What and With Whom is the Tea Party So Upset?

The marginal tax rate for median income earners has been unchanged at 15% since 1987. See http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxfacts/displayafact.cfm?Docid=226

So what exactly is everyone - especially those in the Tea Party - so upset about, why, and with whom?

Could it be they actually don't know the facts, or is it that they simply choose to "refudiate" and ignore those facts?

Now, if you're among the RWMFs the story is admittedly a little different.

As I'm sure all you RWMFs know, the marginal tax rates for the Twice-Median Income Earners climbed from 22% in 1967 to a peak of 43% in 1980. The Dems controlled Congress during this period. The White House was occupied by the LBJ, Nixon, Ford and Carter administrations. The GOP took back the Senate and White House in 1980 and tax rates start declining but primarily for the rich. Hooray.

As any good Randian knows, that means boon times ahead for all of us! Too bad that didn't work out as planned. The net worth and financial wealth of the top 20% of Americans went from 83.6% and 93.4%, respectively, in 1989 to 85.1% and 93.0% in 2007. (See http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html)

So much for trickle down.

Median Income Earners, BTW, saw a much smaller increase in their marginal income tax rates from '67 to '80 and very little to no decline after 1980 until...............................wait for it...............................the Dems took back the Senate. (See the attached graph of the Tax Policy Center's data on top of which I've laid the parties in power.)

Tax rates declined even more vigorously when the Dems took back the Senate in '87 and once again controlled both Houses. Let me say that again.

TAX RATES DECLINED EVEN MORE VIGOROUSLY WHEN THE DEMS CONTROLLED CONGRESS.

All you have to do is look at the chart above and the Tax Policy Center's data and do the math yourself if you don't trust me.

And what else was happening during the 80's and 90's while tax rates were being reduced? Oh, yeah. The federal debt as a percentage of GDP was climbing. (See http://didyoucheckfirst.blogspot.com/2010/02/one-persons-perspective-on-federal-debt.html for a chart of that, again overlaid with political parties in power.)

And why was our debt rising? Could it have been because of increases in defense spending (here and here) while at the same time the taxes being paid into the Treasury were being cut perhaps? No. Couldn't be. Could it? Really. What do I know, and what do the facts prove? Nothing, right? They are easily "refudiated".

And who was it who increased taxes on the wealthy Twice-Median Income earners? Was it those evil Dems? No. It was a GOP-controlled Congress who increased those taxes in 1998 from 28% to 33%. Look at the chart and the data. The facts don't lie. Yes, the Democratically controlled Congress increased them in 2008 - an act for which they win my admiration - but they also reduced them in 2009.

Now remember, while all of this is going on the marginal income tax rates on the middle class remain the same. Let me repeat that.

MARGINAL INCOME TAX RATES ON THE MIDDLE CLASS HAVE BEEN UNCHANGED AT 15% SINCE 1987!!!!

Curiously enough marginal rates on low income earners have bounced around. They are now just a little higher than middle income earners. Evidence, IMHO, that the less money you have the less power you have in this country. You do get to be a political football, though, if you're poor.

Again, all the data is there if anyone wants to avoid an afternoon of yard work like I have. http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxfacts/displayafact.cfm?Docid=226

Unfunded tax cuts mean simply this: you can't reduce taxes without appreciating that those reductions mean less income to the government. Unless you replace it with some other source of funding, the deficit gets bigger. If you cut that income source by cutting taxes but still care about trying to balance the budget, then those cuts must be balanced - funded, if you will - by some combination of increases in income (taxes) elsewhere and/or cuts in expenditures.

For more on this idea, I refer you to the following:
Invincible Ignorance; Paul Krugman

Middle Class Taxes at Historic Lows; Mike Lillis, The Washington Independent


It's Unanimous! GOP Says No To Unemployment Benefits, Yes To Tax Cuts For The Rich; Brian Beutler, TPMDC (Talking Points Memo)


Bush's Unfunded Tax Cuts Did Not Increase the Deficit; Kathy Kattenburg, The Moderate Voice


Considering what I think is plenty of proof about our slide into mediocrity and mendacity manifest in so many ways by the Tea Party movement, I guess I'm not all that surprised that so many people are so upset without even understanding why.

Here's the reality. The GOP is lying, plain and simple, and Tea Partiers seem completely uninformed about the facts.

When the GOP says that Bush's tax cuts didn't increase the deficit and were good for the economy and so should be extended and don't need to be "funded" they are lying. Either that, or they believe there really are free lunches in this world.

The GOP is lying when they accuse Democrats of being the only ones who raise taxes and spend money. When Democrats have controlled Congress, at least since 1987, they clearly have not raised taxes on the middle class. In fact, if anyone bothers to look at the data they will see that it was a Democratically controlled Congress who lowered the marginal income tax rate for high-income earners in 2009 thanks in part, according to the Tax Policy Center, to the Making Work Pay Credit enacted in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.

And the GOP and tea partiers have the balls to whine and cry and stomp their feet about extending unemployment benefits??? Their demand that extending unemployment must be paid for while it's ok to extend tax breaks to the wealthy without funding is both asinine and heartless.

What I'm saying - again - is that we can't have it both ways.

If you want to debate facts, let's do that. If you want to present real data, then I implore you to please do so. If any tea partiers out there can explain and defend their anger with this administration with anything even resembling data and facts, I might actually pay money for that.

Otherwise, I remain steadfast in my conclusions that unless one counts themselves among the wealthiest 5% - maybe 10% - in this country it remains simply and utterly inexplicable to me as to how or why the GOP or Tea Party holds any attraction to anyone but the wealthiest among us.....................unless, of course, you choose to ignore the facts.

American-Bred Terrorists Causing Alarm For Law Enforcement

Everyone saw the headline, right?

American-Bred Terrorists Causing Alarm For Law Enforcement

What do they mean, "law enforcement"???? WTF is that???? I thought we were at war!?!??

WAR ON TERROR!!!!

War means the military, not law enforcement; otherwise, why would we have bothered sending hundreds of thousands of troops and spent hundreds of billions of dollars invading and occupying Afghanistan and Iraq? Think the FBI could do that? The CIA? Give me a break. If this was a matter of concern for law enforcement would we just stand idly by while thousands of American and Allied lives and countless millions of civilians are killed as part of our military exploits and excursions - I mean, protection of our liberties and freedoms!! - if that should have been something for law enforcement??

PLEEEEEEASE.

So when can we expect to see tanks rolling through Fairfax? How else can we "smoke 'em out of their caves, heh, heh?" I mean, seriously, unless I've missed something the last 9 years, WE ARE AT WAR!!! Terrorism isn't a crime, it's an act of war. Call in the friggin' Army, Marines, and Blackwater contractors - the real bad asses.......oops, that's the real rich bad asses!

This is what we've been told since Sept 12, 2001, isn't it? I mean, Duh-bya and Dicky and Rummy and all those good ol' boys wouldn't lie to us, right? We're at war, dammit. And besides, we all know that it's only the sniveling liberal, peace-niks, and spineless Dems who ever lie to us. Not the good patriotic, god-fearing, Ronny-worshipping (notice which gets capitalized - their real god) Ree-pub-lickins.

So, please. Please tell me that this means we'll be invading Virginia next. We needs to "fight over there so's we don't have to fight 'em over here"....in Pennsyltucky, that is!

That's enough.

It's about effing time we started talking about terrorism for what it is - a crime. How come we're not targeting Chesser and his fellow idiot citizens with tanks, drones, and laser-guided missiles like we do in Muslim countries?

How come we send law enforcement to arrest him, but we bomb Iraq back into the stone age?
Fact: seven years after our invasion, and the lights still aren't on and the water still doesn't run like it did before we arrived. (http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2010/0621/First-day-of-summer-in-Iraq-signals-hot-violent-months-ahead)

Could it be that it's because we're a bunch of friggin' xenophobic, hypocritical, frightened, punk-ass, racists who have no problem seeing our military flex its muscle when it's against non-Christian, non-whites in another country?

Here's a clue: all the military muscle in the world won't stop terrorists. It breeds them.

And so we get to witness the next stage in the evolution of the military industrial complex Ike warned us about during our life times. We get to watch what once was a dick-measuring contest against another form of government - communism - and a couple of erstwhile opponents, the USSR and China, now evolve (devolve, if you ask me) into a perpetual and exponentially bigger drag on our economy, the federal budget, and worst of all, the moral character of our society in the name of "Homeland Security" as if we can make our homes more secure by destroying someone else's.

Now on the count of 3, everyone take another big, long, chug of the Kool-Aid. 1.................2..................3.

A Condensed History and Plea for a Better Future

Dateline: October 29, 1929

U.S. stock market crashes. That wouldn't have been such a big deal for most Americans in 1929 except that unregulated banks had invested their depositor's funds into the stock market, too, and without having to tell anyone what they were doing. When the stock market tanked and there no buyers, the banks couldn't sell their holdings either. Some had to close. They no longer had the one thing a bank is supposed to have - money.

Remember, this is an unregulated industry and there was no such thing as the FDIC and deposit insurance. That didn't come along until 1933 (http://www.fdic.gov/about/learn/learning/why/index.html)

Panic about being able to get to one's money, of course, causes the "run" on the banks. Bankers have no money. They lost it all. Oops. Sorry about that.

No money in banks also means no credit for businesses to operate, either. Businesses, naturally, start to worry about preserving whatever remains of their capital so they let workers go. People don't have work so they have no income. Remember, this is before unemployment insurance or any sort of government welfare programs, too. People literally have nothing. No money in the bank and no one working means no one is buying anything, either, so there's no reason for businesses to produce much in the way of goods and services. It certainly doesn't mean there will be any growth and rehiring any time soon. The spiral downward has started, and it's adios amigos to everyone.

Ain't unregulated, unfettered capitalism grand?

And with sincere apologies to some of you, that stupid fucking Russian cunt had the balls to write a few pieces of fiction less than 30 years later and some people like Alan Greenspan either came to believe it was a new religion, suffered severe amnesia about what had happened and why a few decades earlier, simply never bothered to study history at all, or more to what I believe saw then and now that deregulation is the surest way to become filthy rich at expense of ordinary people.

Back to the 30s. So, the federal government creates programs to put people back to work - work that actually benefits society as a whole. My father worked in the CCC program. He and many other young men from PA took care of parts of the Appalachian Trail. So what, you might say. What did that really do for society? Ok. Forget the A.T. Ever hear of the TVA, Triborough Bridge, the Bay Bridge, or Grand Coulee Dam? There's a good chance something where you live that serves you, your neighbors, and the common good - a school, a hospital, or a highway, for example - was built by people employed by BOTH private businesses and the government as a result of the federal government and deficit spending to fund work programs. (See http://americanhistory.about.com/od/greatdepression/tp/new_deal_programs.htm and http://www.pbs.org/wnet/blueprintamerica/reports/the-new-new-deal/public-works-administration/693/)

Let's speed things up a bit. This is getting pretty long.

Lawmakers and citizens alike come to realize that businesses and especially banks are either too stupid or too greedy or both to be completely trusted to regulate themselves. Glass-Steagall is passed in 1932. The "Truth in Securities Act" is passed in 1933 and the SEC and a bunch of other laws are passed beginning in 1934. Banks, at least, are safe and some rules are in place to regulate the financial services industry.

Now it's 1999. The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, a GOP disaster euphemistically referred to as the Financial Services Modernization Act (reminds me the so-called "Patriot Act". We should always get very suspicious of legislation given names that sound like sugar coating or the titles of Mel Gibson movies) effectively repeals Glass-Steagall.

Only a few short years later we find ourselves once again in an economy where too little regulation and oversight exists, thanks mostly to Greenspan, the GOP, and weak-kneed Dems.

W drives the final nails into the coffin up by giving away the federal surplus to the rich, invading 2 countries off the books based on total lies (except for the fact that Afghanistan was harboring bin Laden and he proceeded to fuck that up totally by invading Iraq) and running up the biggest debt since - you guessed it - that other GOP nitwit, Reagan. The financial service sector, who had been merrily creating so-called investments out of highly speculative debt, and the real cold-blooded capitalists who were making even more billions on derivatives tied to that shaky debt, have been doing so without regulation or oversight.

When the bubble bursts ON W's WATCH, who pays? We the taxpayers do.

So I get the tea party anger. Honestly, I do. But the anger, frustration, and demand for change needs to be directed where it belongs; at deregulation, failed GOP economic and fiscal polices dating back to Reagan, and the disaster created that forced Bush to have to put TARP in place for Obama to have to accept and implement. Wake up, tea baggers and you Obama-haters. Have you just conveniently forgotten or chosen to ignore how we got here?

Now I can't believe I'm going to say this, but the more I read and listen to people a lot smarter than I the more convinced I am that TARP had to be done to save the economy and that, perhaps, the biggest mistake being made in DC is that the feds are not spending enough.

The parallels all seem to be there to the 1930s. Some experts say that FDR was too concerned about fiscal restraint in the beginning. Had he done more, they say, the Depression may not have lasted as long or required WWII to really pull us out of it. (I'm sorry that I can't find a reference to that and don't have time to keep searching right now as we're going to a grad party. Maybe someone else can find something on it. I only remember hearing it or reading it somewhere; maybe last Sunday on one of the news programs.)

There are people out there a lot smarter than I who can explain all of this a million times better. Here's one.....

http://robertreich.org/post/719313692/my-father-and-alan-greenspan

What got me going on this today was an article in today's NYT. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/11/us/politics/11tarp.html?_r=1&th&emc=th

It's proof to me that Americans really aren't very well-informed. Candidates for public office are probably the dumbest of the lot. Trying to make hay on who voted for TARP is like blaming the iceberg for the sinking of the Titanic (the iceberg didn't do anything). Captain W and his administration steered us into that iceberg. In case you haven't noticed, they and their cronies are long gone in their yachts for life boats.

How refreshing would it be for politicians to stand up to the STYLE OVER SUBSTANCE HYSTERIA IN THE MEDIA and actually educate the voters on what really caused the bottom to drop out of the economy and the fact that....gulp....there was no other choice but to go with W's bailout. I mean, really. What alternative was there?

The real objective ought to be what comes next to keep this from happening......AGAIN!

Style Over Substance

http://wimp.com/fareedzakaria/

If I may offer my own opinion (and even if I may not), I would begin by saying that our society is rooted in a culture that values style over substance. (There's a bold statement, eh?!?!) We only have ourselves to blame.

Some like me would say that style-over-substance is the only explanation for how Ronny Ray-Gun, Slick Willy, Dumb-ya and even Obama got elected. Yes, even Obama. He was the right guy with the right message and right delivery at the right time. It's refreshing to have a president who speaks in complete sentences and doesn't come off like some dumb ass cowboy who fell out of his saddle one too many times....or in W's case, who has all the right power-base genes but the intellect of a toaster oven.

Frankly, 2 turds could have beaten any GOP ticket considering how bad W screwed things up. That and the fact that the best the party of Lincoln could come up with was a near-senile ex-maverick and a brainless windbag ex-beauty queen who doesn't read a single newspaper and seems pretty proud of her ignorance. The GOP deserved to lose. Some, including me, would cast them - McCain, mostly - in the role of sacrificial lamb. Hell, let's face it. After W's 8-year debacle a GOP ticket of Jesus Christ and Ayn Rand still would have lost.

One thing I think we might all agree on is that "style" has taken over substance. "Style" when it comes to leaders and especially presidents is overrated. I'll bet "style" isn't exactly the first adjective that comes to mind when we think about Nixon, Carter, or George Herbert. Not that any of them were particularly great leaders. Damn, now that I started on this path I have to admit that they all sucked, too. They sucked *AND* had no style. What a trio of losers, eh? Carter, of course, is my favorite among the three but that's only because of what I've learned about GHWB and Jimmy since they left office.

I wonder if any of us will live long enough to see the voting public mature as a society to a point where we focus on facts, the issues, and policies and forget the rhetoric and hyperbole. Sadly, I suspect not. My hope still rests with my children's generation. Ironically, it seems simultaneously easier and harder to fool the digital generation. Clearly, we have done nothing but screw things up royally.

Speaking of screw ups, what a freak show 2012 promises to be if you real Republicans finally and completely surrender your party to the lunatic fringe nut-jobs and Palin is your candidate. If that happens, I can only hope Inhofe or maybe her fellow Faux News celeb, Huckabee, is her running mate. Wwooooooooo-doggies!!!! We're gonna' have us one big ol' Meet the Kardashian-type media circus campaign, you betcha!!! Break out the grizzly jerky and the Good Book, and let's have us some drilling in the ANWR, deportation of anyone who even resembles a Latino, and teaching Creationism in public schools! Hell, let's just have us one big ol' full blown Christian Taliban White House!! If you ain't a white, heterosexual, god-fearing, conservative, lifetime member of the NRA, and deeeee-vout Christian, well then, you're a commie pinko tree-huggin' fagot socialist and we're gonna' show you the door!

You know us middle-class whites - any chance we get to piss on someone below us on the socio-economic ladder and we'll whip it out just to prove that our lord god and savior, Ronny-boy, was right about trickle down!

Enough of that. It's hyperbole, and I'm sure it pisses some of you off. Sorry, but it serves to make the point. We have ourselves to blame.

The media is about eyeballs and advertisers. You've heard it from me before. The media focuses on the president's emotions or lack thereof because that's what we care about and will watch. We don't care about real leadership. Hell, most Americans wouldn't know what that was if it slapped us squarely in the face. When we think of leadership we think of Ben Rothlisberger or Kobe Bryant or John Wayne. We don't think about intelligence and intellect. We don't think about careful contemplation, consequences, inclusion, or long-term consideration for the common good and the general welfare. We certainly don't seem to think about the truth or facts about anything unless, of course, they appear to fit our preconceived notions, beliefs, and desires for what we want and wish the world to be.

What other explanation is there for the ridicule from some quarters of sources like PolitiFact, FactCheck, Snopes, and other unbiased resources?

What other reason can there for Obama's handlers and his political opponents alike to make so much about his "kicking some ass" comments? One side claims it demonstrates his toughness while the other sees it as an indictment of him and his leadership while ogres like Cheney telling legislators to go f*** themselves and that chimp W's stupid flip of the middle finger to a camera like some delinquent ninth grader gets a pass. Oh, then there's that whole inconvenient torture thing, but, hey, we're Americans! We can do whatever the hell we want, whenever the hell we want, and to whomever the hell we want because............well, that's the bully's prerogative.

So, coming from a self-proclaimed flaming liberal, the real crime is that we citizens don't stop and take the time to ask real questions or do our own homework. There simply is, IMHO, no other rational explanation for why things are as they are. We are complicit in the dumbing-down of America, the media, and American politics. Only we can change that. Nothing could have convinced me more of that than seeing a tea party rally with my own eyes.

I don't care that they hate Obama, I really don't. Like most hate, it's out of ignorance. What I care about is that the media pays any attention at all to this lunatic fringe and their lunatic demigod, Queen Sarah. Sharron Angle? Are you effing kidding? How does someone like that rise to any more prominence than with a bunch of local snake handlers without the media and our moth-like reaction to follow the light?

Every second of attention paid by the media to the tea party movement confers a mistaken and misguided sense of credibility they do not deserve and can only win with an uneducated, uniformed portion of the populace who thinks their values are being echoed when all they really are is more fodder for the movement. Moths to the flame; eyeballs to the advertisers.

I get the frustration, I really do. We all have some. But what I saw on July 3rd in my proverbial backyard was the basest elements of what I thought was a democratic society. These people don't care about democracy. They pay it lip service. They don't care about facts or the truth. Listen to their speakers. What they want is a segregationist's America, complete with discrimination against anyone who isn't a god-fearing white face like themselves. What they want is a white man back in the White House; preferably a good Episcopalian, Presbyterian, or Methodist, and in a pinch, a Baptist. No matter what, anyone with a name like Barak Hussein Obama is obviously a Muslim, probably isn't a citizen, and is for sure just a little too tanned for the liking of good ol' fashioned baseball, apple pie, and Chevrolet Americans, goddammit.

And we have ourselves and our feeding of the media-beast to blame for all of this. Why else would the president's emotions - real or staged - seem to get more attention than what caused the disaster in the Gulf and what we're going to do as a nation and as a people to make sure this never, ever, ever happens again anywhere, not just in the USA?

Must be because what we value most is style over substance.

Physicians group accuses CIA of testing torture techniques on detainees - latimes.com

Physicians group accuses CIA of testing torture techniques on detainees - latimes.com

I only wish I could be surprised by this..... There's only one way to determine the truth and that's to pursue these findings for what they are - evidence of the possibility of a crime. Only then will we know if there is, in fact, anything even remotely resembling real courage or justice left in our government, our country, and our society. Only a tyrant tortures, and only an amoral culture condones it no matter the supposed reasons or justification.

One Person's Perspective on the Federal Debt as a % of GDP

What's been the history of the Federal debt, what's been happening over time, and who's been in power when it happened?

Initial searches weren't very efficient and it was hard to find a reasonable summary. Here's one of them: http://zfacts.com/p/318.html. The web site owner claims to be an economist who does this in his spare time. Take it for what it's worth.

Ever the skeptic, I decided to check further and to account for Congress and the role they play. I decided to create my own chart. It's attached. The Sources at the bottom include a link to the actual Federal debt tables used to generate the underlying line graph.

Conclusions? Here are mine.
1. Federal debt as a % of GDP went through the roof due to WWII

2. Federal debt marked a steady decline after WWII regardless of who was in the White House and through 35 years of a mostly Democratically-controlled Congress until.......

3. Reagan, a terrific actor (which some mistake for intelligence and oratory skills) and famous co-star to trained monkeys, got elected...yes, I hate the stupid f***...
AND Republicans took control of the Senate

This next point is, IMHO, probably the single most important fact to remember about all of this.

4. The Republican-controlled 106th Congress takes Ronny's "smaller government" religion to its fatal extreme by passing the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act in November of 1999 which is signed into law by another RWMF and career politician, Bill Clinton.

For those who need a little history review, GLB repealed many of the regulatory safeguards which had been put into place by the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 which was the federal government's response to the unfettered and unregulated bankers who caused the * FIRST * Great Depression.

Go back further (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/wallstreet/weill/demise.html) and understand how Glass-Steagall was coming under serious attack during Reagan's administration in 1986-1987....at the same time a former J.P. Morgan director and life-long disciple of Ayn Rand, Alan Greenspan, was being made Fed Chairman.

"In the spring of 1987, the Federal Reserve Board votes 3-2 in favor of easing regulations under Glass-Steagall Act, overriding the opposition of Chairman Paul Volcker. The vote comes after the Fed Board hears proposals from Citicorp, J.P. Morgan and Bankers Trust advocating the loosening of Glass-Steagall restrictions to allow banks to handle several underwriting businesses, including commercial paper, municipal revenue bonds, and mortgage-backed securities."

Do you see those words, "mortgage-backed securities"?

5. The upward trend continued on Bush 41's watch and with a Democratically controlled Congress (Dems can be such pussies...or are they just RWMFs of a different stripe? Both, I'd say.)

6. Yes, Clinton was in some ways the benefactor of a booming economy and, yes, some credit for reducing the Federal debt has to go to a Republican Congress
(In case anyone would like a quick primer on how the Federal budgeting process actually works, the roles various branches and departments play, etc., see http://useconomy.about.com/od/fiscalpolicy/p/Who_budget.htm)

7. Finally, it was without a single shred of doubt in my mind or any possibility for any sort of fact-based denial that a Republican-controlled Congress and a half-witted Republican son of a Texas oilman is who put us on this disastrous financial path.

The list of fiscal failures since 2001 is long, but we can start with cut taxes that primarily benefit the wealthiest Americans while waging 2 wars off the books. Add to that, the bottom dropping out of an unregulated financial services sector based too heavily on an overly-speculated real estate market that had so much credit and investment capital tied to it and what did those geniuses think would happen? It leads to a reality in which Wall Street and RWMFs everywhere get all the reward with none of the risk and we taxpayers are left to bail out the whole friggin' mess....

My point is the current pathetic state of our economy and the federal budget is something that began long before Obama came into office, before voters turned Congress back to Dems, and really began when Rs were in charge and is rooted in the desire of RWMFs everywhere to deregulate and get rich.

I have no problem with fiscal responsibility, but to think that a president and Congress can fix the mess of previous administrations over night - or even in a single year - just isn't realistic. And I don't think we'd be in this mess if the justifiable and now obviously needed regulations and oversights of the financial services industry had not been repealed.

If anyone has a better plan than what is being done now, I'd like to hear it. Was allowing all the TARP recipients, GM, and any other recipients of federal money to fail the better plan? In a perfect Randian world, I guess the answer would be, "Yes."

p.s. Snowboard Cross racing at the Olympics is way cool!

Additional Sources
http://www.gpoaccess.gov/usbudget/fy10/hist.html
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122156561931242905.html
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE60U09L20100131
http://www.factcheck.org/2010/02/the-big-bank-bailout-bill/
http://topics.nytimes.com/topics/reference/timestopics/subjects/g/glass_steagall_act_1933/index.html
http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/briefing-book/background/bush-tax-cuts/ignore.cfm
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/15/business/15atlas.html

Commonwealth Club of California: Torture Touches Everybody#links

Commonwealth Club of California: Torture Touches Everybody#links

This erudite review of the "moral hazards" of the Bush administration, as well as what is now expected from President Obama - and how he's already failing to demonstrate his commitment to the rhetoric that helped to get him elected - was one of the best hours I spent in at least the last week.

Will illegal actions be tolerated at the highest levels of government?

Will this administration turn its head and simply "look forward"?

If waterboarding was considered a crime...
....worth court-marshaling U.S. soldiers who did it to Filipino guerrillas
....the U.S. could sentence a Japanese army officer in 1947 to 15 years of hard labor to for waterboarding a U.S. citizen, and
....the U.S. military could court-marshal 2 soldiers for in 1965 after pictures of them waterboarding Vietcong were published,
then how is that waterboarding can be defended today by Cheney and his supporters?

And why is there hesitation by Obama to call for a vigorous investigation to uncover those guilty of authoring, authorizing, *and* committing such atrocities has not already begun?

What does it mean if the U.S. government has over 2000 - yes, two thousand - photographs that possibly depict torture authorized by the Bush administration?

Will this president bring real change to the way in which our government functions and how the office of the president affects our values and ethics, and will it be enough to make a real difference?

To torture or not to torture....there's no question and only one answer

So a friend asks me the big red herring "what if" question that presumably justifies torture:

"(I am) in charge of interrogation of this suspect named Osamabama Bin Laden. He has been captured and is boasting, backed by other evidence sources, that his group will detonate a nuclear device in a large American city in 24 hours. He absolutely knows the details. If you f*** this up, millions of Americans will die, not 3 thousand."


Here's my response......

First and foremost, I'm not an expert on interrogation tactics. I doubt that anyone reading this is, so none of us are qualified to make decisions about what to do in this situation.



What is absolutely certain is that torture is illegal, immoral, unethical, and according to experts, completely ineffective. I offer the following which do a far better job than I ever could in making the case against torture:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A2302-2005Jan11.html

http://terrorism.about.com/od/issuestrends/a/TortureTerror2.htm



Now for my opinions.



Torture is barbaric and something that civilized people do not condone or engage in. As for the scenario you offer, not only is it totally debunked in the above, all I can really say is, "Oh brother." ;-)



You've presented classic fear-mongering and red herring material. I'm not trying to be insulting, but I see this kind of argument as pure drivel. It seems to me to be meant purely to sway the unsophisticated, uninformed, and uneducated. It's served up on daily basis by the likes of el Rushbo, Doyle, Hannity, Coulter, Robertson, and every other right-wing, war-mongering, xenophobic, neo-con, nut-job mouthpiece who either is already working at or auditioning for a spot on Fox, EIB, or CBN.



Ok, I admit that that's pretty harsh, but it sums it up for me.



The basic premise of your scenario is like most everything else that comes from the above sources; ridiculous in the extreme. Let me make sure I have this: So we capture a terrorist and they start playing "nanny-nanny-boo-boo" about a pending nuclear detonation? Come on.



Even if this were remotely plausible, do you really think that someone capable of being involved in such a despicable act is going to all of the sudden tearfully and truthfully confess because we waterboard them, connect a car battery to his scrotum, or whatever it is good Christian soldiers in the U.S. intelligence community were told was ok to do by the Bush administration and their appointed thugs?



Maybe you can answer this question for me. If torture is ok and so damned effective, how come the CIA voluntarily stop doing it in 2005?

(http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/04/22/timeline-released-senate-shows-condoleezza-rice-okd-waterboarding/)



(Note that this comes from Fox News, so I don't think you can accuse me of offering some biased liberal media source. If you want to accuse me of offering a biased news source, that would be correct, but it's just not a liberal bias in this case!)




The big mistake - the red herring - of your scenario and any other scenario like it that is used to try to justify torture is the belief that:

a) you can predict how people will respond to torture,

b) everyone responds the same and,

c) some degree of normal and rational thinking and behavior can be expected from someone who is clearly neither if they are a terrorist.



You can't expect, for instance, that a terrorist would respond to the possibility or reality of torture the same as, say, you or I would. Let's not forget, you're presumably referring to people famous for wanting to die for their cause so they can get to heaven and the 57 naked virgins or whatever the big reward is they expect to get in some after life. They aren't going to be scared or tortured into telling you anything of value. Hell, I'm betting they're sitting there thinking, "Bring on those jumper cables, you capitalist dogs! I'm going to spend eternity getting laid!"



No matter what you do to them, they aren't going to tell you where the bomb is planted. And please don't try to say that it's at least worth a try.



No matter what - and I mean, no matter what - the minute we stoop to torture we lose every shred of decency, integrity, legitimacy, and whatever moral high ground we think we can stake a claim to as a democracy and a nation of laws. When we torture - and it seems painfully obvious that we have - we have become a terrorist nation.



Let me say that again. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Ashcroft, Gonzales, and the rest of that administration turned the United States into a terrorist nation. The only way to rectify that is to investigate and, where appropriate, prosecute, try, and punish those responsible for the policy, authority, and commission of torture.



And don't give me that, "The security community is in shambles and looking over their shoulder now," bullshit, either. The men and women working in the intelligence community are not without morals, ethics, and decency, too. Yes, there will be some who will burn for this and they should. But I think the message that it sends will be embraced and well-received by the overwhelming majority of the military and intelligence communities as confirmation that we are a nation of principles and of laws. No Nuremberg defense should be allowed. Agents who were involved in "extraordinary interrogations" knew they were doing wrong. A memo from the boss doesn't make it right.



So let me ask....



Do you really think that there's a difference in the ethics, morality and legality of an act based upon who commits it? If it's wrong for our citizens to be tortured then isn't it wrong for us to torture?



Do you really believe in your heart of hearts that we have some sort of ......I hate to use this term, but I know it has meaning for some of you... God-given right to torture someone? Are we somehow above everyone else? Can we claim to hold some special status by which we're exempt from the same standards as everyone else? What would Jesus do? (Had to throw that one in.)



Where does it end? How do we look future generations in the eye and tell them that we were good people while we condoned torture? How does hatred, violence, and war ever have a chance of being swept from our lives if we as citizens of the United States of America condone torture?



Have we not evolved at least culturally to a point yet where such actions are universally condemned? Have we learned nothing from the Spanish Inquisition, Salem witch trials, the Armenian genocide, Nazi concentration camps, the Rwandan genocide, and the genocide that's going on in Sudan?



Doesn't look like it, does it? And our chances don't get any better if we as citizens of the U.S. give our government officials a pass on torture.



If we're going to continue to think and behave like barbarians, then we shouldn't act surprised or be repulsed the next time a hate group kills a gay man for being gay or drags a black man behind their pick up truck in Texas because he's black. Don't forget, the Klan used to hang Catholics, too.



If we don't demand the investigation and prosecution of government officials who approved torture, then we may as well embrace hate groups and bring back public hangings....maybe beheadings could be started, too. Hell, let's start torturing suspected terrorists in the town square - make sure to bring the kiddies and make a day of it!



In a democracy, it's up to us to decide what our society looks like. We elect our leaders. We need to hold them accountable. If we stay silent on this issue of torture, we send the message that we approve and support torture and that tells the nut-job fringe elements everywhere in the world that ours is a society that has truly declined to a state of barbarism.



I know some of you won't accept this perspective, either, but what if the shoe were on the other foot? Let's pretend that you're General Bruce in charge of the North Korean secret service. You've just captured an American intelligence officer. You're convinced he has knowledge of a pending air strike on a nuclear enrichment site. He's not talking and you know that that air strike is coming. Your wife and kids live close enough that they and lots of your family are sure to be killed along with lots (how do you define that?) of your fellow citizens.



Same basic scenario, just different uniforms.



I'm not willing to throw away one of the most basic principles of this nation - that we are a nation of laws that apply equally to everyone.



I'm not willing to surrender so much authority to elected officials and their appointees that they no longer feel accountable to me, my fellow citizens, and the citizens of the world. If laws were broken, then investigations are called for.



Hey, if it was so damned important to Republicans that the world know if Slick Willy lied about his affair with Monica, then I dare say that the question of torture is exponentially more important and worth investigating.



I'm not willing to allow the moral and ethical foundations of this great country, its history, and the heritage we leave to future generations to be weakened by saying, "It's ok to torture if we think it's necessary because, hell, we're Americans and we can do whatever we think is best and the rest of the world can go f*** itself."



So, no, I don't torture even if the guy sitting in the chair is thumbing his nose about a nuclear device. Torturing him won't get the information needed AND IT'S AGAINST THE LAW!!!!!!



Anyone wishing to add their voice to the cause should consider visiting www.IndictBushNow.org

Class v Brass

Here's another beauty making the rounds and FactCheck.org's analysis.  

I found the closing sentence wonderfully ironic - that someone without very much class would be so petty as to be compelled to craft classless lies and exaggerations and then ask us to send it to people who might not know what a class act looks like.  Now that's classy!

http://www.factcheck.org/askfactcheck/was_bushs_exit_from_office_a_class.html

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Difference of 8 Years...   

Yesterday:  

1. Outgoing President George W. Bush quietly boards his helicopter  and leaves for Texas, commenting only: "Today is not about me. Today is a  historical day for our nation and people."   

Eight years ago yesterday:  

1. Outgoing President Bill Clinton schedules two separate radio addresses  to the nation, and organizes a public farewell speech/rally in downtown  Washington D.C. scheduled to directly conflict with incoming President  Bush's inauguration ceremony.   

Yesterday: 

2. President Bush leaves office without issuing a single Presidential  pardon, only granting a commutation of sentence to two former border patrol  agents convicted of shooting a convicted drug smuggler. He does not grant  any type of clemency to Scooter Libby or any other former political aide,  ally, or business partner.   

Eight years ago yesterday:  

2. President Clinton issues 140 pardons and several commutations of sentence  on his final day in office. Included in these are: billionaire financier,  convicted tax evader, and leading Democratic campaign contributor Marc Rich;  Whitewater scandal figure Susan McDougal; Congressional Post Office Scandal  figure and former Democratic Congressman Dan Rostenkowski; convicted bank  fraud, sexual assault and child porn perpetrator an d former Democratic  Congressman Melvin Reynolds; and convicted drug felon Roger Clinton, the  President's half-brother.   

Yesterday:  

3. The Bush daughters leave gift baskets in the White House bedrooms for  the Obama daughters, containing flowers, candy, stuffed animals, DVD's and  CD's, and heartfelt notes of encouragement and advice for the young girls on  how to prepare for their new lives in the White House.   

Eight years ago Yesterday:  

3. Clinton and Gore staffers rip computer wires and electrical outlets from  the White House walls, stuff piles of notebook papers into the White House  toilets, systematically remove the letter "W" from every computer key-pad in  the entire White House, and damage several thousand dollars worth of  furniture in the White House master bedroom.   

Headlines On This Date 4 Years Ago:  

"Republicans spending $42 million on inauguration while troops Die in  unarmored Humvees"  

"Bush extravagance exceeds any reason during tough economic times"  

"Fat cats get their $42 million inauguration party, Ordinary Americans get  the shaft"   

Headlines Today:  

"Historic Obama Inauguration will cost only $170 million"  

"Obama Spends $170 million on inauguration; America Needs A Big Party"  

"Everyman Obama shows America how to celebrate"  

"Citibank executives contribute $8 million to Obama Inauguration"   

----------Send this to anyone you suspect might not know what a class act  looks like.      

Why the Republican Party Hurts Free Markets

I think we have the deregulatory philosophies and policies of the so-called free market capitalists, mostly of the Republican Party and their latest incarnation of a high-priest, Alan Greenspan, to thank for much of our economic problems. Even he seems to now be acknowledging this (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=96070766). It's not all his fault, to be sure.

The rest of this somewhat lengthy post (from an email thread with friends dated January 24, 2008) attempts to make the point that our troubles are rooted squarely in the social, fiscal, and political ideology of the neo-conservative elements of the Republican Party.

(Now excuse me whilst I climb on top of my soapbox!)

Let's start with the concepts of "free markets" and "capitalism". In my mind, "free market" does not and should not mean a "free for all". Maybe there never was a time when true free marketers understood that they were nothing without a market. Maybe true capitalists could never reasonably be expected to understand that their primary goal and very survival depends on the needs of their markets and how best to grow those markets for the benefit of everyone's long term prosperity and stability. Maybe there was never any hope that they could, would, and should accept the logic and reason for legislation, regulation and oversight as the very best means for keeping out those who would manipulate, cheat, and ultimately destroy those very same markets for their own personal gain.

Maybe it's time for those who like to call themselves capitalists and free marketers to realize the danger in listening to the Ken Lays, Jeff Skillings, Andy Fastows, Bernie Ebberses, and, yes, Alan Greenspans, Dick Cheneys, and the Bush-type royalty of the world who would have us believe...
....creative accounting like mark-to-market, derivatives, and the like are real things on which to base an economy
....the fantasy and fallacy of the Ayn Rand-followers who trust in the benevolence of an untaxed, uncontrolled, and unregulated wealthy to have everyone's best interests at heart
....that not getting caught is the same thing as not doing anything wrong, and that
....no one - especially government - should be poking their civil service noses into business

As Americans, we especially like that last one. When it comes to the authority to regulate commerce, we forget that Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution specifically gives Congress the power and, hence, the responsibility to do just that. Could be the good ol' Founding Fathers knew enough about human nature even way back then to know that, generally speaking, people and business needed regulation if they were to perform for the common good and not just their own self interest. (Common good, by the way, is a great way to think about a free and open society. Keep that in mind.)

Isn't it time to finally wake up to the fact that "trickle down" is just another way of saying "pissed on" by the powerful and wealthy elite in business and government? Isn't it time to admit that "trickle down" is actually a good description of what happens to people everywhere except at the top - we get a trickle of what government "gives" to those at the top in the form of deregulation or tax cuts? Isn't it time we recognize that there is but one political party where big business, ultra-wealthy, and neo-conservative social and political dogma come to their full realization...all at the expense of the rest of the common good?

As I see it, big business and government are one and the same inside the Republican party. R's talk a good game about being inclusive, being for less government in our lives, being for less government spending so as to avoid bad things like increasing deficits, and being about protecting American families and family values. Well, from my perspective, they've done exactly the opposite beginning with Reagan and finding their full throat especially over the last 8 years. Again, just my opinion.

The following excerpt from an article by author Larry Beinhart summed it up pretty well for me (http://www.alternet.org/workplace/98913/a_crash_course_in_economic_crashes/?page=entire)

"The core, the very heart of Bushonomics, is cutting taxes, especially for the wealthy. ...the tax cuts were sold as economic stimulus and jobs packages with the promise that they would not create deficits. This last was based on a romantic Ayn Rand vision of millionaires racing into the backwoods to build, build, build new businesses that would create jobs, "good jobs," and new taxes would be paid by the businesses and the workers, making up for the initial deficits.
Alas, none of that ever happened.
Deficits were created."

More good reading by Beinhart on Bushenomics (I like that term!) can be found here (http://www.larrybeinhart.com/articles/node/12) and at his web site.


I also think that the AFL-CIO's executive council statement from March of last year is worth reading (http://www.aflcio.org/aboutus/thisistheaflcio/ecouncil/ec03052008a.cfm).

It opens with...
"The implosion of the housing market and the cascading crises in the credit markets are the direct consequence of a 30-year experiment of trying to create a deregulated, low wage economy where high consumer spending is propped up by easy credit and asset bubbles. Real solutions must be based on restoring the economic health of the American middle class through good jobs, health care, retirement security and a voice at work for all. And an important part of the solution must be the thoughtful, comprehensive re-regulation of the financial markets."

Don't get me wrong, I'm working my ass off trying to build as much personal wealth as I can just like everyone else. I don't expect or want government at any level to provide - or limit - my potential or opportunities. The reality as I see it, however, is that the old adage about the corrupting influence of power is all too true and very much alive in the backrooms and corner offices of so-called capitalists and free marketers who, it seems to me, are found far more often in the Republican Party.

Capitalism and free markets are honorable ideas, too be sure. It's a shame that they have been usurped and corrupted by what I see as a twisted ideology based upon greed and exclusion now found almost exclusively in neo-con Republican dogma, and which manifests itself as so-called pro-business policy and legislation that, in the end, is anything but helpful to the advancement of markets and the people who make up those markets. Us.

The very idea that business people - especially those people in financial markets who wield such great power and influence and whose decisions affect so much of our lives - need not be regulated is not only silly and naive, it's dangerous and serves only to breed more and more corruption. Left unchecked and unregulated, positions of that much power are destined to be filled with people from ever smaller circles of influence who care less and less for anyone except themselves and their exclusive circle. They will gladly sacrifice entire markets and economies - the very goose that lays their golden eggs - in order to amass as much personal wealth as possible and as fast as possible.

Consider this.

According to a 2007 research paper published by The Levy Economics Institute of Bard College (http://www.levy.org/pubs/wp_502.pdf), in 2004, the latest year for which federal data was available at the time, the top 1% of American households held just over 42% of nonhome wealth "defined as net worth minus net equity in owner-occupied housing (the primary residence only)" (Wolff, p7). Think about that for a minute. Almost half of the nation's wealth is held by 1% of us.

What's even more interesting to me is this. Their wealth had risen by about 2% from 2001, the year W took office, to 2004. So it got me thinking. What was that wealth distribution like under other presidents and their parties?

Well, all that wealth held by the richest 1%....
...was 42.9% in 1983, 2 years after Reagan took office, and had jumped 4% to 46.9% by the time he left in 1989
...had dipped by 1.3% to 45.6% in 1992 during King George I's reign
...had bounced back up by 0.6% to 47.2% by 1995 during Clinton's first 2 years, but
...fell back to 39.7% - a whopping 7.5% drop - by the time Clinton left office in 2001

What does it prove? I don't know for sure, but I decided to dig deeper.

Republicans controlled the Senate but not the House in 1981, 1983 and 1985 during Reagan's 2 terms (http://uspolitics.about.com/od/usgovernment/l/bl_party_division_2.htm). The deregulation and tax cuts of Reaganomics were implemented in '81 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_Reagan). As we all know, such measures take time to manifest themselves. Given that reasoning, Reaganomics was presumably having significant positive affects for the wealthy by '89 when 47% of the nation's wealth was held by that wealthiest 1%.

On the other hand, Clinton's Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1993 passed that August without a single Republican vote in a Democratically-controlled Congress and:
1) cut taxes for 15 million low income families
2) made tax cuts available to 90% of small businesses
3) raised taxes on the wealthiest 1.2% of taxpayers and
4) mandated a balanced budget

When Clinton left office 8 years later, this country had a $559billion surplus. (Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Clinton). If we assume the same timetables for Clinton as we did for Reagan, then the 7 to 8 year gaps from implementation to maximum realization are essentially the same.

All I know is that I was prospering and the economy seemed much healthier during Clinton's administration, especially towards the end, and before the wealthy right-wing's favorite Republican son bought his way into the White House and started his service in January, 2001.

So let's do the same math on W. In 2001, he whips us into a frenzy about the budget surplus being our money and returns it to us - well, not "us" but to the wealthy - and, lo and behold, 7 years later we're in the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.

Truth, or circumstances that conveniently fit a theory? If you're still debating Darwin and favor creationism as part of school curriculum, then I can guess how you'll answer that! ;-)
(Don't get angry. I'm just be the snarky little liberal!)

Probably would be a good idea to make sure that The American Recovery and Reinvestment Bill of 2009 - and anything else that comes out of the White House or Congress during this presidency - is judged along the same kind of time tables, and not in weeks or months.

When it comes to capitalism and free markets, the answer is, "No, I'm not a communist, socialist, fascist, or any other -ist (except atheist!)." Capitalism is good and preferable to all the other -isms. And, no, I don't think Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, and every person of wealth is a criminal, nor do I think they should start writing us all checks under some government mandate that strives to "redistribute wealth". (That's code speak. More on that in a minute.)

I just think people need rules. Especially people of great power and wealth. They need to be governed and regulated by laws that, to quote a famous document, "...promote the general Welfare" instead of promoting the disturbing and ever-growing prosperity gap in this country. Government oversight and regulation of business is what helped this country - you, me, and the rest of the middle class (by some accounts, including those earning income as high as $250K (http://assets.opencrs.com/rpts/RS22627_20070320.pdf) - to rise up from beneath the boot heal of the wealthy elite. Without government oversight and regulation, we'd all still be living in company housing, working in dangerous conditions, and trying to buy goods and services - including food - that did not need to meet any quality or safety standards. Why should it be any different for financial markets?

What I firmly believe we need to be doing as citizens is electing leaders who are willing to stand up to the so-called capitalists and free marketers - and their party - who got us into this mess. We need to be willing to talk openly about our support for proper levels of taxation and regulation as the reasonable price for living in a free society based on democractic principles and not feudal ones in which a small ruling class controls all the wealth and power.

It means we need to recognize code-speak like "tax and spend liberals", "death tax", "big government" and the like for what it really is - a subterfuge perpetrated and perpetuated by an elite few from within a political party who has lost all sense of morality and social conscience, and has society's best interest nowhere in its sights.

Bush and Chaney can't lose

No matter how badly things will continue to go in the Middle East and in the world in general as a result of the greed, incredibly piss-poor judgment and cowboy politics that have governed this great country for the last 8 years, the Bush/Chaney cabal can't lose.

What??? Yes, you read it correctly. Whatever happens, they can't lose.

First, they and their supporters will always say they weren't to blame for what I consider to be an absolute, utter and complete failure of their administration. They have become the masters of deception. They have taken every advantage at every turn to create and leverage fear in the minds of what used to be a rational populace. What I think is that their "failure" has been premeditated and warrants impeachment.

They and their supporters will always say ridiculous things like "Better to have fought them over there than over here", "Hussein presented a threat to Americans", and "We need to open up ANWR and the continental shelves to oil and gas production".

As for the whole "Better to have fought them over there", it's as if we all suddenly found ourselves in some bad World War II movie and were in jeopardy of a Normandy-like invasion. I had and still have no argument with removing the Taliban from power. They clearly were involved in the heinous crime of 911. The events of 911, however, were and always will be just that - criminal acts. They should have been viewed through the prism of law enforcement not some Bush-contrived declaration of war by some foreign government or sovereign nation. Just because some idiot like bin Laden "declares war" doesn't mean that war has been declared....unless, of course, such a declaration is exactly what is wanted.

Yes, the combined military forces of free nations under the auspices of the U.N. was the right move with Afghanistan. Everyone in the free world was in support of America on September 11, 2001. Everyone in the free world knew that we were the one country that could lead a global movement to address terrorism. Everyone was behind us starting that movement with the Taliban as it would send a clear signal to any government who harbors and supports terrorists that the world - not just America, but the world - would no longer stand for it.

Where we lost all credibility in the world was when Bush, Chaney, Rumsfeld, Powell and all the rest of them conjured up lies in order to justify their indefensible and inconceivable left turn into Iraq.

Bush and his supporters will continue most certainly cling to the lies about what a serious threat Hussein was because of his ties to terrorism and WMD programs. The facts are in. There weren't any of either. (http://govinfo.library.unt.edu/911/report/index.htm and http://www.carnegieendowment.org/publications/index.cfm?fa=view&id=1435)

And when it comes to oil, they'll keep saying that, in addition to Mideast instability (which they've done nothing but exacerbate), part of the reason oil is so high is because companies are being kept from opening new domestic fields. There's no debate if anyone's willing to look at the facts.

The amount of oil in places like ANWR and the continental shelves will have very little effect on the price of a commodity that is dictated by a global market. All anyone has to do is the math.

According to the CIA (yes, *the* CIA), 2005 estimates of American oil consumption are just over 20million barrels of oil a day (https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/print/us.html). The best estimates of domestic reserves in ANWR and the outer continental shelves (OCS) that are currently off limits are 42 billion barrels and 18 billion barrels, respectively. http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/oil_gas/petroleum/analysis_publications/arctic_national_wildlife_refuge/html/preface.html and http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/aeo/otheranalysis/ongr.html

Sounds like a lot of oil until you consider:
1. The technically-recoverable oil is more like 15.6 billion in ANWR, making for a total of ANWR and OCS of about 24 billion barrels. 24 billion (if it were even possible to have it all at once) divided by 20 million barrels consumed per day (making the silly assumption that consumption hasn't changed since 2005 estimates) works out to be 1200 days, or about 3 years and 3 months.
2. It will take years before even the first barrels reach the market and puts at risk eco-systems that can never be replaced.
3. Oil is a fungible. No matter what our paltry reserves are, they aren't enough to drive global markets on way or another.


So, in my opinion, there's one thing we can all be fairly certain about. No matter how unstable things become in the Middle East and around the world, Bush and Chaney can't lose. They will keep doing what they've always done - blaming every and anyone but themselves for failed political leadership - while personally profiting from the mess they've created.

What, after all, could be better for a couple of oil men financially and politically than a growing global demand for oil in the face of an ever-shrinking supply, coupled with political turmoil and social unrest which they helped to create, all of which combines to keep oil prices rising?