And Up From The Ground Came A-Bubblin' Crude

Oil speculation, that is. Black gold. Texas tea.

U.S. crude-oil inventories are at their highest levels in almost two decades, and demand has fallen to a 10-year low, but crude oil prices have climbed more than 70 percent since mid-January to a six-month high of $62.04 on Wednesday.

Meanwhile, although refiners are operating at less than 85 percent of capacity, which leaves them plenty of room to churn out more gasoline if demand rises during the summer driving season, the price of gasoline at the pump has climbed 28 cents a gallon from a month earlier to $2.33.

Gosh, it's almost like somebody's bidding up oil prices again. Gosh, that never happens. I wonder who has the money lying around to bid up oil prices. Now, can I think of anyone who happens to have a few extra dozen billion dollars to speculate on oil prices...

Big Wall Street banks such as Goldman Sachs & Co., Morgan Stanley and others are able to sidestep the regulations that limit investments in commodities such as oil, and they're investing on behalf of pension funds, endowments, hedge funds and other big institutional investors, in part as a hedge against rising inflation.

These investors now far outnumber big fuel consumers such as airlines and trucking companies, which try to protect themselves against price swings, and they're betting that the economy eventually will rebound, that the Obama administration's spending policies and Federal Reserve actions will trigger inflation — or both — and that oil prices will rise.

So lemme get this straight: we give banks trillions in taxpayer loans and stuff, they turn around and use it to bid up oil to "diversify their portfolios" and screw over...taxpayers.

Demand for oil is down at 2000 levels. Supply is at a 20 year high, 1990 levels or so. Shouldn't oil prices ergo be back down at those levels, where gas was a buck a gallon?

Mysteriously, gas is $2.40 a gallon and on the way up. It was $1.90 not more than a month ago. Nice to see the TARP money being put to good use, huh?

Zandar's Thought Of The Day

The Gitmo debate has yet to get past the "We can't transfer them here, they are SUPERVILLAINS!" phase. We actually have sitting senators saying they will turn our prison system into a massive jyhadi uprising like these guys are all Paul Muad'Dib riding sandworms out of the deep desert or something.

It's goddamn sad, is what it is.

[UPDATE] John Cole makes another point:

CNN just had James Inhofe on talking about how we could not bring the Gitmo folks to the states because they are too dangerous, and it reminded me of something that has been bothering me the last few days. There seems to be an effort to pretend that we chose to put these people in Gitmo for security reasons.

That is simply nonsense on stilts. It was little more than barbed-wire and plywood when we started detaining them there, and we had to build the damned place. We didn’t put the detainees there because it was super secure. We put them there so there would be no controlling legal authority and we could do whatever the hell we wanted with them.

S'truth.

The First Man Who Should Be Talking On Terror

That man is President Obama. His speech is in some ways a blockbuster...and in other ways disappointing as all hell:

Finally, there remains the question of detainees at Guantanamo who cannot be prosecuted yet who pose a clear danger to the American people.

I want to be honest: this is the toughest issue we will face. We are going to exhaust every avenue that we have to prosecute those at Guantanamo who pose a danger to our country. But even when this process is complete, there may be a number of people who cannot be prosecuted for past crimes, but who nonetheless pose a threat to the security of the United States. Examples of that threat include people who have received extensive explosives training at al Qaeda training camps, commanded Taliban troops in battle, expressed their allegiance to Osama bin Laden, or otherwise made it clear that they want to kill Americans. These are people who, in effect, remain at war with the United States.

As I said, I am not going to release individuals who endanger the American people. Al Qaeda terrorists and their affiliates are at war with the United States, and those that we capture – like other prisoners of war – must be prevented from attacking us again. However, we must recognize that these detention policies cannot be unbounded. That is why my Administration has begun to reshape these standards to ensure they are in line with the rule of law. We must have clear, defensible and lawful standards for those who fall in this category. We must have fair procedures so that we don’t make mistakes. We must have a thorough process of periodic review, so that any prolonged detention is carefully evaluated and justified.

I know that creating such a system poses unique challenges. Other countries have grappled with this question, and so must we. But I want to be very clear that our goal is to construct a legitimate legal framework for Guantanamo detainees – not to avoid one. In our constitutional system, prolonged detention should not be the decision of any one man. If and when we determine that the United States must hold individuals to keep them from carrying out an act of war, we will do so within a system that involves judicial and congressional oversight. And so going forward, my Administration will work with Congress to develop an appropriate legal regime so that our efforts are consistent with our values and our Constitution.

But the problem is simple: detaining these people without charging them, without trying them, without giving them the chance to defend themselves, is not lawful. Any "legitimate legal framework" for doing this that does not include these basic functions is not a legitimate legal framework, period.

It really doesn't get any simpler then that. If you cannot try them in a court of law, then you have to release them. That's how the basic principles of our laws work. Find a solution if you must, but that solution must be lawful.

Or we are no longer a nation of laws, but of political expediency.

[UPDATE] Greenwald on the speech:

The speech was fairly representative of what Obama typically does: effectively defend some important ideals in a uniquely persuasive way and advocating some policies that promote those ideals (closing Guantanamo, banning torture tactics, limiting the state secrets privilege) while committing to many which plainly violate them (indefinite preventive detention schemes, military commissions, concealing torture evidence, blocking judicial review on secrecy grounds). Like all political officials, Obama should be judged based on his actions and decisions, not his words and alleged intentions and motives. Those actions in the civil liberties realm, with some exceptions, have been profoundly at odds with his claimed principles, and this speech hasn't changed that. Only actions will.

Amen, brother.

[UPDATE 2]Footage of the speech on an independent commission and prosecuting Bush officials.

Actions, not words are needed.

The Last Man Who Should Be Talking On Terror

Dick Cheney, on the other hand, is completely wrong about the Warren Terrah and continues to be as wrong about it now as he was eight years ago.

I might add that people who consistently distort the truth in this way are in no position to lecture anyone about “values.” Intelligence officers of the United States were not trying to rough up some terrorists simply to avenge the dead of 9/11. We know the difference in this country between justice and vengeance. Intelligence officers were not trying to get terrorists to confess to past killings; they were trying to prevent future killings. From the beginning of the program, there was only one focused and all-important purpose. We sought, and we in fact obtained, specific information on terrorist plans.

No Dick, they were trying to get them to admit they were in cahoots with Saddam Hussein so we could invade Iraq. We did it to get revenge for 9/11, to get revenge on Saddam Hussein for Bush, to kick the shit out of some Ragheaded Sunzabitches to make America feel good. Those were out "values".

Those are the basic facts on enhanced interrogations. And to call this a program of torture is to libel the dedicated professionals who have saved American lives, and to cast terrorists and murderers as innocent victims. What’s more, to completely rule out enhanced interrogation methods in the future is unwise in the extreme. It is recklessness cloaked in righteousness, and would make the American people less safe.

They saved American lives? You mean the ones we sent to Iraq to die for this man? They saved us from terrorists we convicted legally in a court of law proving they were in fact terrorists?

The administration seems to pride itself on searching for some kind of middle ground in policies addressing terrorism. They may take comfort in hearing disagreement from opposite ends of the spectrum. If liberals are unhappy about some decisions, and conservatives are unhappy about other decisions, then it may seem to them that the President is on the path of sensible compromise. But in the fight against terrorism, there is no middle ground, and half-measures keep you half exposed. You cannot keep just some nuclear-armed terrorists out of the United States, you must keep every nuclear-armed terrorist out of the United States. Triangulation is a political strategy, not a national security strategy. When just a single clue that goes unlearned … one lead that goes unpursued … can bring on catastrophe – it’s no time for splitting differences. There is never a good time to compromise when the lives and safety of the American people are in the balance.

Every lead, like the ones you got in August 2001 that Bin Laden was "determined to attack". You followed up on that lead, alright. Good job saving American lives there, Dick.

Still spouting the same tired 9/11 war rhetoric, still spouting the same old pointless "24" Jack Bauer garbage, still saying that America must treat every lead as a 100% certainly of lost American lives while ignoring 9/11 intel, still claiming to speak for the intel community that it co-opted and corrupted and abused and ignored when they warned him about 9/11 happening.

There is no person on Earth less qualified to criticize the Obama administration's national security policy than the man that failed to stop 9/11 and then manipulated the intel community to cover a program of failures, of torture, and of illegal atrocities designed to cover the ass of the President and his men.

[UPDATE] What Iggy said.

To The Left Of The Man

While right now I'm virulently angry at Democrats and the President in general on the Gitmo issue, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that there are actual progressive Democrats trying to make positive changes in our country.

One of them as DownWithTyranny! notes is Orlando, Florida Democrat Alan Grayson.

None of our winners, though, have done better than one of our most unlikely successes: Orlando progressive Alan Grayson. When we first endorsed him, no insiders thought he had even an outside chance to win the primary, let alone beat an entrenched, well-financed Republican incumbent. But almost immediately we realized that Alan was anything but a run of the mill Democrat. Tireless, brilliant, idealistic and down to earth, the more we got to know of Alan through the primary and general campaigns, the more we realized he could be a rare leader in Congress who could make an outsized difference.

I remember him telling me one day after a meeting with central Florida labor unions how he had told them that if he were elected he would start the ball rolling towards passing a law to guarantee paid vacations. That sounded as crazy as... well, as weekends must have sounded when they were first proposed. Or Social Security. Tomorrow Alan is introducing a bill, the first in (American) history, that guarantees paid vacations. (France guarantees a month of paid vacation per year.)

The bill's provisions, which are expected to meet stiff opposition from Republicans and Blue Dogs poll exceedingly well among average Americans. Nearly 70% of Americans support the idea. This is what Grayson's legislation would accomplish:

• Requires one week of paid vacation for employees of companies with at least 100 employees. Three years after passage, the bill extends this requirement to companies with at least 50 employees, and requires two weeks for companies with 100 employees.

• Covers workers after one year on the job. Part-timers must work 25 or more hours a week and 1250 hours per year to be covered.

Oddly, it wasn't even Grayson's dedication to the betterment and security of working families that first attracted us to him. It was a Vanity Fair feature on his astounding work bringing war profiteers to justice. And this week Vanity Fair is back with another powerful piece of the Alan Grayson story: Freshman Democrat Alan Grayson Attacks Obama's War Policy.

Paid vacation? How novel. Dozens of other countries have paid vacation policies, including all of the European Union. Many employers in the US do this anyway, but not all...and of course the law only applies to companies with more than 50 employees, so the Republicans can't play the "It'll hurt small businesses unfairly!" card. It won't even apply to them.

Seems like a no-brainer to me.

If It's Thursday...

You guys are acquainted with the whole Thursday thing by now. Still, 631,000 new claims, 6.67 million continuing claims. No end in sight to the employment woes. As long as we stay consistently over the 500k weekly claim mark, we're in trouble. As long as we stay over 600k, we're in dire trouble. If it gets any higher, we're in death spiral territory.

President Georack Odubya Strikes Again

On a day where the FBI follows procedure and builds a case against terror suspects and makes arrests, charging suspects with crimes in order to try them in America's court system and send these alleged terrorists, who supposedly want to kill Americans, into our prison system, President Odubya wants to codify into law the ability to detain terror suspects indefinitely without charging them.

President Obama told human rights advocates at the White House on Wednesday that he was mulling the need for a “preventive detention” system that would establish a legal basis for the United States to incarcerate terrorism suspects who are deemed a threat to national security but cannot be tried, two participants in the private session said.

The discussion, in a 90-minute meeting in the Cabinet Room that included Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. and other top administration officials, came on the eve of a much-anticipated speech Mr. Obama is to give Thursday on a number of thorny national security matters, including his promise to close the detention center at the naval base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

Human rights advocates are growing deeply uneasy with Mr. Obama’s stance on these issues, especially his recent move to block the release of photographs showing abuse of detainees, and his announcement that he is willing to try terrorism suspects in military commissions — a concept he criticized bitterly as a presidential candidate.

The two participants, outsiders who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the session was intended to be off the record, said they left the meeting dismayed.

In other words, this man wants to put into law the ability to incarcerate people forever with no trial.

I'm hoping there's much more to this story than is being reported. I'm hoping as a matter of fact this is something of a trial balloon that will get the President pillaged by both the libertarian right and the civil liberties left, and that the President will abandon this stupidity.

Throwing people in jail with no trial? That really is Obama fascism.

Between his growing role as Odubya on civil liberties and the slow death of our economy, I have to honestly question our President's methods and abilities to lead this country at times. Not even George Bush dared to ask Congress to put laws on the books allowing this...which means Obama doesn't believe that the all-powerful plenary executive gives him the ability to do this. He wants Congress to cover his ass.

Which means Obama is basically admitting to breaking the law right now.

Might want to keep that in the back of your mind when you read about Democrats killing Obama's efforts to close Gitmo.

While allies such as Durbin have cast the development as a delay of only a few months, other Democrats have made it plain they don't want any of Guantanamo's detainees sent to the United States to stand trial or serve prison sentences.

Despite the setback, some Democrats said Obama should not be underestimated.

"The president's very capable of putting together a plan that I think will win the approval of a majority of members of Congress," said moderate Nebraska Democrat Ben Nelson. "I can't imagine that he won't."

Well gosh Ben, I can. He's practically said he's considering plans to not only keep Gitmo open, but to keep detainees there for the rest of his Presidency.

If Obama allows "preventative detention" then no American is safe.

[UPDATE] Money quote in the Boston Globe:

Obama was succinct about his reversal, according to one person at the meeting, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the meeting was private: "He said, 'I was a constitutional law scholar. Now I'm commander in chief.' "

If it wasn't so tragically Kafkaesque, I'd be laughing at how naive I was to think Obama would actually keep his promises on this.

StupidiNews!

• President Obama will give a "major policy speech" on the case for closing Gitmo today.
• The FBI has broken up an alleged homegrown terror cell in New York, four arrested.
• California will appeal a law banning the sale of violent video games to minors to the Supreme Court.
• Britain could possibly lose its AAA credit rating from Standard & Poor's.
• Congress wants to include fiber optic cable for broadband in every new road project.

Last Call

Interesting theory. The reason why Norm Coleman can't quit? Al Franken's best selling book from the Clinton years: Rush Limbaugh Is A Big Fat Idiot.

Democrats Urinate On Themselves At Command

This whole "Democrats refuse to close Gitmo because the Republicans are making scary faces" thing is really, really pissing me off.

The Senate voted 90-6 Wednesday to strip money from emergency-spending legislation to close the Guantanamo Bay detainee facility, a clear concession by Democrats that they lacked the political muscle to shutter the prison.

A Senate committee last week proposed spending $80 million from the $91.3 billion war spending measure to begin the closing process, but Wednesday's vote eliminated that money.

Senate Democrats said they weren't necessarily giving up on closing the facility and moving its 241 detainees elsewhere, even as Republicans argue that it should stay open.

An amendment to the spending bill, which is likely to be similarly approved by the House of Representatives, prevents the Obama administration from releasing any freed detainees into the United States or transferring any of them to prisons in the U.S.

This was a complete failure by Senate Democrats to do the right thing. At this point Obama must now turn around and keep Gitmo open because 90 Senators are too scared of terrorists to put them in prisons inside the US.

They are dumping this off on the President. This one's not Obama's fault, either. You can put the blame for this squarely on the shoulders of Harry Reid. As BooMan says, at this point Reid not only needs to go but that the netroots should in fact actively campaign against him in 2010.

I've been saying for quite some time now that Harry needs to go.

Zandar's Thought Of The Day

Two thoughts on this, actually.

One, is Newt Gingrich really the most qualified person to make ethical judgments on Nancy Pelosi,

Two, is Steny Hoyer allowed to speak truth to power to the Village like this?

"Republicans are going to stay on it as long as you guys keep printing it, as long as it continues to be a television item – not about the substance, but about the distraction," Hoyer told reporters Wednesday. "As long as you want to feed on it, the Republicans will continue to feed you."

And while I'm glad somebody is pointing this out, they're going to make him pay for that dearly.

The Village doesn't like being called out by politicians.

Default, Cali Style

Some things to keep in mind about California's budget disaster:

California cannot legally declare bankruptcy. No state can under US law. Cities and counties can and have done so before, but a state cannot declare bankruptcy.

A state however can default on loan payments and wreck their credit rating as a state. That means getting state bonds issued to fund spending will be wildly more expensive. We're about to see if California will be the first state to actually default on a bond payment, and what happens to the people, cities, and counties within as a result.

California will want to get billions in loans from Wall Street...but I can't imagine any Wall Street firm wanting to loan California a dime. That means Obama will have to step in and cut a deal with Treasury. With nearly all 50 states running deep in the red, I can't imagine too many Democrats in Congress are going to object ("There but for the grace of God go I" and all). Republicans of course will do everything they can to bury California and blame the Dems.

Obama will get his deal however. There are too many country club Republicans and corporate interests in the state to let California default. It will be ugly however, and there's the little matter of what California is going to give up in order to get the money...perhaps having to come up with a specific plan to get back in the black like the automakers did...or else.

Defaulting on said bonds would almost certainly cause a raft of lawsuits to be filed against the state forcing them to pay. At some point, somebody's going to have to decide who gets paid, California or its creditors.

That will certainly have to go to the Supreme Court.

[UPDATE] Megan McArdle has a point: once Obama bails out California, it's implied that he will bail out every city, county, and state government currently buried in red ink.

Those Who Can Afford The Least Give The Most

When you think of "the poor", most Americans have images that come to mind: the hard-working immigrant family, the inner-city single mother, the panhandler hanging around outside the office building where you work, the old veteran living under the bridge overpass.

Whether your mental image is from "The Wire" or "The Grapes of Wrath" or from personal experience, the word you probably least likely associate with the poorest 20% of Americans is "philanthropy".

Which is a shame, because it turns out the Americans with the least income give more than twice the percentage of their meager incomes as the wealthiest Americans do.

"The lowest-income fifth (of the population) always give at more than their capacity," said Virginia Hodgkinson, former vice president for research at Independent Sector, a Washington-based association of major nonprofit agencies. "The next two-fifths give at capacity, and those above that are capable of giving two or three times more than they give."

Indeed, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics' latest survey of consumer expenditure found that the poorest fifth of America's households contributed an average of 4.3 percent of their incomes to charitable organizations in 2007. The richest fifth gave at less than half that rate, 2.1 percent.

The figures probably undercount remittances by legal and illegal immigrants to family and friends back home, a multibillion-dollar outlay to which the poor contribute disproportionally.

None of the middle fifths of America's households, in contrast, gave away as much as 3 percent of their incomes.

"As a rule, people who have money don't know people in need," saId Tanya Davis, 40, a laid-off security guard and single mother.

I'm fairly shocked by that personally, but I know my parents regularly give a substantial amount to the local Catholic church and volunteer plenty of time, serving on several committees. They'd fall squarely into that second-highest tier and still give quite a bit.

Then again, the kind of folks earning $200k a year are the folks that work 80-100 hours a week too. Does that make them better people? If you're spending all your time working to earn money you don't have time to enjoy, or you don't have the inclination to give back, you have to wonder.

Money can't buy you happiness.

Followed Up By A Sucker Punch

To accompany today's "CIA as the victim here" leak story in the WaPo, we have WaPo's own columnist Michael Gerson to lead the Village scolding offensive.

Is there any precedent for a speaker of the House of Representatives seeking political shelter by blaming national security professionals? Or for a commander in chief exposing intelligence methods at the urging of the American Civil Liberties Union? Actually, such treatment has precedents. In 1975, the Church Committee nearly destroyed the human intelligence capabilities of the CIA. In the early 1990s, Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan urged closing the agency entirely. The Clinton administration imposed massive budget cuts, leaving behind a demoralized institution.

And now Obama has described the post-Sept. 11 period as "a dark and painful chapter in our history." In fact, whatever your view of waterboarding, the response of intelligence professionals following Sept. 11 was impressive. Within days, the CIA had linked up with the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan and begun preparations to remove the Taliban. The counterterrorism center run of out CIA headquarters was the war on terror in the months after the attacks, making daily progress in capturing high-value targets. Now the president and his party have done much to tarnish those accomplishments. So much for the thanks of a grateful nation.

You know what must have really been demoralizing for the CIA?

Working for Bush and Cheney. Having the President ignore the CIA on 9/11 chatter preceding the attack and saying "Well, you've covered your ass." Having the Joker and the Penguin there twist their hard-earned intel to justify starting a war. Having them torture people to get evidence they knew was false, trapping them in a no-win situation. Having them purge the ranks of those career agents who resisted being the propaganda arm of BushCo instead of America's intelligence defense.

What Obama and the Democrats are doing to the CIA is painful, but necessary. The last remnants of the Bush cancer must be excised. But let's not forget who got the CIA into this untenable situation in the first place, Mr. Gerson.

It wasn't the Democrats.

StupidiNews!

• California voters soundly rejected multiple budget measures, meaning the state must now take draconian action.
• Banks are paying bonuses through taking out life insurance on their employees.
• Senate Democrats have rejected funding to shut down Gitmo, saying the President has no solid plan.
• The Obama administration is considering creating a consumer protection board for financial products.
• A new study by Microsoft shows your answers to password reminder questions can be easily forgotten...or hacked.