The Saudis are going to increase oil production. Again. This is the third production increase in less than two months and I'm betting it will have the same negligible effect as the last two. Call me a pessimist, but I don't think we're going to see any significant decreases in the price of oil. Ever. We very well may be in the final stages before Peak Oil, characterized by rapidly increasing demand being (barely) met by smaller and smaller increases in production.

Of course eventually we reach cross over, demand outpaces production and that spells trouble-with-a-capital-tee for America. Our entire way of life is not only dependent on oil, it is dependent on cheap oil. Heretofore plentiful, light, sweet, easy-to-refine crude oil allowed us to build a sprawling, interstate-highway, suburban infrastructure around an economy that is reliant on rampant consumerism and growth for viability. While our current recession reveals our economy's vulnerability to the loss of that cheap oil, Peak Oil renders it completely unsustainable. (At least short of using our military to, say, invade and occupy an oil-rich country in order to maintain access to supplies, and even that can only provide a temporary relief.)

Meanwhile our short-sighted, but steely-eyed, oilman preznit is still busy pimping ANWR to the oil companies as a solution to all our economic problems. Check it:

On Wednesday, President Bush asked Congress to permit drilling for oil in deep water off the U.S. coast to combat rising oil prices.

He also renewed his demand that Congress allow oil drilling in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, clear the way for more refineries and encourage efforts to recover oil from shale in areas like the Green River Basin, which encompasses parts of Colorado, Utah and Wyoming.

"In the short run, the American economy will continue to rely largely on oil, and that means we need to increase supply here at home," Bush said in a Rose Garden statement.

On what planet does that make any sense whatsoever? It would be at least ten years before a single drop of oil from ANWR could be brought to market and perhaps twice that long before what meager supply is actually available there could be fully exploited. The claim that drilling anywhere is a "short run" solution is an outright lie.

And in the long run too, for that matter. US Energy independence is a myth. Aside from the fact that any new oil produced would of course be sold into the ever-growing demand of the world market, with no guarantee that any of it would wind up in American gas tanks, the truth is we don't have any massive supplies of the good stuff, the cheap, easily obtained, easily refined oil that our economy actually runs on. If we did, we never would have become so dependent on Mid-East oil in the first place.

Though Peak Oil may not be upon us, it is most certainly coming and we need to begin preparing for it. It will require some real leadership from our government, politicians with the courage to give the American people bad news. It will be necessary to both down-size and re-structure our economy. It means the end of superpower. America will be forced to take a step down in the world, become less authoritarian, become, in essence more democratic on a world scale. We can do it voluntarily or have it forced upon us, but it will happen. Our only real choice is whether it is a gradual and controlled decline or a violent and bloody fall. Down a hill or off a cliff.

Right now our leaders, both Republican and Democrat are racing us toward that cliff, wasting time and resources, spending our future maintaining the illusion of a past that no longer exists and never will again. The longer we try to maintain the illusion the more precipitous our fall will be. Only genuine leadership will get us where we need to go. We'll have to change the way we do business; we'll have to change the way we do everything. It will require the introduction of a new form of conservatism based not on runaway capitalism, religious dogma and gay-bashing, but on, you know, actually being conservative.

Dammit! Another spineless capitulation to a lame-duck preznit sporting an approval rating below 30%. Another step down the road to fascism. This time they are retroactively legalizing dubya's warrantless (i.e. illegal) wire-tapping program, granting immunity to the telecom companies that participated in it.

Under the surveillance agreement, which is expected to be approved today by the House and next week by the Senate, telecoms could have privacy lawsuits thrown out if they show a federal judge that they received written assurance from the Bush administration that the spying was legal.
[...]
Caroline Frederickson, a lobbyist for the American Civil Liberties Union, said, "The telecom companies simply have to produce a piece of paper we already know exists, resulting in immediate dismissal."

Thirty-some years ago Richard Nixon declared that anything the president orders is, by definition, legal. His abuse of presidential power led that long-ago Congress to draw up articles of impeachment and Nixon was forced to resign in disgrace. But this Congress, this Democrat-controlled Congress, faced with virtually the same egomaniacal and unconstitutional over-reaches, chose to protect their corporate overlords instead of our Constitution. If I could have one wish right now, it would be that I could dig up Nixon's corpse and force every Congressman who voted for this bill to kiss his mummified ass on national television.

I couldn't help but laugh listening to dubya haughtily complain about today's US Supreme Court ruling that the constitution still applies to the preznit. He fell back on one of his old fear-mongering favorites, vaguely implying the decision might adversely affect his ability to protect Amurkins from the evil, brown, Muslim hordes. See, he can't save us if the Supreme Court keeps taking away all the special powers he granted himself as war preznit.

More specifically, the court ruled that prisoners have rights, the president does not have the authority to just lock people up indefinitely without a trial. Sadly, I remember a time when this was not a novel concept in America. In fact, for the America I learned about in my public school social studies classes, the one with three equal branches of government following the rule of law, by the people and for the people and all that, the idea that the president is not above the law would have been common knowledge. I sometimes wonder if that America ever really existed.

Here's the scary part. This was a 5-4 decision. That's right, this man, of whom less than 30% of Americans approve and the rest of the world universally despises is just one Supreme Court Justice appointment removed from assuming essentially dictatorial powers in pursuance of his War on Terra. This absolute shit-stain of a world leader and his neo-con handlers are still this close (holds thumb and forefinger slightly apart) to rendering our democracy as efficacious as that of Pakistan.

I've been digging around trying to find more information on the Status of Forces Agreement currently being negotiated between the US and Iraqi governments, but very few details are available. From McClatchy:

The negotiations are shrouded in secrecy and Iraqi officials said they'd been instructed by American officials not to discuss the details.

Uh-oh. I smell yet another neo-con foreign policy disaster in the making. And then, from Juan Cole, I learn this so-called "security agreement" is being negotiated directly between dubya and Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, bypassing both countries legislative bodies:

(On both the Iraqi and American side, this agreement is being characterized as a mere understanding between two executives. It is not being categorized as a treaty and there is no plan to submit it either to the Iraqi parliament or to the US Congress. It seems that the Bush team hopes it will take on the force of law just by virtue of existing and having been signed by the two leaders.)

It looks like our preznit holds the same (lack of) respect for the Iraqi constitution that he does our own. Sigh. Lately I've grown so very weary of this administration's complete contempt for the rule of law that I hardly have the energy to rant about it any more. (I just want it to be over, for dubya and company to be gone.) But this transparent end-run around the two-thirds majority Senate approval required for ratification of treaties really gores my ox, and I don't know why. Compared to some of the other shenanigans they've pulled, this latest be-shitting of our constitution seems pretty tame. This is after all, the administration that has successfully legalized the centuries-old crimes of kidnapping and torture by redefining them as "extraordinary rendition" and "enhanced interrogation techniques."

In fact, now that I think about it, it's the amateurishness of this attempt to force dubya's policies onto the next administration that strikes me most. All the smart rats have left the ship. The administration that once weakened pollution standards with the Clear Skies Initiative and granted logging companies access to federal land with the Healthy Forests Initiative is left with rats just capable enough to pick up a thesaurus, grab the first synonym listed for treaty and pretend it has a different meaning.

Sadly, they will still get away with it. Most of America is too intellectually lazy to pay attention to what their government is doing. Besides, it looks like the latest American Idol contest winner may be dating one of the contestants from a previous show!!! And Brittany is skinny again!!!

Meanwhile, the Iraqi citizenry are paying attention. And they are not happy. All dubya's empty (headed) rhetoric about spreading freedom and democracy in Iraq is about to bite him in the ass. Muqtada al-Sadr is going to wind up as Iraq's Patrick Henry. From CNN:

Some Shiite and Sunni Muslim leaders in Iraq -- able to agree on little else -- are united in their opposition to a prospective long-term security agreement between their country's government and the United States.
Many Iraqis suspect it could lead to the establishment of bases, a long-term presence of American troops, and a weakening of Iraqi government control of foreign troops.

What's the Arabic translation for "Duh!"? Of course it will lead to the establishment of bases and the long-term presence of American troops. The sole purpose of this "agreement" is to provide some degree of legitimacy and permanence to our occupation of Iraq. Although they've taken down their website, the PNAC dream of American hegemonic control of the Middle East is still very much alive. More from Juan Cole:

Unlike the Sadrists, who reject the agreement altogether, al-Hayat says that ISCI simply has problems with some specific provisions. For instance, it objects to US troops being able to arrest Iraqis at will and hold them, and to be able to use deadly force at will without coordinating with the Iraqi government. It also objects to extraterritoriality (immunity from prosecution in Iraqi courts) for American troops, civilians and private security guards.

And more from CNN:

Al-Sadr's chief Shiite political rival, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, said only Iraqis should control Iraq.
"From the beginning, we were and we still insist on the importance of not having any resolution that can challenge our national sovereignty," al-Hakim said.
Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi, a leader in Iraq's largest Sunni Arab bloc, worries a security agreement could compromise Iraqi sovereignty, which he calls a "red line that should not be bypassed."
A U.S. diplomat in Baghdad tried to allay those fears.
"These are bilateral negotiations between two sovereign countries," said U.S. Embassy spokeswoman Mirembe Nantongo. "They are still very much in process. We are determining what will work for us, and the Iraqis are determining what will work for them.
"As with all negotiations, the resulting agreement will have to satisfy the interests of both countries. Our focus is to achieve an agreement that is fully consistent with Iraq's sovereignty."

Can you believe the gall of those Iraqis? Thinking they are a sovereign nation just because dubya has been going around calling them one for a few years? Just to be sure, I looked up sovereign in an on-line dictionary. It still means independent and self-governing, but I'll keep checking it. If dubya gets any of his smart rats back, it could mean US colony quicker than you can say 100-year oil lease.

It's good to be back in Misery. I've been home now for 8 days and the neurons in my forebrain are finally beginning to fire again, waking from the self-protective vegetative state they had slipped into during my extended stay in Oklahoma. I've been self-medicating with fine German hops and I feel confident that I will fully recover, but I can't help wondering how close I came to:



I spent the better part of 4 months in Oklahoma, but not in the wide open cattle country with town names right out of the Louis L'Amour books I read as a youth. No, I was living in a seedy part of Oklahoma City. An area with no sidewalks, but many pedestrians, people who walked in the street out of necessity, because they could not afford a car. Others drove old, smoke-belching heaps with trash bag windows and trunk lids held closed with rope. They drove on potholed, washboard roads and sent their children to failing schools. And yet, when asked about politics, they would invariably parrot the latest right-wing noise-machine talking points about how liberals are ruining this country and more tax cuts are the only solution to our economic woes.

After a while I stopped asking. Prolonged exposure to cognitive dissonance of that magnitude gave rise to a great weariness in me. Soul-sucking fatigue. It's much better now, but I'm not whole yet. I'm still dreaming in beige, the color of despair.