I read books you don't, then I blog all political

Greg Palast has a new book out. It's called Armed Madhouse. Greg Palast is a bald headed Ex-Pat reporter who now resides in Britain. Palast broke the story about Jeb Bush scrubbing the names of 40,000 black voters in Florida in the 2000 election. The fix was in then and in 2004 and Palast claims the fix is in yet again for 2008.

I can tell you a few things about this book because I've read it. For one, Greg hates Tom Friedman. I can see why. It's not a hard thing to do. I think everybody should hate Tom. Greg also hates thick armed women like Mindy Tucker Fletcher.

Palast describes Tucker as "thick-armed blonde woman sucking on a super sized slurpee." (p. 202) In the accompanying photo of her on the next page I can see that his description of Mindy is dead on. She is thick armed. You could say that Ms. Tuckers most salient characteristic is her thick arms.

Mindy's thick arms could not fit in the picture.

Now this may comes as a surprise to you. But I think Palast is plain wrong and stupid for saying mean things about the "condescendingly faux friendly public relations gal." You see when he isn't using such outrageous language Palast tells us a story about how Republicans use "caging lists" to challenge Democratic voters.


It's an important story. A story that could even piss off Republicans. When Palast tells the story he dresses like he just stepped out of an audition for Dragnet. All "Film Noir" in a suit and tie and hat. His "just the facts" look contrasts with his red meat delivery for added comedic effect. Only the effect is all wrong. He is a serious investigative reporter, but he comes of looking goofier than Jon Stewart.

His manner does a disservice to his message. He often gets blown off by major TV and newspapers in the U.S. And his outrage will never allow any self respecting independent or Republican to listen to him long enough to discover the truth.

And Palast has a lot of truth to share with you. He has a theory that "Oil" is what killed the Soviet Union not Reagan. His theory is backed up by "Yegor Gaidar is director of the Institute for Economies in Transition in Moscow. Between 1991 and 1994, he was acting prime minister of Russia, minister of economy, and first deputy prime minister." And By Thomas Friedman.

His final theory I'd like to tell you about may comes as a shock to my liberal friends... WE HAVE PLENTY OF OIL! In fact we have too much oil. So much oil that Exxon and OPEC conspire to "rev" up the price by sitting on the oil fields in Iraq. Which he claims is the "real" reason for the war. Not to secure more oil. But to manage oil production and price.

Saddam Hussein got invaded because he would mess with the oil market. One day Saddam would pump full out. The next day he would stop production. It was an instability in the price of oil. An instability not controlled by the Big Oil companies and OPEC that got Hussein in trouble. Not Weapons of Mass Destruction.