Hello everyone.

I wanted to let you all know about some big things going on with the Hillary / PUMA Party movement.

PUMAParty.Com recently launched a combination of tools to help everyone spread the word and support causes related to Hillary, PUMA and anything else relevant

There are now over 425 members on the forums and many more are registering daily to show their support. There are sections to organize, network and take action. Time is limited so any suggestions or info you could share would be awesome.

Also, at the same website you can now get your very own PUMA Party Blog in a few seconds. Use it to post your thoughts, ideas, suggestions, press releases or anything else you feel is important. Each blog is linked from the homepage that receives thousands of hits per day.

I have also been notified by the admins there that they are willing to do anything they can to help the various causes related to PUMA etc. including spreading press releases to supporters, starting forum sections so that supporters of individual causes can network with the overall user base, fundraising efforts or anything else they can help with.

I hope you'll all stop by and say hello and help us move forward.

Thanks for a wonderful site, I will ask them to add it to the link section if it's not there already. Please link back if possible.

http://www.pumaparty.com

Talk to you all soon,

Amy

Hello everyone.

I wanted to let you all know about some big things going on with the Hillary / PUMA Party movement.

PUMAParty.Com recently launched a combination of tools to help everyone spread the word and support causes related to Hillary, PUMA and anything else relevant

There are now over 425 members on the forums and many more are registering daily to show their support. There are sections to organize, network and take action. Time is limited so any suggestions or info you could share would be awesome.

Also, at the same website you can now get your very own PUMA Party Blog in a few seconds. Use it to post your thoughts, ideas, suggestions, press releases or anything else you feel is important. Each blog is linked from the homepage that receives thousands of hits per day.

I have also been notified by the admins there that they are willing to do anything they can to help the various causes related to PUMA etc. including spreading press releases to supporters, starting forum sections so that supporters of individual causes can network with the overall user base, fundraising efforts or anything else they can help with.

I hope you'll all stop by and say hello and help us move forward.

Thanks for a wonderful site, I will ask them to add it to the link section if it's not there already. Please link back if possible.

http://www.pumaparty.com

Talk to you all soon,

Amy

Moral of the story: avoid SFO at all costs, particularly United. One time, my United flight to SFO was held on the ground because of fog at SFO. The flight finally took off late morning. I arrived at SFO shortly past noon and rushed over to my gate for the flight home. It was already boarding. The only problem was that United had given my seat away. To make matters worse, it was the last United flight of the day. United's solution? Offer me $10 for lunch.

I have had other bad experiences with United/SFO, which I won't bore you with. But the decision to site an international airport on the foggy west side of the bay is a classic example of arrogant stupidity by politicians. And letting United get a large number of the gates? Beyond stupid.

Well Col Lang has a bit on this interesting gambit by the Saudis:

King Abdullah and the speculators

"Saudi Arabia, Opec's largest oil producer, moved to take some of the heat out of rising fuel prices yesterday with plans to increase production next month.

The Saudi move followed a weekend of talks between the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon; the Saudi ruler, King Abdullah, and the country's oil minister Ali al-Naimi.

The news is expected to help depress the crude oil price, which hit a record high of $139 a barrel last week, ahead of an unprecedented meeting of oil producers and importers to be held in the Red Sea port of Jeddah on Sunday."...
The Guardian

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Sooo, the Saudi king is going to increase production at the margin on crude oil going into the spot market and this is expected to lower the market price on deliveries of crude to refiners. That, in turn, is expected to cause a failure in confidence in the whole nasty complex of capitalist hedge fund managers, index fund managers, bankers, advisers to same, and individual mega-investors. It is hoped/believed that this failure in confidence will cause the players to lose faith in their ability to pass the risk along to the greater fools waiting somewhere in speculator limbo. After that set of developments the price per barrel is supposed to fall, a lot. I believe this to be true. We will assemble here afterwords to gloat, or not.

A couple of things...

- This declaration by the Saudis means that the Saudi gremlins (something like the gnomes of Zurich but more colorful and with bigger boats at Nice) believe that they can affect the price by doing this. It is intuitively obvious that they thought that all through the time that they assured the cretins in the Bush Administration that they could not possibly increase oil production since they were already at the top of their production limit. I seem to remember that some of you believed that.

- Believing that, they still did not choose to increase production enough to take the steam out of the commodity/financial market upward spiral in price. That spiral gained speed as marginal scarcity fed the greed and confidence of the players.

- Now they are going to boost production because the accelerating rate of destruction of the world economy threatens everyone, including them. Even 300 foot yachts can be threatened by instability.

- Why did they play this game? The Saudis are angry with us and have been for some time. They are tired of being treated like poor relatives at the family reunion. They are tired of being ignored in the matter of policy with regard to Shia triumphalism, Iran and the Palestinian question. The Saudis don't care about that last one? Only a neocon or a State Department hack toadying his way towards promotion would even try to believe it to be true that the Saudis do not care about Palestine or Jerusalem. Ask the Saudis.

Foreign policy doesn't matter to the "little people?" Ask yourself if that is true next time you fill up mama's Explorer. pl

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008/jun/16/oil.saudiarabia

Price spikes always occur during holiday drive weekends, domestic refinery spigots have decreased and capacity is deliberately narrowed to help shape such market factors.
As fort he four dollar a gallon mark, look no further than AIPAC hosting all three Presidential candidates for its convention.

Some people need to be reminded who holds the high cards when it comes to the economy.

For the sake of Truth in Advertising, here is the founder of the PUMAS...Will Bower.

Here is his profile from his blog site:

Will Bower was bred, raised, and educated in the epicenter of the Electoral Universe: Ohio. He began his political life in 1987 (at the age of 14) as a Youth Ambassador to the Soviet Union. The following year, he became a Youth Campaigner for Michael Dukakis. He went on to be chosen as a member of Boys' State Ohio (1989) and ended up winning the prestigious Delaware County Democratic Scholarship in 1990 -- which he applied to his studies as a playwright at Kenyon College, Class of '94. Will spent most of the late 1990s traveling the world, living mostly in Paris, Sydney, and Los Angeles. However, the events of 2000 and 2001 inspired him to move to Washington DC, where he intended to work for the DNC. After a series of stellar interviews there, he realized to his disillusionment that the parties are mostly about fund-raising, for which he had little interest. However, he has remained in Washington DC, where he has been learning the politico-way from such Huffingtonian friends as Steve Clemons and Scott Shrake. He is currently a chief contributor for The Huffington Post and for Florida-Delegates.com and is a researcher for Thomson CompuMark.

I just saw this exchange on Puma. Thanks for the info Carroll. I
have not spoken to Will Bower about this -- and I do not support in
any way shape or form this Dems for McCain effort. I just want to
be clear with readers that I'm not involved at all in the website
posted above.

As long as McCain continues to define his foreign policy
parameters in ways that would aggravate rather than reverse the
deteriorated position of America's standing in the world, I won't
support him.

best, steve

Thank you Will Bower. Go PUMA!

No, thanks, Will Bower.

I care about a women's right to choose, and getting out of Iraq and putting those billions into health care, education, alternate energy sources,and infrastructure. Most important of all in this election will be future Supreme Court appointments. I care about habeas corpus and about getting legislation to reverse the Ledbetter SCOTUS decision of last year that was a severe setback of equal pay for women and about the Paycheck Fairness Act. Last week was the 35th anniversary of the passage of the Equal Pay Act of 1963, the first civil rights act that dealt only with gender discrimination. Today women still earn only about 76 cents for every dollar a man makes in the U.S.

I don't think TWN is the place for anyone to solicit any 527 groups and provide links to them. I do urge thinking Independents and Republicans, particularly women, to find on their own, Independents for Obama and Republicans for Obama and get involved.

Whatever blame or the chargesheet the western agencies may pose against Dr Qadir, the pakistani nuclear scientist, the hidden truth can never be hidden and that reveals the fact that the nuclear proliferation( an act of transgressing peace) has both officially and non offically been tendered or supported by the western- agencies/ nuclear networks themselves, keeping this view in mind,one can not help questioning the validity and the veracity about the wetsern propaganda against Dr Qadir Ahmad khan.

Ironbelle,

Most thinking Democrats and feminists are thinnking: Party Unity, My Brain!

None of this is on-topic of Steve's blog. I think most TWN readers would prefer that we stick to the topic.

I'll vote "present" for the POTUS slot on my ballot.

The topics were US-Saudi Arabia relations and the Pew Global survey (two important and interesting ones) posted by Steve above late Sunday night, and the first two posts on that were from Amy--identical at 5:58 a.m. and 6:22 a.m. Monday morning--off-topic from the start. The facts are all above.