

Dom Armentano is Professor Emeritus at the University of Hartford (CT) and the author of Antitrust and Monopoly (Independent Institute, 1998) and Antitrust: The Case for Repeal (Mises Institute, 1999). He has published articles, op/eds and reviews in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, London Financial Times, Financial Post, Hartford Courant, National Review, Antitrust Bulletin and many other journals.

                          ==========

More on the real reason behind high oil prices – Part II

by F. William Engdahl

Global Research, May 21, 2008

As detailed in an earlier article, a conservative calculation is that at least 60% of today’s $128 per barrel price of crude oil comes from unregulated futures speculation by hedge funds, banks and financial groups using the London ICE Futures and New York NYMEX futures exchanges and uncontrolled inter-bank or Over-The-Counter trading to avoid scrutiny. US margin rules of the government’s Commodity Futures Trading Commission allow speculators to buy a crude oil futures contract on the Nymex, by having to pay only 6% of the value of the contract. At today’s price of $128 per barrel, that means a futures trader only has to put up about $8 for every barrel. He borrows the other $120. This extreme “leverage” of 16 to 1 helps drive prices to wildly unrealistic levels and offset bank losses in sub-prime and other disasters at the expense of the overall population.

The hoax of Peak Oil—namely the argument that the oil production has hit the point where more than half all reserves have been used and the world is on the downslope of oil at cheap price and abundant quantity—has enabled this costly fraud to continue since the invasion of Iraq in 2003 with the help of key banks, oil traders and big oil majors. Washington is trying to shift blame, as always, to Arab OPEC producers. The problem is not a lack of crude oil supply. In fact the world is in over-supply now. Yet the price climbs relentlessly higher. Why? The answer lies in what are clearly deliberate US government policies that permit the unbridled oil price manipulations.

World Oil Demand Flat, Prices Boom…

The chief market strategist for one of the world’s leading oil industry banks, David Kelly, of J.P. Morgan Funds, recently admitted something telling to the Washington Post, “One of the things I think is very important to realize is that the growth in the world oil consumption is not that strong.”

One of the stories used to support the oil futures speculators is the allegation that China’s oil import thirst is exploding out of control, driving shortages in the supply-demand equilibrium. The facts do not support the China demand thesis however.

The US Government’s Energy Information Administration (EIA) in its most recent monthly Short Term Energy Outlook report, concluded that US oil demand is expected to decline by 190,000 b/d in 2008. That is mainly owing to the deepening economic recession. Chinese consumption, the EIA says, far from exploding, is expected to rise this year by only 400,000 barrels a day. That is hardly the “surging oil demand” blamed on China in the media. Last year China imported 3.2 million barrels per day, and its estimated usage was around 7 million b/d total. The US, by contrast, consumes around 20.7 million b/d.

That means the key oil consuming nation, the USA, is experiencing a significant drop in demand. China, which consumes only a third of the oil the US does, will see a minor rise in import demand compared with the total daily world oil output of some 84 million barrels, less than half of a percent of the total demand.

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) has its 2008 global oil demand growth forecast unchanged at 1.2 mm bpd, as slowing economic growth in the industrialised world is offset by slightly growing consumption in developing nations. OPEC predicts global oil demand in 2008 will average 87 million bpd — largely unchanged from its previous estimate. Demand from China, the Middle East, India, and Latin America — is forecast to be stronger but the EU and North American demand will be lower.

So the world’s largest oil consumer faces a sharp decline in consumption, a decline that will worsen as the housing and related economic effects of the US securitization crisis in finance de-leverages. The price in normal open or transparent markets would presumably be falling not rising. No supply crisis justifies the way the world’s oil is being priced today.

Big new oil fields coming online

Not only is there no supply crisis to justify such a price bubble. There are several giant new oil fields due to begin production over the course of 2008 to further add to supply.

The world’s single largest oil producer, Saudi Arabia is finalizing plans to boost drilling activity by a third and increase investments by 40 %. Saudi Aramco’s plan, which runs from 2009 to 2013, is expected to be approved by the company’s board and the Oil Ministry this month. The Kingdom is in the midst of a $ 50 billion oil production expansion plan to meet growing demand in Asia and other emerging markets. The Kingdom is expected to boost its pumping capacity to a total of 12.5 mm bpd by next year, up about 11 % from current capacity of 11.3 mm bpd.

In April this year Saudi Arabia’s Khursaniyah oilfield began pumping and will soon add another 500,000 bpd to world oil supply of high grade Arabian Light crude. As well, another Saudi expansion project, the Khurais oilfield development, is the largest of Saudi Aramco projects that will boost the production capacity of Saudi oilfields from 11.3 million bpd to 12.5 million bpd by 2009. Khurais is planned to add another 1.2 million bpd of high-quality Arabian light crude to Saudi Arabia’s export capacity.

Brazil’s Petrobras is in the early phase of exploiting what it estimates are newly confirmed oil reserves offshore in its Tupi field that could be as great or greater than the North Sea. Petrobras, says the new ultra-deep Tupi field could hold as much as 8 billion barrels of recoverable light crude. When online in a few years it is expected to put Brazil among the world’s “top 10″ oil producers, between those of Nigeria and those of Venezuela.

In the United States, aside from rumors that the big oil companies have been deliberately sitting on vast new reserves in Alaska for fear that the prices of recent years would plunge on over-supply, the US Geological Survey (USGS) recently issued a report that confirmed major new oil reserves in an area called the Bakken, which stretches across North Dakota, Montana and south-eastern Saskatchewan. The USGS estimates up to 3.65 billion barrels of oil in the Bakken.

These are just several confirmations of large new oil reserves to be exploited. Iraq, where the Anglo-American Big Four oil majors are salivating to get their hands on the unexplored fields, is believed to hold oil reserves second only to Saudi Arabia. Much of the world has yet to be explored for oil. At prices above $60 a barrel huge new potentials become economic. The major problem faced by Big Oil is not finding replacement oil but keeping the lid on world oil finds in order to maintain present exorbitant prices. Here they have some help from Wall Street banks and the two major oil trade exchanges—NYMEX and London-Atlanta’s ICE and ICE Futures.

Then why do prices still rise?

…

Complete article at:

Global Research Associate F. William Engdahl is author of A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order (PlutoPress), and Seeds of Destruction: The Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation. (Global Research, available at www.globalresearch.ca). He may be reached at info@engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net.

                          ==========

Iran ‘paid Iraq insurgents to kill UK soldiers’

25 May 2008

Iran has secretly paid Iraqi ‘insurgents’ hundreds of thousands of American dollars to kill British soldiers, according to a leaked government document obtained by The Telegraph. The allegations are contained in a confidential “field report” written by a British officer who served in Basra during one of the most dangerous periods of the conflict. [See: Billions in U.S. Tax Dollars Likely Financing Iraq Insurgent Groups: Official 23 May 2008.]

At:

http://tinyurl.com/6xxsmx   (www.telegraph.co.uk)

From: CLG News

                          ==========

RIGHT IS WRONG — HOW THE LUNATIC FRINGE HIJACKED AMERICA

By Arianna Huffington

The GOP is now a dark, putrefied party of Bush, Cheney, Rove, Limbaugh and Coulter. And we’re all worse because of it.

http://www.alternet.org/stories/85968/

                          ==========

“THEY USED PAT FOR PUBLIC CONSUMPTION, JUST LIKE JESSICA LYNCH”: AN INTERVIEW WITH MARY TILLMAN

By Emily Wilson, AlterNet

The official cover-up of football star-turned-soldier Pat Tillman’s death by “friendly fire” has led his family on a four-year mission for justice.

http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/86444/

                          ==========

Fox News’ Cavuto ignored Hagee’s Hitler comments, McCain’s courting of his endorsement

On Fox News’ Your World, Neil Cavuto reported on Sen. John McCain’s rejection of Rev. John Hagee’s endorsement, but he didn’t note Hagee’s remarks about Adolf Hitler and Zionism or that McCain admitted he sought Hagee’s endorsement.

Read More

http://mediamatters.org/items/200805230001?lid=320952&rid=8620141

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three thousand words

Monte Wolverton: a nation of cows

http://editorialcartoonists.com/cartoons/WolveM/2008/WolveM20080526_low.jpg

RJ Matson: HERO OF THE BEACH

http://www.rjmatson.com/images/cartoons/NYO543.jpg

Deb Milbrath: no wonder I’m so down

http://www.milbrathdraws.com/archives/2008/05/22.jpg

Freedom Is Not Free

- Kelly Strong

I watched the flag pass by one day.
It fluttered in the breeze.
A young Marine saluted it,
and then he stood at ease.
I looked at him in uniform
So young, so tall, so proud,
He’d stand out in any crowd.
I thought how many men like him
Had fallen through the years.
How many died on foreign soil?
How many mothers’ tears?
How many pilots’ planes shot down?
How many died at sea?
How many foxholes were soldiers’ graves?
No, freedom isn’t free.

I heard the sound of TAPS one night,
When everything was still
I listened to the bugler play
And felt a sudden chill.
I wondered just how many times
That TAPS had meant “Amen,”
When a flag had draped a coffin
Of a brother or a friend.
I thought of all the children,
Of the mothers and the wives,
Of fathers, sons and husbands
With interrupted lives.
I thought about a graveyard
At the bottom of the sea
Of unmarked graves in Arlington.
No, freedom isn’t free.

http://tinyurl.com/4ubtpl   (www.thememorialdaytribute.com)

                          ==========

WEBB GI BILL PASSES IN SENATE

By Ali Frick, Think Progress

Despite some Republican political shenanigans, Jim Webb’s GI Bill passed the senate with overwhelming support.

http://www.alternet.org/blogs/waroniraq/86209/

                          ==========

Bush in 2000: I’ll bring down gas prices through ‘sheer force of personality’ –May 2008: Saudi Arabia’s leaders made clear Friday they see no reason to increase oil production until customers demand it, apparently rebuffing President [sic] Bush amid soaring U.S. gasoline prices. Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal thinks Bush ‘was satisfied.’

Compiled by Lori Price

25 May 2008

On the campaign trail in June 2000, Texas Governor George W. Bush told reporters that if he was president, he would bring down gasoline prices through sheer force of personality, by creating enough political good will with oil-producing nations that they would increase their supply of crude. ”I would work with our friends in OPEC to convince them to open up the spigot, to increase the supply,” Mr. Bush, the presumptive Republican candidate for president, told reporters. Implicit in his comments was a criticism of the Clinton administration as failing to take advantage of the good will that the United States built with Kuwait and Saudi Arabia during the Persian Gulf war in 1991.

At:

http://www.legitgov.org/bush_oil_prices_2000_250508.html

From: CLG News

                          ==========

Taxpayers for Common Sense: Pentagon Pork Lards Spending Bill

PENTAGON PORK LARDS SPENDING BILL

Volume XIII No. 21 – May 23, 2008

As they considered the massive emergency Iraq supplemental spending bill this week, Senators cut some of the worst earmarks and bloated spending. But they ignored billions of weapons pork lining the coffers of big defense companies.

Some of their cuts were responsible. The budget scalpel excised an earmark by Sens. Richard Durbin (D-IL) and Kit Bond (R-MO) that reversed the administration’s efforts to kill the $1.8 billion extension for the FutureGen clean-coal power project in Illinois. The earmark would have continued a cooperative agreement between the Energy Department and a consortium of private investors to build the plant, even though the consortium includes a Chinese company that would “ultimately be able to use the technology developed with taxpayer dollars to build plants in China,” according to Roll Call.

However, billions of dollars for new weapons were approved by the Senate, despite these programs being controversial, unwanted by the Pentagon, or having little or no relation to the Iraq war. Last year, the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee basically admitted that they were going to use the emergency spending bill to stuff in additional items that didn’t fit in the defense spending bill. And they did.  Here are the top three we found in the current supplemental:

C-17 – The legislation appropriates $3.6 billion for 15 new C-17’s that the Pentagon really doesn’t want and which have little to do with military operations in Iraq. This funding has more to do with keeping Boeing’s Long Beach production line open into the summer of 2010, than Iraq. It is also a gift to Boeing and gives them time to find more international buyers for the aircraft.

C-130J – The emergency spending bill provides $1.8 billion for 18 new C-130J transport planes that, until recently, the Pentagon wanted to eliminate. While we are aware that one C-130J has been lost in Iraq, the Air Force argues they need many more because increased stress on the aircraft’s airframes has caused them to age faster than expected. Sounds like they are just shopping to fill their weapons wish list.

CV-22 – The bill provides more than $500 million for the CV-22 Osprey. The money has been added despite limited use of the aircraft in Iraq. In reality, the money will help fund the recent DoD plan to purchase 141 CV-22 aircraft for the U.S. Marine Corps, and 26 for U.S. Air Force units operating with Special Operations Command. The plan involves buying up to 33 CV-22s per year from 2008 to 2013.

For several years, the Pentagon has used the emergency spending bills as a slush fund to pad the overall Defense budget for weapons programs that don’t need to be replaced or are unrelated to the war. The Senate bill continues that trend.

Cutting funding for weapons not necessary to fight the war in Iraq seems like a great place to start in an effort to get us closer to the President’s initial request. And the $6 billion for the three new weapons programs mentioned should be the first to go.

Going on at Taxpayer.net This Week

GAO Documents DoD’s Revolving Door

$5.2 Billion in Senate Authorization Add-ons

$9.9 Billion in House Authorization Add-ons

Check out TCS’s Complete FY2008 Database of Congressional Earmarks

Ending the Earmark ATM: An Insider’s View of Congressional Earmarks

TCS in the News

Harkin defends Farm Bill (Mason City Globe Gazette, Iowa)
Measure gives horse farms two key breaks (Lexington Herald-Leader, Kentucky)
Defense bill addition fuels earmark debate (United Press International)
Panel nixes Bush order on earmarks (The Hill)
Foreign briefing (Scotsman, United Kingdom)
Not All Earmarks Are Paid in Full, and a Senator Wants to Know Why (New York Times)
Port Tennant Grant Provides Discussion Point on Earmarks (Kitsap Sun, Washington)
To members’ dismay, fuel efficiency starts in House (Fort Worth Star Telegram, Texas)
Earmarked for controversy (Glens Falls Post-Star, New York)
Maine’s delegates seeking earmarks (Kennebec Journal, Maine)
Tariff suspensions debated (Charleston Post Courier, South Carolina)
NH’s congressional delegation splits on farm bill (Concord Monitor, New Hampshire)
Mayoral Hopeful, an Earmark Critic, Has His Own (New York Times)

Notable Quote

“They’ve proved that they can even screw up spending the taxpayers’ money unwisely.”

– White House spokeswoman Dana Perino, on Congress’ accidental omission of the trade title in the official copy of the Farm Bill sent to the White House.

   

weekly wastebasket at www.taxpayer.net

                          ==========

National Security Archive Update, The Diary of Anatoly S. Chernyaev: 1987-1988

May 23, 2008

The Diary of Anatoly S. Chernyaev: 1987-1988

http://www.nsarchive.org

For more information contact:
Svetlana Savranskaya – 202/994-7000

Washington, D.C., May 23, 2008 – Today, the National Security Archive publishes its third installment of the diary of one of the main supporters of Mikhail Gorbachev and strongest proponents of glasnost during the perestroika period in the Soviet Union — Anatoly Sergeevich Chernyaev. This section of the diary, covering two key years of history, is being published in English here for the first time.

These diary entries cover the two most successful years of Soviet perestroika — the years when Gorbachev enjoyed immense popularity both at home and especially in the West, and before the conservative opposition to reform began to coalesce, leading eventually to the coup of August 1991.  Beneath the surface, however, these processes were already beginning to rock the reformers’ boat, and Chernyaev, subtly but precisely, notes the first signs of this agitation in these pages.

Visit the Web site of the National Security Archive for more information about today’s posting.

http://www.nsarchive.org

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The Influence of Hagee and Parsley 

Friday, May 23, 2008

SARAH POSNER, sarahposner@comcast.net

Posner is author of the new book “God’s Profits: Faith, Fraud, and the Republican Crusade for Values Voters.” She said today: “Over the past 24 hours, presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain rejected the endorsements of two charismatic evangelical televangelists, John Hagee and Rod Parsley, over controversial comments the two men have made.

“Since the televangelists endorsed McCain in late February, reports have surfaced about Hagee calling the Catholic Church the ‘great whore’ in the Book of Revelation, his remarks that God brought Hurricane Katrina as a punishment to New Orleans for holding a gay pride parade, and finally, this week, a decade-old sermon in which he said that God brought Hitler in order to drive the Jewish people to Israel to establish the Jewish state in fulfillment of biblical prophecy. McCain renounced Hagee’s endorsement late yesterday, and last night renounced Parsley’s as well over his stance that Islam is a ‘false religion’ that ‘must be destroyed.’

“Although McCain has appeared to take Hagee and Parsley out of the equation as issues in the presidential campaign, these two figures remain highly influential within two overlapping strands of American evangelicalism, the Word of Faith (or prosperity gospel) movement, and the Christian Zionist movement, as well as in politics. Their remarks about other religions and homosexuality merely scratch the surface of their controversial and disturbing views.

    “The prosperity gospel promises God’s favor, including supernatural financial abundance, in exchange for ‘sowing a seed,’ or tithing to one’s pastor. Convincing their followers that not tithing is disobedience to God’s will that will result in living under a financial curse, these pastors take in millions yet operate their authoritarian churches without transparency or accountability, live in luxury homes and fly private jets. Many evangelicals consider the prosperity gospel to be heretical.

“Hagee’s Christians United for Israel, of which Parsley is a regional director, is the most influential Christian Zionist organization in the country, with close ties to the Bush administration and key members of Congress, former members of Congress, and policymakers. Some of the people scheduled to speak at CUFI’s upcoming July summit in Washington include Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-CT), Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN), Rep. Eliot Engel (D-NY), former Sen. Rick Santorum,
now a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, and New York Times columnist William Kristol. In past years, CUFI delegates have met with members of Congress of both parties, and Sen. Lieberman reportedly said recently that CUFI ‘changes the mood’ when it visits Capitol Hill.

“McCain’s rejection of these figures does not mean they are going away, and it is essential for the public to understand the role they play in our culture and politics.”

Posner has been covering these issues for AlterNet

http://www.alternet.org/authors/7062

and the American Prospect

http://www.prospect.org/cs/author?id=1314

From:  Institute for Public Accuracy

                          ==========

Fox News’ Cavuto ignored Hagee’s Hitler comments, McCain’s courting of his endorsement

On Fox News’ Your World, Neil Cavuto reported on Sen. John McCain’s rejection of Rev. John Hagee’s endorsement, but he didn’t note Hagee’s remarks about Adolf Hitler and Zionism or that McCain admitted he sought Hagee’s endorsement.

Read More

http://mediamatters.org/items/200805230001?lid=320952&rid=8620141

                          ==========

Pink Slips Pile up in Florida

St. Petersburg Times
http://tampabay.com/news/business/article509931.ece

For April, Florida led the nation for the largest month-over-month drop in employment levels. From March to April, the state lost 25,300 jobs. Michigan, meanwhile, shed 18,600 positions over the month. Florida’s dubious honor emerged from state and federal employment reports issued Friday. They showed that while the unemployment rate remained level in Florida from March to April, at 4.9%, that’s only part of the story. Month-over-month job loss is another indicator of a state economy’s health or lack thereof. In retrospect, signs of trouble had been brewing for a while: Florida actually had the highest number of month-over-month job losses five times since January 2007.  But those deficiencies were often not immediately visible because of the sampling method of employers used to derive the monthly figures.

                          ==========

Loss of 836 jobs hurts Siler City: Plant closing hits taxes, sales … and more

Trading Markets (press release) – Los Angeles,CA,USA

Pilgrim’s Pride announced in March that it would close its Siler City plant and six of its 13 US distribution centers. The company cited rising feed costs …

http://www.tradingmarkets.com/.site/news/Stock%20News/1606069/

Large Troup Employer NDS Closing Effective Sept. 30

Tyler Morning Telegraph – Tyler,TX,USA

By GREG JUNEK

California-based NDS Inc. on Thursday confirmed it will close its Troup factory, effective Sept. 30, and at least 140 employees will lose
…

http://www.tylerpaper.com/article/20080523/NEWS01/805230318

                          ==========

And now for the important news …. 

By Argus Hamilton

Barack Obama blamed his struggle in Kentucky on the influence of Fox News Monday. This is nuts. You know the world is upside down when the Yankees are in last place, the Cubbies are in first place and Fox News is accused of helping the Clintons.

http://www.JewishWorldReview.com

                          ==========

three thousand words

Tom Toles: the wheels on the bus go round and round

http://d.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/p/uc/20080523/ltt080523.gif

Mike Luckovich: there’s an airline fee to get your belt, shoes and laptop back …

http://img.slate.com/media/15/080523_ed.gif

Jeff Darcy: affordable gas memorial

http://editorialcartoonists.com/cartoons/DarcyJ/2008/DarcyJ20080525_low.jpg