Bush to Iran: 'All options' are open over nukes

President urges diplomacy over uranium enrichment during European visit
President Bush threatened Iran on Wednesday with more sanctions if it fails to stop enriching uranium and said all options were on the table to thwart Tehran's nuclear ambitions.

"Both the chancellor and my first choice of course is to solve this diplomatically," Bush told a joint news conference with Merkel.

Does this hurt McCain or Obama?

The 101 on Oil Supply

Here is just a snippet:
The oil production of Saudi Arabia and OPEC has been sufficiently variable over time that it is difficult to make predictions, simply based on trends. OPEC's production, and in particular Saudi Arabia's production, is down in both 2006 and 2007. It is hard to know exactly what this means.

According to the US Energy Information Administration, Saudi Arabia's highest oil production was in 1980, when it produced 9.9 million barrels a day. Its recent peak was in 2005, when it produced 9.6 million barrels a day. In 2006, Saudi production dropped to an average of 9.2 million barrels a day. In 2007, production from February to August was only 8.6 million barrels a day.

When OPEC agreed to raise quotas near the end of 2007, Saudi Arabia did in fact raise its production. Its highest single month of production in 2007 was 9.1 million barrels a day, in December 2007. This represented a 500,000 barrel a day increase over its earlier low production of 8.6 million barrels a day, but still left production below both the 2006 average of 9.2 million barrels a day and the 2005 average of 9.6 million barrels a day.

One question too is whether this increase will continue, or if it is just temporary. It is sometimes possible to squeeze out a little extra production for a while, but then production drops back to a more normal level. Saudi Arabia originally planned to have an upgraded field (Khursaniyah) on line by late 2007, which was expected to produce an extra 500,000 barrels a day of oil. It may have thought it could make a spurt of extra production until this field came on line. Now the Khursaniyah field upgrade has been delayed until late 2008. Will Saudi Arabia be able to continue the increase, without the assistance of the Khursaniyah field?

Another question is why OPEC refused to raise its quota further on March 5, 2008. Is Saudi Arabia now really at the peak of what it can produce? It claims to have more production available in reserve. We know that Saudi Arabia has some poor quality oil off-line because the oil requires special processing which is not yet available in any refinery. Is this the only Saudi production off-line? Are other OPEC countries also unable to produce more? To read more Bounce 2 The Oil Drum

Midwest Weather

The Joshua Generation

A source close to the Obama campaign tells The Brody File the following:

"The Joshua Generation project will be the Obama campaign's outreach to young people of faith. There's unprecedented energy and excitement for Obama among young evangelicals and Catholics. The Joshua Generation project will tap into that excitement and provide young people of faith opportunities to stand up for their values and move the campaign forward."

The Brody File said awhile back that the Obama campaign would be making a concerted effort to attrack Evangelicals and Catholics to their campaign.

Yes, the Obama campaign understands that the issue of abortion is a problem for some voters of faith. They respect that and understand if some just simply can't come on board because of that. However, they look at this project as a way of broadening the values discussion. Poverty, Darfur, Climate Change and yes, even the war are issues younger Evangelicals may be able to see eye to eye on with the Obama campaign.

Whatever you think of the "Joshua Generation Project," you have to give the campaign their due because they are making concerted efforts to NOT ignore faith voters. In my reporting, I can tell you this is not a contrived effort.

The folks behind this believe in not only the mission of winning over faith voters to Obama but the larger mission of not ignoring faith voters when it comes to politics.

Obama spoke about the "Joshua Generation" in a speech he gave in Selma, Alabama in March of 2007. It will give you an good idea of where the Obama campaign is heading with this effort....

Barack Obama: The winner

I wonder if Americans have yet fully absorbed what they have just done. This past week - 41 years after the Supreme Court struck down the last bans on interracial marriage and only 40 years after black America exploded in riots after Martin Luther King Jr was assassinated - a black man became the favourite to be the next president of the United States.

His convention acceptance speech, a date scheduled long before Barack Obama became the Democratic nominee, will occur by exquisite timing 45 years to the day after King’s “I have a dream” speech. The states that were critical to his nomination were Illinois, Lincoln’s home state, and the four southern states most associated with slavery: South Carolina, Georgia, Virginia and North Carolina.

Much has been made, and rightly so, of how Obama’s rise changes America’s relationship to the rest of the world. What has been less appreciated is how deeply Obama’s victory alters America’s relationship to itself.

There is no deeper division in America than race. Slavery was America’s original sin. Even after its abolition, America was effectively in large swathes an apartheid society until the 1970s. It was race that bloodily tore the country apart a century and a half ago in the civil war, killing nearly 2% of the population (only 0.3% of Americans died in the second world war). It was race that convulsed America in the last deep internal crisis in the 1960s. And last Tuesday night, Obama’s first words were a tribute to his grandmother, a white woman who had effectively raised him.

Obama is not just potentially America’s first black president. He would be America’s first bi-racial president, in many ways a more integrative event. The cynics demand that we cease this kind of historical hyper-ventilation. It is deemed a function of drinking the Obama Kool-Aid, of insufficient scepticism, of Obamania.

But you have to have a heart of stone not to see what this has already done to race relations in America. Finish the reading after the Bounce 2 Times Online

Bipartisanship and Obama

The notion that Barack Obama has no bipartisan achievements in the Congress is untrue and unfair, as Hilzoy has definitively demonstrated. Senators Lugar and Obama witness the process of munitions elimination at the Donetsk State Chemical Product Plant(2006).

She Finally Did It...

The Bush Presidency

Rogers Says the Crude Bull Market Has `Years to Go'

Jim Rogers, chairman of Rogers Holdings, said the increase in the price of crude oil has ``years to go'' as known sources of petroleum are dwindling.

``I know that unless someone discovers a lot of oil, it can go to $150, $200'' a barrel, Rogers said in a Bloomberg Television interview. ``The facts are the world is running out of known oil reserves.''

Crude oil for July delivery rose $1.62, or 1.3 percent, to $123.92 a barrel at 9:51 a.m. on the New York Mercantile Exchange, after earlier dropping to $121.61, the lowest since May 15. Futures, which reached a record $135.09 a barrel on May 22, are up 89 percent from a year ago.

Rogers said he bought airline stocks around the world today, saying bankruptcies show the sector may be nearing a bottom. ``Bankruptcies are signs of bottoms, not signs of tops,'' he said

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Mugabe's goons threaten to burn U.S. diplomats alive

Apparently you don't have to be an opposition leader seeking democratic reforms to get arrested in Zimbabwe -- just being a foreign diplomat can be enough. U.S. and British diplomats were seized by Zimbabwean police today while visiting victims of political violence carried out by the government of President Robert Mugabe, whom human rights groups accuse of creating famine and starvation for political purposes.

Here's James D. McGee, the U.S. ambassador to Zimbabwe, describing the incident to CNN:

Police put up a roadblock, stopped the vehicles, slashed the tires, reached in and grabbed telephones from my personnel, and the war veterans (Mugabe's supporters) threatened to burn the vehicles with my people inside unless they got out and accompanied police to a station nearby."

McGee added that his embassy felt the orders were "coming directly from the top." Whoever gave the orders, threatening to burn foreign dignitaries alive is a step beyond the usual Mugabe bullying. It's sickening.

Will this be the moment when Thabo Mbeki finally stops covering for the crazy man next door? As the leader of the powerhouse, a country with a long history of friendship and cooperation with Mugabe, the South African president has unique leverage on Harare, but he has, if anything, shielded Mugabe from accountability. It's time for President Bush to pressure Mbeki and other African leaders to handle the mess in their own backyards, and if that doesn't work, take matters to the Security Council. The apologetics need to end now. Courtesy Foreign Policy Passport

For The First Time In Her Adult Life ...

"The United States of America is an extraordinary country. It is a country that has overcome many, many, now years, decades, actually a couple of centuries, of trying to make good on its principles. And I think what we are seeing is an extraordinary expression of the fact that 'We the People' is beginning to mean to all of us," - Condi Rice.

Beginning to mean? Where's Hannity?

Obama @ AIPAC

Barack Obama has strongly backed Israel in his first foreign policy speech since becoming the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee -- just two days after he was accused of naivety by Republican challenger John McCain.
Obama said:

"Any agreement with the Palestinian people must preserve Israel's identity as a Jewish state, with secure, recognized and defensible borders. Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided."

John McCain, speaking at the same gathering Monday, attacked Obama's Middle East policy. In particular he criticized Obama's stated willingness to meet with the leaders of countries like Iran, as well as voting against a measure to label Iran's Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization.

Obama said:

"Contrary to the claims of some, I have no interest in sitting down with our adversaries just for the sake of talking. But as president of the United States, I would be willing to lead tough and principled diplomacy with the appropriate Iranian leader at a time and place of my choosing -- if, and only if it can advance the interests of the United States,"

Obama Names Veep Search Team

Sen. Barack Obama's vice presidential search team will consist of Caroline Kennedy, former Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder and Jim Johnson, former CEO of Fannie Mae, according to the AP.

Johnson led the vice presidential searches for both Sen. John Kerry in 2004 and former Vice President Walter Mondale in 1984.

Ben Smith: "Notably, none of these figures are particularly close to the Clintons, and the choice of Kennedy in particular -- the scion of a different dynasty -- may help damp down speculation that Clinton is in the running."

The Audacity Of Now

Something has already been done, hasn't it? A reader writes:

Tomorrow I will go to the African American cemetery outside of Chicago where my great-grandparents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, friends, neighbors, and my mother and father are buried. And I will tell them that they were right -- that if we studied hard, worked hard, kept the faith, fought for justice, prayed, that this day would come.

And it has.

Courtesy Andrew Sullivan

What would Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King, Jr. think of this day?

The Democratic nominee for POTUS

Numb What? Very Funny...

What Does Today's Primary Mean?

(Q) Not much, according to this reader:

I'm a Puerto Rican reader and I currently live in PR after living a good chunk of my adult life in the US. I've been following the primaries in the US closely. I studied in the States, have a masters degree. Out of my very highly educated friends, I'm the only one who's paying attention to what's going on in this election year in the US.

You cannot use Puerto Rico as a basis for explaining any phenomenon in the US.

We are a colony. We do not participate in any of the US political processes, really. There isn't a general understanding of US national politics, nor of the "Republican" v. "Democrat" mentality. We are consumed by our local politics and whether we should become a state, an independent country or remain as we are.

Clinton's victory here means nothing. There's a lot of name recognition and her husband is a rock star here. That's it. Don't extrapolate the results into anything. We are not Latinos in the same way that Mexican Americans are Latinos. Our vote has nothing to do with Obama's "problem" with Latinos. Anyone trying to frame the PR vote into anything other than name recognition, has no knowledge of PR at all and is, in short, full of it.

Courtesy Andrew Sullivan

US Underestimating Inflation

On Wednesday, Dow Chemical Chief Executive Andrew Liveris made a high-profile announcement that Dow would increase its prices by as much as 20%, starting June 1. Dow, the top U.S. chemical company, said the plan was necessary to offset the impact of rising costs for energy and related raw materials. Over the past year, Dow has already increased its price by about 12%, but those price changes have been phased in gradually rather than implemented all at once.

In the interview, Liveris said he thinks the U.S. is underestimating the level of inflation in the economy and he expects the rise in energy costs is beginning to destroy demand. Liveris expects the price increases his company made will eventually be passed on to the consumer: Bounce 2 CNBC Video

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