Sorry for all the jumping around, but we’re going to try to get back on a more regular posting schedule.  There’s too much going on to ignore it any longer!

CNN’s Velshi Pimping Dirty ‘Oil Sands’ Boondoggle

CNN’s senior business correspondent, Ali Velshi, is a one-man public relations team for the polluters that advertise on his network. In response to rising energy prices, Velshi has spent months promoting the Nazi-era technology of liquid coal. On CNN’s American Morning, Ali Velshi previewed his weeklong tribute to another disastrous and dirty boondoggle, the Alberta [...]

Condoleezza Rice Has Been ‘Playing A Lot’ Of Golf During Iraq War, Not Willing To ‘Sacrifice’ Her Game Like Bush

In May, President Bush revealed that he had given up playing golf because of the Iraq war. “I think playing golf during a war just sends the wrong signal,” said Bush. But apparently Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice doesn’t feel the same way. While at the AT&T National golf tournament this weekend, Rice gave an [...]

Cheney’s office ‘fixed’ EPA testimony on global warming

You may recall a story from October, when Dr. Julie Gerberding, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, testified before a Senate panel on the impact of climate change on public health. Before Gerberding could talk to lawmakers, however, the White House altered her testimony. References to potential health risks were removed — [...]

English Only Rule Aimed at High School Valedictorian

The folks of Terrabone Parish in Louisiana want to cultivate their image as being backwards. Their lack of values are showing. Now they are set to require all speeches be made in English after the Valedictorian included a sentence of Vietnamese in hers — she did so to honor her parents, proving her own strong values.

McCain gets ‘visibly angry’ when challenged on whether military experience prepares him to be president.

ABC News’ David Wright reports that when he asked John McCain to “explain how his Vietnam experience prepared him for the presidency,” McCain “became visibly angry”: McCain became visibly angry when I asked him to explain how his Vietnam experience prepared him for the Presidency. “Please,” he said, recoiling back in his seat in distaste at the [...]

Bush Stimulates The Porn Industry With His Economic Package

When President Bush announced his economic stimulus in January, he bragged that his package was the “right size” and would “boost” the economy: I am pleased that this agreement meets the criterion that I set forth last week to provide an effective, robust, and temporary set of incentives that will boost our economy and [...]

Poll: Obama Vaults To 15-Point Lead Over McCain

Barack Obama might just be getting his post-primary national bounce. A new poll from Newsweek gives him a 51%-36% lead over John McCain, up from a 46%-46% tie a month ago. Obama is helped by some key statistics. Five-five percent [...]

Sounds of Silence

Obama’s spokesman still doesn’t know his candidate’s position on the new FISA bill that passed the House today. The Senate vote is next week [...]

Sounds of Silence

Obama’s spokesman still doesn’t know his candidate’s position on the new FISA bill that passed the House today. The Senate vote is next week [...]

UPDATE:

Obama Backs Bill Giving Immunity To Telecoms

Sen. Barack Obama’s campaign has released a statement stating that while he opposes amnesty for telecom firms that spied on Americans, he will support the House compromise legislation. The statement in full: [...]

McClellan Details Bush Administration Credibility Gap

In testimony on Capital Hill, former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan basically painted a portrait of an administration that created its own credibility gap — and a White House response to his testimony further underscored why [...]

Can McCain Find A Single Economist To Back His Claim That Offshore Drilling Will Lower Gas Prices?

Our guest blogger is Adam Jentleson, the Communications and Outreach Director for the Hyde Park Project at the Center for American Progress Action Fund. The government’s official source for energy statistics says that offshore drilling will not have a “significant impact” on gas prices until 2030. McCain’s own campaign admits that offshore drilling will have [...]

John McCain: I Didn’t Really Love America Until…

Dan Abrams has uncovered a video of John McCain saying… “I really didn’t love America until I was deprived of her company.” This has the potential to upend this campaign. Given the criticism of Michelle Obama’s remarks about pride, how can the right still press the patriotism of the Democratic candidate’s wife when the Republican candidate himself [...]

And, no surprise here, Americans aren’t happy.  Not at all.

Eight in 10 Americans say country is headed in the ‘wrong direction.’

A new AP-Ipsos poll finds that nearly eight in 10 Americans believe “the country is moving in the wrong direction…amid soaring food and gas prices, falling home values and unending war. Just 17 percent say the country is going in the right direction.” This figure is the lowest since the survey began in 2003, and [...]

Fox News asks voters, ‘How much do you think Barack Obama loves America?’

There’s something eminently entertaining about Fox News polls, in large part because the network includes questions in its polls that no other news outlet would even consider. In this case, that’s not a compliment. In the poll (.pdf) released this afternoon, the big question, of course, was about the horserace in the general election. Fox News [...]

You just had to know that there would be FEMA issues in the upper midwest. It was only a matter of time.

Midwest flood victims feel misled by feds

Juli Parks didn’t worry when water began creeping up the levee that shields this town of about 750 from the Mississippi River _ not even when volunteers began piling on sandbags. After all, FEMA and local officials had assured townspeople in 1999 that the levee was sturdy enough to withstand a historic flood. In fact, some relieved homeowners dropped their flood insurance, and others […]

Iraq, and Big Oil, and no-bid contracts … oh my

Dear Iraq, sorry the war hasn’t gone well. But now that the surge is wrapping up, we hope you won’t mind that we need several dozen permanent bases in your country. Oh, and did we mention that we’ll need you to approve some no-bid contracts for our oil companies, too? After all, what’s a few [...]

‘Compromise’ reached on surveillance powers, retroactive immunity gets green light

We knew this “compromise” was in the words, but it doesn’t make today’s announcement any less disappointing. After more than a year of partisan acrimony over government surveillance powers, Democratic and Republican leaders have agreed to a bipartisan deal that would be the most sweeping rewrite of spy powers in three decades. The House is likely [...]

House Oversight Committee Issues Subpoenas to FBI for Bush, Cheney Interviews on Plame

Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) and the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee have subpoenaed notes of an FBI interview with George Bush and Dick Cheney in the Oval Office on June 24, 2004, about their role in the unmasking of a CIA anti-WMD [...]

GOP Insiders Fret About What Former White House Spokesman Will Say

Former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan’s testimony [...]

Bush Disagrees With His Own Energy Dept, Claims Drilling In Arctic Refuge Will ‘Bring Enormous Benefits’

This morning in the White House Rose Garden, President Bush called on Congress to “pass good legislation as soon as possible” that would lift the federal ban on exploring the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) and allow states to permit offshore oil drilling. Bush said in order to relieve the “painful level” of gas prices, “our [...]