Exxon: Pouring Oil on Trouble Waters -- Part 3

December 15, 2008
Exxon: Pouring Oil on Troubled Waters -- Part 3
-AKA-
Being Exxon Means You Never Have To Say You're Sorry

Oil ... $$$$$$$ ... Black Gold!

The centerpiece of international politics, wars and economics. A sizable portion of the world's population believes we are at war in Iraq because of it. A song that I quite enjoyed when there was a small handful of us loudly proclaiming that we would be nuts to go to war with Iraq; one that I copied and passed out freely before George W's "shock and awe", was entitled "How Did Our Oil Get Under Their Sand?".

We have it (oil ... we're a little light on the sand). Indeed, we have so much of it we can apparently afford to dump it in the ocean.

In the minds of most people when they think of oil, they envision the stuff they pour into their car engines. And, of course they are correct. That is refined motor oil. But crude oil, the unrefined hydrocarbon gunk that is pumped out of the ground and, at one time was attributed to decayed dinosaurs, is not something you'd want in your car. Nor in your boat. Nor in your fishing pots or nets. And most certainly not in the seafood meal at the fancy restaurant.

Nor is all oil the same; not even all crude oil. The oil that Captain Hazelwood and Exxon decided to return to nature had made a remarkable journey even before it so abruptly ended.

The oil had arrived in the port of Valdez after being pumped from deep, deep wells nearly a thousand miles to the north in Alaska's North Slope Prudhoe Bay fields and travelling completely across the state (which is the most difficult, by far, of all states to travel across) via one of the world's engineering and construction marvels: the Alaska pipeline. The Port of Valdez is a deep water port, ice free (by Alaskan terms) year round, and able to handle the giant oil tankers that transported the Black Gold to the energy starved world.

Alaskan oil [somehow appropriately] is heavy, tarry stuff that requires [like many Alaskans :-)] a lot more "refining" than most. It is not the clean "sweet" oil found in backyard wells in Texas. Nor is it the stuff that Jed Clampett could find bubbling up in his backyard woodlot. Our oil is thousands of feet below the surface and for whatever reason, largely decided to locate itself in some of the most inhospitable places on earth.

Alaska's North Slope holds vast reserves of oil. As anyone who has followed the news at any time in the last few decades knows, there is a terrific and ongoing battle regarding extraction from the ANWR portion of the North Slope between the Luddites who hide behind the much cooler sounding title "environmentalists" on one side and Sarah's "drill, baby, drill" contingent on the other. This topic deserves vastly more in-depth treatment than I can give it here, but may well be a follow-on column since oil is such a "hot" topic these days in any event.

I personally am in no hurry. Even if alternative energy forms were found and oil was essentially replaced as a fuel, it has sufficient other uses that it will always remain of high value. I'd just as soon leave it in the ground as a bank account for my grandchildren. My objections however have nothing to do with environmental concerns. There are none remaining of note. That is simply a phony excuse by the Luddites. The existing oil operations in the North Slope have had no negative environmental impact. The caribou and other wildlife seems quite attracted to the spectacle (face it ... they are bored with thousands of miles of featureless tundra as their lifetime view) and it has not had any negative effects on the environment whatsoever.

No ... the only time our Alaskan crude oil has harmed the environment was when a drunk sea captain decided to see if his boat was tougher than the rocks of Bligh Reef [it wasn't].

And that harm to the environment was real. It wasn't the "pretend harm" that the greenies use to scare people into opposing drilling. This was real harm. And it not only harmed the environment dramatically (twenty years later and it still hasn't recovered ... biological processes operate much more slowly in this cold climate), but it harmed, even more dramatically, the people who made their living off that environment. And those who made their living off the people who made their living off of the environment.

For those of you just joining us, the brief synopsis is that a drunken Captain (who Exxon had put through alcoholic rehab previously and absolutely knew that he had relapsed badly; indeed he couldn't legally drive even a car - his license was suspended for his third DUI since the rehab only a few years before the accident) was given command of a massive oil tanker and, without bothering to tell anyone, apparently tried to slip through a channel where no oil tanker belonged. And then, he and his bottle went down to his stateroom to do "paperwork" while leaving control of the vessel in the hands of a third mate who was not certified to run the tanker in Prince William Sound (PWS), although he was in the open ocean. For reasons that will never be known, it didn't make it. It appears that when they first scraped the reef a drunken Hazelwood staggered into the wheelhouse and screamed "hard right". Unfortunately he was drunk (and perhaps dyslexic?). If he'd yelled "hard left" we may never have heard of the Exxon Valdez.

As it was, it (in the Captain's inimitable slurred radio report) "fetched up" on the reef and was apparently leaking some ... cargo. That "hard right" caused unfathomable destruction of wildlife and pristine habitat. The spill killed an estimated 350,000 to 390,000 seabirds, in addition to 3,500 to 5,500 sea otters, 300 harbor seals, 250 bald eagles, 22 killer whales and billions of salmon and herring eggs (along with countless other flora and fauna).

It also caused unfathomable loss and damage to those who lived there and were "married" to the land, the sea, and its abundant resources.

This happened in 1989.

No, I didn't mistype. My fingers didn't slip. I didn't get confused. It truly has taken nearly 20 years to pry any money out of them.

Let me give you a move visceral feeling for how long ago Exxon oiled us and then postponed the day of reckoning. In 1989, we had the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill. On June 3 of that year, we also had the Tiananmen Square Massacure. Seems we've had several Chinese governments and entire major philosophy changes since then! :-)

The world moves right along unless you are Exxon with your foot on the brake.

Indeed, Alaska has only been a State for 50 years! For 20 of those we've been living with the never-ending saga of the Exxon Valdez.

In 1989, on November 9 ... the Berlin Wall fell. "No", you say, "that couldn't be! That was more like half a century ago." Well, the Exxon spill was 1/5 of a century ago. But yes ... before such major changes in the world ... the Exxon Valdez had already attempted to cut a new channel through Bligh reef.

In 1989, gasoline was $1.29 a gallon. The mimimum wage was $3.35. A dozen eggs were 96 cents; a loaf of bread, 69 cents! Oh and before serious competion with the internet which should have lowered it's price (!), the cost of a first class stamp was $.25!

It seems like it was a different age, a different era. And it was! Exxon managed to delay through the passing of years, decades, a century and a millenium. It is difficult to believe that the Supreme Court of 1989 (or 1994) would have sliced and diced the exemplary damages award so viciously. [Truefully, even though I understand that this Court is the most conservative in a very long time ... I still find it difficult to believe that even they would do ... what they did!]

Exxon is so big and so powerful and so unbelievably arrogant that they were able to "leverage" that power to keep the money out of the hands of the fishermen for all this time ... and Exxon has now succeeded in keeping most of the money out of the hands of the fishermen forever.

"The check's in the mail."

Exxon claimants [as all the prevailing plaintiffs in the Exxon-Valdez lawsuit are called] have been waiting nearly 20 years to hear those words; nearly 15 years since the jury verdict awarding us, in addition to modest compensatory damages, a $5 billion punitive damage award.

But, the checks aren't for anything close to that. Actually, ignoring interest [as Exxon still hopes to be able to do] and many other variables, we are roughly a decimal point off. In other words, if your share, according to the only people legally qualified to know and therefore to decide; the jurors, was say $100,000, then your "check" would be for ~$10,000. If the jury [and convoluted formulas that were subsequently applied] said your claim was worth $10,000, then your check is for ~$1,000.

And for this we waited 20 years?

Actually, the checks aren't in the mail yet. Presumably they will be soon.

The folks that will be receiving money in this first "round" are those claimants who had no issues of any sorts attached to their claims [eg: judgments against them, IRS liens, child support liens, probate issues (since so many of our original claimants have died), assignments (so many people were so broke they were forced to sell part or all of their Exxon claim to speculators for a small percentage of its worth. Of course, they may look like geniuses now ... , or other]; and had gone through all the stacks of paperwork properly and along the way filled out the proper forms to have the Claims Administrator [the law firm of Keller Rohrback] directly deposit the funds to their bank accounts.

But given the history of this situation, that's really close to "the check's are in the mail".

In 1994 a major trial was held in federal court with approximately 32,000 plaintiffs and a jury, who by all accounts took their job very seriously. After four weeks of testimony and argument and four days of significant deliberation and balancing Exxon's claim that they didn't deserve to be punished any further, primarily because of all the money they had already spent cleaning up their mess, against the reality of what happened, the jury concluded that Exxon needed to both finish reimbursing the actual "out of pocket or never in pocket" type losses (compensatory damages) which was never much at issue. It also made the finding of primary importance that Hazelwood AND Exxon were reckless (ie: "grossly negligent"). Although this point seemed unassailable and crystal clear to everyone but Exxon, it was so dear and the attorneys had fought so long and so hard to get to that point that the lead plaintiff attorney actually had tears when the announcement was made. He had done it.

The finding meant that Exxon was liable for punitive damages and, given the size of the company it was expected that they would be "significant" [the relevant standard being focused on company size and income since the purpose is "punishment" and an award of $10,000 might punish a small mom and pop, but wouldn't be noticeable to Exxon]. Generic formulations yielded nearly absurd results because Exxon was SO huge and profitable that in order for it to "feel" the punitive damages award, the number would have to be staggering.

If one wishes to swat a two year old child for doing something he shouldn't have, it doesn't take much to accomplish that goal. If you swat an elephant with the same force and power ... it would notice you no more than it would a mosquito. In fact, it would probably be more bothered by a mosquito.

Exxon was, and Exxon-Mobil is, an elephant compared even to other elephants.

Instead of shooting for an absurd number that would actually be fitting under the circumstances, plaintiff counsel determined to ask for something that, given Exxon's size, was clearly reasonable and, therefore, presumably appeal-proof. They asked for fifteen billion. The jury gave them five. This was far less than the purpose of punitive damages would dictate as it was but a small percentage of Exxon's annual profits and a pittance compared to Exxon's overall value. It may not have been something that Exxon could pay out of the petty cash annual party fund, but neither would it have a substantive negative effect on the company. This discrepancy (between the value of the award and the value and profits of Exxon) has only increased with time.

As Brian O'Neill, the plaintiff lead attorney said shortly after the initial verdict::

"With a company as large as Exxon that thinks it is above the law, you need to take a substantial bite out of their butt before they will change their behavior. We want to change Exxon. We want to make the Exxons of the world aware that they are responsible the same way that you and I are responsible. It is really a great day. It took five years to bring it about, but we got there."

Indeed, all that was true and for the first time in five years in some of the economically devastated towns and villages, it was the first day of sunshine in half a decade. Despite all the suffering, the loss of culture, the loss of livelihood, the psychic pain that could never be healed ... it was a large enough verdict that there was sunshine and some smiles again. Even though the award was fairly small in terms of the size of award compared to size of company that would be required for "punishment", Exxon was so huge that, in absolute terms, this was a tremendous award; it would arguably be the second highest sustained jury award on record.

There was only one little problem. The award was not sustained.

In a display of corporate arrogance unmatched in modern times (well, perhaps, other than Enron giving top management huge bonuses just before closing their doors), Exxon vowed that as a matter of principle, and because it thought that people should be grateful to it (for all the work it did cleaning up the spill) instead of suing it, it would make sure the fishermen and other plaintiffs never received anything anywhere close to an award of that magnitude.

Exxon succeeded beyond its wildest dreams and beyond the wildest nightmares of the plaintiffs and their attorneys. They made certain that the lesson for all to see was NOT that "the Exxons of the world were made aware that they are responsible the same way that you and I are responsible". Instead, Exxon set out to prove, and ultimately did so with resounding success that the Exxons of the world are NOT responsible the same way that you and I are responsible. They boldly and "in your face" demonstrated that O'Neill was absolutely correct in saying that Exxon believed that were above the law ... and they successfully proved that, indeed, they were.

There is an old African proverb that says: "When elephants play, the grass gets trampled." You have to give O'Neill and his firm credit though. They stuck with us the whole time and fought tooth and nail every inch of the way. It is a tragically sad commentary on our system that even with powerful law firms on our side, that we didn't manage to rise much above the level of the grass. The elephants in the world have gotten so big that there is almost nothing able to control them. They've been paying lobbyists for so long (and as we have been discovering in Alaska, the Big Oil boys have been cutting out the middle man when convenient and paying the legislators directly) that they managed, by the back door, to pack the courts as well.

At most ... we got up off the ground by sheer brute force and transformed ourselves from grass to mosquitoes.

We buzzed around them. We even bit them. But ultimately we had about as much effect as one would expect a mosquito to have in dealings with an elephant. We were naive. All of us, including the Federal District Court Judge Holland who maintained his honor by telling the 9th circuit to shove it when they ordered him to knock the punitives down. Our hot-shot lawyers were naive. The fishermen were naive. "Oh, come on ... the United States Supreme Court is not going to take a drunk driving case!" Unless, that is, you have a Court that has been picked as they rose through the system by litmus test on such things as "tort reform", which is phony lingo for "taking away rights guaranteed by the U.S. Consitution but not admitting to it". 20 years of naivete. Even more than the money (and that is saying a fair bit), I think all of us on the side of right, truth and justice are more upset by a 20 year spanking than anything else. We are embarrassed that we actually believed our "judicial system" was in the business of dispensing justice. Even I fell for it and I had a Superior Court judge tell me once to always remember that the courts are in the business of judgments; not justice.

And that there was a huge difference between the two.

Which is something we have all now (even the most stubborn of us) finally learned.

Harken back to Brian O'Neills' statement following the verdict, above. This is what he said after the Supremes gutted it:

"I feel bad for all the claimants, that they're not going to get enough money to put together their lives again. I feel bad for all the claimants because they're not going to get the satisfaction knowing that there was a just punishment administered to Exxon. And I feel bad for all of the claimants because the judicial system has let them down. It just isn't fair."

Part 4 of This Series May be Viewed Here:

The Fat Lady Ain't Singing

October 25, 2008
The Fat Lady Ain't Singing

I’m starting to run into a sense of defeatism - or at least tangible pessimism - by the pro-McCain/Palin camp. It runs from hard-core solid McCain supporting bloggers (eg: TexasFred's comment beneath the linked story) to the few pro-McCain journalists that run in the mainstream media (eg: Krauthhammer talking of all the conservative "ship-jumpers" who want to be on the winning side.) Only a few days from the elections and polls are showing Obama having a nearly double digit lead. In fact, some polls are showing Obama has a double digit lead.

McCain supporters are beginning to lose hope and Obama backers are already breaking out the champagne.

This article should help the McCain folks regain some of that hope and should convince the Obama folks not to pop any corks yet.

I certainly wouldn’t want to wager my retirement income [oh wait, that disappeared in the financial meltdown and is already gone ... never mind] on McCain and Palin pulling this off. But I don't think the McCain/Palin supporters should be ready to throw in the towel yet. I’m listening really closely and the fat lady isn’t singing yet.

To some extent it is realistic to believe that McCain never really had a chance because he was playing in a rigged game with marked cards. Or, as Newt Gingrich and I separately said on the same day purely coincidentally [at least I doubt he’s getting his guidance from my blog and I hadn’t seen his comment when I first wrote mine] ... "the fix is in".

Well, the fix has been in from the beginning. There is no way that Obama on his own could have made it to the point of being a presidential contender. He is way too young, fresh, unknown and inexperienced. No ... he didn’t get there on the merits. He was chosen. Ultimately "by whom" is a fascinating question. Who is the real puppeteer? Who pulls the strings? Who are we really electing when (if!) we swear Obama in as President? I don’t know. But he was selected and then handed to the Chicago machine and used as a charming, naive front man. I think Obama probably believes he got where he is on his own merits ("woke up on third and thought he must have hit a triple"). But he’s just a pretty face with the ability to read a teleprompter speech well.

I know I’m beginning to sound like Hilary and her "vast right-wing conspiracy". But whoever is running the Chicago machine (or perhaps is even the puppet master of the Chicago machine as well), has the national pressography in lock-step compliance. Virtually the entire mainstream media (with some possible exceptions ... or perhaps only a few "apparent" exceptions so that it doesn’t look any more obvious than it does) is acting as campaign workers for Obama. "Someone" even managed to "get to" Powell and convince him to turn on his very good and close friend of decades. After much thought ... I cannot believe that Powell truly believes what he said, (although it is true that he has clearly shown extremely bad judgment before). He does not appear to be an easy man to intimidate and I’ve always believed he was too honorable to be bribed. So I don’t know how they did it. But I believe "someone" must have.

In a rigged game ... did McCain ever stand a chance?

Oddly, the answer is yes. And oddly I believe that is largely due to something that is widely perceived as a dangerous character flaw in McCain: he is a gambler. Literally, as in spending time playing the craps tables in Vegas; and figuratively in that he is willing to roll the dice on decisions that drive the RNC and his own staff up the wall (his selection of Governor Palin as running mate is an excellent example). McCain has been playing in rigged games all his life and knows how to beat the house even when the cards are stacked against him.

He had (by all appearances) zero chance prior to his Palin selection. The question was just how badly he was going to be beat. Obama was the anointed one. To suggest that Obama's ego got a little carried away with itself is putting it much too mildly :-) He was so certain that he was selected by "higher powers" to this role he gained a Messiah complex. He is right that he was selected by higher powers. But they are very earthly powers. They deal in back rooms and hide, perhaps in plain view. But whoever they really are, these the Powers that Be ("PTB") possess enormous power and influence.

Vegas wouldn’t have even run a line on McCain at that point. He was "just another Bush"; an ultimate Washington insider who had voted with the President way too often for his own electoral good. Essentially anyone that was on the bandied about list of his "likely choices" would have assured the defeat that looked like a forgone conclusion.

So he did what all experienced gamblers do when they see the cards are marked: he brought out a new deck and shuffled. He chose someone the Obama camp and the PTB had not anticipated nor planned on how to respond. And he caused absolute and total panic among all the Obama supporters, the media, the left-wing blogs ... and Obama himself (who allegedly took up smoking again very shortly after hearing the news).

After the initial panic, the entire "vast left-wing conspiracy" [:-)] went to work bringing their considerable resources to attempt to destroy the public image of Palin and to use her as an example of McCain’s poor judgment. As one who actually knows a fair bit about our Governor (and did long before she was selected - see various posts below), it is mind-boggling to me the lengths to which the media has gone to attempt to discredit her as a credible candidate. She is nothing like the caricature the media has painted of her. No negative rumor, no matter how bizarre and unsubstantiated, is too loony for the punditocracy to print about her. If there is absolutely no substantiation, the press can (and does) go with their standard fall-back position by pointing out that there isn’t much to substantiate the rumor. It is a journalistic trick as old as the profession of muckraking.

"The widely reported story that, yet again, Sarah Palin was found passed out from booze and pills in a hotel bathroom has not been sufficiently documented that we are able to attest to its veracity."

I haven’t actually seen that headline yet, but it wouldn’t surprise me if I did.

And it has had an enormous effect. The PTB are back in apparent control, Obama is warning against overconfidence, which is excellent evidence that he is overconfident!

But the fat lady ain’t singing yet.

John McCain has been dead and buried, only to rise again, so many times that Lazarus is jealous. Based on that alone I wouldn’t count him out. But there are other reasons not to believe the fight is over or that McCain can’t pull it off.

The first is that a lot of polling is done with the express purpose of attempting to show whoever the pollsters (or whoever hires them) wants to win is doing so. This is because there is a widely held belief (which I don’t know is accurate, but don’t dispute), that, in general, Americans (or perhaps anyone) are sheep that want to be on the winning side and so if the poll shows that Obama has a comfortable lead and the lead is widening ... people will be more inclined to vote for him. I’ve never truly understood that psychology (but as I say, I don’t dispute that it is real), but that may simply be because I’m inherently a contrarian who tends to float upstream and swim against the tide.

Poll results are all manipulated to "adjust" the raw data for such things as the pollster’s belief in the likelihood of whether certain identified groups of respondents are likely to vote, or to make the sample mirror the actual population in things such as gender, party affiliation, race, age, etc. Beyond that, the exact wording of the question is critical and minor changes in what is asked and how it is asked can bring dramatic changes to the final results. Ultimately this means that a poll can be heavily manipulated to produce desired results.

So I take all national polls with a grain of salt. I don’t know what McCain’s own pollsters are discovering. But he isn’t looking discouraged enough for me to believe that they agree with Pew or McClatchy.

There is another, very powerful, reason to not give up hope. People lie.

It is PC now to be an Obama backer and very un-PC to think highly of Palin or to suggest that you might actually vote for the McCain ticket. And, sheep that we are, people don’t want to appear un-PC. So they lie. They lie to their friends, they lie to their co-workers, they lie to reporters ... and they even lie to telephone pollsters (because no one is ever really sure that their responses will be kept confidential).

This is particularly true in this race for several reasons, one of the main ones being that Obama is black. There is a sense that if you oppose Obama, you must be a racist and in this day and age that is the last thing that anyone would want to be accused of. So they tell everyone that, of course, they are going to vote for Obama. But in the privacy of the voting booth, many of those people will pull the lever for McCain.

And then they’ll lie to the pollsters on their way out of the voting place.

This same thing happened four years ago. I predicted then that, even though Kerry was comfortably ahead in the polls, that once inside the booth, a lot of people who said they were Kerry supporters would vote for Bush and would lie about it afterwards. I said that if I was correct, the exit polls would be way off and that the actual vote would be much higher for Bush than the exit polls show.

I was dead on.

When I re-tooled this blog a couple months ago, I brought along some of my old postings. Many of the links didn’t survive the transfer or the linked site is gone now, but they are still sufficient to show, not to put too fine a point on it, that I was absolutely, unarguably, "I told you so" right! :-).

I don’t know whether this phenomenon will be sufficient to put McCain in the winner’s circle. I’m not ready to call the election on his behalf yet. But I do believe that it will have a very real effect and that, once again, the Republican ticket is going to do significantly better at the actual ballot box than they do in the polls.

So it isn’t time for McCain's supporters to give up. That alone can become a self-fulfilling prophecy; whether because of the sheep phenomena by which people want to be on the winning side to just not bothering to vote since it is a "lost cause" anyway. Between McCain’s gambler instincts and his Lazarus imitations ... and my belief that people lie to pollsters, I’m not at all convinced that Obama has this one in the bag yet. And there still could be an "October surprise" which may make a major difference in the election (whether in McCain or Obama’s favor, I have no idea).

But the election isn’t over until it’s over. The fat lady isn’t going to sing until the 4th of next month. No matter what the pollsters and the media tell you.

General Powell; Fatally Flawed

October 19, 2008
General Powell; Fatally Flawed

I appear to be reacting instead of acting lately! General Powell's endorsement of Obama brought to the surface some very strong feelings of betrayal that had sort of gotten buried a bit by time. But when they hit, they hit hard. I still honestly believe General Powell to be a good man. I used to believe he might even be a great man. But I learned, to my great disappointment, that his "fatal flaw" is that his judgment and recommendations are simply not to be trusted.

At one time I had a great deal of respect for General Powell. That was before he stood before the United Nations and stared us all in the eye and lied about the existence of WMDs in Iraq, claiming personal knowledge that he knew this to be true. I think the war in Iraq is an abomination and horrendously immoral [and said so, loudly, long before "shock & awe" when I was a very lonely voice].

I wasn't blogging then, but see this from "the last time around": four years ago, shortly after that election:

http://alaskanwoulds.blogspot.com/2008/09/monday-november-08-2004-preemptive.html

I wouldn't have been so lonely in opposing the war initially if General Powell had not made the case for the war ... by flat-out lying. Lots of people who didn't trust Bush trusted Powell. And he sold us down the river. We might never have got into that immoral disaster that has ruined our standing in the world and destroyed our economy (and had more additional negative effects than there is room to list) if it hadn't been for Powell.

This is a link to the verbatim transcript of what he said (plus video, plus copies of the slides he showed ... everything). It was a few years ago so you've probably forgotten parts; it is well worth reading again:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/02/20030205-1.html

For those who can't be bothered, a few specific quotes ... the exact words of General Powell:

"My colleagues, every statement I make today is backed up by sources, solid sources. These are not assertions. What we're giving you are facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence."

"Saddam Hussein and his regime are not just trying to conceal weapons, they're also trying to hide people."

"Ladies and gentlemen, these are not assertions. These are facts, corroborated by many sources, some of them sources of the intelligence services of other countries."

"I believe that Iraq is now in further material breach of its obligations. I believe this conclusion is irrefutable and undeniable."

"Ladies and gentlemen, these are sophisticated facilities. For example, they can produce anthrax and botulinum [sic] toxin. In fact, they can produce enough dry biological agent in a single month to kill thousands upon thousands of people. And dry agent of this type is the most lethal form for human beings."

"There can be no doubt that Saddam Hussein has biological weapons and the capability to rapidly produce more, many more. And he has the ability to dispense these lethal poisons and diseases in ways that can cause massive death and destruction."

"Our conservative estimate is that Iraq today has a stockpile of between 100 and 500 tons of chemical weapons agent. That is enough agent to fill 16,000 battlefield rockets ... Saddam Hussein has chemical weapons. Saddam Hussein has used such weapons. And Saddam Hussein has no compunction about using them again, against his neighbors and against his own people."

"People will continue to debate this issue, but there is no doubt in my mind, these elicit procurement efforts show that Saddam Hussein is very much focused on putting in place the key missing piece from his nuclear weapons program, the ability to produce fissile material."

"We know that Saddam Hussein is determined to keep his weapons of mass destruction; he's determined to make more."

"The United States will not and cannot run that risk to the American people. Leaving Saddam Hussein in possession of weapons of mass destruction for a few more months or years is not an option, not in a post-September 11th world."

And to top it all off, he basically asks the world (and us) to trust him (as so many did because we believed we could) by saying:

"I cannot tell you everything that we know."

And that is just a few tiny snippets ... he really lays it on thick. And we know that he wasn't just innocently making a mistake! He ran the State Department and he insisted that "we know". And we now know that he absolutely did not know and in fact a lot of the supposed evidence was forged, fraudulent junk!

So who is starting to look more like the "continuation of George Bush" now? Bush and Powell lied to us and by doing so did us incalculable damage. Now we have Obama, a proven liar, glowing in the endorsement of the most destructive liar we've experienced in a very long time.

Thank goodness Powell didn't endorse McCain! For any thinking person who believes that we shouldn't have attacked Iraq (one of whom Obama claims to be!), an endorsement by the liar that got us there should be considered the kiss of death. [Yeah, Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld ... they all lied also ... but most of us didn't trust them! We, myself included I'm ashamed to say, did trust Powell. When he said we should go to war because he knew Iraq had WMDs I was almost physically ill because someone I respected so much said that (and that was without having a clue that he was lying!).

Well, I don't respect him nearly so much now (although I tried to regain some over the years by attempting to convince myself that he was just repeating what he had been told, but that just isn't a good enough justification - nor is it true - nor is it what he said. He said he knew that Saddam had WMDs) ... but once again he has proven his judgment has huge holes in it. Both his assertion that he knew Saddam still had WMDs and that we should take him out because of it ... and his endorsement of Obama are terrible, terrible judgments.

If his endorsement proves critical to Obama winning, Powell will have the singular distinction of being the only non-president who has led this nation into its two worst mistakes of the last few decades.

I might well have voted for Powell for President in 2000 if he would have run. That's one of the things that keeps me aware that even my own judgment can be wrong; a realization that is clearly not shared by many other bloggers or posters :-)

Preemptive Killing

Saturday, November 27, 2004

Preemptive Killing
Now that the election is over and Bush claims a "mandate" for his actions ... we can assume that there will be no course reversals. This means that we are firmly charted on a misguided and immoral course.

The Cheney/Rumsfeld/Bush doctrine of preemptive killing is simply wrong. It is wrong by any moral, ethical or civilized standard. Especially in this country we absolutely do not accept nor ever endorse any doctrine or practice of preemptive killing. There is nothing but the slipperiest of slopes between preemptively taking out Saddam and his family and loyalists (and inconveniently located innocent countrymen) and preemptively taking out a mafia or gang leader or other who "probably deserves it" or who was perhaps thinking about doing something bad.

I have no argument with our war with the Taliban or Osama. That was not preemptive. If we are attacked, we have every moral right to fight back. But as bad a man as Saddam may have been ... he did not attack the twin towers and he did not attack us. I fear the unavoidable escalation of our new involvement in the Middle East.

This will not sit well in history. This period may be known as the beginning of the Second Millennium Crusades. I hope our ancestors have the evolved morality to be disgusted with us for allowing it to happen.

I Beat The Pollsters!

Wednesday, November 03, 2004

I Beat the Pollsters!
Well ... I nailed that one. Actually, there were simply no surprises for me this election. I am again bemused by all the sound and fury in the last few weeks by professionals, and others, who simply should have known better. The "experts" are all surprised? All they need to do is listen to me! :-) Whether or not I like being right on this is irrelevant ... just that with a little objectivity, the reality of the situation wasn’t hard to decipher.

On my October 22 post, "Pollsters Getting Kerry’d Away", below, I claimed that this election people were lying to pollsters and that once in the voting booth, a lot of people in the "Kerry column" according to the pollsters would grit their teeth and vote for Bush.

I said "If I’m right ... not only will the pre-election polls be wrong ... but the 'exit interview' polls will be as well". That prediction bore out as well. See for example, today’s Fox News article "Egg on Face of Exit Pollsters". A tidbit quote from the article: "'Either the exit polls are completely wrong or George Bush loses,' FOX News analyst Susan Estrich said." [Citation Expired]

If they had only read my blog, they would have known better! :-)

Kerry'd Away

Friday, October 22, 2004

Pollsters Getting Kerry'd Away
The pulse-takers have decided that Kerry would win the electoral vote if the election was held today. See eg: [Citation Expired]. They might be right. But if they are, it is a matter of luck more than science. More than at any time in the past 50 years the surveys are all skewed in unknowable directions and their "samples" are no longer representative.

Pollsters never get a fair sample of the "likely to vote" 18 to 30 year olds because there is such a high percentage of them that have no phone except a cell phone. Indeed, the "cell phone only" crowd is completely absent from all telephone poll results. That age group is a lot more conservative than it used to be. But are they really most likely to be Bush voters or Kerry voters? No one knows and no one can tell you because no one can ask them.

Telephone pollsters usually don’t talk to people with unlisted numbers. Those folks are probably both more conservative and more likely to vote than the general population.

Telephone pollsters often don’t get to talk to people with caller ID because people often choose not to pick up if it is an unknown phone number or obviously a pollster. Same situation with people who screen calls with answering machines. Folks with caller ID or who use answering machines to screen calls are probably also more conservative and likely to vote. The pollsters generally don’t successfully call people at work, so they only reach people who are either home during the day or who get home in good time in the evenings or are hanging around at home on the weekends. In other words, the unemployed or underemployed ... a group that tends to be more liberal.

And polls based on the general population skew left because a higher percentage of Republicans actually vote than do Democrats.This isn’t earthshattering news. Not many people talk about it, but it is widely understood that polling is a lot less accurate than it used to be.

In this election, though, there is another reason for poll results to be suspect. I believe that more than in any election over the past many years ... a lot of people are lying about for whom they will cast their vote.

They lie to their friends, to their family and to pollsters. To a lesser degree, perhaps, but yet to some very real extent, I believe many people are still lying to themselves as well.

A lot of people simply can’t stomach the idea of re-electing Bush. There is a lot of fury at him out there. And people that are mad will tell pollsters or whoever else that will listen, that they are going to vote to fire him. Which means that they go down in the "Kerry" column in the polls. But once they are within the sanctity of the voting booth, I believe that a substantial percentage of these folks are going to grit their teeth and vote for Bush.

If I’m right ... not only will the pre-election polls be wrong ... but the "exit interview" polls will be as well. It could be interesting! :-)

Al-Zarqawi

Tuesday, October 19, 2004

Headlines: Al-Zarqawi Backs Bush!
It has got to be Bush’s greatest political coup. Al-Zarqawi, the best known terrorist in Iraq, has announced his allegiance to Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida.

This is the best possible political endorsement of Bush’s claim that the war in Iraq is part of the war against al-Qaida and Osama. Indeed, Bush has been attempting to connect these dots for many months, but most independent experts disagreed claiming that Al-Zarqawi and bin Laden were more rivals than allies.

At the debates, Kerry tried to convince the world that the war in Iraq was essentially a distraction from the war on terror and on al-Qaida. Bush insisted that it was, essentially, the same conflict. This may, indeed, be the issue upon which the presidential election is determined.

Now, two weeks before the election, Al-Zarqawi backs Bush’s claim. That’s political dynamite, roughly equivalent to suddenly discovering a huge hidden stash of WMD in downtown Baghdad. Al-Z may have just determined the election of a US President.How did Bush do it? How did he get Al-Zarqawi’s endorsement? It is the great paranoid fantasy. What back-room deal did the Bush team manage to consummate the ultimate political campaign coup? These Bush operatives are good!

Only the truly paranoid would believe there is any substance to such malarkey of course. But about now I would expect that John Kerry is nearly ready to join the ranks of the truly paranoid.

Governor Palin: "Take this cash and shove it!"

March 21, 2009

Take this cash and shove it! Palin has cojones!!

"Oh woe, oh wail, oh moan, oh groan."
"How could she do something like this to our children!?!"

"All she is concerned with is her national reputation; she doesn't care for the people of her state."

My word people! Calm yourselves. Seldom have I seen so many people (who truly ought to know better) in such a tizzy over the actions of a Governor of our Great State. You'd think she was out burning down schools. ["Well she might as well be; it amounts to the same thing!"] Yeah, yeah, I hear you. I think you are nuts, but I hear you. You are getting your point across; it is not necessary to shout so.

So what is this dastardly thing that our gutsy Governor is doing "this time"? She is saying "thanks but no thanks" to what amounts to ~31% of the federal stimulus money that is available to Alaska.

What?!? Turning down free money? Is she nuts?

Apparently some people with very big mouths and very loud voices think so. Oddly [:-)] this are the same people who criticize everything else that she does -- including running for Vice President and thereby "neglecting" the State. And of course these people would have reacted exactly the same if had been solid Democrat and previous Governor Tony Knowles that got tapped for the opportunity to run for V.P. as a Democratic candidate when he was Governor. No ... there is no philosophical consistency to their arguments. They'd have been out in the streets cheering Tony on and babbling and bubbling about how great it was for Alaska to have that sort of national exposure.

It is always the same mouths. I believe it was Robert Heinlein who said that if you just don't have the time to study up on all the issues and make a truly informed choice at the ballot box, to find a reliable bozo and just vote the opposite from how he or she votes. [Pelosi comes to mind on the national political field. She is as total a bozo as have ever been spawned and I can't imagine ... I take it back. There probably are areas where we would agree. I am neither a Republican nor a conservative. But Pelosi is an unadulterated idiot so you'd still be on the right side of most issues so long as you take a position opposite whatever hers might be on any given subject.

We have such people here on the statewide political scene as well. I don't need to name names. Just pick up any newspaper and see who is quoted with the loudest moan and wail about how Sarah is destroying education in Alaska ... or whatever gripe they have with her turning down the "free money". And then always listen to that person and vote the other way on any issue.

Because this is that type of litmus test. Those who are aghast that she would turn the money down are the idiots ... bozos ... that will be wrong on virtually every issue. At least on every economic issue.

See, here's the thing. I've been grumbling about this to anyone who would put up with me [:-)] for as long as I can remember; this automatic accepting of all money offered (and often begging for more), regardless of the long term consequences and regardless of all the strings that come attached to the money. I have been waiting for someone in the Governor's chair to have the guts to "just say no" all of my adult life. But until Sarah Palin came along, we didn't have any Governors with guts. But this lady has got them.

Despite my earlier reservations ... defending her from vicious false hatchet jobs but not truly backing her because we disagreed on so many things ... I think this may have made me a convert. Oh, I'll still disagree with her when she's wrong [:-)]. But she proved to have big-league cojones when she broke up the cozy little Big Oil/oiled legislators club ... something every previous recent Governor had either been in on or had winked at or to which they intentionally closed their eyes. But she charged in without any hesitation and with no regard whose head fell. If they were corrupt, she wanted them rooted out. And she did it! She dragged in the F.B.I. and helped them get their investigation going and helped them in other, quieter ways, as well.

And, along with some rich oil barons and lesser known conspirators, the probe she started has now succeeded in bagging its 11th trophy. Beverly Masek just pled guilty to taking bribes from Big Oil while in office and specifically in exchange for killing a bill that she herself had introduced! She is the 11th conviction to date. And, so far, all of them were Republicans. And they are all staring at bars ... or having nightmares about soon staring at bars ... purely because Sarah Palin had the guts to not play slimeball. There was so much money and power that she took down, I'm honestly amazed that she's even alive.

The fact that it was her own party that took the brunt of that assault has kept Democrats remarkably positive about her and Republicans have a difficult time criticizing her for breaking up what was completely unambiguous selling of votes.

This time it is different. Oh, she still gets huge points for cojones; only this time it is mostly Democrats who are opposed to her refusal to take "free money" (although not a lot of Republicans have had the guts to jump on the bandwagon with her). Doesn't matter. She is doing what it right. What all thinking people know is right [at least regarding the forest ... she may have a few trees in the wrong group]. But conceptually we all know that

1) the money isn't "free". It comes from the pockets of the taxpayers in this country. The government as no money except that which it takes from us or that which it prints which causes inflation thus devaluing what money we do have and is the same, only more insidious, as taxation.

2) that we shouldn't take money that has a lot of strings attached which effectively give the feds a lot more control over decisions that should be made by the states [you want to talk about buying votes ... that's exactly what the feds do with the money they dangle at us.] They say "You want this, you can have it ... only you have to run the schools the way WE want you to, not the way you want to." Every previous Administration in the State has said, "Oh, ok, cool" and we get idiotic bureaucrats sitting at a desk in Washington D.C. making up rules for how Alaska's Bush schools should be operated ... instead of the people who know anything about the Bush, the existing school systems, the people who attend them and what they really need to be effective. But every previous Governor has stepped right up to the trough. It is embarrassing besides being stupid. Governor Palin even had the unmitigated audacity to flatly say [what most of us know but are too mealy-mouthed to say]: "To me it's just a bribe". Awesome, Governor. Absolutely awesome.

3) that we shouldn't take money that is going to get us into programs or bridges or anything else that we are going to have to fund once the feds leave after supplying the "seed money". For every building that we build with federal dollars, we end up having to maintain it (and keep it warm and lighted and cleaned); for every government program that we start that people begin to depend on ... we have to pay to keep them running when the federal money goes away. It is like a drug. In fact many people have declared that it is the most addictive of all drugs. But when the feds dangle the cocaine baggy in front of your nose and you already have developed a "taste" for the stuff ... you take it. And when it is gone ... we don't just quit the habit. Instead we reach into our own pocket to buy more ... to keep the program going.

WE ALL KNOW ALL THIS! But so few politicians have ever had the guts to say "no thanks". We will be paying for the addictions developed by previous administrations for a very long time. Three hurrahs for Sarah for not adding more. [Can you imagine Nancy Pelosi turning it down?!? :-D] It's ok. You can laugh. It really was a joke if it wasn't such an expensive one. All Alaskans reading this: Thank Whoever It Is That You Thank that we have Sarah as Governor instead of Nancy.

Great job again Governor Palin. I'm very rarely impressed by a politician. But this time, I am truly impressed.

On behalf of all rational people everywhere ... thank you Governor.