A Friday Round-Up for a Thin Week

Little time to blog this week, so I'll just do a round-up of things I wanted to talk about but didn't have time to. I have a lot to say on the News Corp phone hacking scandal, but that deserves its own post.  On thing that has just happened is that the former head of News International and current CEO of Dow Jones has resigned.

Speaking of News Corp, a blog in that tree-hugging, anti-business rag The Wall Street Journal tells us that oil production can't keep with demand.  Some interesting points from James Herron's Oil Production: Running to Stand Still:

In June, Saudi Arabia responded to rising oil demand, against the protests of fellow OPEC members, by pumping an extra 700,000 barrels a day of oil...So what effect did this major effort have on the crucial balance between oil supply and demand? Very little.

Oil supply from countries outside OPEC for 2011 was revised down by 0.2 million barrels a day because of “prolonged production outages” in a number of important oil producing regions, the IEA said.

More oil is increasingly being consumed at source. The Saudis pumped an extra 0.7 million barrels a day in June, but half of this was consumed domestically.

The Crowell & Moring law firm said birth defects in W. Va are the fault of inbreeding, not mountain-top mining.  Nice strategy, blame a stereotype, not the effects of your client's operations: massive exposure of coal seams (which can include sulfur and heavy metals) to oxygen and water, creating acid mine drainage, as well as radical alteration of surface and groundwater flow.

In their festering Randian-Calvinists minds, the Teabaggers believe themselves to be disciples of fictitious Founding Fathers who were all evangelical protestants who never would think of taxation and fees as a way to pay for the operation of the Federal government.  One of many things they ignore is that the first government under the Constitution solved a massive debt problem by RAISING REVENUE.  When Western Pennsylvania farmers rebelled against an excise tax on corn whiskey, President Washington even raised troops to enforce collection.  The birth of the Coast Guard in the form of the revenue marine came about as a result of revenue collection as well. Secretary of the Treasury Hamilton obtained approval from Congress to build the first ten cutters for the purpose of collecting tariffs and stopping smuggling.

Conor Freidersdorf in The Atlantic watched the Palin documentary in empty Orange County theater.The turnout  shows how overrated she is by the pundits.

It's pretty pleasant here in SE PA, but our fifth heat wave is expected next week.  The drought and heat continue in the south and Plains, leading the Governor of Oklahoma to call for prayer.  Blame it on God eh, not our abuse of the planet eh? When you look at the comments in the linked article notice all the Texas-Okie denialsts claiming it's always hot there.  That begs the question, why pray for it to end then?  But don't worry Southern farmers, that evil federal government will bail you out from the effects of extreme weather.  Too bad most of you vote for people who deny climate change and believe the federal budget should be balanced immediately by only cutting spending.