Democratic US presidential candidate Barack Obama has requested permission to give an address at the Brandenburg Gate when he visits Berlin later this month, according to German media reports.
Although it's still not official, various German media are reporting that Obama's team has contacted the Berlin Senate to discuss the possibility of the presidential hopeful delivering an outdoor speech in front of the famous landmark. It would likely be his only public speech during an upcoming European tour which is set to include stops in Germany, France and the UK.
If permission is granted, the address would be loaded with historical significance. The Brandenburg Gate is where former US President Ronald Regan gave a famous speech in 1987, during which he asked then-Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall.
Both Chancellor Angela Merkal and Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier have expressed interest in meeting Obama, although dates for his visit have not yet been confirmed.
Obama is immensely popular in Berlin a factor that appears to have some of his advisors worried. According to reports in the daily Berliner Morgenpost, some of his staff have warned him that excessive popularity in Europe could end up costing him votes at home, as was the case with 2004 presidential candidate, John Kerry.
When the founding fathers declared our independence, they could not have imagined that, 232 years later, the United States would be so spectacularly dependent on foreign countries.
In 1973, when OPEC imposed its oil embargo, U.S. oil imports composed 30 percent of our needs; today, they make up more than 60 percent, with a growing proportion of that crude coming from the world's least stable regions. At around $145 a barrel, the United States, by my calculations, will spend more on imported oil this year than it will spend on its own defense budget, and much of that money will flow into the coffers of those who wish us ill.
Since oil dependence is so unappealing, you'd think that energy independence would be an easy sell, especially on this Fourth of July weekend. Energy independence does not mean that the United States must be entirely self-sufficient. It simply means reducing the role of oil in world politics -- turning it from a strategic commodity into merely another thing to sell.
Is energy independence a pipe dream? Hardly. In the electricity sector, the mission has already been accomplished. Remember President Jimmy Carter in his cardigan during the oil crises of the 1970s, urging Americans to save electricity? It took us just one decade to wean the electricity sector from oil. Today, only 2 percent of U.S. electricity comes from oil, according to the Energy Department. Could we do something similar with transportation, where American cars and trucks still gulp oil-based fuel greedily? At least four very different countries -- dictatorships and democracies alike -- are already making serious headway toward that goal. It's past time to pay attention to their example. No mention of nukes for electricity; must be a tree-hugger.
The first country, surprisingly enough, is Iran. The Islamic republic has lots of crude but little capacity to refine it, leaving Tehran heavily dependent on gasoline imports. The country's blustery president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is fully aware that this is Iran's Achilles' heel and worries that a comprehensive gasoline embargo could cause enough social unrest to undermine his regime.
So Ahmadinejad has launched an energy-independence program designed to shift Iran's transportation system from gasoline to natural gas, which Iran has plenty of. 'If we can change our automobiles' fuel from gasoline to [natural] gas during the next three-four years,' he said last July, 'we won't need gasoline anymore.' His plan includes a mandate for domestic automakers to make 'dual-fuel' cars that can run on both gasoline and natural gas, a crash program to convert used vehicles to run on natural gas and a program to convert Iranian gas stations to serve both kinds of fuel. According to the International Association of Natural Gas Vehicles, more than 100 conversion centers have been built throughout the country: Iranians can drive in with their gasoline-only cars, pay a subsidized fee equivalent to $50 and collect their newly dual-fuelled cars several hours later. Ahmadinejad's plan, which has been largely ignored by the West, means that within five years or so, Iran could be virtually immune to international sanctions. So we someone should bomb the refineries sooner, rather than later. The refinery needs to have an unfortunate accident ...
While Iran is moving quickly toward energy independence, Brazil is already there. It's a striking turnaround; three decades ago, the country imported 80 percent of its oil supply. But since the 1973 Arab oil embargo, the Brazilians have invested massively in their sugar-based ethanol industry and created a fleet of vehicles that can run on the resulting fuel. According to the Sugar Cane Industry Union (Unica), 90 percent of the new cars sold this year in Brazil will be flexible-fuel vehicles that cost an extra $100 to make but can run on any combination of gasoline and ethanol.
Lest anyone think that can't be done in the United States, many of those new cars are made by General Motors and Ford. All it really takes to turn a regular car into a flex-fuel one is a fuel sensor and a corrosion-resistant fuel line.
Discovering how to make hydrocarbons and carbohydrates happily cohabit in the same fuel tank isn't all that Brazil has done; it has also increased domestic oil production. But we don't need to do that, sez the author.
Its efforts have not only broken the yoke of Brazil's oil dependence but also insulated the country's economy from the pain of the current spike in global oil prices. Gasoline prices have nearly doubled elsewhere since 2005, but in Brazil, they have been almost frozen. This year, more ethanol will be sold in Brazil than gasoline. Sounds pretty good, doesn't it? So it's Brazil's fault there's no corn for people?
Like Brazil, China has decided to replace gasoline with alternative fuels. But unlike the United States and Brazil, where the favorite substitute is ethanol, China has embraced a different alcohol: methanol. Several provinces in China already blend their gasoline with methanol, a clear, colorless liquid also known as wood alcohol, and scores of methanol plants are currently under construction there. The Chinese auto industry has already begun to produce flex-fuel models that can run on methanol. Shanxi, a province in central China that produces much of the country's coal, has even issued stickers granting cars that use pure methanol free passage on the province's toll roads. How Capitalistic!
The distinction between methanol and ethanol is just one letter (but then, so is the difference between Iran and Iraq). Both biofuels should be in our basket of options. True, ethanol packs more energy per gallon and is less corrosive than methanol. But methanol is cheaper and far easier to produce in bulk. While ethanol can be made only from agricultural products such as corn and sugar cane, methanol can be made from natural gas, coal, industrial garbage and even recycled carbon dioxide captured from power stations' smokestacks -- an elegant way if expensive to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Israel offers a fourth testament to what leadership, ingenuity and audacity can achieve. Last year, it launched an electric-car venture designed to turn Israel -- which obviously has some tensions with the region's big oil producers -- into an oil-free economy. Israelis will soon be able to replace their gasoline-fueled cars with battery-operated ones, which they'll plug into the hundreds of thousands of recharging points planned to be erected throughout the country. Israeli motorists, the government hopes, will be able to swap their batteries in a matter of minutes at dedicated stations or recharge them at home or at work. 'Oil is the greatest problem of all time -- the great polluter and promoter of terror,' said Israeli President Shimon Peres, the project's political patron. 'We should get rid of it.'
For each of the four countries, knocking oil off its pedestal is no longer a theoretical proposition but a reality in the making. But despite the lip service our own politicians pay to the need to reduce our oil dependence, none of the solutions offered by Iran, Brazil, China and Israel are even under consideration in the land of the free and the home of the brave.
Just go down the list. Natural-gas vehicles are nowhere to be seen. Brazilian sugar-cane ethanol is barred from the country by a steep 54-cent-per-gallon import tariff, courtesy of ethanol protectionists and their representatives in Congress. (No tariff is imposed on imported oil, of course.) For similar reasons, flex-fuel cars sold in the United States are certified to run only on ethanol, keeping methanol and other viable biofuels off the market -- even though they are cheaper and can be made from a wealth of dirty, nasty, dangerous, CO2-producing coal and biomass resources. The kind of electric cars deployed in Israel have never returned to U.S. showrooms since General Motors' mass crushing of its EV1 -- the subject of the documentary 'Who Killed the Electric Car?'
It's time to get serious. Policies such as 'drill more' and 'drive smaller cars' all keep us running on petroleum. At best, they buy us a few more years of complacency, while ensuring a much worse dependence down the road when America's conventional oil reserves are even more depleted -- whether or not we drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Too bad they have to be selective in their policies of 'many parts to the solution'.
The hard truth is that real energy independence can be achieved only through fuel choice and competition.
So let's remember the old saying: When in a hole, stop digging. If every new car sold in the United States were a flex-fuel vehicle and if millions of Americans could plug in their electric cars, gasoline would be facing fierce competition at the pump and the socket. Moreover, our money would have migrated from Exxon to Pepco, from the Middle East to the Midwest -- as well as to scores of poor, biomass-producing countries in Africa, Latin America and South Asia, including the few countries that don't yet hate our guts. This, and no other, is the road to independence.
Posted by: Bobby ||
07/06/2008 07:20 ||
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Soory, wrong category. Would some kind soul please clean up my mess?
Posted by: Bobby ||
07/06/2008 7:37 Comments ||
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Brazilian sugar-cane ethanol is barred from the country by a steep 54-cent-per-gallon import tariff, courtesy of ethanol protectionists
#1
Sounds Presidential. I agree with everything he said. As for Oil Shale sources, Obamists call derivative petroleum: "dirty oil." I have seen some proof that refined catalytic converters would reduce carbon content of gasoline exhaust to reasonable levels. Obamists chose not to factor current or future technologies into their petroleum policy (if they are capable of devising one). Also, Newt should have mentioned Clinton's indulgence of the NYMEX "futures" market in oil. (Wonder why Hillary received NYMEX money?) Trading in oil futures should be outlawed.
Pre-Clinton, the Chicago EX had a near monopoly on the Commodities trade. Industries like Citric Fruit need to earn from that market in order to maintain revenues, should there be a crop failure. The oil business doesn't need a hedge.
As for the SPR, Clinton made an unnecessary hack at the Reserves; those are emergency resources.
How are oil prices set? NYMEX gurus issue statements which "Platts" reports posts, and vendors take notice and alter the spot price, which is fed back to Platts, and they report the change, which ALL vendors follow. Oil spikes can be created artificially.
Please google "Arjun N. Murti" and do a little of your own research on the Spike-Phenomena. Forget about the Iran/Nigeria, etc factors; the current price rise followed Murti's prediction of a spike to "$200" a barrel.
Also, staff and contract workers with inside information on the 3800 Gulf of Mexico drilling rigs, have leaked that many wells found to produce are capped, making reserve data delivery impossible. Unless reports are BS, there could be huge resources that are not flowing. However, it is true that drillers often chose to use only 1 of many entries into a single oil pool. That would be another explanation for drill, cap, and leave phenomena.
#6
First of all, let me say that doesn't he look better now?
But second, while it would be gratifying to dump oil from the strategic reserve, it is not a good idea for three reasons.
First of all, if we or Israel get into a war with Iran, we will need that oil.
And second, oil can only be pumped out of the reserve at not a very fast rate, then it will only do us any good if the refineries have available capacity, or it just sits there until they are ready for it.
Third, China is radically expanding its strategic reserves as well, and trying to put every drop they can in there. So this is not just a whim by president Bush.
One : no margin purchases allowed on oil futures. Cash ONLY. This kills the "easy money" thats inflating the markerts.
Two : purchases of futures must take delivery. Consumers ONLY. This kills the "free rider" problem of peopel that neither produce not use the oil controlling it.
Three: Drill ANWR, OCS and develop Oil Shale. Remember Reagan and the SUPPLY SIDE! This decreases the pressure on prices, and scares away the speculative buyers, as well as ensureing better domestic supply instead of sending the money to the Wahabbis and Chavez, while we get moving to alternate soruces for vehicles (hydrogen fuel cell, nukes and electrical).
By Jack Kelly
As Jim Geraghty of National Review Online noted, there are 'way too many' of these attacks on Sen. McCain's war record to be a coincidence. But if it's a deliberate strategy by the Obama camp, it's an odd one, because there is no way a comparison between Sen. McCain's record on national security and his makes Sen. Obama look good.
What's important about Sen. McCain's experience as a POW is not what it taught him about conducting foreign policy, but what it teaches us about his character, wrote 'Uncle Jimbo,' a former Special Forces soldier, on the milblog 'Blackfive.'
'John McCain was so loyal to the men he was imprisoned with he endured torture on their behalf,' Uncle Jimbo said. 'Barack Obama associates with those who can help his career, and throws them right under the bus when they become inconvenient to his aspirations.'
'In minimizing the import of McCain''s military service, Clark instead opened the door to the sort of criticism that Obama, who painstakingly praises McCain's military record at virtually every event, cannot afford,' wrote Jay Newton-Small of Time Magazine.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/06/2008 00:00 ||
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My fellow Americans:
As your future President I want to thank my supporters, for your mindless support of me, despite my complete lack of any legislative achievement, my pastor's relations with Louis Farrakhan and Libyan dictator Moamar Quadafi, or my blatantly leftist voting record while I present myself as some sort of bi-partisan agent of change.
I also like how my supporters claim my youthful drug use and criminal behavior somehow qualifies me for the Presidency after 8 years of claiming Bush's youthful drinking disqualifies him. Your hypocrisy is a beacon of hope shining over a sea of political posing.
I would also like to thank the Kennedy's for coming out in support of me. There's a lot of glamour behind the Kennedy name, even though JFK started the Vietnam War, his brother Robert illegally wiretapped Martin Luther King, Jr. and Teddy killed a female employee with whom he was having an extra marital affair and who was pregnant with his child. And I'm not going anywhere near the cousins, both literally and figuratively.
And I'd like to thank Oprah Winfrey for her support. Her love of meaningless empty platitudes will be the force that propels me to the White House.
Americans should vote for me, not because of my lack of experience or achievement, but because I make people feel good. Voting for me causes some white folk to feel relieved of their imagined, racist guilt.
I say things that sound meaningful, but don't really mean anything because Americans are tired of things having meaning. If things have meaning, then that means you have to think about them.
Americans are tired of thinking. It's time to shut down the brain, and open up the heart. So when you go to vote, remember don't think, just do. And do it for me.
#2
The WWII revisionist are out in numbers too because the war is the standard others are compared to. If Iraq becomes another democratic society like Germany and Japan, those who've opposed it will disappear in history as those who opposed the involvement of the the US after Pearl Harbor. Same here, attack the experience standard, no matter if you agree with it or not, that McCain has to offer, because what you offer can't measure up. The appropriate campaign slogan for them should be 'Better to rule in Hell, than serve in Heaven'.
By the 10th anniversary, not one of five office towers will be finished and neither will the memorial.
The signature skyscraper that replaces the World Trade Center is nearly ready to move in. The memorial to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks is a year away from opening. A skyscraper damaged by the falling towers was taken down years ago. Four other office buildings are rising.
Don't bet on it.
Those were either the bold, or impossibly overconfident predictions years ago for what ground zero might look like in 2008, instead of the fenced-off, sunken construction site that sits in the middle of downtown Manhattan nearly seven years after the attack.
Generally, the more involvement in a project by politicians, the slower it moves.
By the 10th anniversary, not one of five office towers will be finished and neither will the memorial, said a report last week by the site's owner, the most pessimistic official account yet of stalled efforts to realize an ambitious vision meant to defy terrorists who destroyed the trade center.
It was many years ago, back in the late Paleolithic, that I came to the conclusion that politicians don't feel disgrace like we the people do. Maybe that's why they go into politix and we go into debt.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/06/2008 00:00 ||
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The ideal of all politicians - as the amount of money sunk in the project tends to infinity, the amount of actual construction tends to zero - because all the money has disappeared into graft...
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
07/06/2008 9:31 Comments ||
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given the design hassles in the PA memorial, I'd half expect the libs, tranzis, UN-first assholes, and Donks to demand the WTC replacement to face Mecca and have a crescent top.
Posted by: Frank G ||
07/06/2008 10:03 Comments ||
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It'll take as long as building the Washington Monument at this speed.
For all Senator Barack Obama's success raising money and generating excitement among voters, he faces a daunting challenge as he prepares to claim the nomination in August: a Democratic convention effort marred by costly setbacks and embarrassing delays. I'm not too sure how much of a recommendation it is for a politician when the 2008 convention doesn't get put together until 2010.
Hush, this isn't the problem you think it is ...
With the Denver convention less than two months away, problems range from the serious -- upwardly spiraling costs on key contracts still being negotiated -- to the more mundane, like the reluctance of local caterers to participate because of stringent rules on what delegates will be eating, down to the color of the food. When politicians are involved, the most important thing to decide is how the boodle's gonna be split. Then comes what's for lunch. After that comes what everybody else will be eating, if anything.
At last count, plans to renovate the inside of the Pepsi Center for the Democrats are $6 million over budget, which may force convention planners to scale back on their original design or increase their fund-raising goals. More likely increase their fund-raising goals.
The convention is being organized by the Democratic National Committee, which is run by Howard Dean, with his chief of staff, the Rev. Leah D. Daughtry, leading the effort. Only in the last month has the Obama campaign been able to take over management of the convention planning with the candidate claiming the nomination, and his aides are increasingly frustrated, as the event nears, at organizers who they believe spent too freely, planned too slowly and underestimated actual costs. The Obama campaign has dispatched 10 people to Denver to help 'get a handle on the budget and make hard decisions' about what has to be done and how to move forward, said Bill Burton, a campaign spokesman.
With Democrats seeking to use the convention to move past the bitterness of their bruising primary fight, the gathering in Denver Aug. 25-28 is likely to draw intense interest as the Obama forces try to show a once-divided party rallying around the nominee. And their convention comes a week before the Minneapolis gathering of the Republicans, whose convention efforts have been much smoother.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/06/2008 00:00 ||
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The comments I keep hearing from Denver is that the moonbats are in control, and the stupidity quotient has to be calculated by a pair of CRAY super-computers. Not terribly surprising, especially when you factor in that both Denver and Colorado as a whole are controlled by Democrats.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
07/06/2008 17:24 Comments ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
When the founding fathers declared our independence, they could not have imagined that, 232 years later, the United States would be so spectacularly dependent on foreign countries. 
