Cool Michael, good to see DFA groups rebuilding.

I'm hoping to attend an event Saturday but just heard my dad's in the hopsital so don't know what part of the country to sign up in.

Michael and other hosts for Saturday's events - be sure to let attendees know about the Obama campaign's Unite for Change events the following Sat. June 28

http://my.barackobama.com/uniteforchange

Cafe Bohemia - used to be a place in downtown Chicago on west Adams with that name that served exotic meat, such as lion, buffalo, antelope, snake. Ugh been long gone but it was pretty popular.

Yummy - kolachies.

drilling, but none mentioned that 80% of the leases they already have are not being utilized.

On the Supreme Court decision, it's really a bit strange that Republicans fail to

recognize that the rights are God-given and the Constitution merely says the agents

of government can't take them away.  The Bill of Rights doesn't give or guarantee

human or civil rights; it enumerates SOME of them and asserts they can't be

infringed upon, except under very special conditions.  That's what the justice was

referring to when he made the point about the detainees being kept up to six years.

After that length of time a condition is no longer special.

Did you all notice that the GAO ruled that the tanker contract should be rebid? I think Boeing made a pretty good case that the Air Force didn't stick to the criteria it set out in the RFP.

you'll remember this diary, right?

KOS

Gotta watch Countdown. Rachael will probably be hosting it tonight. But Keith will have a special comment tomorrow night about McCain.

Checking out with kolachys on the brain, but first this:

Kolachy (Slovakian Jellied Pastries)

1 cup butter, slightly softened
1 (8-ounce) package cream cheese, slightly softened
2 cups flour
1 (6-ounce) container apricot filling
Confectioners sugar


Blend butter, cream cheese and flour. Form into 2-inch diameter rolls, wrap in plastic wrap and chill overnight.

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Slice cookie dough 1/4 inch thick and arrange 2 inches apart on cookie sheets. Push down with your thumb in center of each slice to make a slight indentation. Fill each indentation with 1 teaspoon of apricot filling.

Bake for 10 minutes, or until golden brown. Cool on a wire rack. Dust with confectioners sugar to taste.

Makes 3 dozen

Enjoy!

The Lies of John McCain

Ahmadinejad: Oil Crisis “Fake,” Result of Dollar Devaluation

Hashem Kalentari
Reuters
June 18, 2008

Editor’s note: It should be obvious where this one will lead — Ahmadinejad says the oil crisis is fake and high prices are the result of dollar devaluation. Of course, this will give neocons inside and outside of the corporate media the excuse to proclaim all talk about high gas prices being the result of the devaluation of the dollar as little more than a conspiracy theory — and an antisemitic conspiracy theory to boot.

http://democracyforamerica.com/blog_posts/25629-calpers-dont-invest-in-war-profiteers-thurs-press-conference#1206111

The local news just reported that the aluminum from guard rails in Oakland and other East Bay locations is being stolen as quickly as it can be replaced.  The price has gone up 800% since last year.  That is just nutso.

Arnold on the news in his cream colored suit and pink tie (I am not kidding) promising to not let California off shore drilling take place.  Boxer is on too basically saying that McCain has to be kidding.  Wish he was.

I think Ahmadinejad has something.  Also Michael Greenberger.  Michael Greenberger testified to Congress it's all about oil futures trading.  The trading occurs in Atlanta at ICE, not on Wall Street.  It is mysteriously regulated by some entity in London or perhaps in Dubai.  There are former Enron traders doing it.  Anyone in California in the summer of 2000 will remember huge electric bills thanks to the deregulation of the electric suppliers and the resulting market manipulation by Enron, whose fabled story we are surely familiar with.  Well, they're doing it to us again, only this time it's world wide.

uesday, June 3, 2008 15:43 PDT

The London-Dubai loophole

Regular readers of How the World Works know that I have long been obsessed with the fact that traders who buy and sell energy futures on the Atlanta-based IntercontinentalExchange (ICE) operate free from government scrutiny, giving them ample opportunity to game the system without anyone knowing better. This is the so-called Enron loophole, a provision in the Commodity Futures Modernization Act pushed through at the last minute by Sen. Phil Gramm in 2000.

As soon as Michael Greenberger, a former director of the Division of Trading and Markets at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission during the Clinton administration, began testifying before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation's hearing on "energy market manipulation and federal enforcement regimes" on Tuesday, it became clear that he knew more about this topic than possibly anyone else alive. So I immediately located a copy of the written testimony he supplied to the Senate Committee laying out his position in full -- 32 pages of tight argument ripping the CFTC to shreds as a feeble, incompetent regulatory agency fully controlled by the industry it supposedly oversees. Greenberger makes the best case I've yet seen for understanding how speculators have been given free rein to romp in the oil futures market. If this is an issue upon which you would like to become more informed, Greenberger's testimony is essential reading.

http://www.salon.com/tech/htww/2008/06/03/the_london_dubai_loophole/

(The Salon article links to Greenberger's testimony - it's a PDF file.)

We could go to cars powered by natural gas, of which we have oodles, or we could go to electric cars (I watched who killed the electric car last night - sure sounds like the auto industry had it in for it) and use Schweitzer's coal fields to extract oil to make electricity - we have a lot of that too.  Or we could get with public transportation like NYC or Europe.  As Schweitzer says -- we built an atom bomb, we went to the moon, all we need to solve the energy crisis is to put our minds to it.

...this is an outstanding article - not too nerdy - but from the mouths of the pioneers it tells the story of how we got to where we are with the WWW.  The pictures are great - to me it's like looking at Galileo or Copernicus or something -- these men will (or should) go down in schoolbooks.

http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2008/07/internet200807

Here's a snippet:

Robert Metcalfe, who worked on the Arpanet at M.I.T., went on to invent Ethernet and to found 3Com.

 

Bob Metcalfe: Imagine a bearded grad student being handed a dozen AT&T executives, all in pin-striped suits and quite a bit older and cooler. And I’m giving them a tour. And when I say a tour, they’re standing behind me while I’m typing on one of these terminals. I’m traveling around the Arpanet showing them: Ooh, look. You can do this. And I’m in U.C.L.A. in Los Angeles now. And now I’m in San Francisco. And now I’m in Chicago. And now I’m in Cambridge, Massachusetts—isn’t this cool? And as I’m giving my demo, the damned thing crashed.

And I turned around to look at these 10, 12 AT&T suits, and they were all laughing. And it was in that moment that AT&T became my bête noire, because I realized in that moment that these sons of bitches were rooting against me.

To this day, I still cringe at the mention of AT&T. That’s why my cell phone is a T-Mobile. The rest of my family uses AT&T, but I refuse.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/religion/2008-06-18-obama-evangelicals_N.htm?csp=34

It's a move that's caught off guard some conservative evangelicals, who say they are surprised and dismayed to see a progressive-minded politician attempting to conscript their troops. At the same time, they say Sen. John McCain has done little to court their affections.

"I've never seen anything quite like it before," said evangelical author Stephen Mansfield, who wrote The Faith of George W. Bush and has a forthcoming similar book about Obama.

"To be running against a dyed-in-the-wool Republican, and to be reaching into the Christian community as wisely and knowledgeably as (Obama) is — understanding their terms and their values — is just remarkable."

...

http://www.theledger.com/article/20080614/news/806140371&tc=yahoo

Barack Obama Fields Questions From Christian Leaders

The Illinois senator encourages a frank discussion in the private meeting.

new threaD