Things I’ve Seen

What did I tell you?

Kos notes that the Democrats have just made a saturation advertising buy in Arkansas. With Bill Clinton heading over there for the weekend, and Wesley Clark, no doubt.

Ohio and/or Florida are the most obvious pick-up states to give Kerry the presidency, but New Hampshire + Arkansas would work just as well. As long as he doesn’t lose Iowa. Iowa is a worry.

Just as Fafblog lures you into the comfort of enjoying their clever, progressive humour, feeling superior because you get it, they go and do this to you.

There are seventy thousand dead in Darfur an I’m watchin TV. “Mary Cheney gay,” says TV. “Gay Cheney gay. Gay gay gay gay gay gay gay. Tesesa Heinz. Gay lesbian gay.” Which is a valid point. Mary Cheney IS gay which is pretty important when you stop thinkin about it.

…There’s a law that’s going to make it legal to ship people off to Syria to be beaten with electrical cables and a buildup of nuclear arms in Iraq and North Korea and next month ten thousand more are probably going to die in Darfur. But there’s also important stuff to think about, like the bump on George Bush’s back an whether he an John Kerry are Jesusy enough. What are you going to care about in the end?

I’m not going to be able to get that last question out of my mind…

on the possibility of a military draft if Bush is reelected goes, of course, to Fafblog.

Q: Is there an elephant in this room?
A: Of course not! How could we miss an elephant in the room? That’s so crazy! You’ve been listening to crazy rumors about crazy elephants on the crazy internet, that’s what we think.
Q: Then what’s that huge gray animal in the corner with the large flappy ears and prehensile trunk surrounded by heaps of elephant feed, elephant dung, and a sign reading “Do Not Touch The Elephant”?
A: That is an armadillo.

The head of ASIO, Australia’s intelligence organisation has said what common sense has always said - the war in Iraq is increasing the threat of terrorism.

ASIO director Dennis Richardson says that on a global level, the conflict in Iraq may have created more terrorists.

The only reasonable assumption is that Iraq has added to the number of militant Islamists and will lead to the development of international linkages between such individuals and groups

…Mr Richardson says the coalition campaign in Iraq has helped Al Qaeda recruit potential terrorists.

Iraq has provided Al Qaeda with propaganda in recruitment opportunities and it only stands to reason that they would have some success

It has provided another justification or rationalisation for acts of terrorism.

It has increased the threat against Australian interests in the Middle East.

George W. Bush - the terrorists’ recruitment agent.

Polling Place tells you where you can vote in the Presidential Election. I’m just trying to help Google out here….

In today’s New York Times: Huge Cache of Explosives Vanished From Site in Iraq.

The Iraqi interim government has warned the United States and international nuclear inspectors that nearly 380 tons of powerful conventional explosives - used to demolish buildings, produce missile warheads and detonate nuclear weapons - are missing from one of Iraq’s most sensitive former military installations.

Read the rest of this entry »

By nature, I’m a catastrophist - I like the spectacular, I’m drawn to stories which claim to have big implications. Knowing this about myself, and desiring to avoid making an idiot of myself, I’ve hesitated to blog about either of these two issues, although they’ve been on my mind. But hey, what’s a blog for if it isn’t risking ridicule?

The first story is peak oil. I haven’t yet heard anyone convincingly argue that we aren’t at or near to the peak of oil production, or that there isn’t going to be a crisis in energy in the next twenty years…

Peak oil is the point in time when extraction of oil from the earth reaches its highest point and then begins to decline. We won’t be able to say with certainty when we have reached peak oil until after the fact. Many experts say we have already reached the peak. Others say not yet, but within the next few years.

What does Peak Oil herald? It heralds the end of cheap energy. In just a short 100 year period our civilization has built a high reliance on cheap, abundant energy.

The second is the meltdown of the US dollar. The authority on international currency collapses is Paul Krugman, and he’s been warning for a while that the US dollar could go the same way as the Argentinian Peso. Read his book, “The Great Unravelling”… In some analyses the whole US economy is a bubble based on investment from (mostly) Japan, China and Saudi Arabia.

A diary on Kos has discussion of this, based on the September 9th auction of US government bonds, as described here (registration required: uid=wally@trashmail.net PW=wally)

a rash of new data, including Treasury Department figures released Monday showing a net sell-off by foreigners of U.S. bonds in August, has stoked debate over whether overseas investors - private individuals, institutions and government central banks - are growingly dangerously bearish on the U.S. economy.

I’m not an economist or a geologist, but I have done some study in both fields, and the arguments make sense to me. But I’m a catastrophist…..?

John sent me this…. very funny

Windows Media
Quick Time

Mixed news from the Zogby Battleground.

The bad news is that if all the states go according to this poll, Bush will win. But only just.

The good news is that all the states Kerry is winning look fairly secure - he’s over 51% in all of them, and Bush is under 47% in all but two. This gives a pretty secure base to launch from. It’s also a predictable one - the states Gore won, plus New Hampshire.

There are three states where Bush has a lead, but is polling under 50%. Two of them, West Virginia and Nevada, are each worth 5 electoral votes, which means that winning one of these states is not enough for Kerry (it would result in a 269-269 tie, giving the Presidency to Bush). The third, with 6 electoral votes, however, is much more interesting.

Arkansas. Home of Bill Clinton, who looks likely to rejoin the campaign in the last two weeks, following his heart surgery. Is there a local paper, radio or TV station in Arkansaw that wouldn’t run an interview with the Big Dog? Bill might be able to win this election for John Kerry without even leaving his bed…

Florida, Tennessee, Ohio and Missouri are also all closer than the closest state currently going to Kerry, and any one of them would be enough.