☼ AZspot ☼

The longer Hillary stays in the race, the more one is prone to reflect unsentimentally on the Clinton years in the White House. Mrs. Clinton’s arrogance squandered a chance for universal healthcare. Bill helped elect a GOP Congress for the first time in 40 years. He pushed through NAFTA and a host of destructive deregulation. He brought China into the WTO with no protections for American jobs. He squandered historic opportunities, lastly sinking into the squalid Monica scandal. She picked a state in which she had never lived as her senatorial entitlement. The net was to make the election of 2000 close enough for the Republicans to steal, leading to the calamity of W and Dick. Rogue Columnist ☀

Yet even oil optimists concede that physical limits are beginning to loom. Consider the issue of discovery rates. Oil can’t be pumped from the ground until it has been found, and yet the volume discovered each year has steadily fallen since the early 1960’s despite dazzling technological advances, including computer-assisted seismic imaging that allows companies to “see” oil deep below the Earth’s surface. One reason for the decline is simple mathematics: Most of the big, easily located fields—the so-called “elephants”—were discovered decades ago, and the remaining fields tend to be small. Not only are they harder to find than big fields, but they must also be found in greater numbers to produce as much oil. Last November, for example, oil executives were ecstatic over the discovery off the Brazilian coast of a field called Tupi, thought to be the biggest find in seven years. And yet with as much as eight billion barrels, Tupi is about a fifteenth the size of Saudi Arabia’s legendary Ghawar, which held about 120 billion barrels at its discovery in 1948. Paul Roberts ☀

It may be said with rough accuracy that there are three stages in the life of a strong people. First, it is a small power, and fights small powers. Then it is a great power, and fights great powers. Then it is a great power, and fights small powers, but pretends that they are great powers, in order to rekindle the ashes of its ancient emotion and vanity. After that, the next step is to become a small power itself. G.K. Chesterton ☀

Since 2001, the price of oil per barrel has quadrupled, adversely affecting all but the wealthiest Americans. Efforts to spread democracy have either stalled or succeeded only in enhancing the standing of groups like Hamas and Hezbollah. The much-hyped Iraqi nuclear threat turned out to be illusory. To sustain the overstretched American imperium, we are accumulating debt at a staggering clip. And with U.S. soldiers shouldering repetitive combat tours, the strength of our army slowly ebbs away. Meanwhile, the immediate danger to the American way of life comes not from terrorists but from our own adamant refusal to live within our means. American profligacy, not Islamic radicals, triggered the mortgage crisis that underlies our current economic distress. The ‘Long War’ fallacy ☀

Charlie Black, McCain’s senior counsel and spokesman, began his lobbying career by representing numerous dictators and repressive regimes… …Thomas Loeffler, co-chairman of McCain’s campaign, has represented the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia… …Peter Madigan, a leading McCain fundraiser, lobbies on behalf of the king of Dubai John McCain’s Lobbyist Connections to Dictators, Oil Retimes and Child Enslavers ☀