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Friday, April 27, 2007
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Josh Marshall: "With Harry Reid's controversial 'war is lost' quote and with various other pols weighing in on whether we can 'win' or whether it's 'lost', it's a good time to consider what the hell we're actually talking about. Frankly, the whole question is stupid. Or at least it's a very stilted way of understanding what's happening, geared to guarantee President Bush's goal of staying in Iraq forever...
"This is the key point: right near the beginning of this nightmare it was clear the sole remaining premise for the war was false: that is, the idea that the Iraqis would freely choose a government that would align itself with the US and its goals in the region. As the occupation continued, anti-American sentiment -- both toward the occupation and America's role in the world -- has only grown. I would submit that virtually everything we've done in Iraq since mid-late 2003 has been an effort to obscure this fact. And our policy has been one of continuing the occupation to create the illusion that this reality was not in fact reality. In short, it was a policy of denial."
Be sure to read the whole article.
"2008 pres"
7:01:11 AM 
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Daily Kos: "Republican Scandal Bingo: Feeney back in Abramoff spotlight; Renzi may resign?"
Josh Marshall: "As we've suggested many times over recent weeks, the US Attorney Purge story is much bigger than the eight fired US Attorneys you've already heard about. Now we have another case where a US Attorney in a key swing state was likely forced out in 2006 to be replaced by a Gonzales Justice Department flunky under the US Patriot Act. It's looked for some time now like Thomas Heffelfinger, former US Attorney in Minneapolis, was likely pushed aside to make room for the now notorious Rachel Paulose, the then 33 year old whose lavish US Attorney 'coronation' ceremony garnered so much attention earlier this year."
"2008 pres"
6:54:30 AM
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Political Wire is running a roundup of articles on last night's Democratic Presidential debate.
Metro.co.uk: "The eight Democratic White House contenders have said they want U.S. troops to pull out of Iraq. The initial face-to-face encounter of the 2008 U.S. presidential election campaign produced few fireworks but provided voters' first extended view of front-runners Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama and other candidates in a Democratic race already being waged at a breakneck pace 18 months before the vote."
"2008 pres"
6:51:10 AM
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Wired: "Tread carefully, politicians -- concerned citizens are watching your every move on the web. Their tools? Custom data mashups that use public databases to draw correlations between every vote cast and every dollar spent in Washington. Take this report about the widely debated and bitterly fought California SB217, which would have banned clear-cutting in ancient forests. Generated by the nonpartisan MapLight.org website, the report clearly shows that the logging industry, which opposed the bill, gave nearly twice as much money to politicians as environmental groups did. The bill was defeated. Sites like Maplight.org, Opensecrets.org and Follow the Money, along with wiki-based political reporting resources like Congresspedia, are increasingly giving ordinary citizens the ability to easily document the flow of special-interest money and how it influences the legislature. These new tools are providing an unprecedented level of transparency, exposing patterns of influence that otherwise would have remained invisible to ordinary citizens. "
Thanks to beSpacific for the link.
"2008 pres"
6:47:43 AM
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Here's an update on Solix's operation to supply biodiesel from algae, from the Colorado Springs Business Journal. From the article, "In the wake of rising oil prices and depleted oil fields, several companies in Colorado are focused on alternative energy solutions, and one Fort Collins company is using an unlikely source to create petroleum: algae. The tiny plants can be difficult to work with -- temperatures must be constant and invasive species can fill the tanks, but Solix Biofuels thinks it has a process to cost-effectively mass-produce oil derived from algae...
"Scientists are trying create algae that are capable of producing 10,000 gallons of fuel per acre. Once that happens, oil from algae will be much more profitable. Solix opened December and is building a photo-bioreactor system, which could meet the demand of U.S. consumption of diesel fuel -- about 4 million barrels a day. Solix technology uses the sun to grow algae, capture the carbon dioxide and create 'bio-crude.' Through reducing the costs of energy input and initial capital expenses, algae biofuels can be competitive with petroleum fuels...
"The process is water-intensive, [Al Darzins, group manager and principal scientist for the National Bioenergy Center] said, and that's one of the drawbacks. But algae will grow in saline environments, and many underground aquifers are saline. Solix isn't making biodiesel -- just supplying the crude materials for other companies...
"The company's bio-crude will be refined into biodiesel for specific engines, meaning that it doesn't compete with ethanol research to replace gasoline-powered vehicles. Darzins said that the future for energy is in biofuels -- ethanol as well as algae-created biofuel. And he believes the future is close at hand."
"2008 pres"
5:36:53 AM
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© Copyright 2009 John Orr.
Last update: 3/15/09; 12:53:27 PM.
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