Tuesday or Wednesday at the Rapture:Index not updated…can this be the Rapture?

The Rapture Index person seems to be AWOL….or…is it AWOBLB (Away with out being left behind)?

The last update of the Rapture Index was March 5.  If the Rapture occurred between then and now, then all the righteous Christians would be missing.  I’d try to call one, but I don’t know any.  I know George W. Bush is still around. But that doesn’t prove a thing.  I don’t see any empty cars in the middle of the street.  The school down the street is still full of innocent kids.  My page views are holding up.

I must say, if this is the Rapture, it’s kind of pleasant. Warmed up a bit in Northern California, still chilly at night.

Here’s my plan: let’s lay low for a week. Wait for god to give us a sign. Watch for any images of the Virgin Mary in my oatmeal.  Count on me.  I’m not goin anywhere.

George W. “Exxon” Bush tries to defund geothermal energy

If it doesn’t involve gas stations, Exxon Mobil Bush wants it to disappear:

The Bush administration wants to eliminate federal support for geothermal power just as many U.S. states are looking to cut greenhouse gas emissions and raise renewable power output.

The move has angered scientists who say there is enough hot water underground to meet all U.S. electricity needs without greenhouse gas emissions.

In a transparent deceptive statement, the “unitary” administration tried some fancy footwork to avoid responsibility:

“The Department of Energy has not requested funds for geothermal research in our fiscal-year 2008 budget,” said Christina Kielich, a spokeswoman for the Department of Energy. “Geothermal is a mature technology. Our focus is on breakthrough energy research and development.”

The administration of George W. Bush has made renewable energy a priority as it seeks to wean the United States off foreign oil, but it emphasizes use of biofuels like ethanol and biodiesel for vehicles and nuclear research for electricity.

However, some people are calling Over the Line, Georgie ! :

“In spite of its enormous potential, the geothermal option for the United States has been largely ignored,” a recent study led by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology said.

Last year, the DOE requested no funding for geothermal for the 2007 fiscal year, after funding averaged about $26 million over the previous six years, but Congress restored $5 million. This year, the DOE’s $24.3 billion budget request includes a 38 percent federal spending increase for nuclear power, but nothing for geothermal.

Advocates say they hope Congress can restore at least $25 million in funding to keep geothermal research on track.

“It’s too early to pick our resources. We need them all,” said Karl Gawell, executive director of the Geothermal Energy Association.

New geothermal power projects by 2050 could provide 100,000 megawatts of electricity – enough to power about 80 million U.S. homes, or as much as U.S. nuclear power plants make today, the MIT study said.

But U.S. geothermal development will need $300 million to $400 million over 15 years to make this type of power competitive versus other forms of power generation, the study said.

The big hurdle for geothermal power is finding out where the hot water is and developing better ways to drill for it. Geothermal power plants use steam or water from underground to turn turbines to create electricity.

Recreational hot springs across the United States are examples of where geothermal is easy to access. To be a viable power generator, hot water a mile or more underground has to be developed, said Gawell of the Geothermal Energy Association.

Leland “Roy” Mink, who until last October was geothermal program director at the DOE, said he thinks the White House’s waning interest in geothermal is a mistake. He said he left the DOE when he saw the Department was cutting funding.

“It’s far from a mature technology,” said Mink, who is now working on a geothermal project in Idaho. “There’s a lot to do. For starters, we need to develop drill bits that last longer. It’s a hostile environment down there.”

source

Well, I’m sure that Saudi Arabia is very pleased at Mr. Bush’s decision. Not so sure that our kids in uniform are real pleased, however, that we fight, bleed and die in the sands of the Middle East for oil, while ignoring geothermal energy (that doesn’t produce carbon dioxide) right under our feet.

Duncan Hunter and the Bush talking points: Whitewashing the Sunnis

The Bush/Cheney/Saudi talking points are that Sunnis are not to be mentioned. How can we have confidence in this administration’s ability to solve problems when they won’t admit to them?

Yesterday the Administration’s point man on Iraq, Duncan Hunter, R-CA and candidate for president, was on the TeeVee spouting the Bush/Cheney administration’s talking points that basically, in Western Iraq, al-Qaeda was THE culprit, and in Eastern Iraq and Baghdad, it was “the Iranians.” Nary a mention of the Sunnis and the Shiites.

Like, what happened to these people, who are doing 95% of all the killing and bombing?

Well, as we may have forgotten, at Thanksgiving Dick Cheney made an urgent trip to Saudi Arabia, long enough to discuss something in person that was of the greatest sentivity and secrecy with the Sunni Saudi king. Very shortly after that, mentions of Sunnis evaporated.

It is important to incorporate Sunnis into the Iraqi government. But the Bush administration’s sudden love affair with the Sunnis and especially this denial of the massive conflicts between them and the Shiites is just so dishonest and really disheartening. More lying to the American people is not what’s needed here.

Tomdispatch discusses the issue :

…”sea change” in the Bush administration’s Middle Eastern policies aimed at rallying friendly Sunni regimes against Shiite Iran, as well as Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Syrian government — and launching secret operations to undermine, roll back, or destroy all of the above. Despite the fact that the Bush administration is officially at war with Sunni extremism in Iraq (and in the more general Global War on Terror), despite its support for the largely Shiite government, allied to Iran, that it has brought to power in Iraq, and despite its dislike for the Sunni-Shiite civil war in that country, some of its top officials may be covertly encouraging a far greater Sunni-Shiite rift in the region.

Imagine. All this and much more (including news of U.S. military border-crossings into Iran, new preparations that would allow George W. Bush to order a massive air attack on that land with only 24-hours notice, and a brief window this spring when the staggering power of four U.S. aircraft-carrier battle groups might be available to the President in the Persian Gulf) was revealed, often in remarkable detail, just over a week ago in “The Redirection,” a Seymour Hersh piece in the New Yorker. Hersh, the man who first broke the My Lai story in the Vietnam era, has never been off his game since. In recent years, from the Abu Ghraib scandal on, he has consistently released explosive news about the plans and acts of the Bush administration.

Countdown to US attack on Iran: x minus 17 days: the neocons make their last pitch to Bush

The financial influence of AIPAC is certainly one of the prime movers toward an attack on Iran. But the neocons are Bush’s “intellectual” drivers, and though their ranks seem to be shrinking a bit, they are still in Bush’s “prime time” viewing habits. They recently made a pilgrimage to the White House for a last try at getting Bush to launch the B-2 bombers. Glenn Greenwald (again) gives a commentary:

The White House invited a tiny cast (total: 15 guests) of standard neoconservatives and other Bush followers to the luncheon, including Norman Podhoretz (father-in-law of White House convict Eliot Abrams), Gertrude Himmelfarb (wife of Irving Kristol and mother of Bill), Mona Charen, Kate O’Beirne, Wall St. Journal Editorial Page Editor Paul Gigot, etc. etc. The Weekly Standard‘s Irwin Stelzer was also invited and wrote about the luncheon in the most glowing terms.

Stelzer’s account provides truly illuminating insight into what neoconservatives have been filling the President’s head with for years now, and demonstrates how they have managed to keep him firmly on board with their agenda. The most critical priority is to convince the President to continue to ignore the will of the American people and to maintain full-fledged loyalty to the neoconservative agenda, no matter how unpopular it becomes.

To do this, they have convinced the President that he has tapped into a much higher authority than the American people — namely, God-mandated, objective morality — and as long as he adheres to that (which is achieved by continuing his militaristic policies in the Middle East, whereby he is fighting Evil and defending Good), God and history will vindicate him:

On one subject the president needed no lessons from Roberts or anyone else in the room: how to handle pressure. “I just don’t feel any,” he says with the calm conviction of a man who believes the constituency to which he must ultimately answer is the Divine Presence. Don’t misunderstand: God didn’t tell him to put troops in harm’s way in Iraq; belief in Him only goes so far as to inform the president that there is good and evil. It is then his job to figure out how to promote the former and destroy the latter. And he is confident that his policies are doing just that.

Can the neocons convince Bush to push the button? Can AIPAC? At the moment, with another big hit on Wall Street yesterday and the price of oil starting to settle, I would say that Bush is not likely to go after Iran militarily in the next few weeks. And his political capital continues to shrink; the US attorney scandal may have impeachment potential, in addition to stripping the guise of credibility from the Justice Department, if not the White House itself. But we’ll watch the indicators.

[to read previous posts in this series, click on "countdown..." in the categories list in the far right hand column.]