WASHINGTON DC (RBN) – Three years after staging the largest debt default in modern history, The United States on Monday opened what may be the first Museum of Foreign Debt to teach people the perils of borrowing abroad.

The subject is heavy, but the museum’s creators have tried to make the mood light and the displays accessible to everyone, especially schoolchildren.

Cont. reading: Foreign Debt Museum Opened

Reporters Sans Frontières (Reporters Without Borders), the media freedom watchdog group is noting that it is already 20 years old and today, on the occasion of the 15th “International Press Freedom Day”, is publishing a couple of reports on freedom in media around the world.

One is its Annual Report on 2004 (see the press release and the full report (pdf, 370 kb)

The other is a report on the gruesome toll for journalists of the war in Irak. see the press release and the full report (pdf, 12 pages)

Cont. reading: Killing Journalists

Q: Do you feel that the number of troops that you’ve kept there is limiting your options elsewhere in the world?

BUSH: The person I asked that to – the person I asked that to, at least, is the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, my top military adviser.

I said, Do you feel that we’ve limited our capacity to deal with other problems because of our troop levels in Iraq? And the answer is no, he doesn’t feel we’re limited. He feels like we’ve got plenty of capacity.

Text of Bush Press Conference
April 28, 2005

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Joint chiefs boss says terror war has put military at risk of …
Salt Lake Tribune, UT
Wars risk military activity elsewhere, top officer says
Contra Costa Times, CA
US military stretched taut, Myers reports
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, AR

Cont. reading: Bush Scapegoats Myers

The Chicken and the Egg (First in a series)

And when the dollar bubble finally bursts . . oh man. If you’ve ever heard the joke about the pig, the monkey and the cork, you have some idea what to expect. Which is why hopeful talk about a “soft landing” or a “smooth adjustment” makes me laugh.

Being There

Even by the state’s contemporary standards, though, Allen is a dunce. One of the few politiicans, in fact, who could make people refer to John Warner as "the smart one."
Which, needless to say, could make him a hot prospect for the GOP presidential nomination.

The Economist has published in its most recent edition a survey of oil, which I promised to review. As it is behind a subscription wall, the links (below the jump) are unlikely to be accessible to most of you, so I have tried to summarise its content before critiquing it.

Source

The survey is an interesting contrast before good insights on the oil markets, the behavior of the oil majors, and the importance of government regulations, and a deliberately optimist take on “peak oil” and the likelihood for alternatives (especially fuel cells) to replace oil use in transport.

In a nutshell, this is the well-informed, but deliberately rosy official view of corporate America.

Now complete with comments on second part

Cont. reading: ‘The Economist’ on Oil – the Corporate View on Peak Oil

Open Thread ..

I. Social Surrealism

It should be obvious by now that Bush and the Rovians don’t give a rat’s ass about the poor – except when they can be used as decoys to funnel federal money into their religious patronage machine or provide the appropriate background for a few quick photo ops. As Matt Yglesias and others have already pointed out, their Social Security plan only “aids” low-income retirees if you ignore the trillions in general revenues that still would have to be poured into the trust fund to subsidize Shrub’s precious private accounts. Yet redirecting those same revenues into the existing system (without the private accounts) would leave all retirees better off than what Bush is proposing. If Robin Hood had tried pulling a bait and switch scam like that, I think Friar Tuck would have excommunicated him.

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II. Oil’s Well That Ends Well