After a closer examination of Leonardo Maugeri’s Newsweek article, I found this gem:

Today the average recovery rate for oil is about 35 percent of the estimated “oil in place,” which means that only 35 barrels out of 100 may be brought to the surface. And only a part of those 35 barrels is considered “proven reserves,” which means they are immediately available for production and commercialization. The role of technology is critical. Over the decades, technology has greatly expanded the quantity of oil that can be extracted, through the injection of water and natural gas as well as horizontal drilling, hydraulic fracturing and more. All this progress has boosted the average recovery rate, which was only around 20 percent as late as 30 years ago, and less than 15 percent 60 years ago. In the future, further gains are expected from technologies that are still in their infancy.
Simply put, new exploration methods have increased existing reserves over time, even without any new discoveries. The oil literature is full of examples. A most astonishing one is the Kern River field in California, discovered in 1899. In 1942 its “remaining” reserves were estimated at 54 million barrels. Yet from 1942 to 1986 it produced 736 million barrels, and still had another 970 million “remaining.”

Here’s what I said in the first article:

I remember how the extremists predicted that the Alaskan Pipeline would destroy the caribou herds for a few measly years of crude oil. Thirty years later, they’re still pumping it through that original pipeline, with no end in sight. (continue reading post »)

So says this CAIR News Brief. Follow this link to read the entire text of the editorial. Forgive me if I don’t agree with this editorial’s assessment.

President Carter has done what few American politicians have dared to do: speak frankly about the Israel-Palestine conflict. He has done this nation, and the cause of peace, an enormous service by focusing attention on what he calls “the abominable oppression and persecution in the occupied Palestinian territories, with a rigid system of required passes and strict segregation between Palestine’s citizens and Jewish settlers in the West Bank.”

What the editorialist doesn’t talk about is that Israeli policies would change if terrorist groups like Hamas and al-Aqsa and Fatah didn’t use those areas for initiating terrorist attacks from. What the editorialist doesn’t bother considering is that Israel established policies designed to protect Israelis. But that’s of little or no consequence to this editorialist, or CAIR for that matter.

In Israel’s history, no Arab-led party has ever been asked to join a coalition government. And, among scores of Jewish ministers, there has only ever been one Arab minister, of junior rank.

Might this history have something to do with the fact that Arab-led parties couldn’t be trusted to work as part of the team in strengthening Israel’s right to exist?

I’d further suggest that Carter hasn’t contributed anything meaningful to the Israeli-Palestinian debate because he’s relied on revisionist history and pure fantasy. I’d support that with the fact that he isn’t even man enough to debate Alan Dershowitz on the subject. If Carter had the truth on his side, he should welcome a debate so that he could win the argument. If Carter had the truth on his side, he’d welcome a debate so that he could win the argument. He won’t do that because he knows he’d get taken to the proverbial woodshed by Prof. Dershowitz.

Technorati Tags: Jimmy Carter, Palestine, Israel, Hamas, Al Aqsa

Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog

That’s the main message from this Newsweek article. I’ve never bought into the environmental extremists’ claims of just how much oil is left under the earth’s surface. Here’s a key section in Newsweek’s article:

How much oil lies beneath the Earth’s crust? The only thing we know for sure is that history is littered with estimates so far off the mark, usually below the mark, that they border on the comical. In the 1920s, for instance, the Anglo-Persian Oil Co. (now BP) refused to take a stake in Saudi Arabia, thinking that the country didn’t hold a single drop of oil. In 1919, the U.S. Geological Survey predicted that the United States would run out of oil in nine years. Yet by the time nine years had passed, huge discoveries, topped by the Black Giant field in Texas, had created a massive oil glut that almost destroyed the industry. In the 1970s, the consensus turned grim again: oil production would peak in the mid-1980s and then drop precipitously. A famous CIA report predicted the “rapid exhaustion” of accessible fields, while President Jimmy Carter warned that oil wells were “drying up all over the world.” Instead, in 1986, oil prices collapsed in the midst of a huge supply boom, as they had done many times before.

I’m willing to give the early oil drillers the benefit of the doubt because they didn’t have the technology to accurately predict what lied beneath the earth. I’m totally unwilling to give today’s naysayers that same benefit. Instead, I’ll rip the environmental extremists for lying through their teeth about the supply of oil.

I remember how the extremists predicted that the Alaskan Pipeline would destroy the caribou herds for a few measly years of crude oil. Thirty years later, they’re still pumping it out of Prudhoe Bay from along Alaska’s North Slope, with no end in sight. (continue reading post »)

That’s what an Iraqi judge ruled Tuesday, according to this AP article.

Iraq’s highest appeals court on Tuesday upheld Saddam Hussein’s death sentence and said he must be hanged within 30 days for the killing of 148 Shiites in the central city of Dujail. The sentence “must be implemented within 30 days,” chief judge Aref Shahin said. “From tomorrow, any day could be the day of implementation.”

It’s amazing that a court would rule that decisively and with that specificity. Let’s just say that that isn’t typical in American courts. This is further proof that the Iraqis are governing themselves within the framework of the constitution that they wrote and that they ratified.

Under Iraqi law, the appeals court decision must be ratified by President Jalal Talabani and Iraq’s two vice presidents. Talabani opposes the death penalty but has in the past deputized a vice president to sign an execution order on his behalf, a substitute that was legally accepted.

I can’t wait to watch this execution on TV or on the internet. If ever there was a man deserving of execution, the “Butcher of Baghdad” would certainly be at or near the top of the list. Based on all the mass graves that were found; based on all the heinous acts that he sanctioned on his own people during Operation Desert Storm, my only regret is that this didn’t happen 20 years sooner.

The appeals court also upheld death sentences for Barzan Ibrahim, Saddam’s half brother and intelligence chief during the Dujail killings, and Awad Hamed al-Bandar, head of Iraq’s Revolutionary Court, which issued the death sentences against the Dujail residents. The appeals court concluded the sentence of life imprisonment given to former vice president Taha Yassin Ramadan was too lenient and returned his file to the High Tribunal. Ramadan was convicted of premeditated murder in the Dujail case. “We demand that he be sentenced to death,” said Shahin, the appeals judge.

It’s good to see that the Iraqis will finally get justice for the oppression they lived under Saddam’s tyrannical regime.

Technorati Tags: Saddam Hussein, Death Penalty, Mass Graves

Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog

Religion and morality command every individual to do the right thing by helping people who have fallen upon hard times. But charity is not the same thing as decreeing that such people are entitled to an equal share of everyone’s wealth.

Liberal-socialist-progressive critics charge that questioning the welfare state amounts to a mean-spirited policy of dumping the needy into the streets to provide funds for tax-cuts that benefit only the wealthy.

Such questioning, however, is mean-spirited only if one assumes that the Federal government is the sole source of charity.

In fact, from 1620 to 1933, all public welfare activity was at the state and local levels, primarily through churches, local charity groups, immigrant societies, and fraternal organizations like the Elks and Shriners. Those groups operated hospitals and schools for the disabled and the sick. For a few cents in weekly dues per household, they provided social insurance to support widows, orphans, and the disabled. Members in good standing with their fraternal and sisterly organizations would be cared for and supported by them in times of difficulty.

Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal deliberately pushed this great network of mutual-help organizations into oblivion by more than tripling taxes and forcing everyone to join Social Security. In contrast, present-day private organizations like the Salvation Army are far more effective and much less costly than any governmental programs, Federal or local.

Killing the private mutual-support network was part of the plan, announced in Roosevelt’s first inaugural address, to implement Mussolini’s brand of socialism: Fascist state corporatism.

In order to do so, it was necessary to render nugatory the 9th and 10th Amendments of the Bill of Rights. Political power was stripped from the states and local governments and collectivized at the national level. In 1933, when FDR took office, more than 70% of all governmental taxation and spending were at state and local levels; the New Deal reversed that position.
(continue reading post »)

This letter was emailed to us by a reader and legal immigrant, and we think it deserves to be published in full for all to read.

—

Dear President Rosa Rosales*:

My name is Paul Purdue and I live in Fairview NC. I am disgusted to read this below:

(Reuters) - U.S. Hispanic groups and activists on Thursday called for a moratorium on workplace raids to round up illegal immigrants, with some saying they were reminiscent of Nazi crackdowns on Jews in the 1930s.

They accused the Department of Immigration and Customs Enforcement of “racial profiling,” or selective enforcement against Hispanics, for arresting 1,300 workers on immigration violations in December 12 raids at meatpacking plants in six states.

“We are demanding an end to these immigration raids, where they are targeting brown faces. That is major, major racial profiling, and that cannot be tolerated,” said Rosa Rosales, president of the League of United Latin American Citizens, at a news conference.

“This unfortunately reminds me of when Hitler began rounding up the Jews for no reason and locking them up,” Democratic Party activist Carla Vela said. “Now they’re coming for the Latinos, who will they come for next?”

Tell her they’re ‘coming for’ Illegal Aliens?

Do you think we Americans are going to round up all Hispanics and murder them, like Hitler did to the Jews? I think you owe all Americans a apology for this insult.

Do you think it’s right to award illegal immigrants the same rights as American citizens when they have already broken the law, by stealing American’s identities and doing jobs that LEGAL Americans would do.

To dare think we should obey the law here!

Do you think it’s right for illegal Hispanics immigrants from the south to simply walk across the border taking advantage of our good will, making a mockery of the legal entry process.

Do you think you should as a group for Legal Hispanics, have no problem with the fact illegal immigrants are deported, or that businesses that employ those illegal immigrants should be fined or put out of business.

Do you think it’s right for Legal or illegal Hispanics immigrants not to learn the English language, or not to assimilate,

English is the language of America. English is the language of business.

English is the common language that unites us all as a people.

Bi-lingualism or multi-linguilism is causing the destruction of the American way of life, because if people cannot communicate in a common language it leads to segregation.

As a recently naturalized U.S. citizen of this great country,I went through so much paperwork; you cannot believe. It has taken me over 6 long years, and thousands of dollars, to get to where I am today. One form alone from the INS cost $470.00 to submit for consideration.

As I began this process, I was amazed at the costs involved. Each form had to be accompanied by a check. In addition, my wife and I were required to take many trips back and forth to the Charlotte INS office (now under the auspices of the Dept. of Homeland Security) because there is no office available to serve the Asheville area, despite there being many illegals in this area. (continue reading post »)

“So, how is it that nobody else ever seems to get called on the carpet for their lies and exaggerations? How is it, for instance, that every liberal from Ted Kennedy to Jesse Jackson can get away with pretending that American blacks are still living like slaves, and that four decades after the Civil Rights Act, the only thing keeping blacks out of the cotton fields are Democrats in Washington?

And, finally, how is it that Jimmy Carter, that sanctimonious phony who was a disaster during his four years in the White House and a disgrace in the quarter of a century since, can pass himself off as equal parts statesman and saint?”

It is time to tell the truth. Either Jimmy Carter needs to be in a home for assisted living or he is a nut. I believe he is a nut. He had a failed term in the White House–and ever since then he wanted to prove why he failed. His economics destroyed jobs and families. His foreign policy enslaved millions. His defense policies killed millions. But he believes he was right, so why not denounce those that call terrorists, “terrorists”, instead of the Carter term, “freedom fighter”. If high taxes were bad, why not higher taxes to see if he just didn’t raise them enough.
(continue reading post »)

For decades Jimmy Carter has continually taken the side of Arab countries and opposed the position of Israel. Most of us suspected an anti-Israel and even an anti-semitic bias in the former President. Now the truth comes out. While he obviously is both anti-Israel and anti-Jewish, we now find out that his foundation has, from its inception, been financed by Arabs. Arutz Sheva, the Israel National News reports:

(IsraelNN.com) Former American President Jimmy Carter’s activist foundation received hundreds of millions of dollars from Arab countries, the Washington Times reported. The Bank of Credit and Commerce International, founded by Pakistani Agha Hasan Abedi, helped the ex-President establish the Carter Center.

Abedi had said he wanted the bank to be “the best bridge to help the world of Islam, and the best way to fight the evil influence of the Zionists.”

But wait, there’s more….

The Washington Times reports:

To understand what feeds former president Jimmy Carter’s anti-Israeli frenzy, look at his early links to Arab business.
Between 1976-1977, the Carter family peanut business received a bailout in the form of a $4.6 million, “poorly managed” and highly irregular loan from the National Bank of Georgia (NBG). According to a July 29, 1980 Jack Anderson expose in The Washington Post, the bank’s biggest borrower was Mr. Carter, and its chairman at that time was Mr. Carter’s confidant, and later his director of the Office of Management and Budget, Bert Lance.
At that time, Mr. Lance’s mismanagement of the NBG got him and the bank into trouble. Agha Hasan Abedi, the Pakistani founder of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), known as the bank “which would bribe God,” came to Mr. Lance’s rescue making him a $100,000-a-year consultant. Abedi then declared: “we would never talk about exploiting his relationship with the president.” Next, he introduced Mr. Lance to Saudi billionaire Gaith Pharaon, who fronted for BCCI and the Saudi royal family. In January 1978, Abedi paid off Mr. Lance’s $3.5 million debt to the NBG, and Pharaon secretly gained control over the bank.
Mr. Anderson wrote: “Of course, the Saudis remained discretely silent… kept quiet about Carter’s irregularities… [and] renegotiated the loan to Carter’s advantage.”

You can read the whole article here.

How anyone can reasonably believe the contents of his recent book in which he equates Israel with the South African apartheid, or how anyone can take this doddering old anti-semitic socialist/communist-loving hypocrite seriously is beyond me.

Cross-posted at Bear to the Right

Technorati Tags: Jimmy Carter,Israel,anti-semitism

Let’s hope that this NY Times article gets people’s attentions as to what the stakes are in Iraq.

The American military is holding at least four Iranians in Iraq, including men the Bush administration called senior military officials, who were seized in a pair of raids late last week aimed at people suspected of conducting attacks on Iraqi security forces, according to senior Iraqi and American officials in Baghdad and Washington.

The Bush administration made no public announcement of the politically delicate seizure of the Iranians, though in response to specific questions the White House confirmed Sunday that the Iranians were in custody.

Gordon D. Johndroe, the spokesman for the National Security Council, said two Iranian diplomats were among those initially detained in the raids. The two had papers showing that they were accredited to work in Iraq, and he said they were turned over to the Iraqi authorities and released. He confirmed that a group of other Iranians, including the military officials, remained in custody while an investigation continued, and he said, “We continue to work with the government of Iraq on the status of the detainees.”

Earlier, I talked about Iran built and supplied IED’s to al-Sadr’s Mahdi militia. Now the NY Times is reporting that Iran is supplying them with military advisers. To make matters worse, Gateway Pundit is reporting this (continue reading post »)

The socialistic welfare state is extolled by liberal-socialistic-progressives as more Christian then Christianity, because the welfare state purports to help the needy. So did Hitler’s National Socialism.

Traditional Christmas spirit, depicted in Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, was the warmth of family gatherings, friendship, and loving kindness to everyone.

Today, however, many people insist that socialism IS Christianity. It’s certainly true that the early churches established by the Apostle Paul grew rapidly, because people found there the Christian love and fellowship, as well as support for the poor, sick, elderly, and disabled, that was available nowhere else.

The socialist political state, however, is expressly atheistic and materialistic. There can therefore be no identity between Christianity and socialism, simply on the superficial basis that they nominally espouse some of the same objectives.

The collectivized compulsion of the socialistic state is exemplified by bureaucratic rules mandating certain conduct, described in tens of millions of regulations.

The spirit of Christmas is written in every individual human heart. We must soften our hearts and listen to God’s commands. We must look inward and ask ourselves what is the right thing to do. Going to the Federal rule books is no substitute.

From the purely practical viewpoint, there is also the historical fact that, before the New Deal in this country, those sorts of social needs were better cared for by families, churches, emigrant societies, the mutual-support organizations found in every community, and local governments, without the vast social destruction of the welfare state. Before 1933 there was, for example, no society-wide illegitimacy or single-parent problem and no vast horde of people who, for three of four generations, never sought work, preferring to make living on welfare their life’s career. (continue reading post »)