Running Against Themselves
The New York Times
- 9/05/2008
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| The difficulty for the Republican ticket in talking about change and reform and acting like insurgents is that they have been running Washington — the White House and Congress — for most of the last eight years. |
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| Read at The New York Times site. |
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| Clearly, there are major differences between the economic policies of Senators Barack Obama and John McCain. Mr. McCain wants more tax cuts for the rich; Mr. Obama wants tax cuts for the poor and middle class. The two men also disagree on health care, energy and many other topics.
But few are aware of two important facts about the post-World War II era. |
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| Read at New York Times site. |
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| Lisa Kelly is caught in a sad, patently unfair paradox of American health care. Patients forced to pay out of pocket — be they the 45.7 million uninsured Americans, or international visitors — are charged the most. |
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| Read at chron.com site. |
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| The Democratic team now has onboard someone who not only gets global warming, but who is certainly one of the most qualified people in the country to help lead that effort from the White House, which is where it must be lead from. |
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| Read at Grist site. |
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| Bush has vowed to sprint through the final five months of his Administration, and you better believe him.
Because he is pulling all the bureaucratic levers in the Executive Branch to advance his rightwing agenda. |
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| Read at The Progressive site. |
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| John McCain said in an interview with Politico on Wednesday "that he was uncertain how many houses he and his wife, Cindy, own." |
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| Read at The Huffington Post site. |
Can we do it here?
New York Times
- 8/11/2008
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| The draft Democratic Party platform that was sent out last week puts health care reform front and center. Can Democrats deliver on that commitment? |
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| Read at New York Times site. |
Know-Nothing Politics
New York Times
- 8/08/2008
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| So the G.O.P. has found its issue for the 2008 election. For the next three months the party plans to keep chanting: “Drill here! Drill now!" |
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| Read at New York Times site. |
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| Millions of Americans with chronic disease like diabetes or high blood pressure are not getting adequate treatment because they are among the nation’s growing ranks of uninsured. |
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| Read at New York Times site. |
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| Bowing to President Bush's demands, the Senate sent the White House a bill Wednesday overhauling bitterly disputed rules on secret government eavesdropping and shielding telecommunications companies from lawsuits complaining they helped the U.S. spy on Americans.
The relatively one-sided vote, 69-28, came only after a lengthy and heated debate that pitted privacy and civil liberties concerns against the desire to prevent terrorist attacks. It ended almost a year of wrangling over surveillance rules and the president's warrantless wiretapping program that was initiated after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
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| Read at The Huffington Post site. |
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| Our days as an automobile nation are far from over. But the specter of high gasoline prices becoming permanent has forced the United States to reassess its "Yeah, right" attitude toward public transportation and to reconsider how Americans get from point A to point B.
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| Read at The Seattle Times site. |
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| Exxon Mobil Corp said on Thursday soaring oil prices pushed its second-quarter earnings up 14 percent, again breaking its own record for the highest-ever profit by a U.S. company.
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| Read at Reuters site. |
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| The Justice Department is considering letting the FBI investigate Americans without any evidence of wrongdoing, relying instead on a terrorist profile that could single out Muslims, Arabs or other racial and ethnic groups.
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| Read at The Associated Press site. |
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| Gasoline prices skidded sharply lower during the last week partly because motorists have been curbing their driving -- cutting back so much that Transportation Secretary Mary E. Peters warned Monday of a looming shortfall in the fund that pays for highway and bridge construction and repairs.
In May, U.S. motorists drove 9.6 billion fewer miles, or 3.7% less, than in May 2007, according to a report on traffic volume trends released Monday by the Federal Highway Administration. It was the seventh consecutive monthly decline, suggesting that U.S. road travel will record the first annual drop since 1980. |
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| Read at The Los Angeles Times site. |
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| Republicans on Saturday blocked the Senate from considering a bill next week that would nearly double federal aid to help the poor pay heating and air-conditioning bills.
Although a dozen Senate Republicans support the measure, most voted with GOP leaders who would rather spend the time trumpeting their call to expand offshore oil drilling before Congress takes six weeks off for vacation and the presidential nominating conventions.
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| Read at Talking Points Memo site. |
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| Seven Western states are joining four Canadian provinces to propose a plan to limit greenhouse gas emissions through use of a "cap and trade" system.
The draft plan, made public Wednesday by Oregon Gov. Ted Kulongoski's office, is aimed at gradually reducing carbon emissions across Oregon, Arizona, California, Montana, New Mexico, Utah and Washington. |
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| Read at The Associated Press site. |
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| Auditors at an oversight agency of the Pentagon were pressured by supervisors to skew their reports on a major defense contractor's work, hiding wrongdoing and charges of overbilling, according to an 80-page report from the Government Accountability Office. |
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| Read at The Washington Post site. |
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| More than 100 members of Congress wrote President Bush today, urging him to "halt all action" on a proposal they argue would change the definition of abortion, and drastically limit women's access to birth control.
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| Read at ABC News site. |
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| As you know, we've been posting here regularly about the GOP's frequent pushing of the myth that China is drilling for oil off American shores.
Well here's another outlandish oil-drilling line: If not for the Dems in Congress, gas would cost two bucks a gallon!
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| Read at Talking Points Memo site. |
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| Public attitudes about gays in the military have shifted dramatically since President Bill Clinton unveiled what became his administration's "don't ask, don't tell" policy 15 years ago today.
Seventy-five percent of Americans in a new Washington Post-ABC News poll said gay people who are open about their sexual orientation should be allowed to serve in the U.S. military, up from 62 percent in early 2001 and 44 percent in 1993.
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| Read at The Washington Post site. |
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| In what is thought to be an unprecedented ruling, a Superior Court judge in Fulton County, Ga., halted the construction of a coal-fired power plant, saying that the plant must limit its emissions of carbon dioxide.
Citing an April 2007 US Supreme Court ruling that recognizes carbon dioxide – the primary gas responsible for global warming – as a pollutant under the federal Clean Air Act, Judge Thelma Wyatt Cummings Moore overturned a lower court’s decision to issue an air-pollution permit to Dynegy’s Longleaf power plant near Columbus, Ga. Her decision is believed to be the first one that links global warming to an air-pollution permit
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| Read at The Christian Science Monitor site. |
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| U.S. aid to Africa is becoming increasingly militarized, resulting in skewed priorities and less attention to longer-term development projects that could lead to greater stability across the continent, according to a report released Thursday by the advocacy group Refugees International.
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| Read at The Washington Post site. |
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| Companies collected tens of millions of dollars in government contracts by claiming to have main offices in poor neighborhoods that were actually empty duplexes, part-time offices and other ineligible locations, congressional investigators charge.
Billions more remain at risk because the Small Business Administration doesn't usually check paperwork, rarely conducts audits and is slow to kick out firms that are no longer eligible for the $8 billion in special contract set-asides for small businesses, the Government Accountability Office said.
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| Read at The Boston Globe site. |
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| President George W Bush has lifted an executive ban on drilling for oil in most US coastal waters, and has urged lawmakers to follow suit.
Environmentalists have reacted with alarm to Mr Bush's call, saying offshore drilling would take at least a decade to have any effect on oil supply and would exacerbate climate change.
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| Read at BBC News site. |
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| The prosecutor of the world's first permanent war crimes tribunal will seek an arrest warrant Monday charging Sudan's president with crimes against humanity and genocide in Darfur.
The court, based in The Hague, Netherlands, said the prosecutor will present evidence of war crimes in Darfur to judges Monday and one or more new suspects would be named. But court officials refused to identify any of the potential new suspects.
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| Read at The Associated Press site. |
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| President George Bush signed off with a defiant farewell over his refusal to accept global climate change targets at his last G8 summit.
As he prepared to fly out from Japan, he told his fellow leaders: "Goodbye from the world's biggest polluter."
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| Read at The Independent site. |
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| The Pentagon has ordered electrical inspections of all buildings in Iraq maintained by KBR, a major military contractor, after the electrocutions of several United States service members.
Gen. David H. Petraeus, the American commander in Iraq, told Congress of the new inspections while also disclosing that at least 13 Americans had been electrocuted in Iraq since the war began. Previously, the Pentagon said that 12 had been electrocuted. In addition to those killed, many more service members have received painful shocks, Army officials say.
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| Read at The New York Times site. |
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| A long-delayed Senate committee report endorsed by Democrats and some Republicans concluded that President Bush and his aides built the public case for war against Iraq by exaggerating available intelligence and by ignoring disagreements among spy agencies about Iraq’s weapons programs and Saddam Hussein’s links to Al Qaeda.
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| Read at The New York Times site. |
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| Even General Motors, the steadfast champion of big sport utility vehicles and pickup trucks, is thinking small now.
With no end in sight for elevated gas prices, G.M. announced drastic cuts in production of sport utility vehicles and pickups on Tuesday and stepped up plans for smaller cars and engines.
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| Read at The New York Times site. |
Health Reform is Working
The Boston Globe
- 6/4/2008
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| The 350 people who packed into the main conference room of the John F. Kennedy Library yesterday were in a good mood. They were about to hear a report that implementation of the Massachusetts health reform law had, in less than two years, cut the number of uninsured people of working age nearly in half. |
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| Read at The Boston Globe site. |
