Lots of people like offshore drilling, and just as many think it’s a horrible idea, but the fact of the matter is that we in the U.S. have 2% of the world’s oil reserves. 2%. That’s nowhere close to enough crude to satisfy our thirst for energy, so anyone that has been touting offshore drilling as a viable long term option for solving our energy problems is wrong.

Some offshore drilling is reasonable and acceptable. What is neither reasonable nor acceptable is to base the country’s energy plan strictly on 20th century energy sources like coal, oil, natural gas, and even nuclear. What is also unacceptable is to open all offshore areas to drilling and exploration. Some areas need to be protected and it seems this new relaxation of the offshore drilling ban does just that (specifically in regards to Bristol Bay, Alaska).

An all encompassing energy plan that pursues all options available to us seems rational and reasonable. It just doesn’t make sense to throw all our eggs in one basket, regardless of whether that basket is the polluting, finite resource of fossil fuels or the largely unproven and currently inefficient renewable energy industry.

It seems to be a battle between past and future resources. Both need to be embraced for the present.

Way to go, nerds.

India and Bangladesh have been arguing for almost 30 years over who controls New Moore Island, a tiny piece of rock in the Bay of Bengal 2 miles long and 1 1/2 miles wide with nothing on it. Now, thanks to rising sea levels, New Moore Island is completely underwater.

Now nobody gets to play with it. I hope you’re happy India and Bangladesh.

Pick your jaw up off the floor. Every dog has his day, and even broken clocks can show the right time if you wait long enough.  The Kraut Hammer is known as a foreign policy heavyweight (in addition to his primary job as shill for the neo-con agenda), so it should be no surprise that the question we find ourselves in agreement over is one of international politics, namely Iran’s stubborn obsession with building The Bomb.

Here’s the article from RCP.

The news came out this week that (surprise!) Iran has been less than forthcoming regarding its uranium enrichment project and nuclear program. This was announced September 25, while President Obama was in Pittsburgh for the G20 meetings. However, it seems that Obama (as well as Sarkozy of France and Brown of England) had this information the day before, when Obama was busy becoming the first President to chair a meeting of the U.N. Security Council. The meeting was focused on nuclear weapons, specifically disarmament. Seems like the perfect time to mention a rogue nation moving forward with its own nuclear proliferation program, right?

Wrong.

President Obama chose not to bring up the news that Iran had been hiding the existence of an illegal uranium enrichment facility in the region of Qom. Why? Because, according to White House officials, our President did not want to “dilute” the issue of nuclear disarmament with news of illegal nuclear proliferation.

Isn’t that kind of the same issue? Two sides of the same coin, maybe?

France’s President, Nicolas Sarkozy wanted Obama to use his platform before the entire U.N. Security Council to drop the bombshell news. He was livid when Obama held back. Gordon Brown, Prime Minister of the U.K. also expected these latest transgressions by Iran to be mentioned. Obama didn’t mention this illegal activity though. He held back so that the news about Iran wouldn’t overshadow the hard-fought victory he had won for nuclear disarmament.

But if you get a bunch of countries to promise that someday in the future they will think about the possibility of destroying their arsenals of nuclear weapons, while simultaneously Iran and North Korea work ever closer to bringing more of these weapons into existence, then what, exactly, is the point?

There is no way to create Obama’s dream of a “nuclear-free world” unless all countries decide to forsake these weapons. Obama had a chance to ram that point home during his performance at the U.N. Security Council meeting, but he didn’t. He held back so that the meeting would look more successful than it really was. That’s not leadership, that’s image control, public relations. That’s not what we expect from the leader of the free world.

When the French are pissed at you for not being tough enough, you know you screwed up. And when you have Charles Krauthammer and Rebel in agreement against you, you must have made one hell of a big mistake.

Newsflash: Yelling “heil Hitler” anywhere isn’t cool, but yelling it at an Israeli guy who was simply talking about Israel’s health care system is a whole new level of ignorance.

I was all ready to post the following idea regarding health care this morning when, to my utter shock and surprise, I read this piece from the Huffington Post (via RealClearPolitics) in which contributor Bill Maher basically echoes the exact sentiment I will present to you.

Go ahead and read it, I’ll wait. Done? Good.

Why is it that health care is a for profit industry? How is a doctor any different than a police officer or a firefighter? All tend to us in times of emergency, albeit in varying degrees. All describe their occupations as “callings” more than just a way to make a buck. All serve the public good, and as such, none should be for profit businesses.

With all the debate raging and centered around health care and the prospect of “socialized medicine,” the thought occurred to me that we really must rethink health care and the way the entire industry is constructed. Critics of “socialized medicine” and the “single payer option” have pointed to the fear of government bureaucrats getting between them and their doctors, but isn’t that what is already happening? Why is a corporate bureaucrat any different or more desirable than one from the government? If doctors come to be thought of in the same vein as police officers, firefighters, and even soldiers– that is, government employees who serve the public–then why would we need paper pushers to decide who gets what coverage, who gets denied, or who has to die waiting for treatment? Think of it this way: does a police officer demand payment from you for arresting the person who mugged you? Do you have to fill out pages of paperwork before your house fire is extinguished?

No. So then why do we currently do these things for the people who revive, cure and heal us from knife wounds, broken bones, and third degree burns?

You want to cut costs for health care? Then stop making money off of it. You want to expand health coverage? Then make it truly accessible for all, make it non-profit. Don’t take over the insurance companies, take over the hospitals.

The only entity or person hurt by this would be the insurance companies and the people who make money from human suffering.

And don’t give me that bullshit about stifling innovation. You mean to tell me that no innovations have been made in catching criminals? You really want to argue that firefighters are worse at putting out fires than they were twenty years ago?

A health insurance company is merely a parasitic middleman. It’s time to cut out the middleman. It’s time to rethink health care altogether.

“Henry Louis Gates wasn’t a victim of racism because I was in a similar situation and I’m white. What’s the big deal? Get over it already.”

That’s basically it. Except there’s a few problems with the story related by Mr. Taranto. A) He wasn’t arrested. He was allowed to explain his predicament to the officers who arrived at the scene and that was the end of it. B) He wasn’t at his own fucking house. Taranto was staying at a friend’s home in Alexandria, he had a key, he had permission to be there, but a neighbor reported seeing a stranger in the backyard and called the police. Taranto was a stranger. The neighbor more or less did the right thing.

In Henry Louis Gates’ situation, he was not a stranger. He was entering his own home. He was in his own neighborhood. Let’s get one thing straight though, the police who were called to Gates’ house are not to be blamed for doing their jobs. Maybe they could have handled the situation better, maybe not, but the fact of the matter is that they were called to the home because of racism. And Henry Louis Gates was arrested as a result.

The neighbor who called the cops to Mr. Gates’ home is a racist who saw two black men trying to open a jammed door and assumed that they didn’t belong there, assumed that they were burglars, assumed they were strangers when in fact, one was her neighbor. The neighbor who called the cops on Mr. Taranto saw someone in their neighbor’s house who hadn’t been there before, a stranger, not a  neighbor.

The two situations could not be more different, but Mr. Taranto wants you to read them as the same so that he can argue that racism is dead.

From Kaplan’s piece:

“…it was a vote that reflected corporate contracts. The floor leaders of the faction in favor of more F-22s were Sens. Saxby Chambliss, a Republican from Georgia, where the F-22 is assembled, and Chris Dodd, a Democrat from Connecticut, where parts of the plane are built. Joining this strange couple were such erstwhile doves as Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein of California, which also hosts several F-22 contractors.”

But what’s the bottom line? Why don’t we need to make F-22′s anymore?

The F-22 is a hold over from the Cold War, when there was a much higher probability of being drawn into a war that would require the kind of air combat that F-22′s were designed for. Seeing as how the two wars we are fighting now have been almost entirely fought on the ground, the F-22 has become a very expensive piece of badass equipment that sits in a hangar and gets dusted off for air shows. Not to mention the fact that no U.S. soldier has been killed by enemy aircraft since 1951.

Oh yeah, and we’ll also be maintaining nearly 200 F-22′s just in case Russia wants to start something. And, production of the new hotness, the F-35, starts in 2010.

Break time is over, the time card has been punched, we are back.

Pundits and politicians, consider yourselves warned.

–Rebel Editorial Staff

Researchers at the University of Georgia are working on a project that could help absorb and sequester CO2 while simultaneously enhancing crop yields for farmers. The substance is called biochar and to hear research engineer Brian Biben discuss it, it seems this could be the next great discovery in agriculture.

Here’s how it breaks down (pardon the pun): Researchers load organic material (things like wood chips, peanut shells, etc.) into a container and then cook it at temperatures as high as 1,000 degrees fahrenheit. A thermochemical process called pyrolysis transforms the organic matter and after a few hours, what is left is a charcoal-like substance that can be used as renewable fuel or to enrich soil for agriculture.

A lot of researchers are focused on using biomass for renewable fuel, but at the University of Georgia, the renewable fuel generated is secondary to the creation of biochar. For agriculture, biochar could be something of a magic bullet, or as scientists are calling it, “black gold.”

“Its high carbon content and porous nature can help soil retain water, nutrients, protect soil microbes and ultimately increase crop yields…Biochar [also] helps clean the air two ways: by preventing rotting biomass from releasing harmful CO2 into the atmosphere, and by allowing plants to safely store CO2 they pull out of the air during photosynthysis. “

And now for the most interesting part of the story, biochar isn’t exactly “new.” The substance created by scientists at the University of Georgia, closely resembles what is known as terra preta (Portuguese for black earth), an extremely fertile soil found in the Amazon basin created centuries ago by the indigenous tribes of the area. Terra preta consists of  half-burned wood and animal waste and is so rich that it has remained fertile for hundreds of years without the addition of any fertilizer.