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Archive for August 7th, 2007

Unconfirmed and may not be true, but the New York Post is reporting the New York Times is going to do away with its Times Select subscription service.

Oh, goody, now I can read Maureen Dowd again.

August 7, 2007 — The New York Times is poised to stop charging readers for online access to its Op-Ed columnists and other content, The Post has learned.

After much internal debate, Times executives – including publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. – made the decision to end the subscription-only TimesSelect service but have yet to make an official announcement, according to a source briefed on the matter.

The timing of when TimesSelect will shut down hinges on resolving software issues associated with making the switch to a free service, the source said.

Times spokeswoman Catherine Mathis would only say in an e-mailed statement, “We continue to evaluate the best approach for NYTimes.com.”

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Michael Yon has his second of two dispatches up, telling of the difficulty of getting food to the people in Baqubah.

Breaking that wedge. LTC Johnson—who is hardly in these photos—finally makes an overt threat with the weapon he was going to open those doors with. His threat was shameless. Johnson pointed to me saying that he brought the press along so that the world would either see them for what they were: heroes or villains. Perhaps other writers might be offended, or felt used, but Johnson was simply telling the truth, and nothing disarms basically honest people more than shameless truthtelling. In any case, the camera was working. The bureaucrats were not simpletons. They never told me to turn off the camera. To their credit, they were duking it out in front of God and everyone.

Finally they agreed. They had stated their arguments, and not just rolled over, but they agreed to release the food shipments.

There were still hours of paperwork to do. They asked LTC Johnson if he wanted to come back, but we all sensed that maybe they really had not agreed, and doubted whether they were every bit as wiley as they at first seemed.

Hours passed by. We were on the edge of Sadr City where we could get flattened. As the paperwork oozed forward, we ended up sitting with the bureaucrats, listening to war stories from when they had been in the Iraqi Army. One showed us scars from a mortar, the other said he spent years as an Iranian prisoner. The topic of al Qaeda came up and sparked a discussion that I captured on videotape.

While we talked, one of our Strykers outside was attacked with a grenade. Apparently someone tried to throw it in the hatch (sometimes they get lucky), but missed. It was loud, but everyone was okay. The paperwork had just been completed, so this signaled a good time to leave, but LTC Johnson insisted on having his group of Baqubah officials and soldiers leave under the protection of the Iraqi Army.

We waited inside at the COP for several hours, and there I talked with LTC Fred Johnson about the war, and he asked how I thought it was going, and I said that some parts obviously were improving. The new plan actually seems to be working despite the hysterical reporting back home. We need more Tontos in Hollywood, in the media and in the Congress. We’ve got plenty in the military.

LTC Johnson asked what I thought about Petraeus, and when I said “He’s tops,” that’s when LTC Johnson told me about the shooting incident described in detail in the dispatch “Second Chances.”

The loading process was actually faster and smoother than expected, and we returned with dozens of trucks to Baqubah. The bureaucrats had even given extra truck loads as a “gift.” Beware of the creditor. Of course they had launched some plan. I have no idea what it was, but clearly they were up to something. I got word later that even some weapons might have been smuggled into Baqubah in one or more trucks.

When the convoy finally arrived in Baqubah, the local media was there, along with Provincial leadership, and LTC Johnson gave full credit to the Mayor and other leaders right there in front of the Iraqi media. It was straight out of a Bruce Willis movie where Johnson saves the day, then watches from out of the spotlight as the Mayor and Governor get all the credit. Nobody mentioned Tonto.

Go read the whole thing and see what life is like in Iraq for our troops and the Iraqis.

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I knew this guy couldn’t tell the truth from the minute I heard him speak.

Romney has been rewriting the past. He has repeatedly given a bogus description of recent history by accusing former President Clinton of initiating a decline in military spending.

Romney: After President George H.W. Bush left office, in 1993, the Clinton administration began to dismantle the military, taking advantage of what has been called a “peace dividend” from the end of the Cold War (July/August issue of Foreign Affairs).

Romney: Following the end of the Cold War, President Clinton began to dismantle our military. He reduced our forces by 500,000. He retired almost 80 ships. Our spending on national defense dropped from over 6 percent of GDP to 3.8 percent today. He called it a “peace dividend” (Frontiers of Freedom, April 18, 2007).

This is untrue. The peak in defense spending that Romney speaks of was in the Reagan administration. It is not correct to say that the Clinton administration began to cut U.S. military forces. No matter how you measure defense spending, President George H.W. Bush had significantly trimmed it by the time Clinton was sworn in. And it was Bush’s administration, not Clinton’s, that first boasted of a “peace dividend.”

Measured in what economists call “constant dollars,” adjusted for inflation, defense spending declined by nearly 15 percent between Reagan’s last budget (for fiscal year 1989) and the elder Bush’s last budget four years later. The decline was just under 13 percent between Bush’s last budget and Clinton’s final fiscal year (2001). In other words, the buying power of the dollars spent for defense declined more during Bush’s four years than during Clinton’s eight.

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Tell the truth Rudy.

A new radio ad boasts that Rudy Giuliani “cut or eliminated 23 taxes” while mayor of New York City, a boast he and his supporters have repeated many times on the campaign trail. We find that to be an overstatement. Giuliani can properly claim credit for initiating only 15 of those cuts.

In fact, he strongly opposed one of the largest cuts for which he claims credit, reversing himself only after a five-month standoff with the city council. In addition, the ad’s claim that Giuliani turned the budget deficit he inherited into a surplus, while true enough, ignores the fact that he also left a multibillion-dollar deficit for his successor, not including costs associated with 9/11.

Update, July 31: After our article appeared, the New York Daily News ran a similar article stating that the former mayor “is seizing credit for cuts initiated by others.” In an interview posted on YouTube, the mayor said he deserves credit for tax cuts he supported, whether he initiated them or not.

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A very sad story that speaks for itself.

Just outside the main gate to Bagram airfield, a U.S. military installation in Afghanistan, sits a series of small makeshift shops known by locals as the Bagram Bazaar. For Afghans, it is the place to buy American goods, but the stalls that make up the heart of the bazaar are also well known for what they provide American soldiers stationed at Bagram. Walking through the bazaar it takes less than 10 minutes for a vendor in his early 20s to step out and ask, “You want whiskey?” “No, heroin,” I tell him. He ushers me into his store with a smile.

The shop is small, 9 feet wide by 14 feet deep, and dark. The walls at the front are lined with dusty cans of soda, padlocks and miscellaneous beauty supplies. As we enter, a teenager is visible at the back, seated in a chair next to a collection of American military knives and flashlights. The shopkeeper speaks to him in Dari. The teen stands and heads for the door, where he stops and asks my Afghan driver a question. My driver translates, “He wants to know how much you want? Twenty, 30, 50 dollars’ worth?” From past experience, for I have arranged this same transaction a dozen times in a dozen different Bagram Bazaar shops, I know that the $30 bag will contain enough pure to bring hundreds of dollars on the streets of any American city. Afghanistan, after all, is the source of 90 percent of the world’s heroin. I say 30 and the teen jogs off.

The true extent of the heroin problem among American soldiers now serving in Iraq and Afghanistan is unknown. At Bagram, according to a written statement provided by a spokesperson for the base, Army Maj. Chris Belcher, the “Military Police receive few reports of alcohol or drug issues.” The military has statistics on how many troops failed drug tests, but the best information on long-term addiction comes from the U.S. Veterans Administration. The VA is the world’s largest provider of substance abuse services, caring for more than 350,000 veterans per year, of whom about 30,000 are being treated for opiate addiction. Only preliminary information for Iraq and Afghanistan is available, however, and veterans of those conflicts are not yet showing up in the stats. According to the VA’s annual “Yellowbook” report on substance abuse, during Fiscal Year 2006, fewer than 9,000 veterans of Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom (Afghanistan) sought treatment for substance abuse of all kinds at the VA; the report did not specify how many were treated for opiate abuse.

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I don’t know how many different ways I can give it to you. She didn’t say what you said she did. You’ve got to read the whole paragraph and not pick out what displeases you. It’s called taking things in context. Democrats and Republicans have a different way of looking at things. Get over it.

On the July 1 edition of Fox News’ Hannity’s America, host Sean Hannity played a clip from a May 29 speech by Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) — in which Clinton said it is time for America “to reject the idea of an on-your-own society and to replace it with shared responsibility for shared prosperity” — and added, “This isn’t the first time Hillary has made her socialist views and intentions so apparent.” Hannity also characterized the speech as Clinton “blast[ing] the free market.” In fact, Clinton said in the same speech that “there is no greater force for economic growth than free markets.” As Media Matters for America has documented, other conservative commentators have similarly selectively quoted from Clinton’s speech in order to paint her as a “socialist.”

Hannity began the segment with a discussion of Clinton’s senior thesis at Wellesley College on community activist Saul Alinsky, and then went on to discuss Clinton’s May 29 speech outlining her economic vision for America, which he erroneously described as occurring on June 4. Hannity said that Clinton “blasted the free market, campaigned for redistribution of wealth for the common good, and compared the last six years in America to the era of the robber barons.” Hannity played a series of clips from the speech Clinton gave May 29 at a high school in Manchester, New Hampshire, which the Associated Press described as “outlin[ing] a broad economic vision” in its May 29 report. From Hannity’s America:

CLINTON: It’s time for a new beginning … time to reject the idea of an on-your-own society and to replace it with shared responsibility for shared prosperity. … The genius of the American economy in the 20th century was that it helped to counter that tendency for people to push as far as their own interests would take them.

But in accusing Clinton of embracing socialism, Hannity ignored that immediately after Clinton stated that it was “time to reject the idea of an on-your-own society and to replace it with shared responsibility for shared prosperity,” Clinton praised the free market system when it includes “rules that promote our values, protect our workers and give all people a chance to succeed.” Clinton asserted:

CLINTON: It’s time for a new beginning, for an end to government of the few, by the few and for the few, time to reject the idea of an on-you-own society and to replace it with shared responsibility for shared prosperity. I prefer a “we’re all in it together” society.

Now, there is no greater force for economic growth than free markets, but markets work best with rules that promote our values, protect our workers and give all people a chance to succeed. When we get our priorities in order and make the smart investments we need, the markets work well.

Instead of airing that statement, Hannity followed it with a statement from 17 paragraphs earlier in the speech:

CLINTON: The genius of the American economy in the 20th century was that it helped to counter that tendency for people to push as far as their own interests would take them so that we created a leveler playing field that benefited everyone.

In addition, Hannity truncated remarks Clinton made in San Francisco at a June 28, 2004, fundraiser for Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) as further evidence of Clinton’s “socialist views and intentions.” According to Hannity, at that fundraiser Clinton told the audience of wealthy donors:

CLINTON: We’re not coming to you, many of whom are well enough off that actually the tax cuts may have helped you … we’re probably going to cut that short and not give it to you. We are going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good.

In fact, according to a July 2, 2004, correction to a June 29, 2004, AP report, Clinton said that “cut[ting] short” the tax cuts was probably necessary “for America to get back on track and be fiscally responsible,” implying that the tax cut reductions would be necessary to reduce the federal deficit. According to the AP, Clinton said:

CLINTON: We’re not coming to you, many of whom are well enough off that actually the tax cuts may have helped you, and say “we’re going to give you more.” We’re saying, “You know what, for America to get back on track and be fiscally responsible, we’re probably going to cut that short and not give it to you. We’re going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good.“

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Scott Thomas Beauchamp who went by the pseudonym of Scott Thomas, has recanted his stories he wrote for the New Republic, telling made-up things he and his unit did while in combat in Iraq, except he was in Kuwait.

THE WEEKLY STANDARD has learned from a military source close to the investigation that Pvt. Scott Thomas Beauchamp–author of the much-disputed “Shock Troops” article in the New Republic’s July 23 issue as well as two previous “Baghdad Diarist” columns–signed a sworn statement admitting that all three articles he published in the New Republic were exaggerations and falsehoods–fabrications containing only “a smidgen of truth,” in the words of our source.

Separately, we received this statement from Major Steven F. Lamb, the deputy Public Affairs Officer for Multi National Division-Baghdad:

An investigation has been completed and the allegations made by PVT Beauchamp were found to be false. His platoon and company were interviewed and no one could substantiate the claims.

According to the military source, Beauchamp’s recantation was volunteered on the first day of the military’s investigation. So as Beauchamp was in Iraq signing an affidavit denying the truth of his stories, the New Republic was publishing a statement from him on its website on July 26, in which Beauchamp said, “I’m willing to stand by the entirety of my articles for the New Republic using my real name.”

The magazine’s editors admitted on August 2 that one of the anecdotes Beauchamp stood by in its entirety–meant to illustrate the “morally and emotionally distorting effects of war”–took place (if at all) in Kuwait, before his tour of duty in Iraq began, and not, as he had claimed, in his mess hall in Iraq. That event was the public humiliation by by Beauchamp and a comrade of a woman whose face had been “melted” by an IED.

Nothing public has been heard from Beauchamp since his statement standing by his stories, which was posted on the New Republic website at 6:30 a.m. on July 26. In their August 2 statement, the New Republic’s editors complained that the military investigation was “short-circuiting” TNR’s own fact-checking efforts. “Beauchamp,” they said, “had his cell-phone and computer taken away and is currently unable to speak to even his family. His fellow soldiers no longer feel comfortable communicating with reporters. If further substantive information comes to light, TNR will, of course, share it with you.”

No more can be said except the people who checked into this and found it to be an exaggeration were right.

Why would someone do something like this?

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From everything I’ve read, it seems that Hanity was the first to misrepresent Hillary Clinton’s speech Here. Here is the original. Personally I see nothing wrong with it. You decide.

Well, Colleen, I can assure you that as President, I will strongly support schools like the Manchester School for Technology. I have for many years because I know how important schools like this are. At this very moment, students in this school may be learning how to wire an office building, or work the machinery that runs our automobiles, or fix the bugs that crash our computers. Every day, students at this school are discovering talents and strengths they never knew they had.

And that is because this school has great leadership. I want to especially thank the Principal. Karen White has led this school in an exemplary fashion, and I know she’s worked closely with Governor Lynch to design the plans that will enable the school to be renovated and grow even stronger in the future. I really applaud your leadership, Karen. Because you can’t look at the Manchester School of Technology without realizing that it didn’t happen by accident. It was built by the people of this state who, even 25 years ago, understood that to compete in today’s economy, young people need the skills for today’s jobs. That’s what we’ve always done here in America: When our economy changes, we don’t panic or give up or wring our hands — we simply change with it. That’s what has happened here at MST. I really applaud you for doing that, because we have to look for examples like this to figure out what we need to do more broadly across our nation.

Now we’ve done this before. We did the same thing back at the turn of the 20th century. Back then, the American economy was dominated by large corporate monopolies. Corruption was far too common and good government far too rare. Women couldn’t vote, and the minimum wage, well, that wasn’t heard of and worker rights were completely unimagined. Back then, America was a country filled with haves and have nots — and not enough people in between.

In response to these excesses, the progressive movement was born. Throughout the late 1800s and early 1900s, the progressives busted trusts and fought for safe working conditions and fair wages. They created the national park system, and replaced a government rife with cronyism with a merit-based civil service. They understood, as the great progressive President Teddy Roosevelt once said, that “The welfare of each of us is dependent fundamentally upon the welfare of all of us.”

Well, today, at the beginning of the 21st century, I think it’s time we remembered those lessons. For the first time in history, we have a truly global economy. Workers today think nothing of holding teleconferences with colleagues on three continents at once or e-mailing business partners across the globe. Companies also think nothing of shipping our jobs — even entire factories — overseas. Today, competition no longer stops at the water’s edge. In fact, for many of our companies, that’s where it starts. For example, New Hampshire provides $2 billion worth of exports to 140 countries a year.

At the same time, technology is playing an increasingly important role. It’s really revolutionizing how we live and work. We’re seeing U.S. telemarketing jobs done in remote locations far, far from our shores. Manufacturing requires fewer jobs as machines replace people both here in America and around the world. In part because India and China have begun to harness the power of technology, they are on their way to becoming economic super powers.

Like it or not, that is the reality of globalization. And it isn’t going away. However, if managed properly, globalization may offer the promise of new markets, new growth, and new opportunities for broadly shared prosperity to young people like Colleen.

Unfortunately, we’re not managing globalization properly. Instead of working for all of us, globalization is working only for a few of us.

Read the rest of this entry »

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It sad but it goes on in every debate. It makes them all look phony.

Even though presidential primary debates draw a lot of attention, can be informative and sometimes even are fun, they are a poor way to measure what kind of president a candidate will make.

Debates tell us how well a candidate can deliver an instant response, without notes, without staff and sometimes without thinking.

Presidents, we hope, don’t behave like that. We don’t want them to make big decisions in an instant and in isolation.

We would rather they take their time, gather their staff and consider all the pros and cons before they screw up.

But debates are like a game show: Hit the buzzer and answer fast.

You will never hear a candidate say, “That’s such an important question, George, that I would like to think about it and get back to you.”

The moderator would be shocked, the audience would laugh and the media would tear the candidate apart.

But this year, we are beginning to see a new problem emerge: Candidates are being forced to take positions just to please the crowd.

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Speaks for itself.

A majority of the American public has turned sour on President Bush’s policy in Iraq — but you wouldn’t know it from listening to top Republican recruits for congressional races next year.

Virtually all of the party’s blue-chip challengers continue to back Bush’s surge policy and oppose any timetable for withdrawing U.S. troops.

Their dogged support, even as a number of prominent GOP incumbents in Congress have distanced themselves from the president, could offer political peril for Republican candidates if conditions in Iraq do not dramatically improve.

Republican recruits sense the potential danger; few are eager to talk about Iraq. But most of these challengers seem to feel they have little choice but to back Bush, who remains popular with the most stalwart factions of the GOP base — the party faithful who vote in primaries and give money to congressional candidates.

“Very rarely do GOP recruits cite Iraq as a motivating issue behind their candidacies, and most Republican nominees would prefer to be talking about taxes next October,” said Cook Report House analyst David Wasserman. “It’s difficult to see how a continued presence in Iraq next fall would be anything other than a liability to GOP efforts to gain back ground.”

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He is one for you.

The House ethics committee has suspended its investigation into Rep. William J. Jefferson, acceding to requests from federal prosecutors who believe the congressional inquiry could interfere with the criminal case against the Louisiana Democrat, who was indicted this summer on 16 corruption charges.

The six-member subcommittee handling the inquiry decided to hold off because of concerns from the Justice Department that it “might create legal or factual issues that would complicate or impede the criminal prosecution and related law enforcement efforts in this matter,” the panel’s top lawmakers, Reps. Stephanie Tubbs Jones (D-Ohio) and Doc Hastings (R-Wash.), said in a statement.

Jefferson, who relinquished all committee posts after his indictment, has denied wrongdoing, and he has vowed to fight all criminal charges and to continue to serve in the House. His attorney, Robert P. Trout, declined to comment yesterday.

On June 4 a federal grand jury charged Jefferson with taking about $400,000 in bribes for himself and his family in exchange for his official work in promoting business and trade deals in seven West African nations. He is the first member of Congress to be charged with violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which bars bribery of foreign officials. Jefferson was caught on tape accepting $100,000 from a cooperating witness who, according to the FBI, gave the lawmaker the money with the expectation that it would go to a Nigerian official

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This is an editorial By Martin O’Malley and Harold Ford Jr.
makes sense to me.

With President Bush and the Republican Party on the rocks, many Democrats think the 2008 election will be, to borrow a favorite GOP phrase, a cakewalk. Some liberals are so confident about Democratic prospects that they contend the centrism that vaulted Democrats to victory in the 1990s no longer matters.

The temptation to ignore the vital center is nothing new. Every four years, in the heat of the nominating process, liberals and conservatives alike dream of a world in which swing voters don’t exist. Some on the left would love to pretend that groups such as the Democratic Leadership Council, the party’s leading centrist voice, aren’t needed anymore.

But for Democrats, taking the center for granted next year would be a greater mistake than ever before. George W. Bush is handing us Democrats our Hoover moment. Independents, swing voters and even some Republicans who haven’t voted our way in more than a decade are willing to hear us out. With an ambitious common-sense agenda, the progressive center has a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to win back the White House, expand its margins in Congress and build a political and governing majority that could last a generation.

A majority comes hard for Democrats. In the past 150 years, only three Democrats, one of whom was Franklin Roosevelt, have won the White House with a majority of the popular vote.

What’s more, political success built on the other party’s failure is fleeting. Jimmy Carter won a majority in the wake of Watergate, but his own shortcomings on national security and the economy took him from majority victor to landslide loser in four years. Repudiating the other side’s approach is only half the battle. Since neither side has a monopoly on truth, the hard part is knowing when to look beyond traditional orthodoxies to do what works.

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My opinion on this is that if they want to kill each other let them.

As British forces pull back from Basra in southern Iraq, Shiite militias there have escalated a violent battle against each other for political supremacy and control over oil resources, deepening concerns among some U.S. officials in Baghdad that elements of Iraq’s Shiite-dominated national government will turn on one another once U.S. troops begin to draw down.

Three major Shiite political groups are locked in a bloody conflict that has left the city in the hands of militias and criminal gangs, whose control extends to municipal offices and neighborhood streets. The city is plagued by “the systematic misuse of official institutions, political assassinations, tribal vendettas, neighborhood vigilantism and enforcement of social mores, together with the rise of criminal mafias that increasingly intermingle with political actors,” a recent report by the International Crisis Group said.

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You talk about saying and doing anything to get elected. This is a typical politician who doesn’t care who he hurts as long as he can save his own nasty butt.

An audiotape reveals new details about the arrest of a state lawmaker in the men’s room of a public park. Investigators say State Representative Bob Allen offered an undercover officer 20 dollars, if he could perform oral sex on him. The Merritt Island Republican says its all a big misunderstanding.

In an audiotaped interview with Titusville Police, Allen says he was intimidated after a man offered a sex act for money. He says he went along with the conversation, because he was afraid of becoming another crime statistic.

On the audiotape, Allen said, “Listen. A public park. I got my name on the damn building. I’m not gonna do that. You know, maybe I said it in the wrong order, but this was a pretty stocky black guy, and there were a lot of other black guys around in the park, and, you know…”

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Speaks for itself.

Iraq’s political crisis worsened Monday as five more ministers announced a boycott of Cabinet meetings _ leaving the embattled prime minister’s unity government with no members affiliated with Sunni political factions.

Meanwhile, a suicide bomber killed at least 28 people in a northern city, including 19 children, some playing hopscotch and marbles in front of their homes. And the American military reported five new U.S. deaths: Four soldiers were killed in a combat explosion in restive Diyala province north of the capital Monday, and a soldier was killed and two were wounded during fighting in eastern Baghdad on Sunday.

The new cracks in Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s government appeared even as U.S. military officials sounded cautious notes of progress on security, citing strides against insurgents linked to al-Qaida in Iraq but also new threats from Iranian-backed Shiite militias.

Despite the new U.S. accusations of Iranian meddling, the U.S. and Iranian ambassadors met Monday for their third round of talks in just over two months. A U.S. embassy spokesman called the talks between U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker and his counterpart, Hassan Kazemi Qomi, “frank and serious.”

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Should have done it along time ago.

In a radio interview with Diane Rehm this morning, right-wing columnist Robert Novak tried to assert his conservative credentials by distancing himself from the Bush White House. “I don’t support this administration,” he said.

“The president’s cut me off the list of conservative columnists that are invited there.” He added, “They consider me a lot of trouble
It would be unsurprising if the White House considered Novak “trouble,” given his unscrupulous journalistic ethics. But nothing in Novak’s previous comments has suggested anything but a close relationship with the White House. Just recently, he said he “never enjoyed such a good source inside the White House” as Karl Rove.

It appears Novak is simply sour over the fact he wasn’t given a 110-minute sit-down interview with President Bush like his counterpart at the New York Times, David Brooks.

Novak explained that his relationships with White Houses are like bad marriages. “It starts nice after the honeymoon and it just gets worse.”

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The way it stands now.

New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton has significantly widened her lead over Illinois Sen. Barack Obama for the Democratic presidential nomination,” USA TODAY Washington bureau chief Susan Page writes.

She tells us that according to the latest USA TODAY/Gallup Poll, Clinton’s support among Democrats and independent voters who “lean” Democratic stands at 48%. — up eight percentage points from three weeks ago.

Obama’s support: 26%, down two points. In third: Former North Carolina senator John Edwards, at 12%.

It’s probably not surprising that strategists for the two top Democrats have sharply different takes on the news.

“People are seeing her as the one ready to be president,” Mark Penn, Clinton’s chief strategist, told Susan. Bill Burton, Obama’s spokesman, dismissed the findings. “National polls may go up and down before people actually start voting, but their irrelevance will not,” he said.

Susan, in a story that will be posted later this evening at USATODAY.com, will also report that on the Republican side, “the race was stable: Former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani at 33%, former Tennessee senator Fred Thompson at 21%, Arizona Sen. John McCain at 16% and former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney at 8%.

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The House passed a bill that will tax the oil industry by $16 billion.

They want to put some of that money into renewable energy sources such as windmills.

What about those of us who don’t live where there’s a lot of wind to power those windmills?

Taxes are the big reason for your gas and oil prices being so high, and when they go higher you can thank your Congress for it if the Senate goes along with it.

WASHINGTON (AP) – Declaring a new direction in energy policy, the House on Saturday approved $16 billion in taxes on oil companies, while providing billions of dollars in tax breaks and incentives for renewable energy and conservation efforts.
Republican opponents said the legislation ignored the need to produce more domestic oil, natural gas and coal. One GOP lawmaker bemoaned “the pure venom … against the oil and gas industry.”

The House passed the tax provisions by a vote of 221-189. Earlier it had approved, 241-172, a companion energy package aimed at boosting energy efficiency and expanding use of biofuels, wind power and other renewable energy sources.

“We are turning to the future,” said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

The two bills, passed at an unusual Saturday session as lawmakers prepared to leave town for their monthlong summer recess, will be merged with legislation passed by the Senate in June.

On one of the most contentious and heavily lobbied issues, the House voted to require investor-owned electric utilities nationwide to generate at least 15 percent of their electricity from renewable energy sources such as wind or biofuels.

The utilities and business interests had argued aggressively against the federal renewables mandate, saying it would raise electricity prices in regions of the country that do not have abundant wind energy. But environmentalists said the requirement will spur investments in renewable fuels and help address global warming as utilities use less coal.

“This will save consumers money,” said Rep. Tom Udall, D-N.M., the provision’s co-sponsor, maintaining utilities will have to use less high-priced natural gas. He noted that nearly half the states already have a renewable energy mandate for utilities, and if utilities can’t find enough renewable they can meet part of the requirement through power conservation measures.

Speaking strictly as a partisan Republican and only for myself I have never seen a tax on anything lowering the price of what has been taxed.

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Is this child-like or what?

They work in the same building. They slog through the same rigorous travel schedule. Along the way, they often cross paths several times a day.

But Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama have barely spoken to one another – at least in any meaningful way – for months.

The tension between the two Democratic presidential hopefuls, which spilled over into public view during the past two weeks, has been intensifying since January. It is clear, as the candidates approach a mid-point in their fight for the nomination, that the genteel decorum of the Senate has given way to the go-for-the-jugular instinct of the campaign trail.

As the Senate held an unusually late session of back-to-back votes on Thursday evening, the two rivals kept a careful eye on one another as they moved across the Senate floor.

For more than two hours, often while standing only a few feet apart, Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama never approached one another or exchanged so much as a pleasantry. In the clubby confines of the Senate, even the fiercest adversaries are apt to engage in the legislative equivalent of cocktail party chit-chat.

The relationship began to change, according to several Democrats who are friendly to both senators, when Mr. Obama began musing aloud about a presidential bid. The day he opened his exploratory committee, several Senate observers said, he extended his hand and said hello on the Senate floor. She breezed by him, offering a cool stare.

One week later, following the State of the Union address, the two senators found themselves doing a back-to-back interview on CNN. Mr. Obama went first, with Mrs. Clinton pacing a few feet away. Finally, an aide escorted her completely around the rotunda of the Russell Senate Office Building, avoiding walking directly by Mr. Obama.

The Senate is known for its clubby atmosphere. Even senators from opposing parties banter and have fun while votes are being counted. I’ve seen it hundreds of times on TV.

So what’s with these two? This is an example of why our nation is being torn asunder. Grow up, Senators, the world is watching you both.

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