The Blue State

Reid questions timing of oil refinery maintenance

The average gallon of gasoline in the United States is now up to $3.07 -- a 20 cent increase in just the last two weeks.  Just last month, Exxon reported that profits were up 10% in the first quarter of 2007.

So what is going on?  Harry Reid has his own opinion:

"It's outrageous ...Isn't it interesting every year about this time,a refinery goes down for repairs," said Senate Democratic Leader HarryReid of Nevada.

Actually, it is quite puzzling.  Why would oil companies conduct refinery maintenance at this time of the year, just weeks before Memorial Day weekend, when millions of families across the country will take to the roads?

This kind of maintenance limits supply and helps drive up prices.  Could that be why the Bush Administration ordered oil companies last September, just two months before the election, to delay all refinery maintenance?  It really makes you think.

World Bank Weighs Wolfowitz's Fate

With all the corporate and governmental corruption that has been exposed inthe past few years, (and the jail sentences being served) you would think the"corporate elite" would finally get it. IT being"you're going to get caught"!

Is there a level for these people that once reached, they get retrofittedwith a "larger set" and a lobotomy? Because what they do takes both bigones and stupidity.

Paul Wolfowitz is the latest greedy jackass.

April 13, 2007 ABC News — With his jobon the line and executive directors of the World Bank seeming troubled by acontroversy involving his romantic partner, World Bank President Paul Wolfowitzfought to keep his job Friday. In paper,audioand streamingvideo statements, World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz apologized Thursdayfor his role in helping his girlfriend Shaha Ali Riza secure a lucrative job atthe State Department, for which she is said to be paid even more than Secretaryof State Condoleezza Rice.

"I made a mistake, for which I am sorry,"said the controversial Wolfowitz, a former deputy Secretary of Defense who wasone of the main architect's of the current war in Iraq. "In hindsight, Iwish I had trusted my original instincts and kept myself out of thenegotiations."

In hindsight? What he did was so fundamentally wrong, it was a no-brainer(stupidity), to actually do it took balls (large set).

World Bank Weighs Wolfowitz's Fate

The timing of Wolfowitz's announcement was not coincidental. World Bankdelegates are convening in Washington, D.C., this weekend for annual meetings.The World Bank board met Thursday to discuss Wolfowitz's fate, though itadjourned without reaching a decision.

The 24 executive directors of the World Bank issued a statement in theirreview of the controversy — Wolfowitz's girlfriend was promoted and receivedmassive pay hikes after he took over in 2005. They "found that the EthicsCommittee, including its chairman, had not been involved in the discussions withthe concerned staff member. Neither did it find that the terms and conditions ofthe agreement had been commented on, reviewed or approved by the EthicsCommittee, its chairman or the board."

Obviously the 24 directors haven't "reached the level" yet.

Statementby Paul Wolfowitz, President of the World Bank Group

 

Katrina, FEMA & The Banks...oh, and the people

Living hundreds of miles away, and never seeing any stories on the news aboutit, it's almost as if all is ok in New Orleans. I mean this great government ofours wouldn't let it's citizens get screwed because of bureaucracy, greedy banksand do nothing politicians...would they? Yes, yes they would.

Reuters: "AidFlap is New Threat to New Orleans Rebuilding"

NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) - As homes in New Orleans' flood-stricken zones inchtoward habitability, a bureaucratic storm is brewing between state and federalrelief agencies that could derail the city's recovery from Hurricane Katrina.

Officials from the state of Louisiana contend that a new federal requirementthat aid checks be issued jointly to homeowners and their mortgage lenders couldmean that money bypasses the owners -- many of whom lost their jobs as a resultof Katrina -- and goes straight to paying their defaulted mortgage payments.

So the banks are getting theirs, now you get your's. But FEMA (Federal EmergencyManagement Agency) must be watching out for the people right?, that's their job right,well...that's a "NO"

Johnson has been waiting for funds from the Federal Emergency ManagementAgency and the state-run, federally funded and roundly criticized Road Homeprogram since being rescued from her attic days after Katrina hit the U.S. GulfCoast.

The Road Home program has received more than 121,000 applications and has60,000 still to process, and has closed on fewer than 6,100 of them. Of $7.5billion in funding, some $4.7 billion has been allocated, but not necessarilypaid out.

"It doesn't make sense. Everywhere we been, we build other people's(countries) but when it come to ourselves it's completely different,"said Vernon Lawrence, 75, pointing to the cost of the Iraq war andreconstruction. "Here we are in this country suffering like hell."

The Washington Post: also reported on the current situation: "KatrinaAftermath Still Undercuts Special-Needs Housing"

And for anyone that thinks it was a big task and the governmenthas been working on this situation all along, On August 28, 2006 Amanda of ThinkProgress kept us posted with this story OneYear Later: The Real State Of New Orleans. There are great links in thisstory which are important, because there was some talk about how "greatthings were going" with the rebuilding. The rebuilding was being focused on thetourist areas.

I've been through a few hurricanes in my life, and when I think of how muchof a "disaster" and "inconvenience" it was to be withoutelectric for 2-3 days, I feel ashamed now. After these current stories, maybewe'll see McCain walk around the French Quarter and say how wonderful everythingis going.

Exxon profits set U.S. record

Even though Exxon Mobil's profits declined by four percent during the last quarter of '06, they still set a yearly profit of $39.5 billion, which is an all-time record for any U.S. company.  The Boston Globe has the raw numbers:

The 2006 profit topped the previous record, also by Exxon Mobil, of$36.13 billion set in 2005. The record earnings amounted to roughly$4.5 million an hour for the world's largest publicly traded oilcompany, which produces about 3 percent of the world's oil.

It also equals the approximate gross domestic product -- a measure ofall goods and services produced within a country in a given year -- ofcountries like Ecuador, Luxembourg and Croatia.

Also eyepoppingwas   Exxon Mobil's revenue, which rose to $377.64 billion for the year,surpassing the record $370.68 billion it posted in 2005.

Part of Exxon's success came as a result of crude prices reaching $78 a barrel over the summer.  The sharp decline of natural gas prices in the fall and winter might explain some of the reason why Exxon's profits fell four percent in the fourth quarter of 2006.

U.S. Oil companies and Saudi family manipulating prices to help GOP win

Until now, this had been a conspiracy theory that I didn't believe.  But according to a White House spokesman, oil prices will be "jacked up" after the election by the Saudis and U.S. oil companies:

A former White House spokesman warns that oil prices may be "jackedup" by the Saudis and U.S. oil company executives after the election, RAW STORY  has learned.

In an op-ed  published in Thursday's Seattle Post-Intelligencer,Democratic strategist Robert Weiner writes, "Enjoy the price ofgasoline now, because when the Saudis lower production, we could goright back to the $3 nightmare of three months ago."

The story went on to add that the decline of the price of oil before the election was no accident:

Weiner and Bangs base their conclusion in part on comments that Washington Post investigative reporter Bob Woodward made on CBS's 60 Minutes two years ago while promoting his book, Plan of Attack.They state in their op-ed, "Something Washington Post journalist BobWoodward said two years ago while prices were going higher sendschills: 'They could go down very quickly. That's the Saudis' pledge.'According to Woodward, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, Saudi Arabia'sambassador to the United States, 'told President Bush that the Saudiswould cut oil prices to ensure a strong economy for Election Day.'"

"This prediction has come to fruition," Weiner and Bangs conclude.

According to the strategists, U.S. oil company CEOs "possess thepower to allow the price drops we've seen that may be timed for theelection.

The only reason this is allowed to happen in the first place is because an oil man is in the White House.

Putting military contractors ahead of military men and women

This is a story about how the military is selling themselves out to military contractors, possibly putting our soldiers' lives in jeopardy.

In modern warfare, the RPG is one of the most effective weapons foran enemy that plans to engage in asymmetrical warfare.  130 dedicated Americansoldiers serving in Iraq have been killed from RPG attacks since the war began.  So what dowe do about the problem then?

Israel developed a weapon that defends against these RPG's.  The company that developed the technology is called Trophy.  The blog Defense News elaborated on this technology:

Developed by state-owned Rafael, Trophe createsa sort of protective bubble defending ground vehicles against RPGs andtank rounds. The system operates in three distinct stages:

• A radar detects and identifies an approaching threat.

• Target information is transferred to a kill mechanism.

• The kill mechanism destroys the target at a safe distance from the vehicle.

As another blog, Defense Tech, writes, the technology has been tested by both the Israeli and U.S. military and it was deemed a success.

One small problem though: the company Trophy didn't bid high enough for the Army contract.  Instead, the Army decided to make a deal with a company called Raytheon, which created a similar system but was not specifically tested by Army officials.  As an e-mail obtained by NBC News explains, the Army was determined to award the deal to Raytheon:

..an e-mail obtained by NBC News provides some insight. In it, a seniorArmy official writes that the Army “just awarded a contract toRaytheon” and wanted to “focus all efforts toward supporting thefielding of the Raytheon ... solution.” Accordingly, the official wenton to say, “I don’t want anyone to think I’m supporting [Trophy].”

This is where it gets dirty.  The Army then backtracked and said that they did test the Raytheon system.  But 9 of the 21 officials who tested the system actually worked for the company, not the U.S. government:

Army documents obtained by NBC News, however, reveal that nine of the21 technical experts — as well as all the administrative personnel —were from Raytheon. The team ultimately concluded that of the seven RPGdefense systems examined, Raytheon’s was “the clear winner.”

...“That sure doesn't look like an objective panel to me,” says PhilCoyle, a former principal adviser to the secretary of defense onweapons testing and evaluation who is now with the Center for DefenseInformation. “It just doesn't pass the ho-ho test when you have thatmany people from one company on the selection panel and then thatcompany is the one that's chosen.”

So what you have here are contractors being able to get onto these panels to help tell the military to buy their product.  Trophy technology was tested and it was deemed the best there was, but the government eventually awarded the contract to Raytheon anyway.  I guess it depends who your friends are.

Yesterday, Bill Maher commented on this deal:

"These rocket-propelled grenades that have killed so many of our troops -- we have a system, they know about a system that would stop them.  The Israelis have it.  But Raytheon has the contract for it in this country, and they don't want to give up that contract because it's worth a lot of money."

Is Bush supporting the troops, or is he supporting Raytheon?

More savings for big oil

This year already, thanks to the Republican Congressional majority, our budget gives $14.5 billion worth of subsidies to the oil and gas industry.  As reported in Tuesday's New York Times via the blog Raw Story, oil companies are going to save $1 billion more thanks to a government error:

According to a report in tomorrow's New York Times (reg. req.), agroup of oil companies could avoid more than $1 billion in royaltypayments because of a mistake the Interior Department made in the1990's.

Chevron and the other companies have agreed to renegotiate theirleases, but they have not said how much they would give up and undercurrent law the Interior Department has almost no negotiating power.

Now this is where all of those donations to members of Congress will pay off, preventing a "certain" majority party from stepping in and saying "enough is enough."

US taxpayers pay for Halliburton Super Bowl party

Just about when we could start celebrating the fact that the Pentagon will not renew Halliburton's contract, this kind of story pops up.  According to the Los Angeles Times, Halliburton went to the bank and spent big on a Super Bowl party in Iraq last year.  Oh, by the way, you and I paid for it:

Halliburton Co. executives ordered a big-screen television and 10 largetubs of tacos, chicken wings and cheese sticks delivered to Iraq forlast year's Super Bowl, then billed U.S. taxpayers for their party,according to a lawsuit unsealed Friday.

The Houston-basedcompany also defrauded the government by double- and triple-billing forInternet, food and gym services for soldiers, according to the lawsuitby a former employee for KBR, the Halliburton subsidiary that runsdining halls for troops in Iraq.

What is this, the Price is Right?  You can't just buy free stuff, especially after overcharging the Pentagon millions of dollars since the war began.  This isn't arrogance.  This is knowing that you can do whatever you want because your former CEO is now the Vice President of the United States.
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Other sites blogging about Halliburton: Digg, TPMmuckraker, Newsvine, Daily Kos, Finding Rhythm, Hole in the Earth, The Quad.

Cheney admits oil was one motivation for Iraq war

I can't believe that almost no other traditional news source caught onto this quote.  Yesterday on NBC's Sunday talk-show Meet the Press, Vice President Dick Cheney used the eve of the five-year anniversary of 9/11 to explain why we are in Iraq.

When asked by host Tim Russert why the United States invaded Iraq, the Vice President gave his usual laundry list of reasons.  However, for the first time, maybe by accident, Cheney admitted that one of the motivations was oil:

CHENEY: "Think where we’d be if he was still there. He’d be sitting on top of abig pile of cash, because he’d have 65 and $70 oil; he would by nowhave taken down the sanctions because he had already, with thecorrupted Oil for Food program, nearly destroyed them when he was stillin power; he would be a major state sponsor of terror. We also wouldhave a situation where he would have resumed his WMD programs. That wasone of the conclusions of the Duelfer Report. So to suggest thatsomehow the world’s not better off by having Saddam in jail, I mean, isjust dead wrong."

The fact that all his reasons for going to war were either flawed or flat-out incorrect is completely beside the point.  This is more of a question about psychology.  When you sit down and make a grocery list, usually the first item that you put down on the piece of paper is the item that you need or want the most.  Or, think back to grade school when you brainstormed which world country to do a report on.  The chances were that the country you thought of first was the one you had always wanted to do the report on.  So out of all the reasons for going to war, why would Cheney mention oil first?

I guess those crazy liberal war protesters who said Cheney wanted oil don't look so extreme after all.

The only other traditional news source that caught onto this quote was the Monday edition of the New York Times.  Props to them!
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Other sites blogging about Dick Cheney: Bring it On!, Newsvine, Pen and Sword, The Daily Whim, Cut to the Chase, The Diplomatic Times, New Orleans Voices for Peace, The Immoral Minority, Media Needle, World Mojo, The Next Hurrah, Media Matters, Down with Absolutes, Moron Cowboy, The Democratic Daily, Police State USA, Fighting in the Shade, Crimes and Corruptions of the New World, Hairshirt, News for Mom, Bageena, ORblogs.

On the ABC/Disney movie, the key word is defamation

Despite thousands of letters and e-mails from concerned citizens who vehemently disliked the idea of politicizing a national tragedy, it is now inevitable that ABC/Disney will run their defamatory two-part movie "Path to 9/11."  I know that with all this hype and heated debate it is difficult not to tune in on both Sunday and Monday when these programs air.  As the Nielson numbers will eventually show, ABC will end up helping themselves ratings-wise from this week-long rhetorical firestorm. 

Therefore, ABC's actions have set a new television precedent -- teaching other networks that if they want good ratings, their best bet is to air an inaccurate smear piece that is supposed to reflect a sensitive point in our history.  Just follow the Karl Rove game plan -- because just as fear and lies wins you votes, fear and lies also wins you good ratings.  So I don't know about you, but I will withstand the temptation and tune this one out.  As a political science and history student at the University of Washington -- someone that has spent more time as a young adult studying counter terrorism than any of these right-wing producers -- I want absolutely nothing to do with it.  I don't know about you all, but I am tuning into NBC Sunday Night Football instead, as the Manning brothers square off against one another for the first time!

But the truth is that most Americans with a television on will be watching ABC.  For those of you who will, here are some things you ought to know:

• Over the last few days, I spoke with a Disney employee who told me that many who work for the companyare embarrassed by the historical inaccuracies of the ABC film, andhope that the company will either elect to re-edit the film or not showit at all.  What this individual told me is no different than anyone outside the company.  Like this person, I would feel awkward if my company were responsible incited such demagoguery that might affect the outcome of a major democratic election.
• An fringe right-wing fantasy come true!  A scene in the Sunday half of the film shows a terrorist shooting at a picture of Bill Clinton that is projected onto a movie screen -- as if to represent a mock assassination of the former president.  Of course, this mock assassination scene is not based on the 9/11 Commission's report at all.  John Aravosis of AmericaBlog watched the scene and put it best: "Yes, wenow have Disney/ABC throwing in mock assassinations of Bill Clinton.Did the Taliban really stage such a mock assassination of Clinton withbin Laden watching, andsomehow we got a blow-by-blow of the entire scene? Or did Disney/ABCdecide to throw in a mock assassination of Clinton just for the fun ofit? You decide."  Keep in mind that the screenwriter of the movie is friends with Rush Limbaugh.  Just something to think about when considering the ideological motives for throwing this irrelevant and factless scene into the film.
• The infamous Sandy Berger scene in the "Path to 9/11" movie is being slightly edited.  But as John Aravosis of AmericaBlog who saw the movie explains, either you delete the scene or you show all of it.  Editing it won't make any difference.  The scene is filled with so much defamation that it can't just be slightly edited to change perceptions.  Again, this is a scene that never happened in real life, and therefore misrepresents a public servant like Sandy Berger who repeatedly warned then-incoming National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice about the dangers posed by al Qaeda.  That, my friends, is defamation!
• So where is the right-wing when it comes to the debate over this movie, you ask?  Kevin McCullough of the conservative web site Town Hall wrote an article titled "Pathetic liberal sissies."  That just about sums up the smears of the far-right.
• The European version of the "Path to 9/11" trailer is far worse than anything we have seen.  It dubs the movie as "the official story," and goes on to advertise that "one decision" by the Clinton Administration "changed our world."  That decision refers to the scene in which Sandy Berger decided not to kill Osama bin Laden when he had the chance.  Of course, that scene never happened in real life -- making the entire premise of the film based on a lie.
• The Center For the Study of Popular Culture, a conservative organization run by neoconservative David Horowitz, announced two years ago that it would launch a PR campaign to blame President Clinton for the September 11th attacks.  Could this be part of that effort?

Keep sending those e-mails to ABC and give them your take on their decision to run this film.
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Other sites blogging about this film: Media Matters, Blog for America, Pam's House Blend, Allen Roland's Radio Weblog, Raw Story, MyDD, Athouse, The Liberal Avenger, Marc Perkel Rantz, Angry Bear, The Pollkatz Manifesto, Crooks and Liars, SoCalPundit, The Syndrome, The Daily Scribe, Firedoglake, Daily Kos, Dem Bloggers, They Get Letters, Vigilance, Pajamas Media, Outside the Whale, Night Bird's Fountain, Knowing is Living,