Caspar Arman - How to lie with real data

From Climate Audit about a leading global warming "authority." I give him the floor: The Texas Sharpshooter fallacy is a logical fallacy where a man shoots a barn thirty times then circles the bullet holes nearest each other after the fact calling that his target. It's of particular concern in epidemiology. Folks, you are never going to see a better example of the Texas Sharpshooter work itself out in real life than Caspar Ammann's handling of Mann's RE benchmark. I introduce you to Caspar Ammann, the Texas Sharpshooter. Go get 'em, cowboy. In Ammann's replication of MBH, he reports a calibration RE (the Team re-brand of the despised calibration r2 statistic) of 0.39 and a verification RE of 0.48. So that's his bulls' eye. In our original papers, we observed that combinations of high calibration RE and high verification RE statistics were not necessarily "99.99% significant" (whatever that means), but were thrown up quite frequently even by red noise handled in Mannian ways. So something that might look at first blush like sharpshooting, could happen by chance. In my first post, the other day on this, I observed that Ammann's simulations, like ours, threw up a LOT of high RE values - EXACTLY as we had found. There are nuances of differences in our simulations, but he got a 99th RE percentile of 0.52, while we got 0.54 in MM2005c. Rather than disproving our results, at first blush, Ammann's results confirmed them. Mann didn't appear to be quite the sharpshooter that he proclaimed himself to be or that everyone thought. (This is something that should have been reported in their article, but, needless to say, they aren't going to admit that we know the street that we live on.) It's not that the MBH RE value for this step isn't in a high percentile - it is, something that we reported in our articles, though in a slightly lower percentile according to our calculations. For us, the problem was the failure of other statistics, which suggested to us that the seemingly high RE statistic (99.999% significant) was an illusion from inappropriate benchmarking - a form of analysis familiar in econometrics (especially the seminal Phillips 1986). The pattern of MBH statistics (high RE, negligible verification r2) was a characteristic pattern of our red noise simulations - something we reported and observed in our 2005 articles. Obviously, it wasn't enough for Ammann to show that the MBH RE value was in a high percentile - he wanted to show that it was "99% significant" as the maestro had claimed. So he re-drew the bulls' eye. A couple of days ago, I described the two steps whereby Ammann gets the MBH RE score (0.4817) into the 99% "bullseye" but this was my first cut analysis and did not tie it directly to the re-drawing of the bullls' eye. Ammann's first step was to assigned an RE value of -9999 to any result with a calibration RE under 0. That only affected 7 out of 1000 and didn't change the 99% percentile anyway. So this seemingly plausible argument had nothing to do with re-drawing the bulls' eye, as noted previously. The bulls' eye was re-drawn in the next step - where Ammann proposed a "conservative" ratio of 0.75 between the calibration RE and verification RE statistics. Using this "conservative" ratio, he threw out 419 out of 1000 votes. The salient question is whether this "conservative" procedure has any validity or whether it's more like throwing out black votes because they couldn't answer a skill-testing question like naming the capital of a rural county in Tibet or identify the 11th son of Ramesses II. I'll provide some details below and you decide. First no one has ever heard of this "conservative" benchmark - and I mean, no one. You can't look up this "conservative" ratio in Draper and Smith or other statistical text. The "conservative" benchmark is completely fabricated. So everyone's statistical instincts should be on red alert (as Spence_UK and Ross' have been and as mine were.) So I thought - let's look at the votes that didn't count. What did the rejected votes actually look like? First of all, if a simulation had a negative RE score, those would fail the test and be re-assigned to -9999. OK, but those didn't matter, because they were already to the left of the target; the 99% bulls' eye wasn't affected by this. The only ones that mattered were the votes with RE scores higher than MBH which were thrown out on this new technicality. There were 13 votes thrown out on this pretext which I list below in order of decreasing RE score (note once again how high both the calibration and RE scores are in these rejected votes.) Most of the rejected votes had calibration RE values above 0.3, but slightly lower the value of the calibration RE in the WA emulation of MBH (0.39), but the third one in the list had both a calibration RE and a verification RE that were higher than MBH. Nonetheless, the vote still got thrown out. The RE score was too "good".
 For a calibration RE of 0.3957, the maximum allowable verification RE to be eligible would be 0.528! (0.3957/.75). Turn that over in your minds, folks. If the calibration RE was 0.3957, unless the verification RE was exactly between 0.4817 (MBH) and 0.528, the score would be be placed to the left of MBH and the bulls' eye re-drawn. Redneck scrutineers would be proud. The data and more are at Climate Audit.

The story the main-stream media couldn't see

Cartoon of John Edwards with sweetheart. CNN, NY Times and Washington Post are wearing dark glasses and carrying the canes - they should be white - that blind people use. They just can't see the story.

The War in Georgia Is a War for the West

Let's support Georgia. The Soviet Union, I mean Russia, cannot stand to have a country in "its sphere of influence" be independent and have a legitimate elected government. President MIKHEIL SAAKASHVILI writing in the WSJ.com:

No country of the former Soviet Union has made more progress toward consolidating democracy, eradicating corruption and building an independent foreign policy than Georgia. This is precisely what Russia seeks to crush. This conflict is therefore about our common trans-Atlantic values of liberty and democracy. It is about the right of small nations to live freely and determine their own future. It is about the great power struggles for influence of the 20th century, versus the path of integration and unity defined by the European Union of the 21st. Georgia has made its choice. When my government was swept into power by a peaceful revolution in 2004, we inherited a dysfunctional state plagued by two unresolved conflicts dating to the early 1990s. I pledged to reunify my country -- not by the force of arms, but by making Georgia a pole of attraction. I wanted the people living in the conflict zones to share in the prosperous, democratic country that Georgia could -- and has -- become.

Book report: Rubicon

William Morrow publishers sent me a pre-release copy of "Rubicon." I read enough of it to see that is just another "Dick Cheney decided ahead of time to destroy the world and reads nothing and only listens to yes-men advisors." "When Ceasar crossed the Rubicon, the Roman republic died and the age of the emperors began. We now stand before a Rubicon of our own. Cross it, and the American republic will be dead as well." You can spend your money and time on it. I won't spend even my time on it.

The Ronulans are after me

The rabid supporters of Ron Paul are trying to take over the Republican Party. They have tried going with the Losertarians (Michael Medved's term for Libertarians) to no success. This time they are working the trenches and having some success. It's easy to get started at the grass-roots level because the lowest-level office, precinct committee officer, has a vacancy rate - guessing - of 50% in the RP. So they can get into those slots almost by asking. Where the PCO slot is occupied there is an election every two years, which is always ignored, because it's never contested. This year they are going for broke. They are taking on a powerful, entrenched incumbent - ME. A good looking, soft spoken neighbor who is taller than me (!) is carrying the Ron Paul banner in Sheridan Heights, Lake Forest Park, WA. He makes no pretense of being a Republican or sharing our values. He won't even promise to support our candidates if he becomes the Republican PCO. Our district chairperson Lisa Thwing and her husband Doug are on top of things. They smelled him out immediately and went on the alert. The district helped me get the word out to my neighbors - that I am the real Republican - while I am incapacitated by my injury and cannot doorbell. Broken pelvis

Vote Ron Hebron Precinct Committee Officer LFP-1056 - 32d District

Vote at the polls on August 19 - Check your mailbox now for your absentee ballot Eric Earling at Sound Politics covers some of their techniques.

The joke is finally on Barack Obama

US Election 2008: The joke is finally on Barack Obama - Telegraph UK

Have you heard the one about the presidential candidate who was once so popular that comedians were frightened to make jokes about him? The punchline is this: the more seriously he took himself, the more Barack Obama has become a laughing matter. Only a month ago American comedians and satirists were complaining that they found it hard to get people to laugh at the first black presidential nominee

That is a half truth. People would laugh, but not the right people. The comedians didn't dare make a joke about ObaMessiah. The Brits laugh at his holiness and find opening moves by the US PC comedians. Read it at the link above.

Does DoD want to get the tanker aircraft contract right?

I have never been one of the "Boeing was robbed" people. I am a "true believer." I figure you make the rules clear then call the game and that's it - fair is fair. But more and more analysts are saying the Pentagon changed the rules and effectively "single-sourced" the tanker contract to the more expensive, but not more capable aircraft - the Airbus supported by the governments if Europe. Merrill Cook at National Review Online:

A recent report by the independent Government Accountability Office (GAO) devastatingly critiques one of the Pentagon’s critical procurement processes. The July 2008 report demonstrates that the government botched contracts for an urgently needed new generation of aerial refueling tankers not just once, but twice. With years of delay and billions in budget overruns in many of the Department of Defense’s top programs, many observers are asking just how deep the Pentagon’s procurement problems run. They want to know what the Pentagon’s new chief, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, will do about it. The problems have been building for years. DOD has allowed squabbles between defense contractors to maroon several key acquisition priorities into a bureaucratic no-man’s land. This at a time the armed forces are in great need of quick turnarounds on life-saving systems like the armored MRAP vehicles for troops patrolling dangerous streets in Iraq. Unfortunately, few in Washington seem to have learned the lessons of past procurement mistakes. Exhibit A: The Pentagon is trying for the third time to complete a fair competition for a $35 billion contract to replace our fleet of tanker-refueling aircraft. These are the oldest aircraft still flying, and some date back to the Eisenhower administration. Few question that they pose a serious safety threat to pilots. Woeful mismanagement of a sole-source contract hamstrung the first control, while the Government Accountability Office (GAO) rejected the second as an obsequious effort to award Northrop Grumman and EADS — a subsidized European contractor under criminal investigation — a lucrative defense contract for a more expensive and less capable tanker aircraft. Now under the gun from Congress to produce quick results, Gates has promised that he and his deputy, Undersecretary John Young, will personally oversee the new tanker competition. But instead of simply re-evaluating the previous competition’s bids according to the rules, the Defense Department seems to be engaging smoke-and-mirrors tactics....

The original report is at GAO.

Obama's tire pressure was off by 111 times

Editor Seattle Times Re: Seattle Times 8/7 "Obama pokes at McCain over tire-pressure issue" Viewing the original video I see that Obama said "we can save all the oil they are talking about getting by drilling if everyone was just inflating their tires and getting regular tuneups. You can actually save just as much." It is true that inflating tires will save oil. But far from true that it will eliminate the need for more supply of oil, which is what he claimed. John Hinderocker did the math: Americans drive approximately 2,880 billion miles per year. If we average 24 mpg, we use around 120 billion gallons of gasoline in our vehicles. If, through perfect tire inflation, we improved our collective fuel efficiency by 1.5%, that would be 1.8 billion gallons. A barrel of oil produces around 20 gallons of gasoline, so the total savings available through tire inflation is approximately 90,000,000 barrels of oil annually. How does this stack up against "all the oil that they're talking about getting off by drilling"? ANWR is estimated to produce 10 billion barrels of oil. It can replace 90 million barrels per year for 111 years, not just one year. The continental shelf will produce even more, but we don't know how much because exploration is banned. Oil exploration will produce far, far more than inflating our tires. Obama was off. By about 111 times.

Anti-Bush Protests Fizzle, Pro-U.S. Rallies Sizzle as Bush Visits Korea

The lame-stream media don't report the good news. Amy Proctor - Blog As President Bush arrived in Seoul, Korea today, the media predicted that Bush’s visit would be met with “large protests”. The “progressives” and anti-U.S. civic groups thought the turn out opposing Bush would be huge: “We predict more than 10,000 citizens will participate. We’ll show Korean people’s voice to Bush,”’ one member of the coalition said. However, 374 conservative groups planned pro-American demonstrations welcoming Bush in Seoul Plaza, just a short distance from the progressive’s rally site. Turns out, only a couple hundred protesters came out while 15,000 pro-U.S. Koreans came out to welcome Bush into the capital city of Seoul.

Proud China promises; China breaks promises

China made many promises to be awarded the privilege of hosting the Olympic games. But proud China only keeps the promises that suit its own agenda. - Open internet access - for the press only? No one knows the scope of the promise of "openness," because the IOC kept the agreement secret. So breaking this promise was with the help of the International Olympic Committee. - Air quality

They tried. They promised good air quality, but continued to build coal-fired power plants. They closed the streets to most traffic last week to clean up the air. First it succeeded, then the smog returned. This is not a broken promise, but a bureaucratic botch job.

BAnning ex-athletes

Joey Cheek gold medalist in speed skating was denied a visa to travel to China.

... This effort cut short by family injury - not me this time.

Obama gave McCain the advantage

Excellent analysis by a friend of Hugh's: Clark Judge at Hugh Hewitt In the Reagan speechwriting shop, we had a rule about what today is called the mainstream media: The media does not just get things wrong; they get it EXACTLY wrong. Barak Obama’s recent overseas trip is an example. Widely reported as a triumph, the tour in fact marked the worst week in the Democratic candidate’s long campaign. Despite saturation coverage unlike any presidential aspirant has ever received, much of it close to worshipful, by the end of this past week, Obama’s lead in the Real Clear Politics average of polls was the lowest it had been since early June. And for the first time ever, the Gallup tracking poll, which had previously given Obama a consistent edge, showed the candidates tied as of Friday. Why? The first and most obvious reason was a string of gaffes. Despite reports like Hendrik Herzberg’s in The New Yorker that Obama came off as a deft navigator of global waters, the excursion was filled with missteps. For example, in saying that he remained against the surge, even after General Petraus had explained to him its remarkable effectiveness, he showed what many saw as a reckless disregard for national security. In canceling a visit to troops after being told that cameras couldn’t follow him, he reenforced a widely shared suspicion that all he was up to was political posturing. [Be sure to read the rest] ... In other words, in venturing overseas, Obama abandoned his agenda and embraced Senator McCain’s. He did this without prompting and apparently without realizing how foolish an errand he was on. Many in the media have held that the 2008 election will be most like the election of 1980. In 1980 the public knew they didn’t like Carter but took until a week before the election to decide they trusted Reagan. Just as Reagan was the issue in 1980, some suggest, Obama is today. If the public trusts him, they will make him president. But with so much coverage, not just on this trip but for months before, who in America cannot have formed a firm opinion of Senator Obama by now? Senator McCain is the one the public is still assessing. It is he, not Obama, who the American people must now decide to trust or not. Once again the media has not just been wrong. It has been exactly wrong.

Some sanity in Vacouver BC

After years of encouraging heroin addicts to shoot up some sanity has appeared. The sanity is in the Canadian government in Ottawa, but it should spread to reduce the misery and danger that Vancouver has adopted. The area where heroin users can shoot up legally is dangerous. It adjoins popular tourist sites, but the tourists - and the residents - are not safe. I have heard horror stories from friends and coworkers. globesports.com: Clement's Insite attack leaves WHO red-faced:

MEXICO CITY — The World Health Organization has strongly endorsed safe injection sites like Vancouver's Insite as one of the “priority interventions” that countries should implement to slow the spread of HIV-AIDS, a view that was swiftly and firmly rejected by Canada's Health Minister. “Allowing and/or encouraging people to inject heroin into their veins is not harm reduction, it is the opposite. … We believe it is a form of harm addition,” Tony Clement said Tuesday in Mexico City, where he is attending the XVII International AIDS Conference. While the minister's views on Insite are well known, Mr. Clement repeated them Tuesday at an event where he was endorsing and promoting a new WHO “how-to” guide on battling the epidemic, which promotes needle exchange and safe injection sites. The Health Minister's comments left officials from the agency flummoxed and red-faced.

Notice that the distinguished minister appears to be double speaking.

He also said that the federal government supports various forms of harm reduction for intravenous drug users such as needle exchange, methadone treatment and rehabilitation, but rejected safe injection as illegitimate. “We're not prepared to allow people to die” by condoning their continued drug use, Mr. Clement said. Mr. Clement has never clearly stated why the government supports needle exchange and rehab programs but so sternly opposes the existence of a facility where drug users can actually use the safe needles and be encouraged to enter rehab. The sticking point appears to be that, at Insite, drug users cannot be arrested and prosecuted.

With Democrat Convention in Mind, Denver Bans Carrying Urine, Feces

See new source in update at the bottom. Rush Limbaugh : "With the Democrat National Convention in Mind, the City of Denver has Banned Carrying Urine and Feces." A story written by Daniel Chacon, let me share parts of this story with you: "Poo and pee dominated a public hearing Monday on a new law that prohibits people from carrying certain items if they intend to use them for nefarious purposes. The law, crafted in advance of the Democratic National Convention, was adopted unanimously by the City Council. But not before a hearing laced with comedy and profanity. Representatives from some of the groups planning large-scale protests during the DNC this month said the ordinance was unnecessary and accused city officials of fear mongering. 'The intent of this ordinance is to try to smear protesters and make them look as if they are somehow criminal or somehow going to engage in some kind of gross conduct,' said Glenn Spagnuolo, an organizer with the Recreate 68 Alliance." Why would they think that, Glenn? The name of your group is Recreate 68. What happened in 68? Utter chaos, bombs, tear gas, and all kinds of burning fires, raging fires and automobiles in Chicago in 68. Recreate 68? So now they can't tell you that you can't carry poop and pee around, and you get mad about it? You mean you intended to? "No, Mr. Limbaugh, we're just afraid of what this is going to make people think of us." Don't worry about that, Glenn, people already have you people sized up, and we're hoping you perform, baby. (laughing) We hope Recreate 68 means exactly what it says. What was the name of that weapon that these protesters used? The crap cannon ... * * * Local Denver watcher of the 68 protesters * * * Drunkablog

Paris Hilton - better energy policy than Barrack - updated

If anyone should know that any publicity is better than none it is spoiled brat Paris Hilton. Her sentencing to jail got her air time and more fame. So it is so nice of her to help John McCain when she intended to hurt time. Paris's energy policy is better than B Obama's. Funny or Die McCain has gone ahead of "Mr. Cool" in YouTube views: Washington Times

Gov. Palin of Alaska talks straight

Larry Kudlow's first choice for VP My Interview with Alaska Governor Sarah Palin - The Corner on National Review Online:

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has exactly the high energy, political toughness, and conservative reform message that would boost Sen. John McCain’s presidential run if Big Mac were to put her on the ticket. In an interview last evening on CNBC, Palin was very clear on her drill, drill, drill message for Alaska and the rest of the U.S., along with her strong supply-side tax-cutting and free-market economic views. She did not shirk from questions about an investigation of her firing the state’s safety commissioner. She told us she has nothing to hide — let them bring it on. Palin is dealing with Alaska’s culture of corruption by supporting all manner of reform and investigation. She basically dissed Ted Stevens, calling him a distraction. She then talked about cleansing the Republican party of all the pork-barrel corruption that cost it the congressional election of November 2006. Palin’s response to all the vice-presidential talk is fascinating. It was a point of view I have never heard before and it underscored her independence. I have interviewed all the veep prospects, and I still have Gov. Palin at the top of my list. The interview

Tom Coburn clobbers Dinghy Harry Reid

The Democratics turned off the lights in Congress and went on a 5-week paid vacation. What/who drove them to insanity? A principled cost cutter, Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma. Washington Times

Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid tried to shove an $11.3 billion pork-barrel bill past the Republicans last week but was gunned down by Oklahoman Tom Coburn and 39 of his friends. It was an embarrassing defeat for Mr. Reid, who never met a spending bill he didn't like, and a sweet victory for Mr. Coburn and his fellow Republicans who are trying to regain the trust of the GOP's disillusioned base as the party of fiscal discipline. Mr. Coburn, an obstetrician who still delivers babies, earned his reputation as the Senate's Dr. No for using his senatorial prerogative to place a hold on nearly 80 spending bills, enraging Democrats and a few Republicans who saw one budget-busting bill after another shredded and shelved by the Western waste fighter. Frustrated by the pile of bills Mr. Coburn was killing, Mr. Reid cobbled dozens of them into one fat-filled, omnibus monstrosity called the Advancing America's Priorities Act and made it the Senate's priority business at midweek.

If there had been more Tom Coburns and fewer Jerry Lewises the Republicans would not have lost Congress in 2006. In the article on Rep. Jerry Lewis at Congrespedia scroll down the section on Earmarks to read about his great failure. He did considerable damage with the earmarks to his own benefit in his district, but much more by preventing systemic improvement through his leadership position. The Wall Street Journal in an editorial before the 2006 election predictively labeled him "Minority Maker."

Alexander Solzhenitsyn, voice of the gulag, dead at 89

One of the keys to the fall of the Soviet empire died this week. Alexander Solzhenitsyn was the "voice of the gulag." (The Soviet system of labor camps for political prisoners he descibed as an archipelago - system of island) He was imprisoned suffering cancer but survived. He wrote about his prison experience in A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, so the world learned of the cruelty of the Soviet system. Not that there weren't plenty of clues before, but he shocked the world. Telegraph:

In his lecture of acceptance of the Nobel prize for Literature in 1970, Solzhenitsyn quoted a Russian proverb: "One word of truth shall outweigh the whole world." Those words succinctly encapsulated his literary creed. In a country where autocratic leadership had long obliged the populace to seek more inspiring government, Solzhenitsyn, like Tolstoy, Dostoevsky or Akhmatova before him, became a vital source of spiritual succour to his huge circle of readers. Despite the ban imposed on all his works after the publication of his masterly A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1962), he was very widely read – in photocopied samizdat form – in his native Russia. He was also the only Russian writer to achieve the best-seller lists in the West, and sold more than 30 million books in more than 30 languages. Not that fame or fortune held much temptation for Solzhenitsyn.

He was expelled to the US in 1974 because he was reaching the people of Russia despite his writings being banned. But he didn't take to Western capitalism. He criticized it widely. He was invited to address the Harvard University 1978 commencement. He shocked his hosts by observing that the West was suffering a collapse of our civic courage:

Political and intellectual functionaries exhibit this depression, passivity, and perplexity in their actions and in their statements, and even more so in their self-serving rationales as to how realistic, reasonable, and intellectually and even morally justified it is to base state policies on weakness and cowardice. And the decline in courage, at times attaining what could be termed a lack of manhood, is ironically emphasized by occasional outbursts and inflexibility on the part of those same functionaries when dealing with weak governments and with countries that lack support, or with doomed currents which clearly cannot offer resistance. But they get tongue-tied and paralyzed when they deal with powerful governments and threatening forces, with aggressors and international terrorists.

He returned to Russia in 1994 for the rest of his life.

The fight for higher gas prices

Why do your required business when you can cause higher gas prices instead? Nancy Pelosi made her mark on history by being the first Speaker of the House in 50 years to fail to pass even one appropriations bill before sending her troops home for another vacation Friday. Why did she choose ignominy? To cause higher gas prices, of course! More supply lowers the price; that's what they are fighting. See Law of Supply and Demand. WSJ.com: paid subscription required AFAIK

Hell -- otherwise known as Congress -- has officially frozen over. For the first time since the 1950s, Members will skip town today for the August recess without either chamber having passed a single appropriations bill. Then again, Democrats appear ready to sacrifice their whole agenda, even spending, rather than allow new domestic energy production. Or even a mere debate about energy. The Democratic leadership is stonewalling any measure that might possibly relax the Congressional ban on offshore drilling. Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid know that they would lose if a vote ever came to the floor, and they're desperate to suppress an insurrection among those Democrats who are pragmatic about one of the top economic issues. Behind this whatever-it-takes obstructionism is an ideological commitment to high energy prices. The rulers of the Democratic Party want prices to keep rising.

And Senator Maria Cantwell has her favorite higher-gasoline-price initiative included. The attack on speculators - not housing speculators, only energy:

A good gauge of the radicalism of their energy blockade is the lowest common denominator of this energy fight: The effort to blame "speculators" for $4 gas was promoted by both Barack Obama and John McCain, as well as nearly everybody else in Washington. Sure enough, the House voted 276-151 on Wednesday for a bill that would have driven oil futures trading overseas. But the legislation actually failed to become law -- by design. It needed a two-thirds majority because Speaker Pelosi suspended the rules to prevent Republicans from offering amendments, drilling among them.

Cross posted at Sound Politics.

US Oil hypocrite

The American, A Magazine of Ideas : Until the U.S. opens its offshore waters to oil drilling, it will be seen as the world’s worst energy hypocrite. If you think that the issue of offshore drilling is only a matter of interest to American environmental groups and the U.S. Congress, think again. At last month’s World Petroleum Congress in Madrid, the blatant hypocrisy of U.S. energy policy—demanding that OPEC members expand their oil drilling efforts while restricting offshore drilling here at home—was a prominent topic of discussion. Indeed, the U.S. ban on drilling in the Outer Continental Shelf was mentioned by three of the most powerful people in the global energy business: the head of OPEC; the chief executive of Brazil’s national oil company, Petrobras; and the Saudi oil minister. All of them said the United States should start drilling in its offshore areas. During a press conference in Madrid, Chakib Khelil, the Algerian oil minister and president of OPEC, was asked what the United States could do to lower oil prices.

Economy is growing - bad news for the bears

The US economy is not in a recession. It grew in both the first and second quarters of 2008. The perma-bears can't accept this good news, so they color it to make it bad news. "The 1.9 per cent growth was smaller than expected." Financial News - Yahoo! Finance:

But the gross domestic product still increased at a 1.9 percent annual rate, up from 0.9 percent in the first quarter but less than the 2.4 percent economists were looking for.