Senators turn back ID requirement for immigrant healthcareBesides, ACORN might be able to sign up the illegal aliens as new Democratic Party voters in New Mexico.- 09/30/09 01:03 PM ET
Senate Finance Committee Democrats rejected a proposed a requirement that immigrants prove their identity with photo identification when signing up for federal healthcare programs.
Finance Committee ranking member Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) said that current law and the healthcare bill under consideration are too lax and leave the door open to illegal immigrants defrauding the government using false or stolen identities to obtain benefits.
Grassley's amendment was beaten back 10-13 on a party-line vote.
The bill, authored by committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.), would require applicants to verify their names, places of birth and Social Security numbers. In addition, legal immigrants would have to wait five years, as under current law, after obtaining citizenship or legal residency to access federal healthcare benefits such as Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program or receive tax credits or purchase insurance through the exchange created by the legislation.
But the would not require them to show a photo ID, such as a drivers license. Without that requirement, the bill "remains dearly lacking when it comes to identification," Grassley said. "Frankly, I'm very perplexed as to why anyone would oppose this amendment," he said.
But Democratic Sen. Jeff Bingaman, who represents the border state of New Mexico, said that the type of fraud Grassley said he wants to prevent is highly uncommon. "The way I see the amendment, it's a solution without a problem," Bingaman said.
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Senators turn back ID requirement for immigrant healthcare
It would be against their Constitutional rights to require identification of any sort for any purpose... including identification. From The Hill
Monday, September 28, 2009
Western powers condemn Iran tests
Western powers to Iran: you're being naughty, naughty. But these are enlightened types who don't believe in spanking. Spare the rod and spoil the mullahs.
Western powers condemn Iran testsFootage from Iran's Press TV shows the Shahab-3 missile being tested
Western powers have condemned Iran for test-firing its most advanced long-range missiles, with the White House calling the move "provocative".
But the UK said the tests should not distract from international talks with Iran on its nuclear programme later this week and Russia urged restraint.
Iran tested missiles which Tehran says are capable of striking targets in Israel, state media reported on Monday.
It comes days after Tehran's disclosure of a second uranium enrichment plant.
Iran is due to hold crucial talks with the five UN Security Council members plus Germany in Geneva on Thursday on a wide range of security issues, including its nuclear programme.
Friday, September 25, 2009
Secret Iranian nuclear plant revealed
Does the "no pre-conditions" for negotiations still stand?
Secret Iranian nuclear plant revealed
By Edward Luce in Pittsburgh and James Blitz in London
Published: September 25 2009 10:16 | Last updated: September 25 2009 15:00
Barack Obama on Friday warned Iran to come clean about its suspected nuclear weapons programme following revelations it had built a second covert uranium enrichment facility that it had concealed from international inspectors.
Flanked by Gordon Brown, the UK prime minister, and Nicolas Sarkozy, the president of France, Mr Obama interrupted the start of the G20 global summit to issue a statement calling on Iran to “live up to its obligations”.
“The size and configuration of this facility is inconsistent with a peaceful programme,” said Mr Obama. “Iran is breaking rules that all nations must follow, endangering the global nonproliferation regime and denying its own people access to the opportunity they deserve.”
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Gates: Yes... No... Maybe?
Times change. Situations change. Allegiances change. Principles change. Morals change. So, why not change your mind every few years? Defense Sec. Gates seems pretty flexible. First we need strong defenses and technology... and then we can get by. Save one or two $ billion on a critical defense systems by not building them... who needs advanced fighter planes and long-rang missile defense... and round out those numbers on give-aways to political cronies.
A Pragmatist, Gates Reshapes Past Policies He Backed WASHINGTON — On his tenth day on the job, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates signed off on an ambitious if politically charged plan to build a new missile shield in Europe. Just two weeks later, he supported an even more wrenching decision to send additional American troops to Iraq, into a war that was not going well.
That was nearly three years, one president and a political lifetime ago. Now serving Barack Obama instead of George W. Bush, Mr. Gates just recommended jettisoning his own missile defense program in favor of a reformulated version and once again is wrestling with whether to send more troops abroad, in this case to Afghanistan.
Read more....
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Bombed Plot
Informed sources indicate that Attorney General Eric Holder may begin an investigation into the possible civil rights violation of Najibullah Zazi by over-zealous FBI agents. If found guilty, FBI agents could be imprisoned and face large civil fines.
Terror Suspect Had Bomb Guide, Authorities Say The central figure in what authorities describe as a widening inquiry into a possible plot to detonate explosives in the United States had been trained in weapons and explosives in Pakistan and, according to court papers released Sunday, had made nine pages of handwritten notes on how to make and handle bombs.
Read more....
One cannot be accused of a crime until it has been committed. Simply wanting to know how to build bombs while being Muslim is not sufficient reason for blatant ethnic profiling. Simply receiving training on explosives in Pakistan while on vacation is no reason for the FBI, CIA or Old Navy to place the label of terrorist on a young man.
How can we expect to have good relations with people who have different values if we constantly question their motives?
Thank goodness for people like Eric Holder.
Monday, September 21, 2009
Political Racism
It's interesting that President Obama is labeled an African-American. His sperm donor was African, but the mother and grandmother who raised him were white Americans. Yet his entire political persona only recognizes the sperm donor side and rejects the nurturing side.
Now the mass market story tellers say that those who oppose President Obama's policies are racist. Could it be that those who refuse to accept that the president is not "black" are the racists? Didn't the assignment of "black" to people of mixed racial backgrounds go out with Jim Crow?
Perhaps it is time that President Obama's white heritage get as much press time as his black heritage since he owes far more to the white heritage than the black. Then we can move beyond the nonsense of some pigmentation.
Opposition to President Obama has nothing to do with his genetic makeup as much as his political makeup.
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Now the mass market story tellers say that those who oppose President Obama's policies are racist. Could it be that those who refuse to accept that the president is not "black" are the racists? Didn't the assignment of "black" to people of mixed racial backgrounds go out with Jim Crow?
Perhaps it is time that President Obama's white heritage get as much press time as his black heritage since he owes far more to the white heritage than the black. Then we can move beyond the nonsense of some pigmentation.
Opposition to President Obama has nothing to do with his genetic makeup as much as his political makeup.
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Sunday, September 20, 2009
Putin calls for follow-up to missile U-turn
One small step for [a] man; one giant leap for mankind. Well, maybe not.
Putin calls for follow-up to missile U-turn
By Charles Clover in Moscow, Daniel Dombey in Washington and James Blitz in London
Published: September 18 2009 11:12 | Last updated: September 18 2009 19:33
Vladimir Putin, Russia’s prime minister, on Friday welcomed the Obama administration’s decision to scrap plans for a missile defence shield in Europe as a positive step – but he said that other US concessions should follow.
In his first public comments since the White House announced its decision on Thursday, Mr Putin said that he wanted the US to support efforts by Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan to join the World Trade Organisation.
Read more....
Obama rejects Russia missile link
President Obama has faced criticism about his decisionThe US president says his decision to shelve a missile defence plan was not dictated by Russian opposition.
"The Russians don't make determinations about what our defence posture is," Barack Obama told CBS television.
"If the by-product of it is that the Russians feel a little less paranoid... then that's a bonus," Mr Obama said.
Read more....
Here's how to see if this makes sense. Set up some missile launchers a ship floating in the Pacific Ocean in the lower southern hemisphere away from any land mass, but within an area that represents the geography of Iran. Then place an anti-missile destroyer the approximate the distance from Iran that it would be in the Mediterranean Sea.
The captain of the missile launcher ship would have a three-month window in which several missiles could be launched in any direction representing Israel to Eastern Europe. The anti-missile destroyer could not be on heightened alert and would receive the same monitoring information for the area representing Iran's geography that it would get from actual monitoring.
When the captain of the missile launching ship decided it was time to launch, he would give the order and the targeted area. The anti-missile destroyer would then have to demonstrate the ability of the system to eliminate the multiple-targeted missiles.
The reality is that Iran's only first-strike target is Israel. Iran has nothing to gain from a first-strike against any European country... at least until it had a reliable long-range missile system and nuclear weapons which then would give it enormous extortion leverage against countries that have generally given up the will to fight for much of anything... having long since given up the role of their protection to the U.S. in exchange for continuing insults toward the U.S. for its militaristic approach to the world.
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Thursday, September 17, 2009
Obama to Scrap Bush-Era European Missile Shield Plan
It's comforting to know that the administration that cancelled the next generation of fighter planes has cancelled the next generation of missile defense. Maybe ACORN will defend the world... once they've been paid enough.
From the Washington Post:
From the Washington Post:
Obama to Scrap Bush-Era European Missile Shield Plan
New Defense System Will Focus on Stopping Shorter-Range MissilesVideoPresident Barack Obama issues a statement Thursday updating the United States' missile defense strategies.
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, September 17, 2009; 4:18 PM
President Obama said Thursday that he is abandoning Bush-era plans for a long-range missile defense system based in Poland and the Czech Republic, turning instead to a land- and sea-based system of sensors and interceptors that is focused on stopping shorter-range missiles that could be fired from Iran.
Read more....The president said he was accepting the recommendation of Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in turning away from a plan to place interceptor missiles in Poland and a radar system in the Czech Republic. Instead, a distributed sensor system, apparently envisioned as a more advanced version of the Navy's Aegis theater missile defense system, would "deploy techniques that are proven and cost-effective and will counter the current threat more effectively and do so sooner" than a longer-range system would, Obama said.
The system embraced by former president George W. Bush had been strongly opposed by Russia, which viewed the prospect of a missile shield system on its western border as an affront. Although Obama made a point of saying his decision was based on security interests rather than diplomatic considerations, it could allay what Obama and Gates called "unfounded" concerns in Moscow about the previous plan and contribute to a breakthrough in U.S.-Russian relations. Scrapping the Bush missile shield also could remove an impediment to negotiations on finding a replacement for the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, or START, which expires in early December.
"This new approach will provide capability sooner, build on proven systems and offer greater defenses against the threat of missile attack than the 2007 European missile defense program," Obama said at the White House. He said the system he is embracing will offer "stronger, smarter and swifter defenses of American forces and America's allies."
Obama said he called the prime ministers of Poland and the Czech Republic overnight to alert them to his decision.
Obama's statement from the White House, hastily arranged after news of the decision leaked out overnight, was followed by a news conference at the Pentagon by Gates and Gen. James Cartwright, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Gates, who as Bush's defense secretary had recommended and publicly embraced the longer-range system, said the option chosen by Obama could be implemented several years earlier and would be more effective, especially since the threat of long-range missiles from Iran is no longer believed to be as imminent.
"It is more adapted to the threat we see developing, and takes advantage of" the latest technology available to the United States, Gates said.
The decision sparked immediate condemnation from Republicans in Congress, who accused the administration of abandoning America's allies and putting the country's security at risk. House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) said in a statement that the move "does little more than empower Russia and Iran at the expense of our allies in Europe. It shows a willful determination to continue ignoring the threat posed by some of the most dangerous regimes in the world."
That concern was echoed by Obama's chief rival during the 2008 campaign, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who called the move away from a missile system designed to counter long-range weapons "seriously misguided."
"Given the serious and growing threats posed by Iran's missile and nuclear programs, now is the time when we should look to strengthen our defenses, and those of our allies," McCain said in a statement. "Missile defense in Europe has been a key component of this approach."
In his briefing, Gates anticipated those criticisms, and fired back strongly. "Those who say we are scrapping missile defense in Europe are either misinformed or misrepresenting the reality of what we are doing," Gates said. "The security of Europe has been a vital national interest of the United States for my entire career. The circumstances, borders and threats may have changed, but that commitment continues."
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who was a strong critic of the Bush shield, called Obama's decision "brilliant" and hailed it as "a giant step forward."
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Recession: Get Over It Or Not
Ben Bernanke looked down over the land and said it was good. The he looked at the people and said they were good. Then he looked at the economy and said it was good. And so it was. Eh?
He mean to say "unemployment," but we all understand banker talk. Still not all agree with Big Ben:
Bernanke Sees Recovery, Defends Fed ActionsWASHINGTON -- U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke Tuesday said it's likely the recession has come to an end, but he reiterated that tight credit conditions and a soft labor market will prove to be a challenge.
Getty Images
Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke answers a question at a Brookings Institution forum.
From a technical point, the "recession is very likely over at this point," Mr. Bernanke said in a question-and-answer session at the Brookings Institution.
But he added that even if recovery is underway, it's still going to feel like a very weak economy because credit conditions remain tight and any decline in the unemployment rate will probably only happen gradually. He noted that one risk is that the economy will grow in the second half of 2009, but not enough to trigger a rapid recovery.
If there is only moderate economic growth, "employment will be slow to come down," he said. "It will come down, but it will take some time."
Economist warns of double-dip recessionBy Robert Cookson and Sundeep Tucker in Hong Kong
Published: September 14 2009 15:01 | Last updated: September 14 2009 15:01
The world has not tackled the problems at the heart of the economic downturn and is likely to slip back into recession, according to one of the few mainstream economists who predicted the financial crisis.
Speaking at the Sibos conference in Hong Kong on Monday, William White, the highly-respected former chief economist at the Bank for International Settlements, also warned that government actions to help the economy in the short run may be sowing the seeds for future crises.
“Are we going into a W[-shaped recession]? Almost certainly. Are we going into an L? I would not be in the slightest bit surprised,” he said, referring to the risks of a so-called double-dip recession or a protracted stagnation like Japan suffered in the 1990s.
“The only thing that would really surprise me is a rapid and sustainable recovery from the position we’re in.”
Monday, September 14, 2009
Obama's New War In Afghanistan
This should tell you all you need to know about the change that Obama has brought to the U.S. military. Hope you have a strong stomach.
We're pinned down:' 4 U.S. Marines die in Afghan ambushMcClatchy's Jonathan S. Landay talks about the ambush of U.S. and Afghan troops he was embedded with on Tuesday, Sept. 8, 2009. For reporter, no doubt: 'I'd use the rifle if I had to'
- Story | For reporter, no doubt: 'I'd use the rifle if I had to'
- Story | Deadly Afghan ambush shows perils of ill-supplied deployment
- Story | U.S. names dead from Tuesday's Afghan ambush
- Story | Afghanistan isn't Vietnam, Washington state's Adam Smith warns
- Story | U.N. Afghan panel cites fraud in vote as Karzai pulls ahead
- Story | Taliban-led insurgents strike Kabul airport
- Story | Marines walk into insurgent 'trap' in Afghanistan; 4 die
- Story | Military leery of Afghanistan escalation with no clear goals
- Story | NATO to probe whether deadly Afghan airstrike killed civilians
- Story | Military leaders: U.S. effort in Afghanistan just beginning
- Story | NATO to probe whether deadly Afghan airstrike killed civilians
- Story | Result in Afghan's fraud-ridden elections may take weeks
- Story | Poll: Most Americans oppose more troops for Afghanistan
- Story | Pentagon worried about Obama's commitment to Afghanistan
- Graphic | Where Taliban fighters ambushed a U.S.-led patrol
- Gallery | Photos from an ambush
By Jonathan S. Landay | McClatchy Newspapers
GANJGAL, Afghanistan — We walked into a trap, a killing zone of relentless gunfire and rocket barrages from Afghan insurgents hidden in the mountainsides and in a fortress-like village where women and children were replenishing their ammunition.
"We will do to you what we did to the Russians," the insurgent's leader boasted over the radio, referring to the failure of Soviet troops to capture Ganjgal during the 1979-89 Soviet occupation.
Dashing from boulder to boulder, diving into trenches and ducking behind stone walls as the insurgents maneuvered to outflank us, we waited more than an hour for U.S. helicopters to arrive, despite earlier assurances that air cover would be five minutes away.
U.S. commanders, citing new rules to avoid civilian casualties, rejected repeated calls to unleash artillery rounds at attackers dug into the slopes and tree lines — despite being told repeatedly that they weren't near the village.
"We are pinned down. We are running low on ammo. We have no air. We've lost today," Marine Maj. Kevin Williams, 37, said through his translator to his Afghan counterpart, responding to the latter's repeated demands for helicopters.
Four U.S. Marines were killed Tuesday, the most U.S. service members assigned as trainers to the Afghan National Army to be lost in a single incident since the 2001 U.S.-led invasion. Eight Afghan troops and police and the Marine commander's Afghan interpreter also died in the ambush and the subsequent battle that raged from dawn until 2 p.m. around this remote hamlet in eastern Kunar province, close to the Pakistan border.
Three Americans and 19 Afghans were wounded, and U.S. forces later recovered the bodies of two insurgents, although they believe more were killed.
The Marines were cut down as they sought cover in a trench at the base of the village's first layer cake-style stone house. Much of their ammunition was gone. One Marine was bending over a second, tending his wounds, when both were killed, said Marine Cpl. Dakota Meyer, 21, of Greensburg, Ky., who retrieved their bodies.
HISTORY OF RESISTANCE
A full moon was drenching the mountains in ghostly light as some 60 Afghan soldiers, 20 border police officers, 13 Marine and U.S. Army trainers and I set out for Ganjgal at 3 a.m. from the U.S. base in the Shakani District.
The operation, proposed by the Afghan army and refined by the U.S. trainers, called for the Afghans to search Ganjgal for weapons and hold a meeting with the elders to discuss the establishment of police patrols. The elders had insisted that Afghans perform the sweep. The Americans were there to give advice and call for air and artillery support if required.
Dawn was breaking by the time we alighted for a mile-long walk up a wash of gravel, rock and boulders which winds up to Ganjgal, some 60 rock-walled compounds perched high up the terraced slopes at the eastern end of the valley, six miles from the Pakistani border.
Small teams of Afghan troops and U.S. trainers headed to ridges on the valley's southern and northern sides, setting up outposts as the main body headed slowly up toward the village and, unbeknownst to us, into the killing zone.
The terrain — craggy ravines and sweeping, tree-studded mountains riddled with boulders and caves — was made for guerrilla warfare. The ethnic Pashtun villagers pride themselves on their rejection of official authority, their history of resistance and their disdain of foreign forces that many regard as occupiers.
A possible clue to what was to come occurred when the lights in Ganjgal suddenly blinked out while our vehicles were still several miles away, crashing slowly through the semi-dark along a rutted track toward the village.
NO AIR SUPPORT
The first shot cracked out at 5:30 a.m., apparently just as the four Marines and the Afghan unit to which they were attached reached the outskirts of the village. It quickly swelled into a furious storm of gunfire that we realized had been prepared for our arrival.
Several U.S. officers said they suspected that the insurgents had been tipped off by sympathizers in the local Afghan security forces or by the village elders, who announced over the weekend that they were accepting the authority of the local government.
"Whatever we do always leaks," said Marine Lt. Ademola Fabayo, 28, a New Yorker who was born in Nigeria and is the operations officer for the trainers from the 3rd Marine Division. "You can't trust even some of their soldiers or officers."
Sniper rounds snapped off rocks and sizzled overhead. Explosions of recoilless rifle rounds echoed through the valley, while bullets inched closer to the rock wall behind which I crouched with a handful U.S. and Afghan officers.
Lt. Fabayo and several other soldiers later said they'd seen women and children in the village shuttling ammunition to fighters positioned in windows and roofs. Across the valley and from their ridgeline outposts, the Afghans and Americans fired back.
At 5:50 a.m., Army Capt. Will Swenson, of Seattle, WA, the trainer of the Afghan Border Police unit in Shakani, began calling for air support or artillery fire from a unit of the Army's 10th Mountain Division. The responses came back: No helicopters were available.
"This is unbelievable. We have a platoon (of Afghan army) out there and we've got no Hotel Echo," Swenson shouted above the din of gunfire, using the military acronym for high explosive artillery shells. "We're pinned down."
The insurgents were firing from inside the village and from positions in the hills immediately behind it and to either side. Judging from the angles of the ricochets, several appeared to be trying to outflank us to get better shots.
"What are you going to do?" Maj. Talib, the operations officer of the Afghan army unit, asked Maj. Williams through his translator.
"We are getting air," Williams replied.
"What are we going to do?" Talib repeated.
"We are getting air," Williams replied again, perhaps knowing that none was available but hoping to quiet Talib.
At 6:05 a.m., as our position was becoming increasingly tenuous, Swenson and Fabayo agreed that it was time to pull back and radioed for artillery to fire smoke rounds to mask our retreat.
"They don't have any smoke. They only have Willy Pete," Swenson reported, referring to white phosphorus rounds that spew smoke.
Fifty minutes later, as a curtain of white phosphorus smoke roiled across the valley, Swenson and Fabayo unleashed an intense volley of covering fire while the rest of us sprinted back some 20 yards to a series of dirt furrows, weighed down by our flak vests and water carriers.
The two officers raced back to join us. Everyone jumped up and ran for the next stone wall. Everyone but me. Afraid that too many people were jammed together as they raced, offering easy targets, I waited behind for a break in the gunfire, an Afghan border police officer crouched next to me.
TIME TO MOVE
We soon noticed that the insurgent snipers were trying to outflank us again. I saw one up on a small rise fire and miss us by several feet. My companion decided that it was time to go and bolted away across the wash, but the gunfire grew too intense, and again I pulled my body into the dirt and rocks.
I wasn't as terrified as I was angry: angry at the absence of air support, angry that there was no artillery fire, angry that Williams' interpreter had been killed, angry at the realization that the operation had obviously been betrayed and angry at myself for not bolting with the others.
I knew it was time to move when I saw a gaggle of Afghan soldiers pounding through the boulders past me, their commander, a bright 26-year-old lieutenant named Ruhollah, hopping between two of them, a bullet wound in his groin. Staying put was no longer an option.
Bundling my legs beneath me and grabbing the small bag I use to carry my pad, pens, glasses and other necessities, I sprang and ran, trying to weave as bullets kicked up dust around me.
I reached the next wall and plunged behind it, nearly falling on top of Swenson, Fabayo and several badly wounded U.S. soldiers.
As Fabayo cracked off rounds, Swenson lay flat on his back, clasping a pressure bandage to the shoulder of one soldier with one hand and holding the microphone of his radio in the other, calling out insurgents' positions to two U.S. helicopters that finally had arrived.
It was now 7:10 a.m., and with the helicopters prowling overhead and firing into the hillsides, the incoming gunfire slackened enough for us to move again.
I stumbled down the valley to safety after I helped one of the injured soldiers into a medivac helicopter. Capt. Swenson and Lt. Fabayo headed off to find vehicles and, together with Cpl. Meyer, crashed back up the way we'd just fled to retrieve the bodies of the dead Marines and any other casualties they could find.
ABOUT THE REPORTER
McClatchy's Jonathan S. Landay, who was ambushed with U.S. Marines in a remote Afghan village Tuesday, is a veteran foreign affairs reporter with long experience in South Asia, Iraq, the Balkans and Washington.
Landay covered South Asia — including Afghanistan — as well as the Balkans from 1985 to 1994 for United Press International and for The Christian Science Monitor. He joined the Knight Ridder Washington Bureau in 1999.
He was part of the Knight Ridder team, with State Department correspondent Warren P. Strobel and Bureau Chief John Walcott, that investigated and disproved the Bush administration's claims that Saddam Hussein's Iraq had an active nuclear weapons program and ties to al Qaida.
The team won a National Headliner Award for "How the Bush Administration Went to War in Iraq," a 2005 Award of Distinction from Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism for "Iraqi Exiles Fed Exaggerated Tips to News Media," and a 2007 Edward Weintal Prize from Georgetown University's Institute for the Study of Diplomacy for the Iraq coverage.
The McClatchy Co. acquired Knight Ridder in 2006, and Landay is now the senior national security correspondent in the McClatchy Washington Bureau and a regular contributor to the bureau's Nukes & Spooks blog. He regularly travels to Afghanistan, Pakistan and other trouble spots.
Obama Turns Efforts To Financial Changes
Yes, follow the example of the Obama administration and usher in a new era of fiscal responsibility as indicated by responsible spending.
Obama Turns Efforts To Financial Changes
Wall Street Trip Is to Urge New Rules
By Brady DennisWashington Post Staff Writer
Monday, September 14, 2009
President Obama will head to Wall Street on Monday to try to breathe new life into efforts to overhaul the financial regulatory system, an undertaking he has said is essential to halting the abuses and failures that led to the current crisis.
While the health-care debate has raged nationwide throughout the summer, financial reform virtually vanished from the public radar, even as an army of lobbyists worked on Capitol Hill to reshape the president's agenda.
In New York, Obama will try to retake the initiative, capping other recent efforts in which top government officials have emphasized improvements in the economy and made the case anew for rewriting the nation's financial rulebook. He will urge members of the financial community "to take responsibility, not only to support reforming the regulatory system but also to avoid a return to the practices on Wall Street that led us to the financial crisis," an administration official said Sunday.
Read more....
Sunday, September 13, 2009
Friday, September 11, 2009
9/11 and the 'Good War'
It's all about health care... I mean death by CO2... green jobs, we have to have green jobs... look, over there, another George Bush problem.... Don't worry, my administration is on the right course.
From The Wall Street Journal
From The Wall Street Journal
9/11 and the 'Good War'
It was the furies of the Arab world, not Afghanistan, that struck America eight years ago today.By FOUAD AJAMI
The road that led to 9/11 was never a defining concern of President Barack Obama. But he returned to 9/11 as he sought to explain and defend the war in Afghanistan in a speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars in Phoenix, Ariz., on Aug. 17. "The insurgency in Afghanistan didn't just happen overnight and we won't defeat it overnight, but we must never forget: This is not a war of choice; it is a war of necessity. Those who attacked America on 9/11 are plotting to do so again. If left unchecked, the Taliban insurgency will mean an even larger safe haven from which al Qaeda could plot to kill more Americans."
This distinction between a war of choice (Iraq) and a war of necessity (Afghanistan) has become canonical to American liberalism. But we should dispense with that distinction, for it is both morally false and intellectually muddled. No philosophy of just and unjust wars will support it. It was amid the ferocious attack on the American project in Iraq that there was born the idea of Afghanistan as the "good war." This was the club with which the Iraq war was battered. This was where that binary division was set up: The good war of necessity in the mountains of Afghanistan, the multilateral war born of a collective NATO decision—versus George W. Bush's war of choice in Iraq, fought in defiance of the opinions of allies who had been with us in the aftermath of 9/11, and whose goodwill we squandered in the cruel streets of Fallujah and the deserts of Anbar.
Our elections last November, this narrative had it, had given us a chance to bring America's embattled solitude and isolation in the world to an end. A man with strands of Islam woven into his identity and biography was catapulted to the presidency. We had drained the swamps of anti-Americanism. Assalam aleikum (peace be upon you) in Cairo, Ankara and Tehran. The great enmity, that unfashionable clash of civilizations, was declared done and over with. A new history presumably began with Mr. Bush's return to his home in Texas.
But it will not do to offer up 9/11 as a casus belli in Afghanistan while holding out the threat of legal retribution against the men and women in our intelligence services who carried out our wishes in that time of concern and peril. To begin with, a policy that falls back on 9/11 must proceed from a correct reading of the wellsprings of Islamist radicalism. The impulse that took America from Kabul to Baghdad had been on the mark. Those were not Afghans who had struck American soil on 9/11. They were Arabs. Their terrorism came out of the pathologies of Arab political life. Their financiers were Arabs, and so were those crowds in Cairo and Nablus and Amman that had winked at the terror and had seen those attacks as America getting its comeuppance on that terrible day. Kabul had not sufficed as a return address in that twilight war; it was important to take the war into the Arab world itself, and the despot in Baghdad had drawn the short straw. He had been brazen and defiant at a time of genuine American concern, and a lesson was made of him.
No Arabs had been emotionally invested in Mullah Omar and the Taliban, but the ruler in Baghdad was a favored son of that Arab nation. The decapitation of his regime was a cautionary tale for his Arab brethren. Grant George W. Bush his due. He drew a line when the world of the Arabs was truly in the wind and played upon by powerful temptations. Mr. Obama and his advisers need not pay heroic tribute to the men and women who labored before them. But they have so maligned their predecessors and their motives that the appeal to 9/11 rings hollow and contrived. In those years behind us, American liberalism distanced itself from American patriotism, and the damage is there to see.
Associated PressIn the best of circumstances, this Afghan campaign would be a hard sell. This is doubly so at a time of economic distress at home. There is no tradition of central government to be restored in that most tribalized of countries. The lessons, and the analogy, of Vietnam should perhaps be laid to rest. This is not Mr. Obama's Vietnam. It is what it is—his Afghanistan. But there are irresistible parallels with Lyndon Baines Johnson and the way he committed his presidency, and the nation, to a war he dreaded from the start.
This is LBJ in 1964, from a definitive history by A.J. Langguth, "Our Vietnam," published in 2000: "I just don't think it is worth fighting for, and I don't think we can get out. It's just the biggest damn mess." He would prosecute what he called that "bitch of a war" with a premonition that it could wreck his Great Society programs. He knew America's mood. "I don't think the people of the country know much about Vietnam, and I think they care a hell of a lot less." Yet, he took the plunge, he would try to "cheat"—guns and butter at the same time, the war in Asia and the domestic agenda of civil rights and the Great Society. History was merciless. It begot a monumental tragedy in a land of no consequences to American security.
Wars are great clarifiers. Barack Obama's trumpet is uncertain. His call to arms in Afghanistan does not stir. He fears failure in Afghanistan, and nothing more. Having disowned Iraq, kept its cause at a distance, he is forced to fight the war in Afghanistan. So he equivocates and plays for time. Forever the campaigner, he has his eye on the public mood, the steel that his predecessor showed in 2007 when all was in the balance in Iraq is not evident in Mr. Obama.
For the American effort in Afghanistan to stick on the ground in the face of a Taliban insurgency that's gaining in strength and geographical reach, Mr. Obama will have to make a hard choice. He will need a troop commitment of sufficient weight to turn the tide of war. Furthermore, he will have to face his own coalition on the left and convince it that there is a project in Afghanistan worth fighting (and paying) for.
By the evidence of things, this is a decision that he has refused to make, as he pursues his sweeping domestic agenda while keeping Afghanistan in play. He had been sure that NATO forces would rush to his banners, that Europe had stayed away from a serious commitment in Afghanistan because it had been seized with an animus for his predecessor. But Mr. Bush had been an alibi all along. The Europeans are in no mood for this war.
There is a British contingent of decent size in Afghanistan, but there had been one in Iraq as well. The likes of Jacques Chirac and Gerhard Schroeder (who dabbled in the most craven of anti-Americanism) are gone and forgotten, but the French and the Germans have not ridden to the rescue of Kandahar. The stringent restrictions on their forces, their very rules of engagement, have left Afghanistan an Anglo-American burden in much the same way Iraq had been.
Eight years ago, we were visited by the furies of Arab lands. We were rudely awakened from a decade whose gurus and pundits had announced the end of ideology, of politics itself, and the triumph of the world-wide Web and the "electronic herd." We had discovered that on the other side of the world masterminds of terror, and preachers, and their foot-soldiers were telling of America the most sordid of tales. We had become, without knowing it, a party to a civil war in the Arab-Islamic world between the autocrats and their disaffected children, between those who wanted to live a normal life and warriors of the faith bent on imposing their will on that troubled arc of geography.
Our country answered that call, not always brilliantly, for we are fated to be strangers in that world and thus fated to improvise and make our way through unfamiliar alleyways. We met chameleons and hustlers of every shade and had to learn, in a hurry, incomprehensible atavisms and pathologies. We fared best when we trusted our sense of things. We certainly haven't been kept safe by the crowds in Paris and Berlin, or by those in Ankara and Cairo who feign desire for our friendship while they yearn for our undoing.
Mr. Ajami, a professor at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies and an adjunct fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution, is the author, among other books, of "The Foreigner's Gift: The Americans, the Arabs and the Iraqis in Iraq" (Free Press, 2007).
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
Obama Calls for Health Care Consensus
The last I heard, there is a growing consensus about the President's plans for health care... and it isn't that for which he is hoping. BIG PROBLEM... COST. Even the CBO admits there is no way in hell to cover the costs of what he proposing.
So what is he proposing? More and more expensive regulations on insurance companies that will ultimately pass those costs on to their customers who are ultimately paying for all of the present and so-to-be freeloaders in the system.
He is not listening to the voters. Too bad Democratic Party.
From The New York Times:
So what is he proposing? More and more expensive regulations on insurance companies that will ultimately pass those costs on to their customers who are ultimately paying for all of the present and so-to-be freeloaders in the system.
He is not listening to the voters. Too bad Democratic Party.
From The New York Times:
Obama Calls for Health Care Consensus WASHINGTON – President Obama sought to reframe the contentious debate over health care on Wednesday, asking a critical Congress and a skeptical nation to reach consensus on legislation to expand health coverage to millions of Americans and lower medical costs through an ambitious overhaul that has eluded lawmakers for generations.
“I am not the first president to take up this cause, but I am determined to be the last,” Mr. Obama said in a televised address, according the prepared remarks. He added, “Our collective failure to meet this challenge – year after year, decade after decade – has led us to a breaking point.”
In a speech to a joint session of Congress, the president attempted to regain his political footing on his signature priority of remaking the nation’s health care system. He presented his most detailed outline yet of a plan that he said would guarantee all Americans coverage, regardless of pre-existing medical conditions, while letting people keep their own insurance if they wanted.
“As soon as I sign this bill, it will be against the law for insurance companies to drop your coverage when you get sick or water it down when you need it most,” Mr. Obama said in the prepared remarks. “They will no longer be able to place some arbitrary cap on the amount of coverage you can receive in a given year or a lifetime.”
The president called for “making a not-for-profit public option available” to consumers. But he suggested he was amenable to refining that idea, which has become a lightning rod for criticism.
The speech was the president’s second address before a joint session of Congress. But the political backdrop on Wednesday was far different than Mr. Obama’s appearance in the House chamber on the 36th day of his term, when an optimistic wave of momentum was at his back and his Republican rivals were dispirited and in disarray.
“What we have also seen in these last months is the same partisan spectacle that only hardens the disdain many Americans have toward their own government. Instead of honest debate, we have seen scare tactics,” Mr. Obama said. “Some have dug into unyielding ideological camps that offer no hope of compromise.
“Too many have used this as an opportunity to score short-term political points, even if it robs the country of our opportunity to solve a long-term challenge,” he said.
He added, “And out of this blizzard of charges and counter-charges, confusion has reigned.”
The president paused to remember Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, who died last month of cancer before his goal of a thoroughhealth care overhaul could be realized. The senator’s widow, Victoria Kennedy, was sitting in the first lady’s box in the House chamber alongside several ordinary Americans selected by the White House to help bolster the president’s case that the health care system was in crisis.
“That is why we cannot fail,” Mr. Obama said, according to the prepared remarks. “Because there are too many Americans counting on us to succeed – the ones who suffer silently, and the ones who shared their stories with us at town hall meetings, in emails, and in letters.”
The president said that he had not closed the door on reaching a bipartisan compromise on the health care legislation. He gave a nod to Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, and embraced his proposal to create a high risk pool to help cover people with pre-existing conditions against catastrophic expenses.
But Mr. Obama also signaled a more defiant tone, saying that he would not allow a misinformation campaign to flourish as the White House believes that it did during the August Congressional recess when angry voters flooded town meetings across the nation.
“I will not waste time with those who have made the calculation that it’s better politics to kill this plan than improve it,” Mr. Obama said. “I will not stand by while the special interests use the same old tactics to keep things exactly the way they are. If you misrepresent what’s in the plan, we will call you out.”
The speech, which Mr. Obama and his aides were putting the finishing touches on until shortly before he arrived at the Capitol, was intended to restart the debate on Capitol Hill on the health care legislation. The president said he remained firm in his deadline of signing some type of measure before year’s end.
Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, signaled before the address that Republicans still would not be supportive of the president’s retooled health care approach.
“Americans don’t understand how they’ll be able to keep the health plans they have if government is allowed to undermine the private market,” Mr. McConnell said on the Senate floor earlier Wednesday. “And they don’t understand why the administration doesn’t seem to be listening to these and many other concerns.”
A few hours before the speech, Senator Max Baucus, chairman of the Finance Committee, said that his panel would take up sweeping legislation and start voting on it in two weeks, with or without the support of Republicans.
“The time has come for action, and we will act,” Mr. Baucus said. He added, “Irrespective of whether there are any Republicans, I will move forward.”
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
German Climate Advisor 'proposes creation of a CO2 budget for every person on planet!
We need to pump out all of our oil and give it back to the Middle East... and they can then give us back all of our money... preferably in the form of gold... and then the wealth transfer will be reversed. All will be well in the world. Was ist los?
ALERT: German Climate Advisor 'proposes creation of a CO2 budget for every person on planet!'
Climate Reparations: Western nations 'have already exceeded their quotas'...'The West would give back part of the wealth it has taken from the South in the past centuries'
Sunday, September 06, 2009By Marc Morano – Climate DepotExcerpted From a September 4, 2009 article in The German Newspaper Der Spiegel. The interview was conducted by Christian Schwägerl and the article was titled: 'Industrialized Nations Are Facing CO2 Insolvency'
Der Spiegel Excerpts: Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, the German government's climate protection adviser, argues that drastic measures must be taken in order to prevent a catastrophe. Schellnhuber is proposing the creation of a CO2 budget for every person on the planet, regardless whether they live in Berlin or Beijing. [...]
Schellnhuber: Humankind has to limit itself to emit only fixed amount of carbon into the atmosphere until 2050. [...] Because the industrialized nations have already exceeded their quotas if you take into account past emissions. [...] With the current output you see that Germany, the US and other industrialized nations have either already used up their permissible quota, or will do so within the next few years. [...] The industrialized nations are facing CO2 insolvency. This means that they have to notch up their efforts to reduce climate change, otherwise they will use up the CO2 budget actually designated to poorer countries and future generations.
Question: So industrialized nations would have to pay massive sums of money? - Schellnhuber: Yes. Up to €100 billion ($142 billion) annually. If the richest sixth of the world's population were to pay this amount, each person would have to pay €100 per year. The West would give back part of the wealth it has taken from the South in the past centuries and be indebted to countries that are now amongst the poorest in the world. It would, however, have to be ensured that the poorer nations use the money for the proposes it is intended -- namely to help them to develop a greener economy. [End article excerpt]
Climate Depot Editor's Note: Schellnhuber is not alone advocating these types of CO2 proposals. The movement to control personal CO2 "budget's" is growing internationally. Here are a few recent examples.
2) Flashback 2008: 'Personal carbon trading scheme': 'Every adult in UK should be forced to use 'carbon ration cards', say MPs - Excerpt: Everyone would be given an annual carbon allowance to use when buying oil, gas, electricity and flights -- Anyone who exceeds their entitlement would have to buy top-up credits from individuals who haven't used up their allowance. [...] The influential Environmental Audit Committee says a personal carbon trading scheme is the best and fairest way of cutting Britain's CO2 emissions without penalizing the poor.
3) Flashback Jan. 2009: NYT: California Seeks Home Thermostat Control - Excerpt: The conceit in the 1960s show “The Outer Limits” was that outside forces had taken control of your television set. California, state regulators are likely to have the emergency power to control individual thermostats, sending temperatures up or down through a radio-controlled device.
4) Flashback May 2009: Eco-Nanny Pelosi: 'Every aspect of our lives must be subjected to an inventory'
6) Sept. 2009: 'Only way to seriously reduce the human contribution of CO2 is ...by utilizing full coercive power of each nation state and UN to enforce Draconian laws and regulations on lifestyles of every human being on this planet'
7) Flashback July 2009: Gore: U.S. Climate Bill Will Help Bring About 'Global Governance'
Sunday, September 6, 2009
Making Criminals Out of Law Enforcers
First you cripple immigration laws and then you attack those who enforce them. It looks as if the Democratic Party will do anything to increase its voter base... and disregard our laws. Maybe some of the illegals can be appointed unconstitutional "czars."
CRIPPLE THE LAWS:
CRIPPLE THE LAWS:
MAKE CRIMINALS OUT OF LAW ENFORCERS:Friday, July 10, 2009
Federal rule change could nix Sheriff Arpaio’s immigrant sweeps; he calls move ‘amnesty’
Phoenix Business Journal - by Mike SunnucksNew rules announced Friday by the Barack Obama administration could nix crime suppression sweeps and immigration raids conducted by Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio.
Arpaio said he plans to continue to conduct his immigration enforcement efforts under state laws, despite changes to federal rules related to local police arresting illegal immigrants.
“To me, it looks like some form of amnesty,” Arpaio told the Phoenix Business Journal on Friday.
U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano announced the changes to federal rules. Napolitano, also the former governor of Arizona, said Friday that DHS and the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency would need to re-sign agreements with local police agencies, such as the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office. Those agreements train local police on immigration laws and allow them to sometimes arrest and detain illegal immigrants.
“Only those agencies with newly signed agreements will be permitted to continue enforcing immigration law,” said a DHS statement on Friday.
That could allow the White House to derail Arpaio’s immigration enforcement actions, which have been made through a federal partnership that trains deputies to enforce immigration laws and pick up illegal immigrants. The sheriff also conducts workplace and drop-house raids under state laws.
The MCSO has had an immigration enforcement agreement with the feds since April 2007
The sheriff was not sure whether the federal government would maintain its agreement with the MCSO. If it does not, he said the feds will have to take over the processing and detention of some of the illegal immigrants picked up in the Phoenix area.
Napolitano also said Friday that federal rules regarding local police picking up illegal immigrants would be changed to focus on arresting those charged with violent and serious crimes.
“To address concerns that individuals may be arrested for minor offenses as a guise to initiate removal proceedings, the new agreement explains that participating local law enforcement agencies are required to pursue all criminal charges that originally caused the offender to be taken into custody,” the DHS statement said.
The sheriff’s crime sweeps and immigration raids are under investigation by the Obama administration for possibly unfairly targeting Hispanics. He also faces lawsuits from the American Civil Liberties Union and Hispanic activists over his immigration enforcement policies.
Napolitano also said Friday the feds had signed new immigration enforcement and cooperation agreements with police departments in Mesa and Florence. Former Mesa Police Chief George Gascon, who opposed Arpaio’s efforts earlier this year to conduct crime sweeps in that city, recently became police chief in San Francisco.
Deported Illegal Immigrants Witnesses In Federal Probe
Last Updated: Fri, 09/04/2009 - 3:28pmThe Department of Justice is actually bringing deported illegal aliens back to the U.S. to be witnesses in a civil rights investigation of an Arizona sheriff’s department that enforces immigration law through a federal partnership.
It’s hardly the first time that the federal agency charged with defending the nation’s interests and ensuring its safety pulls this sort of stunt. In its quest to prosecute two Border Patrol gents who intercepted a Mexican drug smuggler in 2005, the Justice Department actually went to Mexico and offered the drug dealer immunity to testify against the veteran agents.
The agents (Ignacio Ramos and Jose Campean) were subsequently convicted on charges of causing serious bodily injury, assault with a deadly weapon, discharge of a firearm and violating the drug smuggler's civil rights. The supposed victim and key witness was the Mexican illegal alien whose vehicle was intercepted with 743 pounds of U.S.-bound marijuana.
This week a Phoenix newspaper reports that the feds are at it again, using illegal immigrant violators as key witnesses in another high-profile case. It involves allegations of discrimination and unconstitutional searches and seizures on the part of the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Department and its elected leader Joe Arpaio. The feds are interviewing Hispanics who were arrested by the sheriff’s department, including those who were deported and have been brought back to the U.S. to testify.
The federal probe was requested by Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon, an open borders advocate who offers illegal aliens sanctuary in his city. In a letter to the Justice Department last spring, Mayor Gordon demanded that the agency investigate “discriminatory harassment” and “improper” stops, searches and arrests by Maricopa County sheriff’s deputies who patrol the metropolitan area.
The Justice Department gladly obliged and proudly announced its civil rights investigation a few months ago, vowing to focus on whether deputies are engaging in racial profiling during immigration crackdowns. The sweeps have helped rid the area of numerous illegal aliens—some violent criminals who fell through the cracks—who should have been deported long ago and helped restore much-needed law and order in a Phoenix business district (36th & Thomas) rife with solicitation, trespassing, loitering and public health ordinance violations.
Thursday, September 3, 2009
Iran backs first woman minister
She may be "female," but how much woman is under that black gunny sack is questionable. From BBC News:
Marzieh Vahid Dastjerdi was approved as health ministerIranian MPs have approved the first woman minister in the 30-year history of the Islamic republic.
She was one of 18 nominations for President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's new cabinet to be approved. Two other women were among three rejected nominees.
The president's choice for defence minister, Ahmad Vahidi, who is wanted by Argentina over a deadly 1994 bombing of a Jewish centre, won strong backing.
The vote follows months of wrangling after disputed elections in June.
Correspondents say Marzieh Vahid Dastjerdi, the female health minister-designate, is a hard-line conservative who has in the past proposed introducing segregated health care in Iran, with women treating women and men treating men.
She has served as an MP for an Islamic physicians' party, spearheading a campaign to introduce segregated hospitals. It foundered over the shortage of women in some specialisms.
Her pitch to parliament focused on the need for increasing women's roles in national affairs. In an apparent change of heart from her segregation campaign, she praised the "miracles" which happen when men and women work together.
The two women rejected were Fatemeh Ajorlou, as welfare and social security minister, and Susan Keshavarz, as education minister.
The third nominee to be turned down was the president's choice for energy minister, Mohammad Aliabadi.
Mr Ahmadinejad has three months to propose new candidates to replace those rejected.
The parliamentary confidence vote followed five days of intense debate.
Before the vote, Mr Ahmadinejad urged MPs to approve his choices, saying the ballot reflected "real democracy". His government would work closely with parliament, he said.
The president's proposed oil minister, Massoud Mirkazemi, was approved, despite questions over his experience.
'Affront to victims'
Meanwhile, Mr Vahidi - a controversial figure internationally - received the highest number of votes in favour of any nominee, with 227 MPs backing him out of 286, Speaker Ali Larijani said.
Interpol has distributed Argentina's warrant for Mr Vahidi's arrest over the attack at the Israeli-Argentine Mutual Association (AMIA) 15 years ago, which killed 85 people.
Israel and Argentina had condemned his nomination, with Buenos Aires calling it "an affront to the victims" of the bombing. Iran has denied any involvement in the blast and says the case against it is politically motivated.
Speaking to the French news agency AFP, Mr Vahidi said his approval by MPs was a "decisive slap to Israel".
The BBC's Peter Biles says the vote was a test of the president's support and his hold on power, amid continuing opposition following his re-election in a contested presidential ballot in June.
The appointment of the cabinet also comes at a time of increasing pressure on the Iranian government from abroad, our correspondent says.
US President Barack Obama has given Iran until later in September to agree to new talks on its nuclear programme, or face tougher sanctions.
Tehran has said it is ready to present a new package of proposals to the international community, although the details have not been published.
Speaking to reporters on Thursday, Mr Ahmadinejad dismissed any threat of further international sanctions against Iran over its nuclear activities.
"No-one can impose any sanctions on Iran any longer," he was quoted as saying by the official IRNA news agency.
An aide to Mr Ahmadinejad confirmed that the president would attend a United Nations meeting later this month in New York.
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
BP reveals ‘giant’ oil discovery
The following is moot. As soon as the EPA and Congress get done with the climate bill and regulating against fossil fuels, we can be drowning in oil and there still won't be enough available.
BP reveals ‘giant’ oil discoveryBy Ed Crooks
Published: September 2 2009 12:01 | Last updated: September 2 2009 16:10
BP, the UK energy group, on Wednesday reported a “giant” discovery in the Gulf of Mexico – in what looks to be one of the largest finds of recent years – that helps open a new frontier for US oil production.
The Tiber field, in deep water about 250 miles south-east of Houston, is likely to hold at least 3bn barrels of oil, with 500m-plus of that recoverable with today’s technology, but could be even larger.
BP said the first well drilled on the prospect suggested that Tiber appeared to be bigger than its Kaskida field, which is also in the Gulf of Mexico and was discovered in August 2006.
One recent estimate suggested Kaskida could hold 4bn-6bn barrels.
The Tiber discovery is in one of the deepest wells ever drilled, in 1,260m of water with a total depth of 10,685m – more than 6½ miles – which will make developing the field extremely challenging. US regulations have previously meant that the oil would have to be piped to shore, rather than loaded on to tankers out at sea.
Analysts suggested Tiber was unlikely to be producing before 2014, but even that date seems optimistic, given that BP’s previous large-scale development in the Gulf – the Thunder Horse field – was first discovered in 1999 but only came into production, after a series of mishaps, at the end of 2008.
Once in production, however, Tiber and Kaskida could lift BP’s output in the Gulf of Mexico – where it is already the single largest producer – from 400,000 barrels of oil equivalent a day to about 650,000 b/d.
Andy Inglis, BP’s head of exploration and production, said in a statement: “Tiber represents BP’s second material discovery in the emerging Lower Tertiary play in the Gulf of Mexico... These material discoveries together with our industry-leading acreage position support the continuing growth of our deep water Gulf of Mexico business into the second half of the next decade.”
In late trading in London BP’s shares were up 20.2p or 3.9 per cent at 539.7p, making them the biggest gainers on the FTSE 100 index.
In a note on Wednesday, analysts at Goldman Sachs said the Tiber discovery was “good news for BP, but it is hardly transformational and does not provide a solution to their thin pipeline of new projects in the 2010-13 period.”
UBS said: “GoM [Gulf of Mexico] oil discoveries are the highest value globally so this is a big positive – probably worth at least 3 per cent even to a company the size of BP.”
Production in the US is highly sought-after, as the fiscal and regulatory terms are much more reliable than in most resource-rich countries, and the US is the world’s biggest market for oil.
The Lower Tertiary rocks in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico, laid down 34m-66m years ago, are seen as offering some of the most exciting potential for US oil production.
BP’s exploration successes will encourage hopes that that potential can be realised and the decline of US oil production slowed.
Following a successful well result in 2006, Chevron, the second-largest US oil group, suggested it had found a part of the Lower Tertiary that could hold 3bn-15bn barrels of oil.
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