Russ McBee

The Anonymous Liberal said this about Jonah Goldberg:

For reasons I cannot explain, big publications keep hiring Jonah Goldberg to write columns that make everyone dumber for having read them.

That pretty much sums it up.

Senator Byron Dorgan (D-ND) is pushing for tighter regulation on oil speculators:

Every day, 20 times more oil is traded than delivered. Because of the way energy trades are regulated (or not regulated), speculators control vast amounts of oil by putting down as little as 5% of the purchase cost.

In short, speculators use money they don't have to buy oil they'll never get. The market is treated like a 24-hour casino while the regulators are asleep.

Some say oil speculation isn't a problem, that it doesn't affect gas prices. But plenty of experts disagree. An international investment firm recently said, "We are seeing the classic ingredients of an asset bubble." They called it "oil dot-com." I agree.

[...]

My legislation, called the "End Oil Speculation Act," would shut down casino-like betting. It does not affect legitimate hedging, but it would require energy speculators to put 25% down on their trades, instead of just 5%, and would convene an international group to ensure speculators can't go offshore to hide their trading.

On balance, I think this legislation is commendable; tighter margin requirements and CFTC oversight of free-wheeling offshore commodities exchanges are long overdue. This legislation could bring down oil prices temporarily; however, I'm not sure it will do much good over the long term.

With the US economy spiraling downward, big institutional investors have been putting money into commodities at a record pace; since 2003, institutions like insurance companies and pension funds have increased their investments in commodities from $15 billion to $260 billion. They've been hedging against the declining dollar and the looming prospect of recession by investing in oil, crops, precious metals, and foreign currencies like never before. Obviously, speculation has played some part in the recent escalation of oil prices, but so have the declining dollar (since global oil markets conduct all transactions in dollars, a weaker dollar automatically means higher oil prices), increasing demand in India and China, and the lack of spare production capacity worldwide.

I think raw speculation has contributed at least somewhat to the recent rapid escalation of oil prices, but I believe a more subtle effect may be at play here (although I have no hard data to back this up): I believe market makers in the oil bourses may be seeing the prospect of peak oil looming close at hand and are investing early. I think a lot of them are anticipating a decline in supplies over the next few years, and they've sort of jumped the gun on the supply/demand curve. Right now, supply can more or less meet demand, but after global production has peaked, that will no longer be the case.

The speculators may simply be acting as canaries in the financial coal mine, sending a message that they expect supplies to decline (and prices to skyrocket) in the near future.

Oil futures contracts generally require the purchaser of the contract to agree on a settlement date a certain number of months into the future; whether it's three, or six, or eighteen months, the buyer agrees to take delivery of that commodity at the expiration of the contract. In the current situation, that isn't necessarily the case:

Even analysts who concede the laws of supply and demand are the most significant say that speculation can make price swings more volatile - and that's what's going on now, they say.

"The fundamentals have been fairly firm, but speculation exacerbates the trends," said Tom Kloza, chief oil analyst with the Oil Price Information Service. "More and more money is going into buy-and-hold contracts that simply buy and roll into the next month."

If speculators simply buy and hold oil contracts, then they are not reflecting the current supply and demand.

This means that speculators are buying contracts and rolling them over, in anticipation of oil prices skyrocketing even further in the future.

The market isn't always right; I certainly don't buy into the idea of "perfect information" as a guiding market force. However, I think the big money is anticipating future oil prices that will make $140 a barrel look like a bargain.

Three stories showed up today, and none of them should come as a surprise:

1) Today is the 100th anniversary of the Tunguska event; on this day in 1908, something (either a small asteroid or a small comet) exploded in the air over Siberia. Although it never impacted the ground, and the object itself was only a few meters across, the blast (measuring somewhere between 5 and 30 megatons) flattened 80 million trees over an area of 830 square miles. The explosion of this small object was 1,000 times as powerful as the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Even though nearly 1,000 potentially hazardous asteroids are known to be in Earth-threatening orbits, we're not doing much to monitor or counteract the threat.

2) The Pentagon considers itself above the law and refuses to comply with EPA orders to clean up its thousands of polluted sites, including 129 Superfund sites. The Department of Defense just doesn't feel like cleaning up its contamination of our soil and drinking water, so that's that.

3) Our nation's only significant response to both climate change and the looming petroleum crisis involves the burning of corn. This policy turns out to be "economical nonsense, ecologically useless and ethically indefensible."

Surprise, surprise.

R. Neal has this week's edition of the intermittent, kinda weekly roundup of Tennessee liberal bloggers.

A lot happened this week, so go here to see what everyone's been talking about.

(Mr. Neal has also started yet another blog: SmartEnergyViews is dedicated to news and information on energy efficiency, conservation, and alternatives. I don't think he ever sleeps.)

This year is the 60th anniversary of the start of the Cold War, and today marks the 60th anniversary of the beginning of the Berlin Airlift. In recognition of that anniversary, Spiegel has published an interview with Helmut Schmidt, who was chancellor of West Germany from 1974-1982.

It's a fascinating interview, touching on everything from the birth of the Cold War in Germany to the collapse of the Soviet Union. On that topic, the interview includes this exchange:

SPIEGEL: The collapse of the Soviet Union marked the end of the era of East-West confrontation. In the end, did the Cold War affect the fall of the Soviet empire or accelerate it?

Schmidt: The fact of the matter is that up until the 1980s, the Soviet Union used its physical potential to fuel a military buildup to a greater degree than any other country. Without glasnost and perestroika this could have continued for a number of years. It was of course a rigid dictatorship. But it is another question as to whether the Cold War or a number of megalomaniacs in the Kremlin or perestroika and glasnost were responsible for the collapse of the Soviet Union.

SPIEGEL: The Soviet Union lost the Cold War. Did the West win it?

Schmidt: The Soviet Union imploded, but not as a result of the Cold War. Some Americans would like to believe that they ran the Russians into the ground with the arms race. That is an understandable exaggeration, but it is also absurd.

Consider Schmidt's comments in light of the fact that he was one of the primary actors who pushed for the NATO "double-track decision" in 1979, which in turn led to the deployment of Pershing II intermediate-range nuclear missiles in Germany. This deployment was seen by the Soviet Union, much of the German public, and most of the rest of the world as a deliberately provocative move on the part of the US and NATO. Many saw the move as a mirror image of the Cuban Missile Crisis, with the West being the provocateur instead of the Soviets. Protests were staged across Europe, and the Pershing deployment derailed US/Soviet disarmament talks that had been underway for some time. It was one of the most destabilizing events of the post-war era.

When the Soviet Union collapsed, some wag (I don't remember who) said that the Cold War ended merely because the Soviets went bankrupt before we did. There's some truth to that, but Schmidt's statement is also an accurate part of the story. However, it's a bit of a surprise to see a former Cold Warrior such as Helmut Schmidt make such an admission.

Jann Wenner interviews Barack Obama in this week's issue of "Rolling Stone." After Obama enumerated the contents of his iPod, he said this (via Blah3):

When Mr. Wenner asked how Mr. Obama might respond to harsh attacks from Republicans, suggesting that Democrats have "cowered" in the past, Mr. Obama replied, "Yeah, I don't do cowering."

I love that line.

Too bad Congressional Democrats won't follow his example.

In this interview with Amy Goodman, Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI) promises to filibuster the horrid FISA amnesty bill when it reaches the Senate.

First, he outlines the most potent objections to the bill:

Sen. Russ Feingold: Well, this is a great blow to the rights of the American people. And much of the publicity has been about a very important aspect: giving these telephone companies immunity that cooperated with the President's illegal program. We think that should be decided based on current law, not some kind of a retroactive immunity. But that's essentially what this bill does.

But you know what? Even worse are the provisions of the bill that will make it very easy for the government to essentially suck up the communications, all communications of Americans that go overseas, whether it's an email or a text message or a phone call to a daughter, junior year abroad, or a child who's in Iraq or a reporter or a business associate. This is one of the greatest intrusions, potentially, on the rights of Americans protected under the Fourth Amendment of the US Constitution in the history of our country.

And unfortunately, it's going to go through with the help of some Democrats. So this is a very, very sad day for our Constitution and for our rights, and it's not justified by the terrorism issue, because we do not have any problem at all with going after anybody that we have reasonable suspicions about. It has to do with sucking all this information into a huge database in a way that is very intrusive on the privacy of all Americans.

And the craven, cowardly politics of it all:

This is nothing but Democrats trying to pretend that they're doing something here. They are doing nothing. They're giving in. Senator Kit Bond, a Republican from Missouri, is basically giggling at the fact that the Republicans and the administration got essentially everything they want on this. It's sadly a great failure on the part of the Democratic majority that was elected in 2006 primarily to get us out of Iraq, but also significantly to protect the Constitution of the United States. This is not a proud moment.

And what he plans to do about it:

Amy Goodman: Senator Feingold, will you filibuster this bill?

Sen. Russ Feingold: We are going to resist this bill. We are going to make sure that the procedural votes are gone through. In other words, a filibuster is requiring sixty votes to proceed to the bill, sixty votes to get cloture on the legislation. We will also - Senator Dodd and I and others will be taking some time to talk about this on the floor. We're not just going to let it be rubberstamped.

Amy Goodman: Would you filibuster, though?

Sen. Russ Feingold: That's what I just described.

I have no doubt his filibuster will be stopped, but at least someone on Capitol Hill has the spine to stand up to the White House. It's just too bad the leadership of the House and Senate don't have the courage to do the same. It never ceases to amaze me that Reid and Pelosi lack the political will to take a stand against the discredited policies of a president whose popularity rating hovers somewhere around that of the plague.

The Bush administration's mismanagement of the Census Bureau is posing a threat to the integrity of the 2010 census. Among other problems, there's this:

Lawmakers must also ensure that the final census funding bill includes a provision from the House version that would require the bureau to spend $8 million to $10 million of its budget on the Census in Schools program. The program, which provides take-home materials to educate families about the census, proved effective in reaching hard-to-count populations during the 2000 census. But the House committee that oversees the bureau learned last spring that the Commerce Department planned to shrink the program.

[...]

The quality of the nation’s democracy depends on the census, because the numbers are used to decide the number of Congressional seats from each state and hence the number of votes each state has in the Electoral College. It’s hard to ignore the impression of partisan motives in policies that hobble the census, because an inaccurate census invariably undercounts out-of-the-mainstream groups not typically aligned with Republicans.

I suppose it's possible that the crippling of a census program which improves the accuracy of counting minorities is just a coincidence. Of course, it's also possible that the Iraq invasion had nothing to do with the fact that Iraq's chief export is petroleum.

Both possibilities seem equally unlikely.

R. Neal has this week's edition of the Tennessee liberal blog roundup.

Go here for this week's edition, including bonus roundups on the AP/blogger controversy and the Fred Hobbs smackdown.

During this season's "Lost" finale, ABC ran a commercial for a company called "Octagon Global Recruiting." The commercial and the website seek volunteers to work on the DHARMA Initiative. Visitors to the site may register for email notifications of their recruitment drive, which will kick off at ComicCon in San Diego next month.

This morning, I received an email from Octagon Global Recruiting; an online copy of the email's text is here.

The message was CC'ed to someone named Hans van Eeghen. A friend and fellow "Lost" addict Googled that name and found this page, which lists a number of descendants of a man named Hugo de Groot; the list includes several van Eeghens.

Of course, my friend also pointed out that "Hans van Eeghen" is an anagram for "a hang seven hen." I don't think he's had enough coffee this morning.

I viewed the HTML source code behind the email message, and I saw this comment buried in the code:

<!-- March has 32 days -->

Both the email and the page reproducing its content also contain this HTML tag in the source:

<meta name="Alert" content="March has 32 days" />

Developing ...

Major General Antonio Taguba, who conducted an extensive inquiry into the Abu Ghraib torture scandal, has spoken out again on the Bush regime's lawlessness. In his preface to a new report from Physicians for Human Rights, he says this:

In order for [detainees] to suffer the wanton cruelty to which they were subjected, a government policy was promulgated to the field whereby the Geneva Conventions and the Uniform Code of Military Justice were disregarded. The UN Convention Against Torture was indiscriminately ignored. And the healing professions, including physicians and psychologists, became complicit in the willful infliction of harm against those the Hippocratic Oath demands they protect.

After years of disclosures by government investigations, media accounts, and reports from human rights organizations, there is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes. The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account.

Unfortunately, that won't happen until both Reid and Pelosi are replaced by Congressional leaders willing to stand up to criminals.

Today, GOP obstructionists in the Senate filibustered a bill which would have provided tax incentives to build out renewable energy sources and which would have extended tax credits for individuals to purchase plug-in hybrid automobiles. The bill would have cost $17 billion over ten years, which is roughly the same amount the Pentagon wastes on the Iraq quagmire in 1.5 months.

Just like their recent obstruction of the carbon reduction bill, today's actions show that the GOP have no intention of doing anything meaningful about our most pressing environmental and energy issues. Alternative energy cannot be successful until it reaches large enough scales to realize significant economies; without a publicly funded boost, alternative energy will remain relegated to the fringes of our economy, which is precisely where the coal and oil lobbies want those technologies to stay. The coal and oil lobbyists' handmaidens in the GOP are doing precisely the job they're being paid to do.

Meanwhile, the Wilkins ice shelf is collapsing at an alarming rate. Today marks the first time the Antarctic ice sheet has been observed melting during the Antarctic winter. No matter, though; we should all rest secure in the knowledge that Senate Republicans are being so incredibly diligent about following the orders of their corporate masters.

Last week, the Associated Press sent seven DMCA take-down notices to the Drudge Retort (a liberal counterpoint to that other Drudge) based solely on the fact that they had posted short excerpts of AP wire stories. After some pretty significant blowback (and a boycott of their content), the AP decided it might not be in their best interests to alienate a significant source of their traffic, so they've magnanimously decided to publish their very own interpretation of what "fair use" actually means for us simple-minded bloggers.

Someone needs to inform the AP that they don't get to decide what constitutes "fair use." That's up to the Supreme Court.

On a more practical and immediate level, Terry Heaton says this:

The real problem for the A.P. is that it can’t win this argument, and by pressing the issue, they’re very likely to end up with a business model that dies overnight. And I don’t think I’m overstating that. Links are the currency of the Web, and the A.P. hard line spits in the face of that, which is leading to boycotts like Arrington’s. The monopoly co-operative is living in the past, but it needs that past to validate a business model that is as out-of-date as traditional media itself. Now, by pressing the matter, they run the significant risk of being in a contrary legal position, and what will be left for them after that?

I think the answer to that last question is pretty simple: they'll follow RIAA and MPAA into the gutter by attempting to sue their customers into submission. It isn't working for RIAA, it isn't working for MPAA, and it won't work for AP.

One of the AP's arguments against the Drudge Retort was that, in some cases, "the essence of an article can be encapsulated in very few words." If AP articles are that shallow and devoid of content, they aren't worth quoting in the first place.

If the AP doesn't drop this issue and fast, the boycott against them will make the AP an irrelevancy so fast it'll make their lawyers' heads spin.

This morning, the US Supreme Court handed down its decision in Boumediene v. Bush, holding that Guantanamo detainees have the right to challenge their detention in US civilian courts. As SCOTUSblog said:

The Court, dividing 5-4, ruled that Congress had not validly taken away habeas rights. If Congress wishes to suspend habeas, it must do so only as the Constitution allows — when the country faces rebellion or invasion.

[...]

The Court also declared that detainees do not have to go through the special civilian court review process that Congress created in 2005, since that is not an adequate substitute for habeas rights. The Court refused to interpret the Detainee Treatment Act — as the Bush Administration had suggested — to include enough legal protection to make it an adequate replacement for habeas. Congress, it concluded, unconstitutionally suspended the writ in enacting that Act.

Respect for the rule of law and for this nation's founding principles may be making a comeback, albeit at the sometimes glacial pace of the court system. This is made abundantly clear by Justice Kennedy's statement in the decision (PDF is here):

To hold that the political branches may switch the Constitution on or off at will would lead to a regime in which they, not this Court, say "what the law is." ... These concerns have particular bearing upon the Suspension Clause question here, for the habeas writ is itself an indispensable mechanism for monitoring the separation of powers.

After nearly seven years of official lawlessness in the White House and spineless capitulation by a timid and weak Congress, we may be witnessing a renaissance of respect for this country's fundamental essence.

Via Doug McCaughan:

That pretty much says it all.

In addition to the 47 million Americans with no health insurance, the ranks of those considered underinsured are growing at an alarming rate.

A new study by the Commonwealth Fund has found that the number of Americans with inadequate health insurance coverage mushroomed from 16 million in 2003 to 25 million in 2007.

That's a jump of 56 percent in just four years.

"Underinsured" is defined this way:

Respondents were identified as underinsured if they spent 10 percent of more of their income (or 5 percent if they were low-income) on out-of-pocket medical expenses, or if they had deductibles that equaled 5 percent or more of their income.

As the study notes (the PDF is here), the underinsured are likely to forgo needed care, wait until health problems become much more serious before seeking treatment, and let prescriptions go unfilled, all due to escalating out-of-pocket costs. The study also notes that over the period from 2000 to 2007, average health insurance premiums jumped 91 percent, but wages only increased by 24 percent.

Employers are becoming more likely to drop health insurance coverage for their workers due to escalating costs, leaving individuals to fend for themselves. Individual health insurance policies are unaffordable for the vast majority of Americans, so those who do manage to carry some kind of individual policy end up with high deductibles, outlandish premiums, and onerous terms on the rare occasions when claims are actually paid.

In this situation, no one wins except the vultures in the for-profit health insurance industry.

Unfortunately, neither of the two major presidential candidates offers anything close to the significant health care reforms this country needs. McCain is recycling the nonsensical right-wing canard of tax breaks to purchase health insurance, which would amount to either a pittance or nothing for most American workers. Obama's milquetoast approach would do almost nothing to reduce the ranks of the uninsured, and, like McCain, Obama seems perfectly willing to ignore the underinsured.

Regardless of who wins the White House in November, the mushrooming health care crisis will not be meaningfully addressed anytime soon. The underinsured will get the shaft in 2009, just like they're getting the shaft today.

"Change"? What change?

This is just unbelievably cool:

The world's most advanced, commercially available, bionic hand has won the UK's top engineering prize.

The i-LIMB, a prosthetic device with five individually powered digits, beat three other finalists to win this year's MacRobert award.

The technology has been fitted to more than 200 people, including US soldiers who lost limbs during the war in Iraq.

[...]

"It's such a fantastic invention," Ray Edwards, a quadruple amputee and one of the first people in the UK to be fitted with the device, told BBC News.

"When the arm was put on, I had tears rolling down my face. It was the first time in 21 years that I had seen a hand open.

"I can do a thumbs-up, I can hold a pen and I can do many things that I couldn't do before."

Wow.

R. Neal has this week's roundup of Tennessee liberal bloggers, focusing on Clinton's withdrawal from the race and her endorsement of Obama.

Go here.

Contrary to the will of the American people, the US Congress, the Iraqi parliament, the Iraqi president, and the Iraqi people, George Bush is engaged in secret negotiations with Iraqi president Nouri al-Maliki to establish fifty permanent US military bases inside Iraq. Bush is excluding Congress from these negotiations, and he thinks he can sign the agreement without Congressional approval.

Here's a shining example of the disdain Bush holds for our Constitution:

A British newspaper reports new details about the ongoing secret negotiations: Bush wants to retain the use of more than 50 military bases in Iraq and is insisting on immunity from Iraqi law for U.S. troops and contractors, as well as a free hand to carry out military activities without consulting the Baghdad government. The pact, which Bush has said he does not intend to submit for Congressional approval, would take effect shortly before he leaves office. Reversing it, while possible, would force a future president to break an international commitment.

Nouri al-Maliki can't stay in power without American military backing, so he's in the process of making a deal with the devil to preserve his own craven political hide. Bush knows he has al-Maliki painted into a corner, so he's also trying to include a guarantee of permanent US military control over Iraqi airspace.

This is rank imperialism, pure and simple. It's also a childish, cynical dare aimed at his successor.

To Bush and his handlers, it doesn't matter that a permanent occupation of Iraq will continue to destabilize the country, that it will continue to foster internecine violence, and that it will continue to empower the Iranians. Then again, maybe that's what they want: a permanent state of war easily justifies contracts for their friends in industry, and it also fosters a permanent state of anxiety in world oil markets, keeping petroleum prices elevated.

Conspiratorial speculation aside, the only sure winners of a permanent US occupation of Iraq are the Iranians. With a permanent bogeyman crouching on their western border, hard-liners within the Iranian government will be assured of re-election. They will also become an even more attractive source of support by Shi'ite groups within Iraq. As long as the US continues to occupy Iraq, unity within that country will be impossible, and the Iranians will look ever more attractive to Shi'ite groups as an ally against the conqueror.

Furthermore, Congressional approval is required for any international obligations which commit the United States to an agreement with another country, regardless of whether such agreements have the word "treaty" in their titles. If Congress doesn't step in and put a stop to Bush's imperious diktats, they can (and should) withhold funding for any such bases he negotiates.

As if we needed another reason why McCain would be a horrid president:

If elected president, Senator John McCain would reserve the right to run his own warrantless wiretapping program against Americans, based on the theory that the president's wartime powers trump federal criminal statutes and court oversight, according to a statement released by his campaign Monday.

His desire to be president trumps your Constitutional guarantees of liberty and fair treatment under an equitable, civilized system of justice.

Remember that.