Friday, July 18, 2008
Thanks Dan...
Good old senior member of the journalism business, Dan Rather just handed the McCain campaign a gold plated gaffe. When discussing Jesse Jackson's Fox News comments, with Tiki Barber on MSNBC, he mentioned how one has to be ready to have anything taken out of context due to Internet video, and how people now have to be careful what they say. He then failed to follow his own good advice by lauding Jesse's history as a trailblazing black politician whose prior success helped pave the way for "Osama bin Laden".
Er, who? Gee, did you happen to mean Barack Obama? Even more strikingly no one on the show reacted. It's as if they didn't notice an error at all, sure Obama, Osama, anyone could confuse those two. It's bad enough that we have to deal with right wing funded media outlets making this "mistake" on a regular basis, without having supposedly neutral parties doing it as well. Now everytime some right winger does this, they'll just say they pulled a Rather. Clearly it must be ok to confuse the two even the media does it! So thanks Dan, for handing the Republicans a get out of jail free card for equating Obama with terrorism.
Er, who? Gee, did you happen to mean Barack Obama? Even more strikingly no one on the show reacted. It's as if they didn't notice an error at all, sure Obama, Osama, anyone could confuse those two. It's bad enough that we have to deal with right wing funded media outlets making this "mistake" on a regular basis, without having supposedly neutral parties doing it as well. Now everytime some right winger does this, they'll just say they pulled a Rather. Clearly it must be ok to confuse the two even the media does it! So thanks Dan, for handing the Republicans a get out of jail free card for equating Obama with terrorism.
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
June Oil prices, a revisitation of my oil price post...
In my earlier post on oil prices, I pointed out that oil prices were on track to reach another 6% monthly increase in price, or to roughly $133. The actual average price for oil in June reached $133.93, an increase of 6.8% over May's average price. So far this month we appear to be on track for another significant price increase. Oil prices are presently around $137 a barrel but have been as high as $145+ earlier this month. This illustrates some speculative volatility in the market, but the overall trend remains up in the face of supply declines, and continued worldwide demand growth.
Given the insatiable need for oil in the modern market economy, it is dificult to envision anything other than a steady climb upward for oil prices. Only a major world wide economic depression, would appear to have the necessary sting to significantly decrease oil prices, and in the event of that most people would probably have far more pressing concerns.
As Samuel L. said in Jurassic Park, "Hold on to your butts." We are in for a rough landing.
Given the insatiable need for oil in the modern market economy, it is dificult to envision anything other than a steady climb upward for oil prices. Only a major world wide economic depression, would appear to have the necessary sting to significantly decrease oil prices, and in the event of that most people would probably have far more pressing concerns.
As Samuel L. said in Jurassic Park, "Hold on to your butts." We are in for a rough landing.
