September 2008 - Page 10 of 14 - Common Sense Evaluation

Saudis Walk Out of OPEC

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Sep 112008

This is the best news I have read in a long time. Without the Saudis, OPEC is broken. The Saudi’s are smart enough to know that OPEC is trying to kill the Goose that laid the golden egg! Maybe they are getting nervous about America drilling for its own oil and ending our dependence on foreign supplies.

This should drive oil prices down even further. Now we can pick and choose whom we get our oil from and we can even restrict oil purchase from certain rogue countries. What was once a Monopoly could turn to competitive pricing. This will be interesting to watch.

The death of OPEC

Saudi Arabia walked out on OPEC yesterday, saying it would not honor the cartel’s production cut. It was tired of rants from Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and the well-dressed oil minister from Iran.

As the world’s largest crude exporter, the kingdom in the desert took its ball and went home.

As the Saudis left the building, the message was shockingly clear. “Saudi Arabia will meet the market’s demand,” a senior OPEC delegate told the New York Times. “We will see what the market requires and we will not leave a customer without oil.”

OPEC will still have lavish meetings and a nifty headquarters in Vienna, Austria, but the Saudis have made certain the the organization has lost its teeth. Even though the cartel argued that the sudden drop in crude was due to “oversupply”, OPEC’s most powerful member knows that the drop may only be temporary. Cold weather later this year could put pressure on prices. So could a decision by Russia that it wants to “punish” the US and EU for a time. That political battle is only at its beginning.

The downward pressure on oil got a second hand. Brazil has confirmed another huge oil deposit to add to one it discovered off-shore earlier this year. The first field uncovered by Petrobras has the promise of being one of the largest in the world. The breadth of that deposit has now expanded.

OPEC needs the Saudis to have any credibility in terms of pricing, supply, and the ongoing success of its bully pulpit. By failing to keep its most critical member, it forfeits its leverage.

OPEC has made no announcement about any possibility of dissolving, but the process is already over.

New Video Shows John McCain Being Handed Over to the U.S. Military in Hanoi

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Sep 112008

A Swedish broadcaster released a video showing the release of John McCain to the U.S. military in Hanoi in 1973.

This is pretty powerful stuff. Obama isn’t fit to lick McCain’s boots.

Film shows McCain’s release from Vietnamese prison

Swedish broadcaster SVT on Thursday released a previously unseen film clip purportedly showing the release of presidential candidate John McCain to the U.S. military in Hanoi in 1973.

A former SVT reporter, Erik Eriksson, said he found the video in the network’s archives when he was looking for footage for a book he was writing about his experiences as a war correspondent in Vietnam.

SVT posted the edited 39-second clip on its Web site on Thursday. It shows McCain stepping off a bus with other prisoners. He has a pronounced limp but is not using crutches.

It then shows McCain standing in a lineup when his name is called. He walks up to salute and shake hands with U.S. military officers. The last part of the clip shows a U.S. Air Force jet taxiing on a runway.

Eriksson said the footage was filmed in Hanoi on March 14, 1973, by a Vietnamese photographer whom he had contracted to film the release of U.S. prisoners.

“I don’t know if there is another film from his release. I haven’t seen all the films in the world, but as far as I know there are no others,” Eriksson told The Associated Press.

Eriksson said the clip was included on a DVD that he released with his book.

“This summer when I was preparing the release of my book we were putting together a DVD with some of my reports from Vietnam and then I thought, ‘I wonder if we have McCain here?'” Eriksson said.

Per Yng, head of SVT’s national news, confirmed that Eriksson found the film in the network’s archives.

“It’s our material. So we can confirm its authenticity,” Yng said. He could not confirm the date and location of the film, but he said he had no reason to doubt Eriksson’s information.

Eriksson said he was covering the Vietnam war for SVT as well as U.S. networks CBS and NBC.

Eriksson could not recall the name of the Vietnamese cameraman and said he had not been in contact with him after finding the clip.

Hat Tip: Hot Air

Obama Losing Support Among White Women Voters

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Sep 112008

Barack Obama in a desperate attempt to win back women voters.
After the lipstick on a pig comment, it’s going to get larger.

Poll shows big shift to McCain among white women

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama on Tuesday brushed aside a survey that showed him losing support among white women voters to John McCain since the Republican standard-bearer named Sarah Palin as his running mate.

A Washington Post/ABC News survey published on Tuesday found most of McCain’s surge in the polls since the Republican National Convention was due to a big shift in support among white women voters.

“The notion that people are swinging back and forth in the span of a few weeks or a few days this wildly generally isn’t borne out,” Obama told reporters during a campaign stop in Riverside, Ohio.

His campaign manager, David Plouffe, was more pointed when asked about the findings at a briefing on Monday, telling a Washington Post reporter, “Your poll is wrong.”

“I don’t think you’ll find many others that back up a 20-point reversal,” Plouffe said. “We certainly are not seeing any movement like that.”

The poll found that the race for the White House is a virtual tie since the parties’ nominating conventions, with Obama, an Illinois senator, at 47 percent support of registered voters and McCain, an Arizona senator, at 46 percent.

An NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll released on Tuesday also showed Obama leading McCain by 47 percent to 46 percent, a statistical dead heat. Obama’s lead in that survey was down from 3-point advantage in August and a 6-point edge in July, NBC said.

Before the Democratic National Convention in late August, Obama held an 8-point lead among white women voters, 50 percent to 42 percent, according to the Washington Post/ABC News poll. After the Republican convention in early September, McCain was ahead by 12 points among white women, 53 percent to 41 percent, that survey found.

“There is no doubt that Governor Palin attracted a lot of attention this week,” Obama told the news conference. “It has brought excitement to the Republican Party.”

“What we’re going to have to do is to see how things settle out over the next few weeks when people start examining who’s actually going to deliver on the issues that people care about: Who’s got an education policy to improve the prospects for our children? Who’s got a health-care plan that’s going to help a whole bunch of women out there?” he said.

McCain surprised the electorate ahead of the Republican convention by naming the little-known Alaska governor as his vice presidential running mate. Palin received high marks among supporters for her convention address, which included a scathing attack ridiculing Obama’s experience and record.

Obama, who would be the first black U.S. president, defeated Hillary Clinton in the battle for the Democratic nomination, a long and bitter struggle that left many of the former first lady’s supporters disaffected and angry.

Many of her backers were further angered when Obama ignored her in picking a vice presidential running mate, choosing instead longtime Delaware Sen. Joe Biden. A key question for the Obama campaign has been whether he would be able to maintain the support of Clinton’s supporters.