Oil Price to Peak in June, Temporarily:

Forecasts are for the price of oil to peak in June, according to a New York Times report; however, the best analysis is that will only provide a momentary lull, followed by a steady increase over the next two years to somewhere between $150 to $200 per barrel, as demand in China and India continues to skyrocket.

The price of gasoline is expected to run as high as $7 a gallon, with home heating oil and diesel fuel to be even higher. Thus the cost of everything else will accelerate, including the price of food, which has already taken a marked jump.

In the meantime, the issue of global warming, which looms in the not so distant future, seems to be a forgotten issue.

The Haves and the Have Nots:

While the economy is in the throws of a recession and the U. S. is in the middle of a major political campaign, while millions of people have no health care and 40 percent of the world's population lives in extreme poverty, millions of others have so much money and so much time on their hands that they can afford to spend the money and the time on video games.

Don't misunderstand. I'm not opposed to video games, but surely the irony cannot be missed in the juxtaposition of news items about the high cost of energy and its effects with the news that a video game had sales of $500 million within the first week of its release. (See The New York Times story.)

For another insight into who has loads of money vs. the rest of us, see The Times story on who's buying art for hundreds of millions of dollars. (Keep in mind that none of the artists is alive and in any way benefiting from these sales.) Monet's "Railroad Bridge at Argenteuil" sold for $41.4 million. Granted, it is impossible to place a monetary value on how enriched our lives are through art. But the question here is just who has the money to do this? And we could add, why spend the money this way? The painting already exists and could easily be displayed in a museum where all who could get to that museum could have their lives enriched by it, so how is it that someone has that much money just to own such a painting? No doubt the purchaser will declare the purchase an investment, but it seems more likely to qualify as hoarding. Investing one's money in a pile of gold that is locked in a vault is decidedly different from investing one's money in a business.

This Day in History: 63 years ago today, Germany signed the unconditional surrender that ended World War II in Europe.

60,000 Missing or Dead in Myanmar:

The Washington Post is now reporting that the tsunami numbers of missing or dead past 60,000 as emergency supplies began arriving yesterday.

States Rush to Murder Inmates:

Georgia claimed the first execution last night at 7:51 p.m. as states around the U. S. rushed to begin executing convicts. Virginia Attorney General Robert McDonnell (R) stated that "The commonwealth has suffered, and continues to suffer, serious and irreparable harm each day the stay remains in effect," although he failed to explain just what that harm is since the man he wants to kill is securely locked up in prison. One supposes he means the harm to his reputation as a professional, hired killer. (See The Washington Post story.) Virginia has been under a stay of executions pending the outcome of the recent Supreme Court ruling with regards to the "cruel and unusual punishment" issue regarding the "three-drug" method of killing prisoners currently employed by most death penalty states and the fact that this method is outlawed by most states because it is considered cruel when used on animals.

The Dude's perspective: "And one of the things we've got to make sure that we do is anything." — George W. Bush, Washington, D. C., May 7, 2002. (Spoken, no doubt, with extreme sincerity.)

China Facts: "China has the world's largest number of Internet users—220 million—surpassing Web surfers in the U. S." (Source: ngm.com)

Double Take:

On the one hand, the Bush administration has claimed it has the right to arrest and spirit away anyone on the planet and do with them what they will without so much as a "thank you, ma'am" to anyone, simply by declaring them (us) "enemy combatants." (Have you read The Count of Monte Christo ?).

On the other hand, yesterday's New York Times reports that

State Department investigators offered Blackwater USA security guards immunity during an inquiry into last month’s deadly shooting of 17 Iraqis in Baghdad — a potentially serious investigative misstep that could complicate efforts to prosecute the company’s employees involved in the episode.

Keep in mind that Blackwater USA is a government contractor employed by the State Department. In other words, the Bush administration has rigged the outcome of any investigation against its private (Praetorian Guard) security firm.


Death Penalty Status:

The death penalty—a central ingredient of politicians' attempts to demonstrate they have the proper level of testosterone to intimidate the weak minded—has been placed on hold by the Supreme Court, that bastion of conservative ideology, of all places.

Linda Greenhouse reports on the issue in today's New York Times. The issue focuses on the chemicals used by prisons to kill people for the sake of garnering votes for prosecutors who either are or represent elected officials.


Throw More Money at It:

The Republican party has claimed throughout most of its history that "you can't fix problems by throwing more money at them." Mostly they've practiced this ideology when the problems were the sort that affected predominantly Democratic voters. When it comes to the military, for instance, the last Republican to show any restraint was Eisenhower. He was a guy, you might remember, who thought you could replace much of the traditional military with lots of cheap nuclear bombs. (That worked out well!)

Today's New York Times reports on the cost of spying in an article by Mark Mazzetti, who states that congress has authorized "spending $43.5 bilion over the past year to operate spy satellites, remote surveillance stations and C.I.A. outposts overseas."

The White House will tell you that the money has been well spent, that they have thwarted (fill in any number you choose here) terrorist attacks. Naturally, they won't be able to tell you anything about those alleged attacks. They were, after all, thwarted. (Did I tell you about the rain dance I did in my back yard before the last rain storm?)