How to Cut Iran’s Petrodollars By Over $100 Million A Day

By GottaLaff

Think Progress did an analysis of how a strong carbon cap would would "significantly cut the flow of petrodollars to Iran’s hostile regime".

By changing the way we do things here, vis a vis our consumption of oil, we can control the flow of money, petrodollars, to Iran. And the best bonus of all? We'd be slowing the negative effects of climate change by reducing our dependence on foreign oil.

Think Progress has more, but meanwhile, here is a visual aid:

Obama To Expand Offshore Oil Drilling

I just don't get this, haven't they figured out by now that nothing they do will appease the R's? Ugh.

President Obama will propose "to open vast expanses of water along the Atlantic coastline, the eastern Gulf of Mexico and the north coast of Alaska to oil and natural gas drilling, much of it for the first time," the New York Times reports.

"The proposal -- a compromise that will please oil companies and domestic drilling advocates but anger some residents of affected states and many environmental organizations -- would end a longstanding moratorium on oil exploration along the East Coast from the northern tip of Delaware to the central coast of Florida, covering 167 million acres of ocean."

First Read: "The announcement is stunning for those of us who paid close attention to the presidential race. And it will be yet another test for Obama's Democratic base -- in this case, environmentalists."

VIDEOS: Jon Stewart shoots holes through Karl Rove's "Meet the Press" lies

By GottaLaff

Meet the Press, this morning:

Addressing a Congressional panel, former Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz claimed that Iraqi oil revenues would help pay for reconstruction of the country. Sunday, Karl Rove denied the Bush administration ever made that claim.

"[T]he suggestion that somehow or another the administration had as its policy, 'We're going to go in to Iraq and take their resources and pay for the war' is not accurate," Rove told NBC's Tom Brokaw.

"With all due respect", KKKarl:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
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Once again, it took The Daily Show's Jon Stewart to provide us with accurate reporting.

You know what they say, "there are no jokes." Touché, BushCo.

Thanks to my Twitter pal Steve Kimura, we have more evidence:

AUDIO-- Bombshell: Bin Laden worked for US until 9/11

By GottaLaff

Former FBI translator and founder of the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition, Sibel Edmonds.

When I saw that headline, I had to wonder if this is another one of those exaggerated stories that Commenters pounce on me for. But it's Sibel Edmonds, who usually sounds reasonable and very credible. I report, you decide:

Former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds dropped a bombshell on the Mike Malloy radio show, guest-hosted by Brad Friedman (audio, partial transcript).

Sibel Edmonds on the Mike Malloy Show, hour 1

Sibel Edmonds on the Mike Malloy Show, hour 2

In the interview, Sibel says that the US maintained ‘intimate relations’ with Bin Laden, and the Taliban, “all the way until that day of September 11.”

These ‘intimate relations’ included using Bin Laden for ‘operations’ in Central Asia, including Xinjiang, China. These ‘operations’ involved using al Qaeda and the Taliban in the same manner “as we did during the Afghan and Soviet conflict,” that is, fighting ‘enemies’ via proxies.

As Sibel has previously described, and as she reiterates in this latest interview, this process involved using Turkey (with assistance from ‘actors from Pakistan, and Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia’) as a proxy, which in turn used Bin Laden and the Taliban and others as a proxy terrorist army.

The goals of the American ’statesmen’ directing these activities included control of Central Asia’s vast energy supplies and new markets for military products.

The Americans had a problem, though. They needed to keep their fingerprints off these operations to avoid a) popular revolt in Central Asia ( Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan), and b) serious repercussions from China and Russia. They found an ingenious solution: Use their puppet-state Turkey as a proxy, and appeal to both pan-Turkic and pan-Islam sensibilities. [...]

According to Sibel:

This started more than a decade-long illegal, covert operation in Central Asia by a small group in the US intent on furthering the oil industry and the Military Industrial Complex, using Turkish operatives, Saudi partners and Pakistani allies, furthering this objective in the name of Islam.

[...]

Sibel has famously been dubbed the most gagged woman in America, having the State Secrets Privilege imposed on her twice. Her 3.5 hour testimony to the 9/11 Commission has been entirely suppressed, reduced to a single footnote which refers readers to her classified testimony.

In the interview, she says that the information that was classified in her case specifically identifies that the US was using Bin Laden and the Taliban in Central Asia, including Xinjiang. In the interview, Sibel reiterates that when invoking the gag orders, the US government claims that it is protecting ” ’sensitive diplomatic relations,’ protecting Turkey, protecting Israel, protecting Pakistan, protecting Saudi Arabia…” This is no doubt partially true, but it is also true that they are protecting themselves too, and it is a crime in the US to use classification and secrecy to cover up crimes.

As Sibel says in the interview:

I have information about things that our government has lied to us about… those things can be proven as lies, very easily, based on the information they classified in my case, because we did carry very intimate relationship with these people, and it involves Central Asia, all the way up to September 11.

Summary

The bombshell here is obviously that certain people in the US were using Bin Laden up to September 11, 2001.

It is important to understand why: the US outsourced terror operations to al Qaeda and the Taliban for many years, promoting the Islamization of Central Asia in an attempt to personally profit off military sales as well as oil and gas concessions.

The silence by the US government on these matters is deafening. So, too, is the blowback.

Sadly, this makes sense to me in the most chilling way imaginable.

Your turn.

IWRC* Palin wrongly suggests Congress bans oil exports

By GottaLaff

All that energy expertise, and for what, huh IWRC*?

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, touted by GOP presidential candidate John McCain as his expert on energy, seemed to have problems Thursday explaining whether the government bans oil exports — especially from her state's North Slope fields.

A questioner at a town hall-style meeting in Wisconsin said he had heard that at least 75 percent of the oil drilled in Alaska was being sold to China and said, if true, he would like to know why.

"No. It's not 75 percent of our oil being exported," Palin said, suggesting some of Alaska's oil, in fact, may be going abroad but not that much.

"In fact," she added, "Congress is pretty strict on, um, export bans of oil and gas especially."

No Alaska oil has been exported since 2004, and little if any since 2000, according to the Energy Information Administration and the Congressional Research Service.

And Congress has never imposed outright bans on oil exports. Congress prohibited exports of Alaska oil in 1973 when the Alaska oil pipeline was built. But that ban was lifted in 1996 when there were large volumes of Alaska oil coming down from the North Slope and U.S. demand was soft.

The Alaska ban has never been reinstated.

But she can probably see oil bans from her kitchen window.

*"In What Respect, Charlie?"

Palin’s Pipeline to Nowhere may never be built

By GottaLaff

Poser Palin picked a purported pipeline. How many purported pipelines did Poser Palin pick?

When Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska took center stage at the Republican convention last week, she sought to burnish her executive credentials by telling how she had engineered the deal that jump-started a long-delayed gas pipeline project.

Stretching more than 1,700 miles, it would deliver natural gas from the North Slope of Alaska to the lower 48 states and be the largest private-sector infrastructure project on the continent. [...]

The reality, however, is far more ambiguous than the impression Ms. Palin has left at the convention and on the campaign trail.

[A]n examination of the pipeline project also found that Ms. Palin has overstated both the progress that has been made and the certainty of success.

The pipeline exists only on paper. The first section has yet to be laid, federal approvals are years away and the pipeline will not be completed for at least a decade. In fact, although it is the centerpiece of Ms. Palin’s relatively brief record as governor, the pipeline might never be built, and under a worst-case scenario, the state could lose up to $500 million it committed to defray regulatory and other costs.

Contributing to the project’s uncertainty is Ms. Palin’s antagonistic relationship with the major oil companies that control Alaska’s untapped gas reserves.

Put that in your pipeline and smoke it.

Ms. Palin won the governor’s office in part by capitalizing on populist distaste for the political establishment’s coziness with Big Oil, and her pipeline strategy was intended to blunt its power over the process. Her willingness to take on the oil companies has allowed the McCain campaign to portray her as a scourge of special interests.

Now, though, she will need the industry’s cooperation if her plan is to succeed, and just this week, her office said she intended to reach out to the North Slope oil companies.

She sure is one tough Oil Mom!

As Ms. Palin takes to the road to campaign with Mr. McCain, invoking the pipeline as a major victory, some Alaska lawmakers who initially endorsed her plan now believe it was a mistake. [...]

Ms. Palin’s push for a pipeline is central to her view that Alaska, with its North Slope gas resources, is a key to helping the United States develop an energy policy that embraces increased domestic production of gas and oil and the development of renewable and alternative energy sources.

There are many, many more details. You can see the rest here.

Crisis in Georgia = big problems for both candidates and the press

By GottaLaff

This report is disturbing in so many ways. I'll try to break it down into sections:

So far, the domestic political implications of this conflict have been minimal, but the actions of both campaigns raise troubling questions about how either Senator would perform as Commander in Chief.

For Barack Obama, the problem is foreign policy incoherence. [...] he's embraced Georgia's entry into NATO without understanding the full implications of that strategy. [E]mbracing Georgia in NATO means a willingness to defend that country in a war against Russia. [...] At first, he blamed both Georgia and Russia, then called for Russia to withdraw, now he's demanding an immediate cease fire. Events are in the saddle and Obama is going along for the ride -- this matches President Bush's approach to the crisis, and that's not a good thing.

Next, McCain:

For John McCain, the problem isn't coherence, it's bellicosity. McCain has been the strongest global voice behind Georgia since the shooting began. The problem is, when does the McCain tough rhetoric end and World War III begin? ... [W]ith U.S. troops in Iraq and even Georgia unsure how to get their 2,000 Iraqi troops back home in time to make a difference, how exactly would the U.S. help Georgia in this conflict, short of starting an all-out war with the second biggest nuclear power? [...] So unless McCain is willing to get the U.S. in the middle of every armed conflict on earth -- giving new definition to his promise of "more wars" -- a McCain Presidency would mean that we're at least going to enter a new age of foreign policy brinkmanship that will demand a military sufficient to fight these battles. That means either getting out of Iraq or reinstating a draft, because the military today is incapable of matching McCain's rhetoric.

And finally, the media:

One final point: yesterday, one Georgia official claimed that Russian jets targeted the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, which carries roughly one percent of the world's oil to Turkey, bypassing Russian ports. [...] There has been no independent confirmation of the attack and considering how easy it's been for Iraqi insurgents to knock out pipelines over the last five years, one would assume that if Russia really wanted this pipeline out of service, it would be blown to bits by now. Yet despite the dubious nature of these reports, the Drudge Report threw up a headline this morning entitled The Pipeline War and now every American news source has followed their lead. All based on one man's unconfirmed report. Such is the ridiculous state of American news coverage in 2008 and another reason why the oil futures markets have become completely insane this year.

I don't even know where to begin...