(Daniel Ellsberg debates Bill Kristol on C-SPAN, Mar 28, 2003)

Now that all of the neocons are worked up over the possibility that former Sen. Chuck Hagel might be nominated to be our next Sec. of Defense, it seems there's a little dust up going on between documentary film maker Michael Moore and Iraq war cheerleader, Bloody Bill Kristol.

I Want to Give $1000 to Bill Kristol's Favorite Charity – If He'll Just Tell the Truth About Iraq, Oil and Chuck Hagel:

I just sent this to Bill Kristol, the editor of the Weekly Standard magazine and one of the most influential advocates of our invasion of Iraq. He posted something this morning about my post where I found an old quote from Chuck Hagel about how the Iraq War is all about the oil. I'll let you know when Bill gets back to me. (If you don't know much about Bill, you can find a good introduction here about his pre-war debate with Daniel Ellsberg.)

Dear Bill,

Thanks for your post mentioning me! I didn't realize you visited my website so early on Saturday mornings. Man, I wish we had cleaned up after the party last night.

Anyway, I see you're mad that back in 2007 former Sen. Chuck Hagel said that we were obviously "fighting for oil" in Iraq. You explain this was "vulgar and disgusting" and "could be the straw that breaks the back of Hagel's chances" to be Obama's next Defense Secretary.

Since you feel so strongly about this, I wanted to make sure you heard about four other prominent people who've said the same thing. (I should have mentioned them yesterday with the Chuck Hagel stuff, I apologize.)

• "I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil." – Alan Greenspan, former Chairman of the Federal Reserve, in his 2007 memoir. (Read about it here. Greenspan then lamely tried to walk this back, when he found out just how politically inconvenient it was…while admitting a Bush White House official told him "unfortunately, we can’t talk about oil.")

• "Of course we should go to war for oil. It's like saying, you're going to war just for oxygen, just for food. We need oil. That's a good reason to go to war." – Ann Coulter, author, April 11, 2011. (Watch her say that here at 37:30.)

• "Of course it’s about oil, it's very much about oil, and we can’t really deny that. From the standpoint of a solider who's now fought in the middle east for six years – my son-in-law's fought there for four years, my daughter's been over there, my son has served the nation – my family has been fighting for a long time." – Gen. John Abizaid, former commander of CENTCOM, October 13, 2007. (Watch Abizaid say this here.)

• "We're not in the middle east to bring sweetness and light to the whole world. That's nonsense. We're in the middle east because we and our European friends and our European non-friends depend on something that comes from the middle east, namely oil." – Midge Decter, author, May 21, 2004. (Listen here, at 35:55.)

I like to think the best about people. I know all you're looking for is an open, honest debate about Chuck Hagel's qualifications – with absolutely no smears or bullying. And because you feel that way, I'm sure you'll want to update what you wrote about Hagel with these quotes, and explain that Alan Greenspan and Ann Coulter and John Abizaid and Midge Decter are vulgar and disgusting and far-left too. Read on...

Digby has more on Moore's post and Midge Decter here: All the neocon Hippies:

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Democracy Now's Amy Goodman did some follow up to Al Jazeera's reporting on the state of the Gulf of Mexico and the fishing industry there, two years after the Deepwater Horizon disaster.

Gulf Oil Spill: BP Execs Escape Punishment as Fallout from Disaster Continues to Impact Sea Life:

Two years since the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history, we look at its impact on the Gulf of Mexico’s residents and wildlife even as no BP officials have faced criminal prosecution for the disaster. Eleven workers died when the Deepwater Horizon well exploded, and almost five million barrels of crude oil leaked into the ocean before the well was plugged after 51 days. BP maintains the Gulf is rapidly recovering thanks to the company’s efforts, but Al Jazeera reporter Dahr Jamail describes how scientists say shrimp, fish and crabs in the Gulf of Mexico have been deformed by oil and chemicals released during the spill cleanup effort. Meanwhile, ProPublica’s environmental reporter, Abrahm Lustgarten, says the company failed to learn from past mistakes that could have helped avoid the explosion. He is the author of the new book, "Run to Failure: BP and the Making of the Deepwater Horizon Disaster."

Full transcript is available at the link above. Our corporate media actually did a small amount of reporting on this news after Al Jazeera broke their story on the diseased fish and shrimp coming out of the Gulf, but I'll be surprised to see much more follow up from sources other than those like Al Jazeera and Democracy Now.

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It's so nice to see Republicans shilling for big oil and insisting that trying to move to other forms of energy is "ridiculous" but that's what we got from the head of the RNC, Reince Priebus, on Face the Nation this Sunday. And of course Priebus also trotted out the Republicans' "big lie" that Obama wants higher gas prices.

Elon Green over at Steve Benen's old blog, The Washington Monthly took that one on today after Mitt Romney repeated it on Fox News Sunday -- The Zombie Lie That Won't Die: Gas Prices Edition:

The claim that Obama consciously tried to hike the price of gas isn’t a new one. Last month, Mitch Daniels said the president “wanted higher gas prices, and he got them.” And earlier this month, a Fox News reporter was widely mocked, including by the president himself, for asking if Obama yearned for high has prices.

The Washington Post looked into the allegation (which, it’s worth noting, makes no sense whatsoever), and found that “the president never said he wanted the cost of gasoline to rise.”

What’s new, and immensely dispiriting, is that Romney — who, if nothing else, understands how the economy works — chose to pick up the mantle. The problem for him is he can’t very well acknowledge where the blame truly lies without eroding his support. If Romney calls out the oil speculators, he risks being labeled anti-capitalist, and if suggests ratcheting down the talk of attacking Iran, he will be labeled anti-Semitic.

The Washington Post also took on one of Priebus' other lies during this interview, which is that the building the Keystone pipeline will somehow lower the price of gas as well -- Will the Keystone XL pipeline lower gasoline prices?.

And Think Progress has more on Priebus' claim that the Keystone pipeline would create 20,000 jobs -- Myth That Keystone XL Creates Jobs Perpetuated By Oil Lobby, Parroted By Congress’s Oil Recipients:

Project advocates, who include Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, misrepresent its economic benefits to favor the oil industry, throwing out claims that Keystone XL creates “tens of thousands of jobs.”

However, studies conducted independently of TransCanada find much smaller jobs numbers, far from “tens of thousands.” An oil contractor hired by the State Department reported it would create between 5,000 and 6,000 temporary jobs, while an independent study by Cornell University found it would create only 500 to 1,400 temporary jobs. Once the costs of the increased pollution and risk of oil spills is factored in, Cornell found, the jobs impact is likely to be negative. The “118,000 spin-off jobs” number used by TransCanada received two Pinocchios from the Washington Post Fact Checker.

I'm also not sure how building a pipeline for Canadian oil which will end up on the world oil market would "get us a step closer to energy independence" but Schieffer let Priebus get away with that one as well. Schieffer for his part did at least challenge Priebus on the fact that Republicans were the ones that actually killed the pipeline by rushing the approval date, but after Priebus lied in response he didn't challenge him and just moved on to the next topic. But that's par for the course with these Sunday shows where Republicans are regularly allowed to lie with impunity and are seldom taken to task for it, with Schieffer being one of the worst offenders.

Transcript below the fold.

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Rachel Maddow calls "bullpuckey" on the Republicans constant barrage of lies we've heard, claiming that President Obama is somehow anti-energy while trying to make hay of the recent rise in gas prices. As she noted, like it or not, he's been anything but, not that facts matter much to the GOP who are desperate to find anything to make a campaign issue out of.

As Karoli already noted, the yappers over at Fox can barely contain their glee over rising gas prices and that clip with Hannity and Rove isn't the least or the worst of it by far.

I guess if they wise up to the fact that trying to take us back a half century on the birth control issue isn't working out for them, this is the other nonsense we get to look forward to from now until the election.

Transcript via:

MADDOW: After former House Speaker Newt Gingrich won the South Carolina primary at the end of January, he was pretty much on top of the world. He was the frontrunner in the Republican race for president, he was awash in cash. Everything was great in Newt Gingrich land.

But look what`s happened to Mr. Gingrich since then. He is the green line on this graph.

Yes, total collapse. Newt Gingrich`s disappeared into oblivion in the Republican race over the last month. He had sunk like a stone falling through water.

And so, Newt Gingrich is a man currently in need of a path back to relevance. Enter potential path back to relevance.

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Diane already posted Rick Santorum's bizarre rally in Tacoma here -- Protesters at Santorum Rally Tased, Taunted, and Dragged Away:

The Young Turks' Cenk Uygur decided to have a bit of fun with the creepy footage by combining it with some of the Blair Witch Project.

But first he reminded everyone that Rick Santorum is not just your average, everyday working class guy he's been trying to portray himself as. He ran the K Street Project for the Senate. Here's more from Salon Cenk quoted on that -- Santorum’s well-compensated love of fracking:

As the Center for Responsive Politics reports, Santorum is one of the top U.S. Senate recipients of campaign contributions from the oil and gas industry — and what makes those numbers so stunningly outsized is the fact that he remains one of the top Senate recipients even though the last time he ran for Senate was in 2006. Put another way, this is not a run-of-the-mill legislator who happened to get a few afterthought contributions from the industry; this is a guy who was such a sycophantic apostle of the industry that he received enough oil and gas money to keep him on the top-recipient list a full six years after he was voted out of office — that is, a full six years after he raised a single dollar for a Senate campaign. In baseball terms, it’s the equivalent of Hank Aaron racking up so many home runs that he was able to hold the record well after he retired — only with Santorum, it’s not home runs, it’s oil and gas cash.

He's another 99 percenter like the rest of them, bought and paid for by the oil and natural gas industries.

From the Billings Gazette -- Ruptured pipeline sends oil coursing down the Yellowstone River:

An ExxonMobil oil pipeline that ruptured beneath the Yellowstone River has fouled more than 150 miles of the waterway between Laurel and Miles City.

Exxon officials have not said what caused the leak, but in a morning press conference Saturday, Yellowstone County officials noted that the high level of the river, the speed of the water and quickly moving debris all may be factors.

ExxonMobil spokeswoman Pam Malek said the pipe leaked an estimated 750 to 1,000 barrels of oil for about a half-hour before it was shut down. Other Exxon officials estimated as much as 42,000 gallons of crude oil escaped.

The oil slick started just east of the Laurel Bridge late Friday night and by 9 a.m. Saturday had reached Worden. By about 3 p.m. it had reached the Myers Bridge in Hysham. The pipe itself connects Exxon's Silvertip Line — which brings crude from the oilfields in northern Wyoming — to the Billings refinery.

At various points along the Yellowstone, strings and pools of black and red-brown crude collected in eddies and clung to plant life and riverbanks. White pelicans sitting on floating logs in the morning sun Saturday were ringed with brown slurry.

"It's going to be a heck of a cleanup," said Duane Winslow, Yellowstone County director of disaster and emergency services. Read on...

Drill, baby, drill! What could possibly go wrong with allowing them to drill in or around our national parks?

h/t Jamie

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On CNN's The Situation Room today, The New York Time's Nick Kristof does something we don't see on these cable news shows very often if ever; admits that the United States has a problem that includes the word "oil" when it comes to what countries we decide are worth involving ourselves in that have a horrible humanitarian crisis going on.

BLITZER: When should the United States intervene, militarily, in a country where awful things are happening, for example, like Libya as opposed to the Ivory Coast or Sudan, Darfur? What's the benchmark there?

KRISTOF: Well, I think that a lot of critics, especially liberal critics, are pointing to the U.S. involvement in Libya and saying this is inconsistent. This is hypocritical because you are intervening with a country with oil, and you don't intervene in a country that undergoes terrible humanitarian disasters for an even longer period, that doesn't have oil.

You know, I think we have to plead guilty. There is a real inconsistency there. But I guess I would also say, you have to start somewhere. One of the oldest problems in the world of humanitarianism and the world of international relations is what you do when a leader begins to devour his people. We are not going to intervene in every case, but in some cases we will be able to build an international coalition, and there will be the popular support that will make it clear that we can actually accomplish something.

So I think that in this case we should do it. I would point out that in other areas of humanitarian intervention, for example, feeding the starving. We don't have to say that unless we reach every starving child, it's not worth it. Just because we didn't intervene in some cases we still should have intervened in Bosnia. I think we should have intervened in Rwanda. I would love to see more international attention to the tragedy unfolding in Ivory Coast, but if we can't muster the gumption to do that, let's at least support the people of Libya and prevent massacres there.

I think that would be easier for a lot of people to do if we weren't already so cynical about the reasons for our military interventions in the Middle East and other areas and propping up so many bad actors whenever it's convenient for us if it suits the financial interests of big multi-national corporations.

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Jeffrey Sachs was actually allowed some air time on Morning Joe to make a lot of really great points about how America is spending our money in the midst of what's being called a budget crisis. I would argue that we don't have a budget crisis. We have a refusal to levy adequate taxation on those that can afford it "crisis" created by our politicians who refuse to raise taxes on the rich at at time in our history that resembles the Gilded Age with income disparity. As Sachs noted, we're going after discretionary spending which hits in is words, science, education, technology, and energy and he's exactly right on how our approach to what we should be cutting is completely wrong.

As he noted we're not going after the extreme amount of waste in our military industrial complex, we're not fixing the amount of profits going to the insurance companies that are driving up the cost of our health care, the oil industry and corporate tax evasion. Instead we're looking to cut programs that harm the working class in America and I just want to say thank you to Jeffrey Sachs for laying out there how wrong headed our economic policies in the United States have been for at least the last thirty years.

Scarborough's response of course was to say that our working class and our seniors just haven't given quite enough so the oligarchs can keep their pockets lined. Brzezinski to her credit, pointed out that her father said if this keeps up we might see people taking to the streets and that he was called crazy for saying so. She didn't lay it on her buddy Scarborough and said he might not have been the one that said it, but I have the feeling that he was exactly who she was talking about and she gave him a pass. Of course Joe thought it was a good time to go to commercial break after she pointed that out to him.

I'm wondering if they'll have Sachs on again any time soon since he dared to speak the truth on that show. I'm not holding my breath for him to get another chance to say what he did today.

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What a guy. Sean Hannity never took up Keith Olbermann's challenge to be waterboarded. I bet he'd be every bit as reluctant to pick up a gun and help follow through on this idea of his. From Think Progress -- Fearing High Gas Prices, Sean Hannity Proposes Re-Invading Iraq and Kuwait To ‘Take All Their Oil’:

Tonight’s Hannity on Fox News featured a discussion by the Great American Panel about high gas prices, which host Sean Hannity claimed are “now gonna go up to three, four, five dollars a gallon again.” The panel ruefully noted that Arab sheiks possess great amounts of oil, and pointed out a recent statement by Kuwait’s oil minister that he believes the market can withstand $100-per-barrel oil. After noting that Kuwait is a country that “would not exist [but] for us,” Hannity angrily offered his remedy:

HANNITY: There’s two things I said. I say why isn’t Iraq paying us back with oil, and paying every American family and their soldiers that lost loved ones or have injured soldiers — and why didn’t they pay for their own liberation? For the Kuwait oil minister — how short his memory is. You know, we have every right to go in there and frankly take all their oil and make them pay for the liberation, as these sheiks, etcetera etcetera, you know were living in hotels in London and New York, as Trump pointed out, and now they’re gouging us and saying ‘oh of course we can withstand [these prices].’”

This was from the Friday night edition of Hannity's show. More at Think Progress on just what the cost of the Iraq invasion has been already. Apparently no amount of loss of lives and treasure will ever be enough to suit Sean Hannity if it means Americans can still have low oil prices. This doesn't actually surprise me a bit that Hannity would believe this, but most wingnuts don't actually say this sort of thing out loud. So much for that "we're liberating them for their freedom" bullpucky, huh Sean?

At the end of this segment he let everyone know he'd be having Sarah Palin on his show Monday night. More on that below the fold from this past Friday's Countdown where Chris Hayes explained to us what it means to get Hannitized.

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From The Colbert Report -- "As the shrimp season begins, Michael Blum discusses the human health risks caused by the BP oil spill."

Colbert: That's right. Our inspectors are so good they can detect shrimp taint by smell. Do you know how hard that is? I need a jewelers loop to even see shrimp taint. Although I pride myself on my ability to smell moth balls.