Dujodu Blog

Two anonymous U.S. officials claim that Bush is planning on bypassing the Senate to appoint John Bolton as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, possibly as early as Monday. The Senate is beginning its August recess this weekend, allowing Bush to slip him in with a “recess appointment.” The Senate Democrats are very strongly opposed to Bolton however, so much in fact that 35 of them and 1 Independent sent a letter to Bush on Friday asking him to choose someone else. “A recess appointment is not in the interest of the country. Mr. Bolton does not have the full confidence of the Senate. Sending him to the U.N. without the Senate’s approval would send a mixed message to friend and foe alike,” said Joseph Biden, D-Delaware.[1]

Recently, John Bolton claimed that he wasn’t questioned during any government investigation in the past five years. This was later found to be false.
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“The beauty of daylight-saving time is that it just makes everyone feel sunnier,” said Edward Markey, D-Massachusetts, about the extension of daylight savings time included in the new energy bill passed by congress on Friday. The bill will extend daylight savings time by four weeks all together. It will begin three weeks earlier, on the second Sunday in March, and last one week longer, ending on the first Sunday in November. “Kids across the nation will soon rejoice,” said Fred Upton, R-Michigan, referring to the extra hour of daylight that kids will enjoy on Halloween.[1]

Surely the 1,724-page bill wasn’t created to let everyone enjoy an extra hour of sunlight for 4 extra weeks, or more accurately enjoy 4 extra weeks of a one hour shift in standard operating time. However, the daylight savings time shift is probably going to be the only thing you hear about the bill, because it’s the only thing that is going to effect the average American. “An energy bill wouldn’t change the price at the pump today. I know that and you know that,” said Bush during a speech to the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. He went on to say “What I’m talking about is making sure that we leave our children and grandchildren a cleaner, healthier and more secure America … that is less dependent on sources of energy from overseas.”[2] But does this bill really help reduce our dependency on foreign oil? “As long as we’re consuming 21 million barrels (a day) and we’re only producing 8 million, we’re going to be importing oil,” said Joe Barton, R-Texas, author of much of the bill. [1]

The bill does call for more domestic onshore and offshore oil production, but it’s very short sited. The United States reached it’s peak oil production in the early 1970’s, as predicted in 1956 by Dr. M. King Hubbert of the United States Geological Survey (USGS). In April 2000 the USGS confirmed Hubbert’s research when they released the results of “the most thorough and methodologically modern assessment of world crude oil and natural gas resources ever attempted,” says the Energy Information Administration (EIA, http://www.eia.doe.gov/). Inspired by the USGS, the EIA decided to conduct the first Federal analysis of long term world oil supply since Dr. Hubbert’s in 1974. Like the USGS and Dr. Hubbert before them, the EIA reached the same conclusion regarding domestic oil production. A slide from their July 2000 presentation of their study shows this peak.[3]
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Our kitchen sink was clogged today, and I became a plumber. Don’t you love it when completely random events accumulate over time and create a problem for you to overcome? For weeks I’ve been haphazardly shoving crap into the sink, not really worrying about where it’s going or how it’s getting there, and now those actions have climaxed today in the form of a massive sludge ball stuck somewhere between the kitchen sink and some crazy pipe in my basement. The position of the clog was easy to locate after determining that the water was unable to make it to the basement pipe. A very small hole drilled into the drainage pipe gave me access to the interior. By means of a snake I was able to reach the clog and dislodge it. I wasn’t really ready for the amount of time and energy it would take to dislodge this sludge ball, but the payoff (nasty black water running all over me and the basement floor) was much better than it sounds. In fact I was so happy afterward that I was kind of hoping I would have to fix something else today. That feeling didn’t last any longer than it took to wash my hands. “Lava” soap is everything that the commercial says it is though, so go buy a stick today!
This message was brought to you by Lava © brand soap, Ace ‘true hardware’ ©, and the united plumbing association.

Today the house passed the new trade agreement CAFTA (NAFTA, but extended for more of Central America). No brainer right? The Republicans have the majority, so obviously this would pass. WRONG! With 27 nay votes from the Republicans, who actually went against Bush’s urges to pass the bill, the Democrats could have turned it down.

Boston Globe

In an indication of the stakes, the president made a rare lobbying visit to Capitol Hill yesterday to make personal appeals to wavering GOP House members. He urged members to think beyond the interests of their districts and argued that the United States should reward nations that support US policies in combating terrorism and pursuing democratic forms of government, according to members who attended the closed-door meeting.

In fact, only one of the 15 Democrats that voted for the bill could have changed the outcome, since it was passed by only one vote. NAFTA cost the U.S. some 500,000 (some say as many as 900,000) jobs after it was passed in 1993. Will CAFTA do the same? Even if it won’t be as damaging to the U.S., free trade without fair trade spells exploitation for the Central American workers.

More reading:

• House passes free-trade agreement in tight vote - Article cited above.
• Targeting the 15 Democratic sellouts - Who are these Democrats? What else have they voted for?
• Democracy Sold Out - An in depth look at the decision and it’s consequences.
• In Their Own Words: The House Debate on CAFTA - How this bill got passed.

I guess “Separation of Church and State” just doesn’t seem to make sense to some people, like a group of Christian fundamentalists that plan on changing the way religion impacts the government. In the “Plan of Action” section on their website they outline plans to migrate Christian fundamentalists from all over the nation to key states one at a time. Once they are “stationed” they will vote in representatives to push their religious agenda, and if need be they plan to secede from the nation. Seriously. The first state in the lineup is South Carolina. Here is their list of initial and intermediate goals.

Initial goals:

1. 2,500 members in our Phase One counties by September 30, 2006.
2. Work several local political campaigns in 2006 (election goals set at that time).
3. Move thousands more members into South Carolina by September 30, 2008.
4. Complete Phase One by end of 2008.

Intermediate goals:

1. Complete multiple phases by end of 2013.
2. Overwhelmingly impact the Statewide elections of 2014.
3. Institute constitutional reforms returning proper autonomy to the State by 2016 regardless of illegal edicts from Washington, D.C.

Once they have created their Christian utopia in South Carolina, they plan on restarting the cycle in more states.

Read up on the whole Rove situation, if you can stomach it:

• What I didn’t Find In Africa - The original article by Joseph Wilson that started it all. Despite the information in this article and additional information from the CIA, Bush STILL decided to use the Niger case in his January 28th 2003 State of the Union address as an argument to go to war.
• Eight Days in July - A good article that sums up the situation, with an interesting look at the Supreme Court nomination in relation to the cover-up.
• Plame Leak Timeline- A very comprehensive outline on the leak.
• Complete timeline of the 2003 Invasion of Iraq - Look at all of this in context to the war in Iraq. The Niger case was the key argument for going in.
• CIA & Iraq: An Effort to Shift the Blame - The Bush administration tried to blame the CIA for the famous 16 words in the State of the Union. They also tried to discredit Wilson by claiming his wife authorized his trip to Niger - she doesn’t even have the authority to do that.

So, this must mean trouble for Rove right? Actually, it turns out the only consequence so far is a pay raise for him and other top level white house aides. Go figure.

The top pay for senior White House aides, including Chief of Staff Card, Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove and Legislative Affairs Director Candida Wolff, was boosted to $161,000 at the beginning of July, according to a list sent to Congress and obtained by National Journal.

Dujodu.com is going to go through some changes soon, and as a result it will probably no longer include a blog. In an attempt to keep that portion of the site alive, I will be starting a brand new one here (soon to be http://blog.dujodu.com/). With the new blog born I hope to offer some more interesting content that isn’t necessarily related to myself or silly webpages. Will I follow through and deliver on this new venture, or will it fall into the wayside as so many other projects before it? Stay tuned to find out, it’s like a reality TV show, but it isn’t on TV and I won’t be participating in any island games or eating exotic animal waste for “points.”