Gore Still An Energy Hog -- 10% Increase, Now Equals 232 Homes!

In the year since Al Gore took steps to make his home more energy-efficient, the former Vice President’s home energy use surged more than 10%, according to the Tennessee Center for Policy Research.”A man’s commitment to his beliefs is best measured by what he does behind the closed doors of his own home,” said Drew Johnson, President of the Tennessee Center for Policy Research. “Al Gore is a hypocrite and a fraud when it comes to his commitment to the environment, judging by his home energy consumption.”

In the past year, Gore’s home burned through 213,210 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity, enough to power 232 average American households for a month.

DKK

Watts Up With That -- Giant Sucking Sound

McCain Announced Support For Outer Continental Shelf Drilling -- Congress Still Prefers High Gas Prices

John McCain and Barack Obama both made news today. McCain announced his support for lifting the moratorium on Outer Continental Shelf drilling.
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UPDATE: When it comes to drilling, we have a ways to go to catch up with the Brazilians. Fausta notes another mammoth Brazilian offshore strike.

Personally, I'd like to see the United States remain the number one economic power in the Western Hemisphere, but this is not foreordained. If Brazil's Congress is smarter than ours, as it certainly is at the moment, we are at a huge disadvantage.

DKK
Power Line -- Two Small Steps Forward

Where's Obama's Bounce?

Obama: Still no bounce

DKK

In Spite Of Obama;s Fabled Judgment™ -- The Surge worked

Democratic Sen. Barack Obama’s forced to admit that he was wrong about Iraq — and Republican Sen. John McCain was right.

Obama told reporters that he spoke on the phone with Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshiyar zebari.

“I emphasized to him how encouraged I was by the reductions in violence in Iraq but also insisted that it is important for us to begin the process of withdrawing U.S. troops, making it clear that we have no interest in permanent bases in Iraq,” Obama said.

In other words the Surge worked.

Had we listened to Obama, the troops would have been home 3 months ago and there would have been a bloodbath that would make the fall of Saigon look like kindergarten.

There’s your change.

Your chump change.

DKK

Don Surber -- The Surge Worked

Obama, Governor Rod, Rezko, And Iraqi Criminal/Insurgent Supporter

Nibraz Kazimi at the Talisman Gate has this latest awful news for the Obama Campaign.
The Messiah better work a miracle and keep this one out of the mainstream media's hands.
Talsiman Gate reported:

Ayham Alsammarae, Iraq’s slimy ex-Minister of Electricity under the Bremer and Allawi administrations, who had escaped from an Iraqi prison by hiring an American security company to break him out back in December 2006, has resurfaced in the Jordanian capital Amman where he gave a press conference today saying, among other things, that he hoped that the insurgency in Iraq “would continue [against U.S. occupation] and avenges the Iraqi people.”

Alsammarae, an Iraqi-American Chicagoan, added during remarks carried by Radio Sawa (Arabic link) that he had contributed the maximum allowable of $2,300 to Barack Obama’s campaign.

But there’s another Obama link to Alsammarae: while serving as electricity minister Alsammarae had been involved in brokering deals in the Iraqi electricity sector for Antoin Rezko, Obama’s long-term friend and patron. Rezko is the Syrian-American hustler who was convicted of fraud in an Illinois court on the day that Obama secured the Democratic nomination.

There is much more at Talisman Gate.
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BIG--- UPDATE: Alsammarae was seen partying at the Rezko residence with Illinois Democratic Governor Blagojevich and Rezko buddy Nadhmi Auchi, via Illinoize in 2004:

DKK
Gateway Pundit -- Hope?... Obama Ex-con Supporter & Rezko Buddy Wants US Troops Dead ...BIG UPDATE!!

Success -- Troop Reduction -- Media Questions Public

Meanwhile, the AP not only notes significant progress in Iraq, but actually (get this) kinda-sorta wonders why the public hasn't taken note of it.

Signs are emerging that Iraq has reached a turning point. Violence is down, armed extremists are in disarray, government confidence is rising and sectarian communities are gearing up for a battle at the polls rather than slaughter in the streets.

Those positive signs are attracting little attention in the United States, where the war-weary public is focused on the American presidential contest and skeptical of talk of success after so many years of unfounded optimism by the war's supporters.

That's rich. The MSM has reduced its coverage of the war by ninety-two percent over the past year, conveniently since the US has been winning the war, and AP blames the lack of public attention on the public itself.

DKK
Ace Of Spades HQ -- Bush Announces Over-the-Horizon Redeployment of 34,000 Troops Out Of Iraq

Bush Triumphant In Europe

Real leaders know George Walker Bush is great.

The sniping from the left aside, Bush is one of the best presidents ever.

His tour of Europe shows that.

He stood up to terrorism and made the world safer.

Other world leaders know this. They appreciate the leadership that America again is showing the free world.

See the post by Don Surber for the list of honors and accomplishments, he continues:

History will record that the American Left which rooted for defeat in Iraq was wrong, wrong, wrong.

The world is safer because of George Bush and not just the false sense of security that it pretended it had in the 9/10 world.

That was why he was re-elected by 3 million people — one of the largest victories in American history. His 62 million votes were 15 million more than Bill Clinton ever received.

n the 9/12 world, Bush risked his political career to protect America and the free world.

Europe thanks him.

DKK

Don Surber -- Peer Review

Seek And Ye Shall Find -- Brazil Discovers Another New Oil Field

The Brazilians must have been reading Luke 11:9

Luke 11:9 And I say unto you, Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.

Knock, knock:

BG, Petrobras Find More Oil in Brazil's Santos Basin BG Group Plc, the U.K.'s third-largest oil and gas company, and Petroleo Brasileiro SA made a second discovery in Brazil's Santos Basin.

The Guara exploration well struck oil in the BM-S-9 concession area, according to the partners, which also include Repsol YPF SA. That's in the same block as the Carioca discovery in September, which Brazil's petroleum regulator said may contain as many as 33 billion barrels of oil.

DKK
Fausta's Blog

Iran Moves To Safeguard $75 Billion From Sanctions

Iran has withdrawn around $75 billion from Europe to prevent the assets from being blocked under threatened new sanctions over Tehran's disputed nuclear ambitions, an Iranian weekly said.

Western powers are warning the Islamic Republic of more punitive measures if it rejects an incentives offer and presses on with sensitive nuclear work, but the world's fourth-largest oil exporter is showing no sign of backing down.

"Part of Iran's assets in European banks have been converted to gold and shares and another part has been transferred to Asian banks," Mohsen Talaie, deputy foreign minister in charge of economic affairs, was quoted as saying.

DKK

Reuters

The Associated Press Bites The Hand That Feeds Them

The stories over the weekend were bad enough - the Associated Press, with a long history of suing over quotations from their articles, went after Drudge Retort for having the audacity to link to their stories along with short quotations via reader submissions. Drudge Retort is doing nothing different than what Digg, TechMeme, Mixx and dozens of other sites do, and frankly the fact that they are being linked to should be considered a favor.

After heavy criticism over the last few days, the A.P. is in damage control mode, says the NYTimes, and retreating from their earlier position. But from what I read, they’re just pushing their case further.

They do not want people quoting their stories, despite the fact that such activity very clearly falls within the fair use exception to copyright law. They claim that the activity is an infringement.

Many blogs are not linking to AP stories, preferring to link to the original source or another news service such as AFP or Reuters.

This is an interesting test of the business model the AP and other traditional media outlets have set up. I have no idea how they think they can get around fair use, but even more curious is how they think they are going to get around making money via hits.

As Tech central continued:

The A.P. doesn’t get to make it’s own rules around how its content is used, if those rules are stricter than the law allows. So even thought they say they are making these new guidelines in the spirit of cooperation, it’s clear that, like the RIAA and MPAA, they are trying to claw their way to a set of property rights that don’t exist today and that they are not legally entitled to. And like the RIAA and MPAA, this is done to protect a dying business model - paid content.

So here’s our new policy on A.P. stories: they don’t exist. We don’t see them, we don’t quote them, we don’t link to them. They’re banned until they abandon this new strategy, and I encourage others to do the same until they back down from these ridiculous attempts to stop the spread of information around the Internet.

DKK

Tech Central --Here's Our New Policy On A.P. stories: They're Banned