Karl Schwarz

About 30 years ago, then President Jimmy "Mr. Peanut" Carter and his National Security Advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, had a 'peanut brain idea' that the US could take over the entire Caspian Basin mother lode of oil and natural gas if they created Al Qaeda to destabilize those Islamic areas (except for Christian Georgia) and turn them against Russia.

Well, it was a nut brain idea at the time, and it is still a nut brain idea. Here we are, about three decades later, and Russia is stronger than ever while the US is sinking like the Titanic...and its dreams of hegemony over the Caspian Basin are already sitting on the bottom of the sea.

You can view the following two maps in much larger form by visiting the websites and zooming in on them. This is the north and south part of just the Caspian Sea area and who holds the tracts of oil and natural gas. It is not a US Show, it is now an "international affair" and the US has no one to blame but itself.

UFO enthusiast Lester Arnold of Declo, Idaho, waits for nightfall and an evening of sky watching next to the so-called Black Mailbox. The white mailbox, which replaced the black original, is the only landmark for miles along a stretch of Nevada's Highway 395, officially nicknamed the Extraterrestrial Highway, near Area 51. UFO seekers frequently camp beside the mailbox, hoping to discover what the night may be hiding.
(Laura Rauch / For The Times)

LATimes

Dan Mihalopoulos

Mayor Richard Daley became irked and tight-lipped again Wednesday at questions about what he'll do to deal with the city's $420 million budget deficit. But the mayor was eager to sermonize about campus drinking.

He ripped university presidents who have called for lowering the legal drinking age to 18.

"Lower drinking age, that's the easy way out. I really believe presidents of universities have a responsibility. You send your son or daughter to university. You pay an awful lot of money. You look at the salaries that people get at universities. You pay a lot of money. I’m sorry, they have a legal and moral responsibility when your child goes to [get] an education, what type of environment is set on that university," Daley told reporters.

Bruce Mirken

The alcohol poisoning death rate in the United States is shockingly high, consistently between 300 and 400 a year. It's zero for pot.

On Aug. 19, the Associated Press reported on a group of college presidents proposing reconsideration of the legal drinking age. I'll refrain from wading into the emotional debate about what the legal age for alcohol should be, but a graph that accompanied the story in some outlets, including the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, raises larger questions about our national policies toward drugs and alcohol.

Two things are striking:

David Borden

An August 5 article in Time Magazine, "Bolivia's Surprising Anti-Drug Success," observed that legal coca cultivation and the illicit cocaine trade are not the same thing. Despite increased tolerance for coca growing by the Bolivian government under President Evo Morales -- who came up through the ranks of the coca grower community himself to become Bolivia's first indigenous chief executive -- reporter Jean Friedman-Rudovsky notes that interceptions of illicitly grown coca destined for cocaine labs are up by 30% from 2007, and 11 tons of coca paste have been intercepted this first part of the year alone, more than in all of 2005 (the year before Morales took office), according to the country's Anti-Narcotics Special Forces (FELCN).

The point is an important one. Coca is a crop grown for generations in Bolivia and other Andean nations, and it is one that is economically needed. Cocalero leaders from Bolivia and Peru spoke eloquently to their situation, their needs -- and their rights -- at our Latin America conference convened in Mexico in 2003. Coca-based tea and candies and even soap given out by conference attendees made the point directly -- coca is not cocaine, cocaine's origin in the coca leaf notwithstanding.

TOVAH LAZAROFF

Israel should not have to trade land for peace, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee said as he explained to a small group of reporters Tuesday morning why he believed Israel should remain sovereign both in Jerusalem and the West Bank.

Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee.
Photo: AP

"As an American, I do not feel that the Israelis are obligated or required to give up land in order to bring peace," said Huckabee, a Southern Baptist minister who earlier this year lost his bid to become the Republican party's presidential nominee but still holds sway with the key evangelical constituency.

Dick Heller, who sued to overturn Washington handgun ban, poses for the media after picking up his gun registration, Monday, Aug. 18, 2008 at Washington's Metropolitan Police headquarters.
(Gerald Herbert - AP) Paul Duggan

A 66-year-old security guard whose lawsuit overturned the District's handgun ban is now officially authorized to keep a revolver in his Capitol Hill home.

STEPHEN MIHM
 
On Sept. 7, 2006, Nouriel Roubini, an economics professor at New York University, stood before an audience of economists at the International Monetary Fund and announced that a crisis was brewing. In the coming months and years, he warned, the United States was likely to face a once-in-a-lifetime housing bust, an oil shock, sharply declining consumer confidence and, ultimately, a deep recession. He laid out a bleak sequence of events: homeowners defaulting on mortgages, trillions of dollars of mortgage-backed securities unraveling worldwide and the global financial system shuddering to a halt. These developments, he went on, could cripple or destroy hedge funds, investment banks and other major financial institutions like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Bruce Gilden

Duncan Campbell

The Guardian, Wednesday August 13 2008 Article historyA former senior civil servant who was responsible for coordinating the government's anti-drugs policy now believes that legalisation would be less harmful than the current strategy. Julian Critchley, the former director of the Cabinet Office's anti-drugs unit, also said that his views were shared by the "overwhelming majority" of professionals in the field, including police officers, health workers and members of the government.

He also claimed that New Labour's policy on drugs was based on what was thought would play well with the Daily Mail readership, regardless of evidence of what worked. Downing Street policy advisers were said to have suggested stunts such as sending boats down the Thames to catch smugglers to coincide with policy announcements.

Pamela Geller

I have been researching, documenting and studying thousands upon thousands of Obama's campaign donations for the past month. Egregious abuse was immediately evident and I published the results of my ongoing investigation. Each subsequent post built a more damning case against Obama's illegal contribution activity.

The media took little notice of what I was substantiating. I went so far as to upload the documents so that anyone could do their own research.  I asked readers to download the documents and a number of folks pitched in.

Despite dropping the groundbreaking bombshell  story of "Palestinian" brothers from the Rafah refugee camp in Gaza who donated $33,000 to Obama's campaign, no big media picked up the story. Jihadis donating to Obama from Gaza? Could there be a bigger story?  Foreign donations are illegal, but this story was all  that and so much more. The "Palestinian" brothers were proud and vocal of their "love" for Obama. Their vocal support on behalf of "Palestinians"  spoke volumes to Obama's campaign.

And yet still no media.