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Tuesday, May 13 2008 @ 12:58 EDT
Oil could hit $200 in 'super-spike' Oil prices threaten to hit $200 a barrel in a final "super-spike" over coming months as 'producers fail to keep pace with blistering demand from China and the Middle East,' according to a controversial report by Goldman Sachs.Buck Fush
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Here's one for you by The Intruders. Happy Mom's Day, Mom.
I think I'm very late to the party on this one, but Pandora.com is simply fabulous. Forgive my tardiness.
Of course he "hadn't heard that," he's a fucking moron.Feb 28, 2008:
Q What's your advice to the average American who is hurting now, facing the prospect of $4 a gallon gasoline, a lot of people facing --THE PRESIDENT: Wait, what did you just say? You're predicting $4 a gallon gasoline?
Q A number of analysts are predicting --
THE PRESIDENT: Oh, yeah?
Q -- $4 a gallon gasoline this spring when they reformulate.
THE PRESIDENT: That's interesting. I hadn't heard that.
Q Yes, sir.
White House: Time not right for three-way Mideast meeting WASHINGTON - President Bush's second trip to the Mideast this year, designed in part to make progress toward a peace deal before the end of his presidency, will not see him hosting a joint session with the leaders of Israel and the Palestinian Authority, the White House said Wednesday.Project for the Old American CenturyOf course we’re not ready to talk. Bush only talks AFTER he’s blown a country to smithereens.—Caro
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Bolton on whether Bush might bomb Iran before he leaves office: ‘I think so, definitely.’ (Think Progress) In a Fox News interview this afternoon, former UN Ambassador John Bolton discussed his desire to bomb camps inside Iran that are reportedly training and arming Shiite insurgents who fight in Iraq. Fox host Martha McCallum asked, “Can you imagine a scenario where President Bush would do that before the end of his term?” Bolton responded, “I think so, definitely.” He added later, “This is entirely responsible on our part.”The Radical FringeWe can’t believe anything you say, Mr. Bolton. We know you're just pimping for George Bush, trying to get him another war.—Caro
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Still picking my jaw up off the floor after reading this:
"I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on," she said in an interview with USA TODAY. As evidence, Clinton cited an Associated Press article "that found how Sen. Obama's support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me."
"There's a pattern emerging here," she said.
Clinton to Fight On Despite Split Result With her hopes for a shift in campaign momentum deflated by Senator Barack Obama’s commanding victory in North Carolina on Tuesday, his strong showing in Indiana and signs of mounting financial problems, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton nonetheless vowed to fight on, heading early Wednesday for a new round of speeches, rallies and town meetings in West Virginia, which holds its primary on May 13.All Hat No CattleAnd more power to her.—Caro
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Pentagon Backs Plan To Build U.S. ‘Zone Of Influence’ Of Hotels And Resorts In Baghdad (Think Progress)For more headlines, visit MakeThemAccountable.com.The White House has repeatedly insisted that the United States has “no desire for permanent bases” in Iraq. Nevertheless, the Bush administration is seeking to leave its footprint on Iraq through other means. The AP reports that the Pentagon is backing a $5 billion dollar plan to “transform the U.S.-protected Green Zone” into a “centerpiece for Baghdad’s future,” resulting in “big paydays for early investors.”A fairyland for investors. In a war zone. And you thought “Apocalypse Now” was fiction.—Caro
United States is drawing up plans to strike Iranian insurgency camp The US military is drawing up plans for a "surgical strike" against an insurgent training camp inside Iran if Republican Guards continue with attempts to destabilise Iraq, western intelligence sources said last week. One source said the Americans were growing increasingly angry at the involvement of the Guards’ special-operations Quds force inside Iraq, training Shi’ite militias and smuggling weapons into the country. "If the situation in Basra goes back to what it was like before, America is likely to blame Iran and carry out a surgical strike on a militant training camp across the border in Khuzestan," said one source, referring to a frontier province.Freeway BloggerGotta have another war, eh George?—Caro
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Seems like in the past months we've heard pretty quickly from the campaigns about how they did in fundraising for the previous month. Heck, Hillary's folks were able to say how much came in after the PA primary almost immediately, so I doubt some obscure accounting problem is behind this. Maybe no one wants to announce until just before next Tues. primaries? Both sides seem to have gone all in and are getting a little dramatic before throwing down their cards. Or maybe I'm just antsy because I once again tossed some coin Obama's way (4th time, a record for anyone for me) in hopes that indeed, the media will take some note about how well his support has or has not held up over the latest rough patch.
Or maybe these numbers are out there and I'm too dumb to find them? If so, let me know and as for the rest...never mind.
Josh Marshall is having a little fun with the McCain campaign's whining over a DNC ad mocking his '100 years in Iraq' quote (posts here and here), and in the second post he points to a quote by Hendrik Herzberg which so perfectly captures the shithouse-rat aspect of McCain's quote, I had to post it here.
McCain wants to stay in Iraq until no more Americans are getting killed, no matter how long it takes and how many Americans get killed achieving that goal--that is, the goal of not getting any more Americans killed. And once that goal is achieved, we'll stay.
Poll: Bush most unpopular in modern history A new poll suggests that George W. Bush is the most unpopular president in modern American history. A CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey released Thursday indicates that 71 percent of the American public disapprove of how Bush his handling his job as president. "No president has ever had a higher disapproval rating in any CNN or Gallup poll; in fact, this is the first time that any president's disapproval rating has cracked the 70 percent mark," said CNN Polling Director Keating Holland.BartcopThe Methodist Church doesn’t want his library to be at SMU, either.--Caro
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Right Wing politics - it isn't just for Democrats any more.
Former journalist Sidney Blumenthal has been widely credited with coining the term "vast right-wing conspiracy" used by Hillary Clinton in 1998 to describe the alliance of conservative media, think tanks, and political operatives that sought to destroy the Clinton White House where he worked as a high-level aide. A decade later, and now acting as a senior campaign advisor to Senator Clinton, Blumenthal is exploiting that same right-wing network to attack and discredit Barack Obama. And he's not hesitating to use the same sort of guilt-by-association tactics that have been the hallmark of the political right dating back to the McCarthy era.
Almost every day over the past six months, I have been the recipient of an email that attacks Obama's character, political views, electability, and real or manufactured associations. The original source of many of these hit pieces are virulent and sometimes extreme right-wing websites, bloggers, and publications. But they aren't being emailed out from some fringe right-wing group that somehow managed to get my email address. Instead, it is Sidney Blumenthal who, on a regular basis, methodically dispatches these email mudballs to an influential list of opinion shapers -- including journalists, former Clinton administration officials, academics, policy entrepreneurs, and think tankers -- in what is an obvious attempt to create an echo chamber that reverberates among talk shows, columnists, and Democratic Party funders and activists. One of the recipients of the Blumenthal email blast, himself a Clinton supporter, forwards the material to me and perhaps to others.
These attacks sent out by Blumenthal, long known for his fierce and combative loyalty to the Clintons, draw on a wide variety of sources to spread his Obama-bashing. Some of the pieces are culled from the mainstream media and include some reasoned swipes at Obama's policy and political positions.
But, rather remarkably for such a self-professed liberal operative like Blumenthal, a staggering number of the anti-Obama attacks he circulates derive from highly-ideological and militant right-wing sources such as the misnamed Accuracy in Media (AIM), The Weekly Standard, City Journal, The American Conservative, and The National Review.
To cite just one recent example, Blumenthal circulated an article taken from the fervently hard-right AIM website on February 18 entitled, "Obama's Communist Mentor" by Cliff Kincaid. Kincaid is a right-wing writer and activist, a longtime critic of the United Nations, whose group, America's Survival, has been funded by foundations controlled by conservative financier Richard Mellon Scaife, the same millionaire who helped fund attacks on the Clintons during their White House years. Scaife also funds AIM, the right-wing media "watchdog" group.
The Kincaid article that Blumenthal circulated sought to discredit Obama by linking him to an African-American poet and writer whom Obama knew while he was in high school in Hawaii. That writer, Frank Marshall Davis, was, Kincaid wrote, a member of the Communist Party. Supported by no tangible evidence, Kincaid claimed that Obama considered his relationship to Davis to be "almost like a son." In his memoir, Dreams from My Father, Obama wrote about meeting, during his teenage years, a writer named "Frank" who "had some modest notoriety once" and with whom he occasionally discussed poetry and politics. From this snippet, Kincaid weaves an incredulous tale that turns Davis into Obama's "mentor."
Kincaid's piece had been previously circulating within the right-wing blogosphere, but Blumenthal sought to inject the story into more respectable opinion circles by amplifying it in his email blast.
In the same piece, Kincaid, expanding his guilt-by-association tactics, also wrote that Obama "came into contact with more far-left political forces," including former Weather Underground member William Ayers. Until a few weeks ago, Obama's tangential connection with Ayers -- whose 1960s anti-war terrorism occurred when Obama was in grade school -- was echoing among right-wing bloggers.
Some Clinton supporters who also knew about Ayers have been discreetly trying to catapult the story out of the right-wing sandbox into the wider mainstream media. On April 9, Fox News' Sean Hannity interviewed fellow right-winger Karl Rove, who raised the Ayers-Obama connection. The next day, ABC News reporter Jake Tapper wrote about Ayers in his Political Punch blog. The following week, on his radio show, Hannity suggested to his guest, George Stephanopoulos, that he ask Obama about his relationship with Ayers at the upcoming Philadelphia presidential debate. Stephanopoulos, who was Bill Clinton's press secretary, replied, "Well, I'm taking notes." The following night during the April 16 nationally televised Presidential debate, Stephanopoulos dutifully asked Obama about Ayers, who is now a professor of education at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
White House admits fault on 'Mission Accomplished' banner WASHINGTON - The White House said Wednesday that President Bush has paid a price for the "Mission Accomplished" banner that was flown in triumph five years ago but later became a symbol of U.S. misjudgments and mistakes in the long and costly war in Iraq.From exactly two years ago:
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