Obstruction of justice at Gitmo

What else could you call an order to interrogators there to destroy handwritten notes, specifically because of worries they might be called on to testify?

The lawyer for Toronto-born Omar Khadr, Lt. Cmdr. William Kuebler, said the instructions were included in an operations manual shown to him by prosecutors and suggest the U.S. deliberately thwarted evidence that could help terror suspects defend themselves at trial.

Kuebler said he’s going to see dismissal of charges. If this were a civilian court, he’d have a great shot, I think. Don’t know about a military court, especially with all the politics overhanging this.

So now I say, yes, let’s have these show trials before November. And tie McCain/McSame to obstruction of justice in the name of torture.

Why Clinton lost – in one word

Iowa.

Specifically, the prognostication of advisors like Harold Ickes that she had an excellent chance of winning Iowa, combined with the orchestrated outrage that she might skip it.

She should have said “screw it” to the faux outrage, and like Bill in 1992, skipped it.

But, the decision to “cave” to Iowa Dems’ outrage and get back into full campaign mode there at a late stage showed, even before Dodd nailed her in the debate, that she was vulnerable.

It also showed her campaign still wasn’t organized. She didn’t have a series of talking points about WHY to stay out of Iowa.

Other possible factors? Dodd exposing her vulnerability to attack, not inevitability, specifically over then-New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s plan to give illegal immigrants drivers’ licenses.

As for the caucus vs. primary issue, the story linked above notes that she actually won the Nevada caucuses, so that’s a myth as much as reality.

Meanwhile, the New York Times has a round-up of pundits with their takes on her demise’s causes. Worth a read.

McCain’s latest lobbyist problem

This time, it’s on the foreign policy side. Randy Scheunemann gets paid well to advocated for independent countries from the former Soviet Union to try to join NATO. It happens to dovetail nicely with Schmuck Talk Express’™ desire to boot Russia from the G-8, so on he stays, at least for now.

Meanwhile, McCain’s policy toward Russia is more radical than anything Obama has proposed, and he pays a known neocon to be his chief flack.

George Soros on why oil prices are soaring

In a word, it’s called reflexivity. To use a relevant, non-Deepak Chopra analogy from quantum physics, by the act of buying commodities futures in certain size blocks at certain prices, etc., traders influence the future of those commodities.

Soros noted that in his talk to Congress last week.

The Oil Drum explains exactly what this means, as Soros shows why the neoclassical economics of the U. of Chicago, etc. is dead and needs to be replaced by behavioral economics in every American college and university.

And, it’s not just oil. As the graphic shows, all sorts of commodities are being inflated beyond reason.

Yes, it is likely that some precious metals are getting near world peaks in production, but “Peak Copper,” for example, has been less studied than Peak Oil.

Of course, since this time, agriculture futures have climbed more and more, too. One has to wonder how much of THIS is a bubble. And, a bubble with a head of steam behind it:

Commodities have not had a boom since the late 1970s, and until recently have played a minor role in general portfolio asset allocation. Combined with media coverage (e.g. Jim Rogers) and rapid growth in demand and tightening of supply, commodity markets have had explosive moves the last 5 years. Pension funds, sovereign wealth funds, university endowments and other index speculators have been allocating money away from stocks and bonds into commodities.

Soros doesn’t deny part of the problem actually is Peak Oil, though, so his words carry extra weight.

On the other hand, this is the man who single-handedly nearly wrecked the economies of several southeast Asian countries in 1998.

On the other hand to that, re his Congressional testimony, “To catch a thief …”

Kunstler – the Paul Revere of Peak Oil

James Howard Kunstler continues to sound the alarm of of how radically Peak Oil will change America. Unfortunately, too few people are listening.

The public, and especially the mainstream media, misunderstands the "peak oil" story. It's not about running out of oil. It's about the instabilities that will shake the complex systems of daily life as soon as the global demand for oil exceeds the global supply. These systems can be listed concisely:

• The way we produce food.
• The way we conduct commerce and trade.
• The way we travel.
• The way we occupy the land.
• The way we acquire and spend capital.
And there are others: governance, health care, education and more.

As the world passes the all-time oil production high and watches as the price of a barrel of oil busts another record, as it did last week, these systems will run into trouble. Instability in one sector will bleed into another.

Shocks to the oil markets will hurt trucking, which will slow commerce and food distribution, manufacturing and the tourist industry in a chain of cascading effects. Problems in finance will squeeze any enterprise that requires capital, including oil exploration and production, as well as government spending.

These systems are all interrelated. They all face a crisis. What's more, the stress induced by the failure of these systems will only increase the wishful thinking across our nation.

I’m not as alarmist about Peak Oil as Kunstler is. Nonetheless, I’m more alarmist than many of the people who he finds are still asleep at the switch.

It’s sad that the college students in many of his lectures still appear to believe in American exceptionalism. So much for social conservatives bete noire of the “liberal academia.” Would that it were liberal enough to actually challenge such beliefs.

Then, you have folks like Amory Lovins at the Rocky Mountain Institute. I criticize Lovins for something else than Kunstler does, namely, his wide-eyed optimism for the hydrogen economy.

What both Lovins and too-wet-behind-the-ears college students either fail to, or refuse to, recognize is that empires have fallen in the past and ours is no different.

That’s unless we, as a society, officially withdraw the statement our leaders made at a U.N. conference, and accept instead that the “American lifestyle” HAS TO BE up for negotiation.

The future of California will only come up dryland roses

Don’t expect new drought-related restrictions on development to be just a passing fancy.

Assuming everything is correct about how climate change is going to affect the Desert Southwest, water in southern California will get even tighter in the future. And, in neighboring Arizona and Nevada, too.

Eventually, either the federal government will take the voluntary lead in renegotiating the Colorado River Compact, or else one state is going to sue.

In all likelihood, it would be California suing to try to force the other two states of the Lower Colorado Basin to implement similar governing restrictions on development.