No matter which "side" you are on, this line from that article is funny:

[QUOTE]"When Mitt and I give that check," she said, "I actually cry."[/QUOTE]

:ouch:

There is that double-reading isn't there.

While I can honestly say I've never cried while giving tithing, I do get emotional on occasion when I think about those struggling for food, housing, education. But I have to admit I'm one of those softies.

[QUOTE=Xyzzy;309162]"When Mitt and I give that check," she said, "I actually cry." [/QUOTE]

It hurts so bad that it feels good? :devil:

Professional econo-ranter Karl Denninger [url=http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=210866]comments on Ryan's speech to the faithful[/url] last night:
[quote]Paul Ryan, for those who have been living in a cave for the last couple of years, has put forward two separate "budgets" that are nothing more than mythical claims just as are Obama's Unicorn-laden promises. The premise that we can somehow magically return to 5% GDP growth on a sequential basis for 30 years when the last 30 was all powered by debt expansion rather than production is a pure farce.

Never mind that an unbroken 30 year real expansion is fantasy-land material anyway; it presumes no recessions, no policy mistakes, no business cycles and no outside forces that might get in the way. It is thus the sort of thing that only exists in the movies -- or in Lyin' Ryan's mind.

The lies came especially-thick when it came to Medicare:
[i]
“The greatest threat to Medicare is Obamacare, and we’re going to stop it,” he said. “So our opponents can consider themselves on notice. In this election, on this issue, the usual posturing on the left isn’t going to work.”
[/i]
That would be nice but there was no promise to cage the medical industry -- literally, behind bars, once they refuse to stop their monopolist behavior after the legal exemptions they enjoy today are removed. Oh, yeah, I almost forgot -- there was no promise to remove those exemptions either.

That's because Ryan and Romney won't remove them.

See, Romney's litany is not that of Capitalism in the true sense -- that is, innovating and proving through that innovation increased productivity and thus an improved standard of living. Instead Romney is an utter expert in the abuse of leverage -- loading up an entity with debt and taking his skim off the top then leaving someone else with the bill to be paid.

In this he's a perfect match with the behavior of our Feral Government over the last 30 years, but unfortunately we're in the position as a nation of one of those over-indebted companies that is about to blow and Romney doesn't have time to add in more debt and take his skim first, as Bain did all too many times.[/quote]

Wikileaks has a right-wing counterpart, which is helping to detail how far government co-option of the media has gone:

[url=www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/aug/29/correspondence-collusion-new-york-times-cia]Correspondence and collusion between the New York Times and the CIA[/url]: [i]Mark Mazzetti's emails with the CIA expose the degradation of journalism that has lost the imperative to be a check to power[/i]
[quote]The rightwing transparency group, Judicial Watch, released Tuesday a new batch of documents showing how eagerly the Obama administration shoveled information to Hollywood film-makers about the Bin Laden raid. Obama officials did so to enable the production of a politically beneficial pre-election film about that "heroic" killing, even as administration lawyers insisted to federal courts and media outlets that no disclosure was permissible because the raid was classified.

Thanks to prior disclosures from Judicial Watch of documents it obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, this is old news. That's what the Obama administration chronically does: it manipulates secrecy powers to prevent accountability in a court of law, while leaking at will about the same programs in order to glorify the president.

But what is news in this disclosure are the newly released emails between Mark Mazzetti, the New York Times's national security and intelligence reporter, and CIA spokeswoman Marie Harf. The CIA had evidently heard that Maureen Dowd was planning to write a column on the CIA's role in pumping the film-makers with information about the Bin Laden raid in order to boost Obama's re-election chances, and was apparently worried about how Dowd's column would reflect on them...[/quote]
Full piece is well worth a read.

Stiglitz on Romney, tax avoidance, fairness and impact on society
 

[url]http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/economics-blog/2012/sep/03/mitt-romney-tax-avoidance-society[/url]

[QUOTE=ewmayer;309774]Wikileaks has a right-wing counterpart, which is helping to detail how far government co-option of the media has gone:

[URL="http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/aug/29/correspondence-collusion-new-york-times-cia"]Correspondence and collusion between the New York Times and the CIA[/URL]: [I]Mark Mazzetti's emails with the CIA expose the degradation of journalism that has lost the imperative to be a check to power[/I]

Full piece is well worth a read.[/QUOTE]It certainly [u]is[/u] worth a full read.

I've often seen the NYT characterized as leftist, but this article reveals it to be whoever-is-in-power-now-ist in a vital department that is supposed to act as an independent check on government power.

How reliable has the [i]Guardian[/i] been in the latter category?

[url]http://www.allegiancemusical.com/blog-entry/gorilla-their-midst[/url]



[url]http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=obama-romney-science-debate[/url]

Someone thinks Obama has laid the groundwork for an "October Surprise":

"Europe must wean IEA from dependence on US"
(IEA = International Energy Agency)

[URL]http://www.europeanenergyreview.eu/site/pagina.php?&id=3841[/URL]

[quote=Matthew Hulbert][B]European countries should firmly resist any move made by the US and G7 to release strategic oil reserves in the current situation. Such blatant interference in the market, which would clearly be made only for political (US electoral) purposes, would hurt the credibility of the International Energy Agency (IEA) and make a mockery of the IEA's ambition to become a truly global (rather than 'Western') organisation by extending its reach to China and India.[/B] ...

Storm clouds are gathering for a release of the strategic petroleum reserve to coincide with US presidential elections. Not because any release could currently be justified relative to fundamentals, but because Washington needs to make it to polling day (6 November) delivering two contradictory political imperatives: cheap ‘American oil’ and sanctions pressure on Iran.
...

Although missed by most analysts, the strategic reserve has been put on political standby at least since May 2012 when G7 ministers issued a [URL="http://www.g8.utoronto.ca/summit/2012campdavid/g8-oil.html"]communiqué[/URL] that said they “stand ready to call upon the International Energy Agency to take appropriate action to ensure that the market is fully and timely supplied”. Iran was the clear issue to hand; the IEA was directly enlisted as a geopolitical foot-soldier to help fight the sanctions war. What made the communiqué even more politically telling was that oil prices had already dropped back to $90/b at the time due to deep seated demand side concerns. Some commentators said the G7 [URL="http://www.evercorewealthmanagement.com/news/read.php?art=56"]"misread" the market[/URL], but this had nothing to do with misreading fundamentals: Washington was laying the political foundations to make entirely clear that it would use IEA reserves whenever deemed politically fit. President Obama has cleverly used the G7 to normalise the strategic reserve as a rational (and indeed logical) option to use whenever he wants to cool benchmark prices.[/quote]Hulbert seems to be saying that the release would not necessarily be from the U.S. strategic petroleum reserve, but could be from the strategic petroleum reserves of the 27 other IEA member countries ([URL]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_strategic_petroleum_reserves#International_Energy_Agency_reserves[/URL])
[quote]So wind the clock forward to the latest G7 meetings in late August (not to mention oil prices back above $115/b), and it comes as no surprise that the threat to use the reserve has not only been repeated, but heavily briefed to journalists to get the message out: We’re on the verge of a September release: Right here, right now.

That will probably prove to be a bluff as far as September is concerned. Provided Saudi Arabia maintains notional control of the market, September is merely the final round of Obama’s bluster to trick the market into lower prices, October will be the ‘play’ where action is taken. If nothing else, Washington will want to get far closer to polling day before orchestrating a release, precisely because the IEA only has one shot at this. Go too early, and Iran will make President Obama sweat all the way to the ballot box. The release [I]must[/I] be seen as an effective counter balance to Iran, not another ‘tried and failed’ sanctions strategy on the US electoral trail.

. . .[/quote]Personally, I think that if this "October Surprise" were released, it would be such an obvious manipulation as to spur immediate criticism and ridicule of Obama from both sides of the U.S. presidential campaign. (Of course, we already have plenty of criticism and ridicule from both sides of the U.S. presidential campaign, but in this case both sides would be anti-Obama.) Could it swing the result in some battleground state? I dunno. Does it look like a silly European idea about the U.S. election? Yes.

It should be remembered that besides speculation-driven crude prices, hurricanes, and the Iran situation, a good part of high fuel prices derives from reductions in refining volume.

[URL]http://in.reuters.com/article/2012/09/07/us-usa-oil-policy-idINBRE8861E920120907[/URL]

EDIT: The article cites concerns that a Strategic Petroleum Reserve release would have little effect on consumer products because of the refinery bottleneck.

[QUOTE=kladner;310746]It should be remembered that besides speculation-driven crude prices, hurricanes, and the Iran situation, a good part of high fuel prices derives from reductions in refining volume.

[URL]http://in.reuters.com/article/2012/09/07/us-usa-oil-policy-idINBRE8861E920120907[/URL]

EDIT: The article cites concerns that a Strategic Petroleum Reserve release would have little effect on consumer products because of the refinery bottleneck.[/QUOTE]Yes, but the only non-U.S. refinery shortage mentioned in the article is:
[quote=Reuters]the huge Amuay refinery in Venezuela, which has been partially shut since a deadly fire two weeks ago.[/quote]The article doesn't mention refinery shortage in any country other than the U.S. and Venezuela.

Furthermore, as the article points out:
[quote=Reuters]But the participation of European members offered an advantage: Unlike the U.S. reserve which is entirely crude oil, more than half of Europe's reserves are refined products.[/quote]So, refining need not even be done on half of Europe's reserves.

Note that "Strategic Petroleum Reserve" is the name of the U.S. reserve, and that term doesn't include non-U.S. reserves. That a Strategic Petroleum Reserve release would have little effect on consumer products does not necessarily imply that releases from other countries' reserves would also have little effect.

- - -

BTW, the 28 IEA member countries are listed here: [URL]http://iea.org/countries/membercountries/[/URL]