Oh well..we should all walk more anyhooo.

Thanks, Aries...the prices have sky rocketed around her already...*sigh*...

Luv,
Rainbow~

Sadaam and the Bushes are probably thick as thieves.

Maria

We all live in a yellow submarine, a yellow submaine,

They are green and blue meannies.

A Bill in the Sadaam,
is worth two in the Bushes
Slow down the Tex-Mex, Miss Chili Powder,
We'll use that all for the Bar-B-Q

Fresh Bar-B-Q'd YAK? Mr. Slappy.
Why, of course, Miss Chili Powder but you better broil a Salomon for Mr. C.
We don't him going south on us before he brands all those YAK's for us.
Okey, dokie, Mr. Slapper.
And while he's up there have him gather 8 tiny reindeer for the girls. It's important for kids to have pets. It's so American.
Don't you worry 'bout a thing, Miss Chili Power. I got it all under control.
And I sent the black man on a trip, so we don't have to deal with that.
Oh? Where did he go?
Hahaha, well, I sent him to the middle east to make peace.
hehehe, Oh, Mr. Slappy, you sly dog, you.
That could take years if ever.
Oh, this will be such a wonderful Christmas.
Yes, Miss Chili powder and we'll have 7 more even better to come. No run along, I have to hide some small nucular drilling machines into the the Pentagon's remodeling budget.

"Oh, glove...Caribou...smash it!"

~~Sky of blue and sea of green in our yellow submarine~~

Maria

How true, how true, - 14th year in the presidency for sr.

~~The forces of good! The forces of evil!~~
http://hollywoodandvine.com/yellowsubmarine/

Sabra

Love,
Greg

Aries, I heard the Dems are going to filibuster. If that's what it takes, I'm for it.

Maria

sigh ~

Maria,

If you want to see a fellow Aries get sentimental, just keep it up with your Beatle references.
http://www.kappa.ro/music/lyrics/pnowherem.html

Sabra

The president, never shy about playing the increasingly dog-eared national security card for political gain, is now using the growing crisis in the Middle East to justify his renewed call for drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Adding fuel to the fire was Saddam Hussein's decision to cut off Iraqi oil exports for 30 days -- an economic scud that prompted the president to declare that the oil from ANWR "is needed more than ever."

"What more reason do we need," said the president, "than to diversify away from somebody like him?" Do you hate Saddam? Are you a real American? Well then you must agree with me on drilling in ANWR. Only in the Bush administration would energy "diversification" mean drilling in a wildlife refuge.

For his part, Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham said that he planned to respond to this crisis by meeting with officials of the American Automobile Association to talk about ways drivers might cut down on oil consumption -- things like not leaving the engine of your SUV idling while waiting to pick up your Big Mac in the drive-thru lane. I can already hear the new Happy Meal jingle: "Hold the pickles, hold the lettuce, Saddam's threats don't upset us."

Helpful hints like that are all well and good, and are what the Energy Secretary should presumably be doing all the time and without fanfare. But if Secretary Abraham really wants to make America less vulnerable to the oily schemes of someone like Hussein, he should put his AAA plans in neutral and shift into high gear on something that we all know will work: raising mileage standards.

But instead of supporting last month's modest effort by John Kerry and John McCain to gradually increase fuel standards over the next 13 years, the White House joined in an unholy alliance with carmakers and the auto-worker unions, and helped kill the plan which would have saved about 2.5 billion barrels of oil a day, roughly the amount we currently import from the Middle East. Apparently, the first casualties of this new crisis has been the administration's short-term memory and truth-telling skills.

So much for leading a charge to help us thumb our noses at Persian Gulf potentates. The White House would much rather pursue its now-clearly-bizarre obsession with drilling in ANWR -- a fixation which reached new heights this week with the Great Caribou Study Flip-Flop, a brazen example of media manipulation and political damage control.

After the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), a fact-finding agency within the Department of the Interior, released a report maintaining that drilling in ANWR poses a serious hazard to wildlife, a dismayed Interior Secretary Gale Norton prodded the scientists to reevaluate their conclusions and report back within 10 days.

The initial USGS study had been twelve years in the making. Norton-quality science is obviously much speedier -- the amended analysis was delivered in seven days, just in time for this week's Senate debate on the energy bill. And, in two pages as opposed to the original's 78, the revised report conveniently concluded that Bush's drilling proposal would have little or no impact on wildlife, particularly the thousands of Porcupine caribou that populate the Arctic refuge.

The head-spinning reversal left ANWR opponents apoplectic: "There have been numerous government reports telling the Bush administration what they didn't want to hear," fumed Sen. Joe Lieberman. "Now they've rushed through a study telling them what they do want to hear."

But the highly expedient revision was never about the actual effect of drilling on caribou calving rates and the foraging patterns of Musk oxen. It was all about headlines -- and on that front the White House got exactly what it wanted. "Limited Arctic Drilling Won't Harm Caribou, Scientists Say," trumpeted newspapers after the dubious do-over. Just what the Spin Doctor ordered.

If the president were truly sincere about freeing us from our dependence on foreign oil, he would forget about the very limited amounts of oil in ANWR -- which a new study by his own Department of Energy found would have a negligible effect on reducing oil imports -- and get serious about conservation and the promotion of alternative sources of energy.

But the president has not even delivered a single speech calling on all Americans to conserve as much energy as possible.

Indeed, all you really need to know about where the administration stands on the subject can be found in documents recently unearthed by a court order. It turns out the White House dipped into the Department of Energy's already meager funds for renewables and energy conservation -- budgets Team Bush is planning to slash by half -- to come up with over $135,000 for the printing of 10,000 copies of its industry-friendly energy plan.

White House spokesman Ari Fleischer called Saddam's crude ploy "a reminder about the need for America to have an energy policy that is independent of such threats." But what we need even more urgently is an energy policy independent of the wishes, goals and manipulations of the oil industry, and their slick friends in the White House.

Arianna Huffington is a nationally syndicated columnist.

Yep, makes one wonder about these "forces" that are working together

Sabra

quote:

---

Originally posted by Sabra:
yeah ... probably will happen only after the gas lines start forming like it did in our last energy crises in the early 70's.

Sabra

---

Love and Giggles,
Darwin

Actually, we have several things going on down here.

1. There is a wind farm to be built some where in the east or south.
2. A Finnish, Swiss, or Sweden company (?) is building a plant here to make their wind mill generators. They will start building this summer or next but full production will take a few years.
3. This is because more wind farms are due on the Columbia River gorge in lue of building houses and billboard signs..
4. Interest in solar power in the other states will reduce our needs to build fossil fuels plants.
5. And finally, a law was passed to give the end user the choice to select where their power comes from. All be it, wind and river power only is the most expensive.
And Enron didn't help matters much.

And in connection with this we must all conserve and put pressure on the fed and auto industry to increase gas mileage. I am seeing a lot of 4 door half pick-up converted Ford Explores on the road and this is all about status and ego. If they didn't make them no one would miss them. And they are sooooo ugly.

Love and Wind,
Darwin

Here's to hippie angels.

Maria

..and the rich get richer.

The employees didn't just lose their jobs, they lost their own retirement investments, which they had heavily invested in their own company's stock. And the top guys sold their stock at high prices and prohibited the employees from selling theirs while the price fell.

Right? Will somebody confirm for me that I've got that central set of facts correct? Did the employees have the kind of contracts where their stock could not be traded on the open market?

Pat, can you find that kind of stuff?

Maria

Take a look at this link:
http://www.enronerisa.com/complaint.html

When you get to that page, click on "New Amended Complaint". It will open a pdf file, so you will need Adobe Acrobat (free download).

Once it opened I did various searches such as "stock" and I believe I found a few things you are looking for, but it is between a lot legal mumbo jumbo. I didn't have time to do a more thorough search in this document.

Hope this helps,

Sabra

It should at the very least get your aries blood in a boil...
Dobbs Report on CEO pay

Did you not know that apparently (?) even Jesus said "for the love of money is the root of all evil"

It will be our main downfall.

To be realistic, however, this kind of thing is happening universally in the banking and financial management field -- this is just a big one that came crashing down, but far from the only such scam. The Federal Reserve system itself is actually a FAR bigger scam and ripoff to millions more people on a continuing basis.

Love,
Greg