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POPSWall Street Likes The Bailout Plus Drill, Drill, Drill
But my thought is that a Senate victory might just blow Pelosi out of the water and open the floodgates to Democratic defections in the House. If a drilling bill ever passes Congress, oil prices will keep on plunging — perhaps all the way to $75 a barrel, which is the profitable break-even point for lifting the extra barrel of oil. That would drive the Dow to somewhere between 15,000 and 16,000, and it would have a huge tax-cut effect on the economy. And, of course, it could completely change the November election outlook in a highly favorable way for the GOP. The conventional wisdom says Republicans are gonna get clobbered again this fall. But drill, drill, drill would overturn that wisdom. More drilling today would have the potency of the Reagan tax cuts 28 years ago in the 1980 landslide race. But the GOP has got to make the case. And deregulating oil, which is great policy, would offset much of the bad policy pain coming out of the Fannie-Freddie housing bailout.
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POPSHot Air And the back-up coal or natural gas power generators can not be started and stopped on a whim.
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POPSThe coming famine "In light of all these hurdles, as I see it, the challenge is to double world food output by 2050 using less land, far less water and fewer nutrients – all in the teeth of increasing rates of drought. And we need to do it sustainably." "I believe we are quite capable of solving these issues through good science and good policy. In the first instance, we need to massively increase global public investment in agricultural research and development. Then we need to make sure the fruits of that research reach farmers everywhere. I also think that commercial wild harvests, such as fishing and forestry, should be phased out in favour of sustainable farming that dovetails with the local environment."
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POPSPentagon to EPA: You and What Army? Refuse to clean up If it were a private polluter and not the Pentagon, the EPA would most likely go to court to force compliance, but an executive branch policy prevents federal agencies from suing one another. Other agencies, including NASA and the Department of Energy, have complied with the EPA’s Superfund cleanup orders without protest. This is the second time in a week that it’s been revealed that the EPA’s authority has been ignored by others in the government. The New York Times reported last Wednesday that, when the EPA sent an e-mail to the White House concluding that greenhouse gasses can be regulated by the Clean Air Act, the White House simply refused to open it, successfully getting the EPA to backtrack.
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POPSThe Oil Cartel Of Our Own Making the 85.9 billion barrels of crude offshore won't be tapped. The May BLM report explains why most onshore oil won't be tapped, either. Of the 279 million acres of federal land "with potential for oil or natural gas resources," 60 percent is off limits to leases as a matter of federal statute or administrative policy. Another 23 percent is open to leases with "restrictions." These include such things as "lands that can be leased but ground-disturbing oil and natural gas exploration and development activities are prohibited" and "lands that can be leased, but stipulations ... limit the time of the year when oil and gas exploration and drilling can take place to less than 3 months." While compliance with these laws may delay, modify or prohibit oil and gas activities, these laws represent the values and bounds Congress believes appropriate to manage Federal lands." You elected Congress. It paid you back with $4.00-per-gallon gas.
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POPSIs nuclear energy good or bad? Things began to heat up for the industry within two weeks of President Bush taking office in January 2001. He formed the National Energy Policy Development Group (NEPD), headed by Vice President Dick Cheney, which produced a National Energy Policy report by May of that year, recommending “the President support the expansion of nuclear energy in the United States as a major component of our national energy policy.” Following a long legal battle to force the release of NEPD documents to the public, environmental lawyers at Natural Resource Defense Council uncovered that industry lobbyists were integral in forming the president’s energy policy and his decision to launch a so-called ‘nuclear revival’. Over eight years the nuclear industry has received billions in government funds
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POPSMickey Mouse-opatamia: Disneyland comes to Baghdad
But, just like in a Disney fairy tale, the souls of these dead animals will inhabit the bodies of the cartoon characters who will serve as ushers and greeters at the thrilling new "Baghdad Zoo and Entertainment Experience." The $525 million project, says C3's owner, "will be managed by the Iraqis" (ha, ha, that's a good one, just like the oil fields) and the "experience" will be "culturally sensitive" (ha, ha, that's an even better one). Even though there's no running water in parts of Baghdad, the electricity is sparse at best, and suicide bombers are still killing an average of 100 civilians a week, this will, in the words of C3's director, be a welcome sight to Iraqis. He told the London Times, "The people need this kind of positive influence. It's going to have a huge psychological impact." Another big supporter of the Disney "experience" is Bush lapdog, General David Petraeus, who said Baghdad was otherwise "lacking in entertainment." If this weren't all so predictably ha
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POPSWhy I Left Greenpeace-Patrick Moore Phthalates are the new bogeyman. These chemicals make easy targets since they are hard to understand and difficult to pronounce. Sadly, Greenpeace has evolved into an organization of extremism and politically motivated agendas. Its antichlorination campaign failed, only to be followed by a campaign against polyvinyl chloride. We all have a responsibility to be environmental stewards. But that stewardship requires that science, not political agendas, drive our public policy.
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POPSBIOFUELS – A MAN MADE DISASTER BIOFUEL DISASTER_THANK CONGRESS AND GREENIES! Contrary to popular belief, the production of biofuels is extremely unfriendly to the environment. The increased use of fertilizer needed in the growing corn crop has resulted in additional soil and water pollution. The National Academy of Sciences recently reported that the 15% food to fuel mandate will increase the size of the Gulf of Mexico dead zone by 10 to 19% as a result of water pollution caused by fertilizer runoff. The production of ethanol requires copious amounts of water, thereby draining local water tables. Congress never learns. Manipulating the market with subsidies and taxation can have disastrous, deadly results. If ethanol is such a great product, then it will thrive in the free market. How many people will have to starve before Congress and the do-gooder environmentalist lobby admit that our biofuel policy is a complete disaster and a potential threat to our economy and global stability.
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POPSPalestine/Israel: Water and international law - Things could get worse The United Nations' General Assembly reaffirmed in several resolutions that the Geneva Convention (IV) relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War (1949) is applicable to the Palestinian and other Arab territories occupied by Israel since 1967, including Jerusalem, and again and again condemned Israel's policies and practices against the population in the occupied territories. Very startling, the chutzpah with which Israel withstands the imminence of being classified as a rogue state.
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POPSWater Policy in Israel and Palestine - There's Enough Water for Both The increasing difficulties with water availability, concludes the hydrogeologist, result from Israel using the majority of water resources for agricultural purposes, although this sector today represents a very small portion of the Israeli economy. Despite this, the Israeli state remains unswervingly committed to the Zionist foundation myth, which regards the promotion of agriculture as a central tenet in the Jewish settlement of Palestine. Messerschmid, in turn, sees the priorities of Israeli water policies as fundamentally flawed, leading to a wasteful use of the precious resource. Large areas of land, for instance, are still intensively watered even during conditions of very high temperatures, although most of the water immediately evaporates. The Palestinians, by contrast, do not even have the amount of water at their disposal that was promised in the Israeli-Palestinian peace treaty. Deutsche Fassung
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POPSMay I Quote You, Mr. President? 22-"See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda." 25-"Free nations don't develop weapons of mass destruction." 31- "The most important thing is for us to find Osama bin Laden. It is our number one priority and we will not rest until we find him." 32- "I don't know where bin Laden is. I have no idea and really don't care. It's not that important. It's not our priority." 36-"I have made good judgments in the past. I have made good judgments in the future." 47-"I'm the commander — see, I don't need to explain — I do not need to explain why I say things. That's the interesting thing about being president." 50-“I don’t have the foggiest idea about what I think about international, foreign policy.”
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POPSIsrael Moves to Dump Gaza Problem on Egypt Israel said that it wanted to wash its hands completely of the Gaza Strip. ---- "Matan Vilnai, the Israeli Deputy Defence Minister, said that the destruction of the wall was an opportunity for Israel to “disconnect” from Gaza and push it into Egypt’s unwilling lap. “We need to understand that when Gaza is open to the other side we lose responsibility for it,” he said. “We want to stop supplying electricity to them, stop supplying them with water and medicine, so that it would come from another place.” Israel moves to dump Gaza problem on Egypt
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POPSCanada Apologizes for Saying America Tortures Prisoners Somebody sounds like they are afraid of getting water-boarded! Seriously, does this sound like a valid way of conducting foreign policy? America is doomed by our intolerance of criticism. No matter how many pictures are published of Americans torturing prisoners, America still expects everyone to look the other way. Kinda weird. Hopefully our next president won't be so bizarre when it comes to flaunting our morals while at the same time proclaiming them.
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POPSSea Shepherd, "Steve Irwin to join (!?) Greenpeace in Tracking Whalers! Go get 'em Capt. Watson! kick some whaler butt. I'm soooo tired of seein' the videos of dead and bloody whales and dolphins and hearing their screams in my dreams. Once you have met cetaceans in the water, it changes you life. My brothers and sisters of the Sea....yes..... Time to draw the line in the water.
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POPSEco-Sin Tax? Chicago Fights the 7 Sins of Bottled Water Chicago's 5-cent tax on bottled water took effect on Jan. 2, 2008. The tax is expected to bring an extra $10.5 million annually into the city's coffers while encouraging people to drink tap water and eschew the environmentally suspect bottles. Illinois residents consumed 270 million gallons of bottled water in 2005, making the state the seventh-biggest bottled water consumer in the United States. The Earth Policy Institute estimates manufacturers use more than 17 million barrels of oil in making polyethylene terephthalate plastic bottles. Only 23 percent of those bottles are is recycled, according to the Container Recycling Institute. The rest are tossed into landfills.
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