The surge in oil prices is being driven by political factors and there is no need for additional crude supplies, Saudi Arabia’s assistant oil minister said.

‘We have always said, and OPEC has always committed itself to keep the market well-supplied and balanced. Never has this market been (more) balanced with crude than today,’ said Prince Abdul Aziz, who is assistant oil minister for petroleum affairs.

While there was no need for additional crude supplies, there is a problem with refining capacity. He was referring to what Saudi officials say is a need to invest in expanding refining capacity in consumer countries. Thomson Financial

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To stimulate a bit of thinking about oil players instead of merely blaming Arabs, what’s at least 13% of British Petroleum’s reserves — nudging BP ahead of Shell, to become the No 2 behind Exxon Mobil? Russia.

The day is known for its ability to evoke power through the thunderous collective rumble of thousands of motorcycles rolling through downtown Washington.
Washington Post
By Chris L. Jenkins.
Record Turnout Marks Rolling Thunder Ride’s 20th Anniversary http://news.google.com/

More vets better bikes and boots, more from home and Apple Pie and Al Amode sitting solid As Swans are Songs in ponds these Days and Life or Not ran grief or grave knelt deeper than the beaming heart as sky brings blue then brighter than righter and onerous maston to wheel to steel to Next is Never Far Away driven taut coming home calm Parks are children Not Alone teaching awe turning air heaving crisping cracking racing to its cloudy nest when hurried pain cross patient hope until storms stop, war remains.

Spring has sprung this Peter Wentworth-Sheilds drawing;

white and cold,
an icebox nostalgia
of yesterday’s courage.

Since 2001, 150 fundamentalist graduates of Pat Robertson’s Regent University have worked in the Bush Administration.

Moyers points out, unlike almost all other media outlets, that one of Pat Robertson’s graduates has been in the headlines.

One such political aspirant, former Justice Department official, Monica Goodling, has recently helped to thrust her alma mater into the spotlight, due to her alleged involvement in the firings of as many as ten federal prosecutors.

She resigned from her position in the Justice Department in April, and has said she would assert her fifth amendment rights, rather than testify before Congress. “May God bless you richly as you continue your service to America.”

Regent University produces “Christian leaders who will make a difference, who will change the world.” Bill Moyers says, “I am not that sangiune about Pat Robertson’s missionary efforts; Regent’s University hopes to be the Loyola of fundamentalism.”

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1 in 3 Believe Bible is Literal
Editor and Publisher, ‘America’s Oldest Journal Covering the Newspaper Industry’, reports from Gallup poll figures that about one-third of the American adult population believes the Bible is the actual word of God and is to be taken literally word for word.

Belief in the literal word of the Bible is strongest among those whose schooling stopped with high school and declines steadily with educational level, with only 20% of college graduates holding that view and 11% of those with an advanced degree. [via Thomas Aikenhead Society]

“He who begins by loving Christianity better than truth, will proceed by loving his own sect of Church better than Christianity, and end in loving himself better than all.” – Samuel Taylor Coleridge

A novel and important use for our fingers has appeared at reCAPTCHA.

Shaun Inman posted about how we can help digitize books by solving scanned words that stump computers. It’s easy. By using reCAPTCHA where we use ordinary verification, the word we type is the word we correct in the book scan.

Dick Cheney wants a new war.

Multiple sources have reported that a senior aide on Vice President Cheney’s national security team has been meeting with policy hands of the American Enterprise Institute, one other think tank, and more than one national security consulting house and explicitly stating that Vice President Cheney does not support President Bush’s tack towards Condoleezza Rice’s diplomatic efforts and fears that the President is taking diplomacy with Iran too seriously.

This White House official has stated to several Washington insiders that Cheney is planning to deploy an “end run strategy” around the President if he and his team lose the policy argument.

The thinking on Cheney’s team is to collude with Israel, nudging Israel at some key moment in the ongoing standoff between Iran’s nuclear activities and international frustration over this to mount a small-scale conventional strike against Natanz using cruise missiles (i.e., not ballistic missiles).

This strategy would sidestep controversies over bomber aircraft and overflight rights over other Middle East nations and could be expected to trigger a sufficient Iranian counter-strike against US forces in the Gulf — which just became significantly larger — as to compel Bush to forgo the diplomatic track that the administration realists are advocating and engage in another war. [The Washington Note]

An airline in England specializing in family holiday deals has installed touch-screen gaming systems on the seat backs of its long-haul flights. Ain’t that a kick in the back?

Digital probing while sitting in line
My ticket is wrong, the wrong airline

“We deal in illusions, man. None of it is true. But you people sit there day after day, night after night, all ages, colors, creeds. We’re all you know. You’re beginning to believe the illusions we’re spinning here. You’re beginning to think that the tube is reality and that your own lives are unreal. You do whatever the tube tells you. You dress like the tube. You eat like the tube. You even think like the tube. In God’s name, you people are the real thing, WE are the illusion.” Howard Beale

Twenty percent of children don’t get immunized.

Nuts.

This is a signature to mark our era; a report to the future that we are confused about how to be together.

Our failure to deliver hope and health to children is astounding.

The Chicago Tribune examines the 2008 candidates more thoroughly than other sources, though probably also panders to party machinery. A recent report on Hillary Clinton’s revival of new policies for our nation’s health tells that she has already introduced legislation to expand health care coverage to all children.

Like too many sectors of today’s America, there is a tremendous supply of money that fails to reach the street.

Costs are out of control: premiums have almost doubled since 2000; the nation spends 16 percent of its gross domestic product on health care; 30 percent of the cost increase is related to the doubling of obesity among adults during the last two decades; and the nation’s administrative costs are the highest in the world.

Clinton stumped, “If we spend so much, why does the World Health Organization rank the United States 31st in life expectancy and 40th in child mortality, worse than Cuba and Croatia?”

The insurance industry used major media to mock Hillary Clinton fifteen years ago, making her healthcare efforts seem complex and unworkable, and as the article states, “a laughingstock in some quarters”. Who’s laughing? Mothers and fathers and families at risk for tuberculosis, whooping cough, mumps?

As president, Clinton said, she would focus on prevention, keeping people well rather than treating them later when they are sick and the cost of treatment is more expensive.

“Under my reforms, all Americans will have access to comprehensive preventive care, which will save money in the long run.” She would require all insurers who participate.

“The whole point of insurance, lest we forget, is to spread risk across a group of enrollees,” she said. “It’s one of the reasons that the administrative costs of Medicare are so much lower—because they are actually insuring everyone.”

The Tribune signs off by saying, “Political candidates often cite ‘eliminating waste’ as a way to produce a windfall, but it is unclear how much money could actually be saved.”

I’ll end this post saying it’s not about saving money, it’s about where money goes. It’s time for us to control our cash by demanding service for spending. It’s time for the ship of state to sink a few yachts.

The change from paper-based text to electronic text is one of those elementary shifts — like the change from manuscript to print — that is so revolutionary we can only glimpse at this point what it entails. - Jerome McGann

The pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives. -Albert Einstein

It’s simple.
Admire the leaders you like in large enough numbers.

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10 Things Martin Luther King Would have Done about Iraq

The top 10 websites accounted for 40% of page views.

Richard MacManus reported trends in online traffic over the past five years.

He found that between the end of 2001 and the end of last year, the number of Internet domains expanded by more than 75%, from 2.9m to 5.1m. At the end of 2001, the top 10 websites accounted for 31% of all the pages viewed on the net, and 40% in 2006.

There are more destinations online, but we seem to be visiting fewer of them.

On the internet, the big get bigger.

It wasn’t supposed to be like that.

Nicholas Carr examines ‘Web Plantations’

There are reaching, lifting, trying.
There are duties, tasks, dying.
This is human.

Who are you talking with?
What are you doing?
Where are you?

Have you any forward?
Have you any well?
Have you any sky?

Sprinkle bone.
Voice life.
Step.