Pangloss

Incidentally, Obama made a statement of strong support for Israel's attitude and behavior towards Iran today when asked about the training exercise.

Not to split hairs, but I would characterize it as more of a desire to make their current strength known to potential enemies, rather than saying "they're not as self-sufficient as they would have everyone believe". Israel's dependence on foreign support has never been a secret; it's the source of much of radical Muslim ire against the United States.

Bear in mind that it's showing citations, not actual correlations in research. Note how isolated the science of "Probability & Statistics" is on the chart. Statistics are an integral part of virtually all research conducted today, so you'd think it would be connected with every single dot on that page. It's not because the statistics used in those papers are commonly accepted and therefore don't require citation. Perhaps it's the same way with basic principles of physics. Also some of what we're seeing here (which I think is really interesting, btw -- a very cool chart) is the difference in how each area of science views the importance and relevance of citations. Perhaps it's more important in medicine, for example, and less important in other areas. Or maybe that's a stretch of a conclusion, I don't know. It might be interesting to find out.

I think there's some truth to that, but if the alternative is a mushroom cloud over Jerusalem and nobody is doing anything to stop that by more reasonable means, then last resort measures may be come necessary. This is the price of appeasement, and the fault won't be Israel's, it'll be every UN member nation's.

We got our first indication this week of where Obama will be spending those hundreds of millions of dollars he'll have, being the first presidential candidate not to accept public funds and spending limits. He made a television ad buy in 18 battleground states, 14 of which were won by George Bush in 2004. The ads are even running in states like Alaska, Montana, North Carolina, and North Dakota, described in this article as "perennial Republican strongholds". It'll be interesting to see if the advertising hits a saturation point, where it's no longer effective, or even becomes counter-productive. In a related note, FactCheck has a problem with one aspect of the 60-second spot: http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/obama_polishes_his_resume.html

Like rolling back the "Bush" tax cuts?

Well, change is a relative thing. A little bit can go a long way. Maybe the importance of Obama is the depth of change, not its breadth. Dang, I guess I'm gonna have to drop my "this is the guy who represents change?!" arguments. (sigh)

For once we are in complete agreement. And now I'm going to go and drown this annoying flu fever in water, the NEXT natural resource we'll need to fix.

Incidentally, offshore drilling has suddenly become a red hot issue here in Florida. Drilling has been prevented in spite of many years of Republican control of both houses and the governorship, thanks in part to a successful melding of conservationism and environmentalism mainly aimed at protection of natural resources like the Everglades, which of course benefit tourism, Florida's primary industry, which annually produces $65 billion in revenue. It's difficult to describe how entrenched this issue has been -- absolutely part of the landscape, if you'll forgive the pun. If you'd asked me six months ago about offshore drilling in Florida I (and anybody else) would have said "when hell freezes over" and probably still been accused of understating the case. The New York Times (one of our local papers ) called it "the third rail of Florida politics" in this article today. They're not joking. I would have quoted Dan Rather and called it a "20 foot pole" issue. (You know, the pole you use for stuff you wouldn't touch with a ten foot pole.) But now with $4 gas a reality, there is a new bipartisan effort to do a complete 180. New governor Charlie Crist (high on the list of potential McCain VPs) is now in favor of it, as is former governor Jeb Bush, who was always considered one of the greatest opponents to drilling, knocking it down it time and time again during his eight years in office. I know many here won't believe me when I say this (it's Jeb BUSH after all), but it really was quite stunning to see that particular announcement. According to the NYT article linked above (and here), current proposals stipulate that any drilling must take place at least 150 miles from shore. It also cites a National Petroleum Council (whatever that is) study saying that around 5.2 billion barrels of oil wait off the Florida coast (and a lot of natural gas). (Perhaps that answers one of the questions I posed earlier. Not a lot of oil, but it sounds like that's over and above what's in ANWR. What lies next to other states?) Part of the motivation here is the Hurricane Katrina angle. The media meme you've probably heard is that when Katrina hit Louisiana there was very little damage to the offshore rigs there (in fact according to the article linked above it was over 700,000 gallons from 124 leaks). The Florida take on this, the very common local perception, is that Louisiana was very ill-prepared for Katrina. We took eight direct hits over 18 months, including two storms equal or greater in strength to Katrina and ended up with only minor damage. In other words, whatever Louisiana can take, Florida can take much more easily. (Of course we weren't living below sea level, but again this is about perceptions.) While I still think drilling may be a good idea, it's pretty clear that the reason offshore drilling is politically POPULAR right now isn't about extending the time we need to convert to better energy sources, but rather, as iNow has been saying, about lowering prices. That's the political angle, because that's the pain people are feeling and screaming about to their legislators. Not all Florida politicians are buying it, however, with objections coming from both Democrats and Republicans. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz (who represents the district next door to mine) on Wednesday accused the administration of exaggerating the impact that drilling would have. (Then she went on to boast about the potential of ethanol, but I guess nobody's perfect.) http://www.house.gov/apps/list/press/fl20_schultz/DrillingFacts.html That's the Florida political landscape at the moment, which I just thought you all might find interesting. I imagine the same sort of thing is happening in a lot of states right now that would never have considered offshore drilling before. Yessiree, this is turning into one heck of an interesting year in politics!

Well even if that's true, we weren't when they decided to call it one.

Meanwhile Obama has announced plans to have the Iraqis pay for American defense with their oil revenues, a simple and obvious thing that, had it been announced by a Republican, would have been instantly met with world outcry and denunciation.

Yeah, well, I think NBC News here in the States declared this to be a recession, and that Iraq was in Civil War. Neither of those things has turned out to be true yet either. Just goes to show you what happens when the news decides to set the agenda. I did see that in your post, and I've read POM's posts along the same lines, yes. I acknowledge the statistics. I just don't know enough about how detailed and widespread this analysis was. Did they just look at ANWR and extrapolate what might be off the Florida coast, or are they saying it's up to (maybe) 16 billion barrels in ANWR alone, and Florida (and every other state) may have even MORE than that? You've given me reason to reconsider the subject, I admit. I'll keep an open mind about it, though it still seems to me that (in general) digging for oil should continue as we transition to alternate fuels. I just don't understand this desperate desire to prohibit that, it's like (and I'm not trying to put words in your mouth here, I'm asking) you're saying that all oil production should immediately stop so we can wake up and smell the coffee you've been shoving under everyone's noses, and if a lot of people are hurt by that, so what, at least we woke up. I just don't like that kind of ideological drive. It really rubs me the wrong way. If that's not your opinion, cool, but it seems that way to me when you talk about refusing future drilling when we're probably the only country in the world that's not doing that, and we're STILL dinged as ecological criminals. And POM, I hear you, but I'm just not interested in "they can't fix this". If that's the case then what's the point of talking about it? Just go build your bomb shelter and... stock up.

I do give Obama credit for speaking up on the issue, rather than dodging it. He lost that credit when he blamed it all on Republicans and the RNC, though (as in John5746's quote above). The Dems are no better, so that was a misplaced accusation, and he's supposed to be the guy who steps above mere partisanship. None of this has any bearing on my vote, though -- I just see it is a set of minor plays in the big game, which is still in the bottom of the first inning, and none of these plays strike me as (if you all will forgive the baseball metaphors) spitballs or tarred bats. Business as usual, perhaps, but nothing worse than that. It's gonna be a fun next few months. I'm actually looking forward to the fact that there will be such a massive disparity in the funding of the two campaigns. That really sets the stage for some interesting drama. Good politics. Good for the country, I don't know, but since I'm actually pretty satisfied with either man becoming president, I'm okay with that.

I heard something about PDFs being messed, but I imagine they'll fix that soon as well. Always bugs with new releases. The only thing kinda bugging me at the moment that seems unlikely to be fixed is the formatting of the screen in Outlook Web Access. It's not too surprising, I'm guessing MS probably put some highly customized scripting in their specifically aimed at IE. But it's a bit annoying because I have to use OWA for work. I might grab that plugin that lets you open IE windows as tabs inside the FF app frame and see if that works. Kinda reminds me of the old "view in IE" plugin they used to have, where you could right click on a link and select "View in IE" and it would open the page in IE instead of FF. But I'm guessing stuff like that is a lot more rare than it was 3-4 years ago.

Anybody else checkin' this puppy out? I'm pretty impressed with it so far. One of the things I really liked that I haven't seen much discussion about was a really cool installer feature that imported not only the bookmarks from IE but also the browser history, cookies, passwords, and so forth. Very handy. Seems like they've really raised the bar.

It's just my opinion; my analysis as a political observer. I included one media example already; the article from ABC's Jake Tapper headlining it as a broken promise. A googling of "Obama broken promise" yields 297,000 hits and 1667 articles at Google News. That, of course, includes denials that it's a broken promise, but the fact that they have to respond to it on that level means that it's being perceived in that manner. Yeah it's circular reasoning, but that's politics for ya. I've actually been pondering this tangentially. I'm getting the impression that folks here aren't aware of how wary undecided moderate voters are about Obama. I can put together another thread on that subject if you all want. Some of the discussions and comments I've seen that question even his most basic viability as a candidate, from people who are at least ostensibly moderate or undecided (i.e. not obviously Rush Limbaugh fanatics) have been quite surprising to me. Might make for some interesting discussion here as well.

True enough. But I was under the impression that 18 billion barrels was what awaited along ALL of the US coastlines (ok, 16 billion barrels, if you insist). If that's only what may be in ANWR then that would seem to suggest that there's far more waiting off the coast of Florida, etc. Sounds like a freaking bonanza. What am I missing here? BTW, I don't think it will reduce the price of oil at all, not even that 75 cents they talked about, because of the growing demand in China and India. Nor do I think that's an important goal for this exploration. But perhaps you just included that information for the sake of thoroughness.

It wouldn't be, but he didn't wait for that to happen, making a decision ahead of time. Personally I respect that, getting out in front of the issue, but as I told iNow it's not going to play in Peoria. What he needs to get out in front of us public perception amongst moderates and centrists and swing voters, and he's got a VERY long way to go in that area. He's got all you die-hard Democrats on board, that's a given. Now it's time to convince us that George Soros won't be telling him what to do. This move is very contrary to that goal. And let's face it, the Huffington Post-crowd support he's getting on this move is not because it's the right thing to do, but because a Democrat did it, and because they want him to have every penny he can possibly have in order to defeat those evil Republicans in the fall. No, the issue here is that the PUBLIC sees it as a broken promise, and it's hurting him with the very consituency that he's failing to win over at the moment. Stamping your feet over semantics won't win over the red states, folks. "Say, Bubba, can you put that shotgun down for a moment and tell us how you feel about Obama's decision to go with unlimited funding this fall?" "Uh, it sucks. He broke his promise, dint he? <hic>" "But Bubba, don't you realize that he didn't actually make a promise, he just indicated that he MIGHT do that, and it was really his aide speaking anyway?" "Uh, his middle name is Hussein, he must be like a terrorist or something! <hic> Sorry, did you say something?" Yeah, that's gonna work. You guys really have no idea how far he's got to go to win this election. It certainly is, and more to the point, moderate swing voters SEE the left drinking that kool-aid and they are not impressed.

I responded to you on that subject in that earlier thread. What we're talking about here is Alan Greenspan, and what you've posted above has nothing to do with him. And frankly that's just another example of correlation implying causation. Bob Woodward spent years and three books and never saw a shred of evidence that oil played a part in the decision. You throw up one correlation and call it a done deal, berating us for not seeing the obvious. Well I'm sorry, reverend, but I need more than that.

According to ABC News last night they were saying that the federal government says that there's 18 billion barrels of known oil off the coasts right now. That's enough for 2.5 years at current consumption, with a time-to-market of something like 10 years (some say more, as you noted). If that's the case then that oil will be filling my tanks exactly when it needs to be, just as China and India are beginning to completely control a market that is no longer under US control. I don't think it's a matter of faith at all. But it is just my opinion, I agree. http://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory?id=5197505 http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=5191991

iNow, the only reason he gave before for not taking the public funds was if McCain didn't take it. Now he's saying he's not going to take it regardless, which clearly constitutes, at the very least, a change of heart of some kind. And it's pretty clear that the "some kind" is the vast amount of money he clearly can raise. Just a few years ago we saw our first billion-dollar presidential campaign. This year I believe we're going to see the Obama campaign alone spend over that amount. Now if you want to stop short of calling that a "promise", that's fine, but that's a semantical argument, and it speaks volumes about your objectivity on this issue. You know, the phrase "it won't play in Peoria" comes to mind. You know, those red-staters we NEED to vote for Obama this fall? They're not buying it. I think I've said this before, but I'm just continuously amazed at the sheer stubbornness of red staters on even the basic viablity and respectability of Obama as a man, much less a candidate. This is just adding fuel to the fire, guy. You think they're going to buy your parsing? Furthermore, it's not just the red staters. My analysis appears to be the prevailing political analysis around the Web today, excepting obviously partisan web sites. A typical example of which may be seen here: Obama to Break Promise, Opt Out of Public Financing for General Election

I agree, he's stating his opinion that oil was a primary driver toward the decision to go in. But he has no particular standing on that issue. None. He wasn't involved in the decision, and he has no evidence to shine on the subject. Therefore his opinion on this subject is no more valuable than yours or mine. Well, aside from the fact that he's a brilliant individual with many decades of public service in Washington under his belt. I'll stipulate that.

I want to know that as well, but two wrongs don't make a right. You guys can spin the semantics as much as you like, but I can tell you that from a political perspective this story is written and it is playing in Peoria, and the perception is that Obama promised to take the public money and live with the restrictions, and he backed out of that promise. Doesn't change my vote (and it is a vote for Obama at the moment), but that's how I see this issue playing out. Your mileage may vary.

Well shoot man, I can sympathize with that. I hope your situation improves. I have no doubt that it will, actually -- you're as bright and engaged a person as I've ever met online. Things will turn up. I think I speak for the entire board on this. Anyway, I can understand why people want to see lower gas prices, but I simply think that cheap gas has carried a price that isn't measured in dollars, and is no longer worth paying. But I'm completely down with you about wanting to mitigate the damage and make the transition as smooth as possible. I don't see catastrophe and destruction of our way of life as a means to the proper end of a better society. Just the opposite, in fact -- I believe that our way of life will be preserved more or less intact. The great irony of the current situation is that it's now going to happen -- the very thing that the left has been warning us about for all these years -- but it's just not going to happen the way they hope and pray and dream for -- the dismantlement of the capitalist way. On the contrary, it's going to be solved much more smoothly and easily than they thought. The highways really won't be plowed over to make way for hemp fields. Sorry! Think Savings and Loan "Crisis", not armageddon. Or even 'crippling economic pain'. For most people, anyway. Okay. Why' date=' then? It's already been shown repeatedly that the returns on this are not even close to significant, and the costs associated are greater.[/quote'] Well even you admit that there would be a minor impact, so the point is already made right there -- I believe all oil should be drilled regardless of how minor the impact, mostly because I suspect that once we actually dig in there (and shove aside all the PC BS that gets in the way of the practical science on this subject) that they'll find plenty of oil. But even if they don't then the stretching of the transition will be useful in terms of minimizing the "crippling economic pain" that produces all those left wing wet dreams.

So what I'm suggesting is that Greenspan, who was not involved in this policy decision, is simply extrapolating his own opinion. In other words, he's simply saying "Well of course it's about oil, oil is what drives the economy, what else could it be about?" Do you think he might have meant something else? If so, what would that be?