"Looking forward" is permission for today's co-conspirators today's and yesterday's thieves.

@maxrot, I didnt have high hopes to begin with, my main disappointment is seeing the continuance of building the national security state and executive power.

Even less likely than auditing the Fed is auditing the pentagon.

@Robert S. - Randi was an Air Force mechanic in the first Gulf War - hence her devotion to the troops, the veterans, and their families. That devotion, however, does NOT extend to the Pentagon, and certainly not to the privateer firms like CACI & Blackwater (or whatever they're calling themselves this week)..

You do, of course, understand the difference between supporting our soldiers and supporting the war that they've been shipped off to, right? I'll admit that it took me QUITE a while to "get" that - essentially that period known as the Viet Nam war.

I thought it was "be multiple and fruit fly."

BTW - did anyone catch Jesse Ventura on Bill Maher's show last weekend? Jesse asked why the US government isn't prosecuting the Catholic Church under the RICO statutes, and proceeded to make a fairly creditable case for such prosecution -

1) They had knowledge regarding the commission of several felonies.

2) They DENIED that they had such knowledge, and that the felonies were committed at all.

3) They ACTIVELY participated in a covering up said felonies (by moving the guilty parties to new parishes).

If that doesn't sound EXACTLY like what the RICO laws were written for, I don't know what does.

The PR thing was run by the Creel Commission. It was too effective and had to be pulled back lest people go out and kill those of German descent.

@Gene, I thought it was "Be flyful and multi-ply"

Comedian Lewis Black tries to make sense of the contradictory poll numbers from the latest Pew Poll (video):

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036677/ns/msnbc_tv-countdown_with_keith_olbermann#36654767

An Excerpt from:

Oil and the origins of the
‘War to make the world safe for Democracy’

By F. William Engdahl, 22 June, 2007

A revolution in Naval Power

In 1882, petroleum had little commercial interest. The development of the internal combustion engine had not yet revolutionized world industry. One man understood the military -strategic implications of petroleum for future control of the world seas, however.

In a public address in September 1882, Britain's Admiral Lord Fisher, then Captain Jack Fisher, argued to anyone in the British establishment who would listen, that Britain must convert its naval fleet from bulky coal-fired propulsion to the new oil fuel. Fisher and a few other far-sighted individuals began to argue for adoption of the new fuel. He insisted that oil-power would allow Britain to maintain decisive strategic advantage in future control of the seas.

Fisher argued the qualitative superiority of petroleum over coal as a fuel. A battleship powered by diesel motor burning petroleum issued no tell-tale smoke, while a coal ship's emission was visible up to 10 kilometers away. It required 4 to 9 hours for a coal-fired ship's motor to reach full power, an oil motor required a mere 30 minutes and could reach peak power within 5 minutes. To provide oil fuel for a battle ship required the work of 12 men for 12 hours. The same equivalent of energy for a coal ship required the work of 500 men and 5 days. For equal horsepower propulsion, the oil -fired ship required 1/3 the engine weight, and almost one-quarter the daily tonnage of fuel, a critical factor for a fleet whether commercial or military. The radius of action of an oil-powered fleet was up to four times as great as that of the comprable coal ship.[13]

In 1885 a German engineer, Gottleib Daimler, had developed the world's first workable petroleum motor to drive a road vehicle. The economic potentials of the petroleum era were beginning to be more broadly realized by some beyond Admiral Fisher and his circle.

By 1904 Fisher had been named Britain’s First Sea Lord, the supreme naval commander, and immediately set to implement his plan to convert the British navy from coal to oil. One month into his post, in November 1904, a committee was established on his initiative to “consider and make recommendations as to how the British Navy shall secure its oil supplies.” At that time it was believed the British Isles, rich in coal, held not a drop of oil.

The thought of abandoning the security of domestic British coal fuel in favor of reliance on foreign oil was a strategy embedded in risk. The Fisher Committee had been dissolved in 1906 without resolution of the oil issue on the election of a Liberal government pledged to work for arms control. By 1912, as the Germans began a major Dreadnought-class naval construction program, Prime Minister Asquith convinced Admiral Fisher to come out of retirement to head a new Royal Commission on Oil and the Oil Engine in July 1912.

Two months later on Fisher’s recommendation, the first British battleship using only oil fuel, the Queen Elizabeth, was begun. Fisher pushed the risky oil program through with one argument: “In war speed is everything.” Winston Churchill had by then replaced Fisher as First Lord of the Admiralty and was a strong advocate of Fisher’s oil conversion. Churchill stated in regard to the Commission finding, “We must become the owners or at any rate the controllers at the source of at least a proportion of the oil which we require.” [14]

From that point, oil conversion of the British fleet dictated national security priority to secure large oil reserves outside Britain. In 1913 less than 2% of world oil production was produced within the British Empire.[15]

By the first decade of the 20th Century securing long-term foreign petroleum security had become an essential factor for British grand strategy and its geopolitics. By 1909, a British company, Anglo-Persian Oil Company held rights to oil exploration in a 60-year concession from the Persian Shah at Maidan-i-Naphtun near the border to Mesopotamia. That decision to secure its oil led England into a fatal quagmire of war which in the end finished the British Empire as the world hegemon by Versailles in 1918, though it would take a second World War and several decades before that reality was clear to all.

@Maxrot,

No, you don't seem kookier than a civil-war re-enactor, and it's fun to debate the finer points of forgotten/ignored history.

Yours in looking backward, and forward,

Zero G.

Zero G. I read the article clip you posted. Very interesting, but I still don't see how Oil directly lead Britain into a war with Germany. Germany was a young country at the time (having only been formed in 1871, by Bismark and the Franco-Prussian War). Germany didn't have much in the way of Colonies, and at the time Britain entered the war with Germany, I don't think the Ottoman empire had declared itself an ally of Germany (I could be wrong, and in all practicality, Britain could have expected a German-Ottoman alliance, even if one had not been so declared). It may explain even further why Britian was so eager to land troops in Turkey and thus fight the Gallopoli campaign. I always just figured that the line about helping Russia open the Dardenelles was sufficient, however, I'm currently reading a book by D.J. Goodspeed called the German Wars 1914-1945, and he really goes into depth on the diplomatic situation prior to the war. Britain was no natural friend of Russia. I never thought about it, but it doesn't make sense for them to want Russia to have a fleet that had access to the Atlantic and possibly be a major rival to them in the future if they weren't getting something in return... Ottoman Empire Oil. Britain was probably really relieved when Russia didn't receive the laurels due them at the end of the War since they capitulated and came to terms with Germany in 1917. Britain got the middle east, for the most part, until America stepped into the power vaccuum in the 1940's.

BTW, in retrospect it was in at least one country's best interest to enter WWI when it did, and that country was America. If Wilson had been wise and tough enough to pull it off, he would have realized he had Europe by the balls in 1919, he had the only army that wasn't exhausted and in large force on the only front that mattered at the time (the Western Front). What would England and France had done if during the Armistice but prior to the dissolution of troops on both sides, he told England and France these are the terms, or we're now on Germany's side? I know, I know, the thought unthinkable, but not all together implausible. There were English and French politicians that did fear this at the time.

http://www.opednews.com/populum/linkframe.php?linkid=110069

Let all Christians follow Jesus and be His disciples!!! Jesus was a pacifist, a liberal, and a progressive God. Jesus even healed people with pre-existing health issues and He never asked to see their health insurance card before healing them.