On Mon, 03 Dec 2007 21:45:58 -0800, johac wrote:

In article <EuadnWsI96IGvMnanZ2dnUVZ_qninZ2d@giganews.com>,
"Mark K. Bilbo" <gmail@com.mkbilbo> wrote:

On Sun, 02 Dec 2007 21:43:33 -0800, johac wrote:

In article <gqWdnajgRaZnhc7anZ2dnUVZ_v7inZ2d@giganews.com>,
"Mark K. Bilbo" <gmail@com.mkbilbo> wrote:

On Sun, 02 Dec 2007 08:26:17 -0800, parsifal222 wrote:

On 2 Dez., 08:53, johac <jhachm...@remove.sbcglobal.net> wrote:

Huckabee's a Huckaloon.

---
FLASHBACK: Huckabee Claimed Jesus On The Cross Supported The
Death Penalty

At Wednesdays CNN/YouTube debate, a questioner asked former
Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee what would Jesus do on the death
penalty. He replied:

You know, one of the toughest challenges that I ever faced as
a
governor was carrying out the death penalty. I did it more than
any other governor ever had to do it in my state. As I look on
this stage, Im pretty sure that Im the only person on this stage
thats ever had to actually do it. []

Jesus was too smart to ever run for public office, Anderson.
Thats
what Jesus would do.

Huckabee dodged the question that time. But in 1997, Huckabee
claimed that Jesus would have agreed with him on supporting the
death penalty. Shortly before a triple execution in Arkansas in
Jan. 1997, a caller called into Huckabees show on Arkansas
Educational Television Network and asking how he squared his
Christian teachings with his support for the death penalty. As
the Arkansas Times reported on Jan. 22, 1997:

Interestingly enough, Huckabee allowed, if there was ever an
occasion for someone to have argued against the death penalty, I
think Jesus could have done so on the cross and said, This is an
unjust punishment and I deserve clemency.

Jesus, though, did not ask for clemency. Therefore, according to
Huckabees logic, Jesus must have been in favor of capital
punishment.

Huckabee also believes God supports Republicans. As ThinkProgress
reported yesterday, Huckabee interrupted his speech to the
Republican Governors Association in 2004 to answer his cell
phone. He proceeded to have a three-minute conversation with God
about President Bushs re-election:

Were behind [Bush], yes, sir, we sure are. Yes, sir, we know
you
dont take sides in the election. But, if you did, we kind of
think youd hang in there with us, Lord, we really do.

---http://thinkprogress.org/2007/12/01/huckabee-jesus/ -- John
#1782

Holy *****!!!
Is this what your country has been reduced to?!?

Huckabee is gaining support you know...

He's No. 1 in Iowa now. We are in deep you know what.

Not really. The GOP still doesn't have even a third of the money raised
by the Democrats. The gap isn't closing. If anything, it's widening.

I've voted Democratic in nearly every election that I too part in, but
one thing I found to be true. If the Democrats have a way to shoot
themselves in their feet, they will. And the Rethugs have become adroit
at stealing elections. I don't take anything for granted anymore.

True, the Democrats have been good at that lately. But if they manage to
screw this one up, I think there's going to be a civil war in the party.
The party faithful are already pretty fed up with the leadership taking
them to defeat election after election and cowering before Bush and the
Republicans. Lose an election where the Democrats have all the money and
the public is massively discontent and all hell's going to break loose.

It's probably about time anyway. The old DLC crowd needs to be ousted
across the board.

On the *other* hand, while I'm not particularly fond of her, Clinton has
been running a hell of a campaign. I think she has a point when she
claims to be the candidate that can deal with the GOP and the right wing
echo chamber. Obama, whose views are better in many ways, keeps fumbling
the ball.

Then there's Edwards, who nobody's paying attention to, still campaigning
and making good showings in the state polls. We'll see how long the
media's Hillary V. Obama script lasts when the actual primaries get
rolling.

Far as stealing an election, that's something you can pull off in close
ones. I don't think we're talking close this time. Not with that kind of
difference in cash. And not with the independents already breaking for
the Democrats.

The public is not happy. There's a lot of discontentment out there. And
the GOP faithful may nod their heads in polls but will they vote? Lot of
apathy over there. And it's showing in the fund raising.

Frankly, I think stealing this election would be opening a nasty can of
worms. The Dems are already convinced one or both of the last two were
stolen. If it reaches the point where significant numbers really believe
it no longer matters how they vote, I don't know how that'll play out.

While we're a notoriously passive public, we are also the kind that riots
when our football team *wins*.

Unless a, heh, miracle happens (maybe that's why they're turning to
Huckabee?), the Democratic candidate will be able to bankrupt the GOP
candidate in the general campaign. Literally, they won't be able to
keep up and will go into serious debt if they try.

Romney is going to give a big speech on religion this week. We'll see if
the Mormon miracle work any better than the Baptist ones. (I predict a
tie.)

I think Romney will ultimately lose because the GOP turned itself into
the Fundamentalist party. And fundies do *not* like Mormons. I saw on the
news where they were interviewing religious reich types who openly said,
"Mormonism isn't Chrisitianity, it's a cult". They *won't* vote for him.

He's the most beatable candidate the GOP has. The fundies won't switch
but they sure as hell won't vote *for* him. They're already fracturing.
Robertson endorsing Tony Soprano... erm, Rudy Giuliani. One of the others
(I forget which) throwing a hissy over a third party. Some of the fundie
voters say they'd do it too (which would be funny to watch).

I still say something big is going on when you see a disparity like
that. I don't care what the national polls say at this point, unless
the money changes and by orders of magnitude, 2008 is going to be a
slaughter

I hope so. We need more votes in the Senate too. At least enough to cut
off filibusters. .

Oh hell, even if they hang on to enough seats to filibuster, taking a
serious hit in the House (and I bet they will, their House committee
being literally broke and telling candidates "bring your own cash") and
lose the WH, they'll fracture.

Without "support our president" to keep them in line and having gone
through a serious whipping in the election, they'll deal. They're
politicians. Party loyalty only goes so far as the next election.

Hell, the GOP House committee is borrowing money *and* telling
potential candidates they're going to have to fund their own campaign.
The GOP Senate campaign is having so much trouble fielding candidates
at all, that last I heard, they had not announced even *one* in a race
where a seat is coming open (via resignations).

GOP theme song. "Another one bites the dust..."

Yeah, another sign the rats are leaving the ship. They're throwing in the
towel. They will not openly say, "Bush has seriously damaged the party"
but that's what they're thinking (and I understand saying amongst
themselves). He will, in time, be despised by his party.

Word is, when GOP leaders trying to get him to think about the future of
the party, he shrugs them off. He flat doesn't care. He's that
disconnected. It's always been about him and him alone. He doesn't give a
flying fig about the party.

They're in a totally untenable position. Bush is wrecking the party but
he's their president and you can't "break ranks" without all hell
breaking loose and handing the Democrats even more ammunition. This is
why I think a number of them have said, "***** this, I'm outta here."

The GOP is literally imploding before our eyes. Even the religious
right has fractured and is going in twenty different directions. I've
never seen the like. I don't think it was this bad after Nixon. And I
remember my Republican family members debating whether the US would
become a one party state and whether what was left of the Republicans
could make up the conservative wing of the Democratic party.

They can still cause a lot of trouble with their dirty tricks. The voter
'caging', the hacked machines, 'Swiftboaters', and shady tactics such as
the one they are using to steal half of California's electoral votes.

Oh they can make all kinds of trouble. But they're in a weird position
this time round.

The last two elections were close. They shouldn't have been but the Dems
shot themselves in the foot twice. Rigging a nationwide election when the
public is in that "throw the bums out" mood is risky. As in if you fail,
you'll have a seriously hostile party in charge of all the buttons and
levers of power. And payback's a *****.

That's one thing I used to think amusing about the "nuclear option" for
filibusters the GOP used to strut around yapping about. Too bad they
didn't go for it. There wouldn't *be* any filibusters in the Senate now.
The Dems would pass anything they felt like.

Further, the GOP is facing two things they'd rather not think about. The
housing bubble is deflating. And despite Wall Street's *repeated*, "whew,
we hit bottom" every time another down turn happens, people I read that
were neck deep in all the subprime and derivatives games make comments
like, "We're not in the last inning, we're just getting through the
National Anthem". There's a looooooooooooooong way to go to unwind that
mess.

I understand the last big run up in the market (300+ points mind you) was
in the face of a new record in prices *dropping* in the housing market.
Not "most in X years" but "biggest ever".

Every single one of them is yapping, "The Fed has to bail us out now!
You'll see!" Which the Fed may do and cut rates again. Problem with that
is the Fed would be gambling on inflating us out of the housing and
credit mess. Which can sometimes work (as Greenspan pulled it off) but
you can only turn that dial so much so many times before inflation takes
off. Wall Street wants rate cuts every other week, ignoring the chance
they're opening the Pandora's box of inflation. Short sighted bastards
that bunch.

If they keep bailing out Wall Street, the public is going to spend the
campaign dealing with the return of inflation. This makes the public
irritable.

Finally, but importantly: oil.

I see even the most recalcitrant pollyanna "expert" has given up their
cant of "we'll see $40 a barrel Real Soon Now" (which cant has also been
"we'll see $50 Real Soon Now", "fundamentals won't sustain $60 long",
"Saudi Arabia is increasing production which will end $70 per barrel Real
Soon Now", "$80 is too high considering supplies and will end Real Soon
Now").

In fact, I just now saw a reich whiner rant about how the "liberals" are
trying to scare the public and, see, oil is down to $88 a barrel!

Which is *hysterically* funny to me. "We're back around $90, see how
silly *those* people are?"

Little noticed fact...

Exxon-Mobile stock dropped recently when they announced profits were
down. The market's reaction was about as stupid as it gets. We were
talking a "drop" in the realm of "$9.1 billion" down from an expected
"$9.4 billion". My thought? Oh my god, how WILL they pay their bills?

Notice something interesting? Gas prices didn't spiral wildly when oil
headed for $100 per barrel but oil company profits dropped (even if
slightly in relative terms).

They ate the difference. They're scared. The last big run up when we
first went to $3 saw people actually cutting back. Not a lot but it was
there. RV sales have collapsed and the Prius has waiting lists.

We've reached the realm of the tipping point where prices are close to
"behavior changing". Plus, we're heading into an election year. The oil
companies are worried.

But how long can they hold their breaths? Eat too much of the increase,
Wall Street punishes you. Let it rise, the public backs off. What's a
filthy rich company to do?

Now, consider going into summer 2008 with $3 a gallon being the new
normal. We'll hit the refinery switch over about March and the driving
season about two(ish) months later. This is when gas prices rise normally
and don't start retreating until about two months (sometimes less)
before...

You guessed it. The election.

Oh and don't be distracted by all the yapping that SA is going to
increase production. They don't have it. They're lying.

They always claim they have 1 to 2 million barrels per day extra
capacity. But they've claimed that *for* *years* now. Funny how world
consumption can go up as much as 2 million barrels per day and SA always
has 1 or 2 million more. Somehow. As if by magic.

And never mind the time they actually whined that they offered that extra
production and nobody bought it.

Wanna know why? It's the crappy oil nobody can use. Nobody bought it
because nobody could do anything with it. THAT is their "extra"
production. The sludge nobody wants.

Funniest thing in all of this is the only member of OPEC that's said
anything I'm willing to even consider believing is, of all countries,
Iran. They flat out said, "There is no more, this is it."

I believe we're at 100% production now. This is it. Every announced
refinery expansion project is talking 10s or 100s of thousands per day.
But world consumption rises 2% per year and we're talking 1.5 million or
more per day. If every, single expansion project they're talking about
were brought online tomorrow, we'd get maybe a year's reprieve before
prices started climbing again. And they won't be brought online all at
once. They span years. 2010(ish) is when several major ones are coming.

It's going to be an interesting year...