"Stay The Course"

Who's 'cutting and running' from "Stay The Course"? Click and see...

Joshua Micah Marshall on Bush the 'entreprenueur'

This is good, go read the whole thing:... it's worth remembering why President Bush, short of being forced kicking and screaming, will never and can never withdraw American forces from Iraq.

Fundamentally, it doesn't have to do with military strategy or ideology. It has to do with coming to grips with the monumental failure he has wrought, which of course he can never do....

...Think of the president as a failed or deadbeat entrepreneur (again, not such a stretch) who's already lost his investors a ton of money. He goes back to them and says, 'Okay, fine. You think I'm a moron and a screw-up who lost you guys a ton of money. Fine. But do you really want to finally, totally, conclusively kiss that $300 billion goodbye. You wanna just totally call it quits? Admit it's a total loss? What about giving me just another $10 billion and maybe somehow I'll actually pull this off? Or, since that's just not gonna happen, a mere $10 billion to put off for six months having to write the whole thing off as a loss, having to come to grips once and for all with the fact that all the money's gone and the whole thing's a bust?'

Theories Abound as Oil Prices Fluctuate

This is only one of the theories broached in the article

Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. has asked his former partners at Goldman Sachs to dump gasoline futures to drive down pump prices and boost GOP prospects in November.

Goldman runs the most important commodity index, which serves as the basis for about $60 billion in investment funds. And the firm has been selling gasoline holdings. "Goldman has been liquidating its gasoline position, and that's put a lot of pressure on prices," said Citigroup Inc. oil analyst Doug Leggate. "It's a very large part of why gasoline has fallen."

Other theories include the debts that the Saudis owe the Bush family, but not mentioned in my quick galnce over is the fact that the US govt has not been buying stores for its winter oil subsidies for the poor and elderly, which it usually does at this time, for cost-savings reasons. This can have a huge impact in a commodity market where the price is defined by the price of the last barrel of oil currently in demand.

In a market system, all prices are pegged the same, so the first sold costs as much as the last, so if the last exceeds supplies all the prices rise precipitously. Hence the influence a relatively small amount of oil demand can have on a market system. Of course, as any economist knows... you must pay the piper in the end, but as far as the Bush crime family is concerned, better you pay them (more) after November than before.

Olbermann: It is not the Democrats whose inaction in the face of the enemy you fear

Mr. President, these new lies go to the heart of what it is that you truly wish to preserve.

It is not our freedom, nor our country — your actions against the Constitution give irrefutable proof of that.

You want to preserve a political party's power. And obviously you'll sell this country out, to do it.

These are lies about the Democrats piled atop lies about Iraq which were piled atop lies about your preparations for Al-Qaeda.

To you, perhaps, they feel like the weight of a million centuries.

As crushing. As immovable.

They are not.

If you add more lies to them, you cannot free yourself, and us, from them.

But if you stop — if you stop fabricating quotes, and building straw-men, and inspiring those around you to do the same — you may yet liberate yourself and this nation.

Please, sir, do not throw this country's principles away because your lies have made it such that you can no longer differentiate between the terrorists and the critics.