SAR #8142

Capitalism is an efficient way of deciding
who lives and who dies.

Explanation: How high will oil go? What's the market price for surgery when your child cannot breathe?

Trust Me Us: Google wants you to post all your medical information on its website so it can sell it to insurance companies help you manage your healthcare more effectively. The will hold your data in strictest confidence and will not share your records "except in certain limited circumstances" such as for a profit or to help out Homeland Security.

False Dawn: Iraq suddenly realized it has 350 billion barrels of oil reserves - more than Saudi Arabia! Add that to the recent discoveries in Brazil of 300 billion, Indonesia, 300 billion, nearly 200 billion barrels in the Gulf of Mexico and a magical 400 billion barrels in the US without drilling ANWAR and the price of crude becomes $3.75 a barrel next week.

Bush Polls: Bush may not be popular; but he is not a failure. He has succeeded at turning the USA into a fearful quasi-fascist state with an immense security apparatus, lowered taxes on the rich, started two wars and doubled the defense budget, overseen the abolishment of fair elections, delivered the US Treasury to Wall Street and married off a kid. Not bad for eight years of bike riding.

Friendship: The Pentagon is selling F-16's to Romania in order to help it defend itself from the jets we've sold its neighbors. It's also a way of slipping $4.5 billion into Lockheed's pocket.

For The Very First Time: Ice core analysis going back 800,000 years again confirm the link between greenhouse gas levels and temperature. Carbon dioxide concentrations varied from 200 to 300 ppm between ice ages and warm interludes. Today's level is over 380 ppm. Methane, an even more powerful greenhouse gas, over that time period ranged from 400 - 700 ppb. It now stands at 1,800 ppb.

Crystal Bawl. The ratio of house prices to rents is at historic levels, indicating that further price declines are likely. The Case-Shiller composite index suggests a further 15 to 20 % decline in the second half of this year. Construction spending and house prices seem likely to continue to decline well into 2009. Don't cry.

Mexican Standoff: Mexico's petroleum output is falling sharply and will virtually cease within 6 years. Mexico was once the number two supplier to the US. Of oil. Still number one in immigrants.

Finally: At $4.00 a gallon, a minimum wage earner driving the average 15,000 miles a year will spend 25% of his/her after-tax income on gasoline. The US is shipping $2 billion a day - three quarters of a trillion dollars a year - overseas in exchange for oil. Neither is sustainable.

Blind Dates: Harsh climate conditions apparently killed off all but a few tiny groups of humans who then lived in isolated groups for 100,000 years - half of our existence. Mitochondrial evidence shows the groups reunited about 60,000 years ago, giving rise to modern humans.

Porn O'Graph: Oil prices, 1861 - 2008. Interesting