This would seem to be a good time to drill:

The chief executive of the world's largest energy company has issued the most dire warning yet about the soaring the price of oil, predicting that it will hit $250 per barrel "in the foreseeable future".

The forecast from Alexey Miller, the head of the Kremlin-owned gas giant Gazprom, would herald the arrival of £2-per-litre petrol and send shockwaves through the economy....

Mr Miller's prediction is well beyond even the most heady market forecasts, the most extreme of which fall between $150 and $200 per barrel, and was explained only by vague references to demand from the developing world. It nonetheless stoked an already febrile atmosphere of growing public anger across Europe over a soaring fuel cost that is wreaking havoc at nearly every level of the economy.

...

In a speech to the European Business Congress in Deauville, France, Mr Miller offered little prospect of relief. He warned that the world was experiencing a fundamental shift in energy prices that will end at a "radically new level. We expect that the oil price will approach $250 per barrel in the foreseeable future".

Philip Shaw, an economist at Investec Securities, warned that oil at that level would exert an extraordinary drag on the economy at a time when it is already decelerating at a rapid rate. "The word is ouch," he said. "Forecasts are forecasts though, and I think it should be treated with some level of scepticism."

...

Most expect it to reach a breaking point before that figure. The IEA said that the high price would eventually "choke off" demand and a balance between supply and demand would return.

Quick, someone get that caribou a pillow. It looks sleepy. We exist to comfort the caribou, you know.

Posted by: Ace at 04:52 PM | Comments (56)
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It's a baseball story.

As we get older, it is customary to bitterly criticize the next generations coming up as selfish and coddled, as possessed of no personal honor, etc., ad infinitum.

Video below the fold. more...

Posted by: LauraW at 03:40 PM | Comments (1)
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The "Brown Note"? That low-frequency tone from a South Park episode that supposedly causes involuntary bowel release?

I thought this was a parody. It doesn't appear to be the case. Interestingly enough, though, the idea of a "Brown Note" doesn't seem to have been invented by Parker and Stone, but is an urban myth (disproven by Mythbusters).

Political activists planning protest rallies at the upcoming Democratic Convention in Denver have their stomachs in knots over a rumor about a crowd control weapon - known as the “crap cannon” - that might be unleashed against them.

Also called “Brown Note,” it is believed to be an infrasound frequency that debilitates a person by making them defecate involuntarily.

Mark Cohen, co-founder of Re-create 68, an alliance of local activists working for the protection of first amendment rights, said he believes this could be deployed at the convention in August to subdue crowds.

“We know this weapon and weapons like it have been used at other large protests before,” he said.

Cohen, who described Brown Note as a “sonic weapon used to disrupt people’s equilibrium,” cited eyewitness accounts of its use during free-trade agreement protests in Miami in 2003.

“I think these weapons were mostly intended for military use and so their use for dealing with innocent protesters seems highly inappropriate,” he said. “The idea that they might be field testing them on people who are doing nothing more than exercising their first amendment rights is disturbing.”

His group is preparing against a possible attack by Brown Note and other crowd-control measures by dispatching street medics at the convention trained in treating injuries in demonstration situations.

“It’s all we can do,” Cohen said.

So is the Brown Note a real threat?

Read the article for the answer to that. The short answer: Of course not, you retard.

What a wonderful fantasy world these guys live in. The LARP guy below with his roman candle magic missile at least knows he's engaging in fantasy play.

These no-account nobodies really think they're important enough that the US government would bother deploying its most secret technology against them.

Now that is some serious Live Action Role Playing.

What's Coming to Denver: The same tragedy that struck Little Rock, Arkansas some years back.

Posted by: Ace at 02:48 PM | Comments (62)
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Here's my buddy Stinky trying out the new Ruger .45 Wand of Magic Missiles:

Good wand. Shame about the high-capacity ban.

Thanks to Matt M.

Posted by: Ace at 02:41 PM | Comments (17)
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All good stuff, including all those wonderful Democratic quotes about Saddam's WMDs that conservative bloggers love to cite but the MSM, for all their resources and journalistic training, just never seem able to find.

More: The Democrats' favorite State Department official, frequently quoted as a brave dissenter standing up to the Administration's "twisting of intelligence," on Saddam's terrorist connections.

Hint: There's a reason this part of his analysis isn't given more play by the MSM.

Posted by: Ace at 02:38 PM | Comments (16)
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And it will only get worse once he's got all the trillions of US taxpayer dollars to spend helping Michelle Obama's kids.

Thanks for both tip and graphic to Slublog.

More: Obama's shopping for a general as his VP.

I think he pretty much has to do this. He needs someone in the military on the ticket to parrot his line that surrender and defeat are actually resolve and victory.

Fortunately he's got a few choices of generals eager to say just that.

Shocker: Obama Actually Takes Time out of his Busy Schedule to Trade Emails With Scarlett Johansson: Awww... the little darlin' actually thinks he does this for all his supporters:

She e-mailed him after some of the Democratic debates, offering her thoughts on his messages and performance. “After the silliness of the last ABC debate,” she says of the highly criticized event co-hosted by Charles Gibson and George Stephanopoulos, she wrote to congratulate him on “holding his ground.”

His replies have been thoughtful, she says, more than a brief line or two; on the ABC debate, he responded that the questioning was “difficult” and he was being pounded on “one silly question after another.”

Johansson is somewhat shocked that he keeps up their back-and-forth correspondence. “You’d imagine that someone like the senator who is constantly traveling and constantly ‘on’ — how can he return these personal e-mails?” she asks. “But he does, and in his off-time I know he also calls people who have donated the minimum to thank them. Nobody sees it, nobody talks about it, but it’s incredible.” She adds, “I feel like I’m supporting someone, and having a personal dialogue with them, and it’s amazing.”

Yeah, it's amazing that a heterosexual male would take the time to respond to a super-luxe-bodied Hollywood starlet.

This is the finger I help Michelle's kids with.

I can't wait to see Obama praised, like a new Jesus, for actually ministering to lepers Herpes risk cases.

Thanks to dri.

Meet the New Politics, Same as the Old Politics: Slate questions whether Obama's dismissive, um, dismissiveness of the dubious history of his latest "tangential, informal friend" really lives up to "The Obama Standard" of rectitude, or even the more plausible Objective Standard.

It doesn't meet either standard, he finds.

Obama's got a lot of chutzpah. He makes a major issue of anyone having CountryWide lobbyists on their staffs, and then, when it's discovered the man helping him make "the most important decision of his candidacy" (the search for a VP) is himself associated with CountryWide, he calls it a distraction and "irrelevant."

Gee, it was pretty relevant when it was Hillary who had the CountryWide connections, Obambi.

Thanks to Hot Air's headlines.

Oh, here's Obama in April, when Countrywide was not "irrelevant" as it suddenly is:

Corrected: I headlined originally that he was spending 114% more than what he was taking in (that is, 214% of what he was taking in), rather than 114% of what he's taking in. I've corrected. Not so much a math error as screwing up the right way to write a percentage in English.

Posted by: Ace at 12:52 PM | Comments (51)
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This from McClatchy, which often seems to be competing with Reuters for most anti-war rag.

Gotta love how it's headlined (at least on Yahoo), though:

Lull in Violence Prompts Questions of US Departure

Heh. So increased violence prompts questions of US surrender, and decreased violence prompts questions of US surrender.

Ah well. It's McClatchy. (And maybe Yahoo headlining it.) But the article is still upbeat:

After weeks of relative calm, two questions are being asked in war-torn Iraq and in the United States :

Will it last? And when can American forces start coming home?

Real peace, of course, has hardly broken out, and the improved security environment may be fleeting. But recent substantial gains by the Iraqi army, flagging insurgent violence and civilians reclaiming a sense of confidence have produced expectations that are higher than at any time since 2003.

It's increasingly reasonable to assume that Iraq's security environment will continue to improve— slowly, maybe at the margins and with the chance that things could go south fast.

...

Emotions here about the recent calm range from frustration to resignation to hope.

That hope appears at all encourages the government and its American sponsors. There's no denying the recent military gains. Insurgents still attack, but not as often and not as lethally. Iraqi forces are bigger and more aggressive. One senior U.S. administration official in Baghdad , speaking on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to talk for publication, was moved this week to insist that Iraq's recent safety record "ain't a lull. It's a crisp decline now 17 months in duration."

...

Even if recent events don't portend a permanent change, nearly all the numbers the past few weeks suggest that Iraq's center finally may be holding. Of most interest to Americans is the figure 19: the number of U.S. troops who died here in May. It's a still-grim but welcome low point since the war began in March 2003 . Through the first five months of the year, 179 American troops died, well below the 475 killed during the same period a year ago.

Iraqi casualty figures also have leveled off. Iraqi government figures put the total number of violent deaths for the first five months at this year at 7,854, up slightly from 7,829 in the same period last year. However, officials point out that major operations in the southern city of Basra in March and April swelled the total.

From May 15 to June 3 last year, 316 incidents marred stability in Baghdad . This year there were 68.

Evidence of near normalcy is widespread.

...

Several developments account for the relative tranquillity....

The article definitely dwells on doubts and the fragility of the situation, but at least they're actually reporting the facts.

I suppose this may be McClatchy's dour attempt to insulate itself from the WaPo's criticism that the MSM is not reporting on the success in Iraq. And certainly they're both behind the curve and parsimonious with praise. But they have at least written one article on it.

We'll see if this is their sole acknowledgment on the surge's success.

BTW: Sorry, I got caught up in the argument running in Slublog's post below. I'll ignore that argument now in favor of putting stuff up.

Posted by: Ace at 11:32 AM | Comments (26)
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*Sigh*

McCain criticizes Obama for wanting to increase dividend and capital gains taxes and aiming to raise the minimum wage and link it to an index.

But he also takes aim at top corporate executives with big salaries and excessive severance packages.

"Americans are right to be offended when the extravagant salaries and severance deals of CEOs ... bear no relation to the success of the company or the wishes of shareholders," he will say, adding that some of those chief executives helped bring on the country's housing crisis and market troubles.

"If I am elected president, I intend to see that wrongdoing of this kind is called to account by federal prosecutors. And under my reforms, all aspects of a CEO's pay, including any severance arrangements, must be approved by shareholders," he will say.

If any issue required some of McCain's vaunted "straight talk," this one does. But I guess "straight talk" is only reserved for when the Maverick™ needs to take on conservatives.

Update - Look, I like a lot of what McCain is saying in his speech. I just get a bit itchy at statements like this:

We need rules that assure fairness and punish wrongdoing in the market.

"Assure fairness" in the market? Eh...who defines fair? It's a bit too hopey-changey for me, I guess. Then again, I'm just a moron.

Posted by: Slublog at 09:33 AM | Comments (257)
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Finally.

In case you don't know, "Cornhole" is a game played with, um, children, very popular in the Midwest, especially around Cincinnati, where this vile "activity" started. Bengals Quarterback Carson Palmer is a big proponent of playing "cornhole" with your children. (That post is fake, but the graphic at the end is real -- he really was advertising the Carson Palmer Cornhole Classic, and inviting your children to enjoy the pleasures of "cornhole.")

In case you don't know what "cornhole" really is -- it's just tossing a bag (sometimes filled with cornmeal) through a hole in a board for points. You can get your first "cornhole" experience -- online and anonymous, with no chance of disease or awkward fumblings -- via this shockwave cornhole game.

Why they called this "cornhole" I have no idea.

Thanks to Chuck.

Posted by: Ace at 09:09 AM | Comments (42)
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Even as the price of oil nearly doubled over the last year, the percentage of Americans pointing the finger of blame at oil companies fell, from 37% a year ago to 20%.

And 57% favor drilling in areas of the US that are currrently off limits.

Other factors measured, a drop in the percentage of Americans blaming high gas prices on the Iraq war, and single digit percentages blaming speculators (6%) and a weaker US dollar (4%). Those pointing to economic forces and supply vs. demand up from 10% to 15%.

Meanwhile Senate Democrats recommend imposing "a 25 percent tax on profits over what would be determined "reasonable" and would allow oil companies to avoid paying the tax if they invest the money in alternative energy projects or refinery expansion".

Can't wait to see what "reasonable" is. But apparently voters in Union County South Dakota want to help one company avoid paying that tax.

A new refinery and shifting public attitudes regarding the price of oil? I think Slublog is getting results. And he deserves a sandwich, and maybe even a new BB gun.

Posted by: Dave in Texas at 07:53 AM | Comments (81)
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