Right Of The Star

Sunday, July 27, 2008

Daily Trek -- July 27, 2008

The Obama Rainbow Tour -- Day 8 -- London, The Man Needs A Vacation (So He Is Told!)

Today, retired Lt. Colonel Joe Repya issued the following statement on Barack Obama’s cancelled visit to Ramstein and Landstuhl:
“The most solemn duty of a commander in chief is to fulfill his responsibility to the men and women who serve this country in uniform. Barack Obama had scheduled a visit with wounded American troops who have served with honor and distinction in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but he broke that commitment, instead flitting from one European capital to the next. Several explanations were offered, none was convincing and each was at odds with the statements of American military leaders in Germany and Washington. For a young man so apt at playing president, Barack Obama badly misjudged the important demands of the office he seeks. Visits with world leaders and speeches to cheering Europeans shouldn’t be a substitute for comforting injured American heroes.”

Hot Air

"Times of London: 'Barack Obama: He came. He saw. He, er, left.',

Hold the coronation.

The JFK-wannabe did not win every heart in Europe."

Includes a summary of quite a few reviews of his visit. Don Surber

'You should be on the beach... You need a break' So says the leader of the Tories in Britain, David Cameron.

I do think that’s entirely conditions-based. It’s hard to anticipate where we may be six months from now, or a year from now, or a year and a half from now.

Barack Obama flipping back or back again or, does anyone really know, on Iraq troop levels.

Even as Barack sweeps through Europe some wonder about the rest of the world, "Barack Obama promised his Kenyan family members and villagers that he would assist their school but has failed to honour his pledge."

95% of base wanted nothing to do with him. I have met three troops who support him, and literally hundreds who regard him as a buffoon, a charlatan, a hindrance to their mission or a flat out enemy of progress. Even when the rumors were publicly admitted, almost no one left their duty sections to try to see him, unless they were officers whose presence was officially required.

So, how did that visit to the troops in Iraq go? Gateway Pundit

As thousands waited at the Sieges Saule monument in Berlin to hear Obama's sensational speech, a BILD reporter met Barack all alone - in the gym! Here's the incredible account of Judith Bonesky's meeting...

It's 16:02pm and I've been training in the gym of the Ritz Carlton hotel in Berlin. A man in a suit approaches me and says: "Barack Obama is about to come and train ..." Shortly after half past four and he actually arrives! Barack Obama is wearing a grey t-shirt, black tracksuit bottoms - and a great smile!

"Hi, how's it going?" asks Obama in his deep voice. My heart beats. "Very good, and you?" I say. Obama replies: "Very good, thank you!" (HT: Media Blog at NRO)

Simply orgasmic isn't he! Glad he could work out instead of visit the troops! American Thinker

In Berlin, hundreds of thousands will cheer a projection rather than a flesh-and-blood Obama on Thursday. After Inauguration Day, alas, Europe and the world will not face a Dreamworks president, but the leader of a superpower. Whether McCain or Obama, the 44th president will speak more nicely than did W. in his first term. He will also pay more attention to the "decent opinions of mankind." But he will still preside over the world's largest military, economic, and cultural power.

This vast power differential is what Germans and Europeans don't quite fathom in their infatuation with Obama. Their problem was not Mr. Bush, but Mr. Big--America as Behemoth Among the Nations, unwilling to succumb to the dictates of goodness that animate post-heroic, post-imperial, and post-sovereign Europe.

TNR via Power and Control Blog

...The press certainly helped Obama get so far so fast; the question is, how far can he get if his campaign alienates them?...
...But, as Obama ascended from underdog to front-runner to presumptive nominee, the flame seems to have dwindled. Reporters who cover Obama these days grouse that Obama's flacks shroud the campaign in secrecy and provide little to no access. "They're more disciplined than the Bush people," a reporter on the Obama trail gripes...

Saturday, July 26, 2008

Fox News Reports -- Obama Lowers Expectations, "May Be A Drop In Poll Numbers," From Overseas Campaigning

Reported on Fox and Friends today, but not online yet. And since Redlasso has been shut by the likes of Fox News I can't show you.

Update: Here you go -- NY Times reporting some of the same sentiments as Fox.

Perhaps he read this Rasmussen poll where 63% of Americans say his trip doesn't make him more fit to be President. I think that was due to an error in judgment, he just couldn't help doing the German rally instead of just meeting the leaders of the world. It made it look just like another campaign stop (in a country that can't vote) rather then a fact finding, experience gaining trip.

Power and Control makes this very excellent point:

In any case the differential between American growth rates and European growth rates is going to widen the divide. What can the Europeans do? Become more like Americans. In that sense his speech shows that Obama is going in the wrong direction. Americans do not want to join the European league (the phrase in America is bush league - har). He should at the very least be thinking of dragging Europe our way, rather than making efforts to drag America to theirs. That might have mitigated what will, I predict, be the downfall of the Obama campaign.

DKK

Daily Trek -- July 26, 2008

Just A Daily Trek and Rainbow Tour update today.

What'd I miss?

Everything you need to know to stay informed each day in 5 minutes or less! Read your regular news and include this and you will be able to participate in most any current events discussion.
---------------------------
CNN dying to prove there is no enthusiasm for McCain among younger voters interviews a fake College Republican who, predictably isn't and knows of no one who is enthusiastic about McCain. Hmmm, go figure.

"Congress gives it to you without lubrication," bumper stickers available at Power and Control. A truer bumper sticker has never been written.

Anchorage Alaska may end up having its coldest summer on record.

Oh dear, Bin Laden's driver was not read his rights! Do you know anyone who cares? By the way, he also head Bin Laden brag about the number of innocent people killed that day.

The Senate Republicans are holding the line on their promise to not allow any legislation to pass until a serious comprehensive energy bill that includes drilling can be voted on -- Harry Reid loses it under the pressure.

Energy is the top issue for voters now -- Republicans are on the right side of this one. I really can not figure out what is wrong with the Democrats. They either figure a bad economy helps Obama or they are such captives of Gore's Law that they can't think straight any longer.

"The bill is HR 6615 . Its title is 'A bill to provide for the transport of the enemy combatants detained in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba to Washington, D.C., where the United States Supreme Court will be able to more effectively micromanage the detainees by holding them on the Supreme Court grounds, and for other purposes.'"

"...The result threatens to be the first time since at least 1950 that lawmakers will go home for the August recess without either chamber having passed a single appropriations bill.
If drilling opponents really have the better of this argument, why are they so worried about letting it come to a vote?"

Just in case they thought they could get a sweetheart deal from Obama -- I wonder why they would have thought that -- he tells them to act now and not to wait for him.

Iran has a website where they demonstrate their wonderful military technology. Problem is that, like the time they photoshopped the missile launches, some of the planes are fake. Worse the photoshops though, these are photos of models -- as in plastic and some glue!

Back before her deadly DDT rant that cost millions of lives from malaria, Rachel Carson had written about global warming. Only her information showed that the changes were from ocean changes, just like the recent testimony given by NASA.

John Edwards WAS at the hotel meeting his ex staffer.

Ooow, the UN wants to take the lead on counter terrorism. Problem is they haven't even been able to define the term terrorism.

EXPLAINING the Northern Lights.

Toyota tops manufactures on CAFE numbers.

McDonalds sued for refusing to allow womens Muslim headwear.
--------------------------------------
DKK

The Obama Rainbow Tour -- Day 7 -- Paris And London

There you are, I told you so
Makes no difference where she goes
The whole world over just the same
Just listen to them call her name
And who would underestimate the actress now?
Evita - Rainbow Tour

What's the use in mourning if there is no one there to see you do it (paraphrase Absolutely Fabulous):

Pentagon officials tell NBC

the problem was that Obama’s request to visit Landstuhl included two members of his campaign staff — retired Major General Jonathan S. Gration and Jeff Kiernan. US military officials in Germany informed the campaign the two political operatives would not be permitted on base.
Pentagon officials say Gration was the campaign’s point of contact at Landstuhl in arranging Obama’s visit and “got torqued” when he was told he would not be permitted to join Obama. It was Gration who later suggested to reporters that the Pentagon short-circuited Obama’s visit.
Jim Geraghty wrote yesterday: “A very interesting email from a source I must protect suggests that Obama’s visit to the Landstuhl Regional Medical Center had the green light until a campaign staffer raised a stink about going with Obama.”
And today Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs strongly hinted that Gration’s exclusion was what led to the campaign’s last-minute decision to scrap the visit.
“Based on the information that we received from the Pentagon,” Gibbs said, “anybody on the staff that was related to the campaign including General Gration a two start [sic] general” would not be allowed to go to Landstuhl.

Patterico

Junior Ill. Senator Barack Obama is on his way to France today. By the end of this media junk-it, he will have visited several foreign countries throughout Europe and the Middle East.

I would just like to say ... oh, heck - Barack already said it better than I ever could:
It’s embarrassing when Europeans come over here, they all speak English, they all speak French, they speak German, and then we go over to Europe (laughter) and all we can say is ‘Merci Beaucoup.’ (Laughter ensues) Right?!”
Ironic that about all Obama can muster up is "Merci Beaucoup" while traveling abroad.
BERLIN (AFP) — US presidential hopeful Barack Obama was due in Paris on Friday a day after telling a vast crowd of 200,000 people in Berlin that Americans and Europeans must tear down walls between estranged allies, races and faiths, in a soaring challenge to a new political generation.

Not even a merci beaucoup!
Reihl World View

200,000 . . . or 20,000? Obama's Crowd in Berlin -- looked like more then 20,000 to me, remember there was food and music after his speech!

"During the big anti-Bush demonstration after the fall of Baghdad, there were 250,000 people. And it looked totally different from yesterday. Then, you couldn't move all the way from the Brandenburg Gate to the Technical University [on the western side of Tiergarten park, another kilometer beyond the Siegessäule]."

World Politics Review Blog

U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama met with British Prime Gordon Brown in London Saturday on the last leg of his weeklong overseas tour.
Obama waved and smiled at the media outside Brown's residence at 10 Downing Street but made no comments as he walked inside.
Brown decided not to greet the U.S. senator on the doorstep because he did not grant the same honor to Obama's rival, John McCain, when the Republican candidate visited in March.
Obama's visit in London is more low-key than the other stops on his trip. He plans no major news conferences and is expected to make his only remarks to reporters as he departs his meeting with Brown.
Earlier Saturday, Obama met with former Prime Minister Tony Blair, who now serves as the Middle East envoy for the "quartet" of the United States, European Union, Russia, and the United Nations. The two posed for the cameras at Obama's hotel but made no statements.
Obama also plans a meeting with British opposition leader David Cameron, head of the Conservative Party, following the talks with Brown.

CNN

Major Garrett: If Obama spent more time visiting troops, he’d know they don’t only watch Fox News

No one doubts that our partners in the coalitions in both Iraq and Afghanistan have suffered losses on the battlefield, and of course every loss is tragic. However, Barack Obama tells NBC’s Brian Williams that Americans have ignored the “serious losses” that NATO allies have taken in Afghanistan, scolding us for our lack of appreciation for their effort. Unfortunately, this dumbs down the definition of serious to such a degree that our losses look positively catastrophic.

Hot Air

In Berlin, Obama was just making up facts! His fiction about Belfast is even worse than his story about Airlift flights turning back.

Obama speech text:

"Not only have walls come down in Berlin, but they have come down in Belfast, where Protestant and Catholic found a way to live together;"

Quoting from a 5/3/2008 USA Today article:

"Ten years after peace was declared in Northern Ireland, one might have expected that Belfast's barriers would be torn down by now. But reality, as usual, is far messier. Not one has been dismantled. Instead they've grown in both size and number."

American Thinker Blog

Yes, another tedious climate change post.

Among many curious moments in Barack Obama's speech in Berlin on Thursday, this line takes Gorean liberties with the facts:

As we speak, cars in Boston and factories in Beijing are melting the ice caps in the Arctic, shrinking coastlines in the Atlantic, and bringing drought to farms from Kansas to Kenya.

"As we speak"? You have to love the royal "we."

In any case, as we write, Barack Obama is just wrong. Sea levels have been declining, not rising, for the last two years.

TigerHawk

“If the real Messiah came back to the Holy Land, the coverage couldn’t be any more thorough, and it probably would be a good deal less adoring.” — Kevin O’Brien, the Plain Dealer.

Don Surber

Israelis know in their kishkahs that Obama isn't here for Israelis. Obama is here for the American Jewish vote. The rank and file Israeli knows that Obama is an outsider here as well as there. There is no connection. There is only coldness and calculation. The AP picture of Obama with Olmert in the Jerusalem Post was a joke--the Two Yo-Yo's, a good buddy called it. Obama isn't even attempting to look at Olmert.

Gateway Pundit
DKK

Redlasso Tool No Longer Available -- Networks Losers Long Term As They Fail To Adapt To New Media

For those who grew up in the Napster era, the music industry’s emphatic protection of its copyrights in music content is very familiar territory. However, the aggressive shutdown of music download websites has plagued the music industry as a bad public relations move for many years. Despite a shift to legalized digital downloading, the music industry continues to suffer lagging sales.

Today, one must wonder whether other media conglomerates have learned from the mistakes of the music industry—or is history simply poised to repeat itself? On May 19, 2008, NBC, FOX, CBS, and Allbritton Communications served a cease-and-desist letter to the blogger-friendly website, redlasso.com.

JETLaw blog

Redlasso, the video site that allows bloggers to post clips of television content, has shut down its beta in response to a recently filed lawsuit by Hulu-backers Fox and NBC.
In May, Fox, CBS and NBC issued Cease and Desist notices to Redlasso for copyright violation, which the company largely ignored. In June the company established a “Media Advisory Board” headed by a number of ex-studio execs that they hoped would help smooth things over with the networks.

TechCrunch

So much for that experiment. I hope they can get a compromised reached soon. The sad thing is this is the same type of thing the music industry went through. Instead of working to form a new business model that included supportive use on the net and expanding choices they would rather drive a business plan of limiting what is available in an attempt to force use of their old model.

I don't know of an alternative yet, but I will try to find one that has the flexibility to select specific content.
DKK

Update copied from later post:

You know, the more I have though about the whole Redlasso thing it really makes me wonder the logic. Imagine I put up a snippet from say, Special Report and say it's a good one. How many more possible viewers do they get for the two later airings of Special Report that day who go there just to see that snippet in context. Free advertising driving ratings, now lost because of the inability to adjust to changing technologies. Oh and the Hulu service supported by NBC and Newscorp is very limited and the videos are not breaking news.
DKK

Friday, July 25, 2008

Obama's Idea Of Change -- Apologizing For Being America!

So now he has to go apologize for the United States of America. What is it? He's black, he's running for President of the United States, "We haven't perfected ourselves." You know, that's a key phrase, by the way, is one of the things that drives liberalism is the fact that they think people and institutions can be perfected. They think they can be perfect. And when nothing is perfect, then everything's wrong. But this is just beyond the pale. He's talking to Germans and making excuses for the United States of America, which to this day defends and protects Germany? (interruption) Exactly right. This is insulting. It is demeaning. "We have made our share of mistakes. There are times when our actions around the world have not lived up to our best intentions." This is Iraq. But he's not a candidate, folks. He's just a guy strolling through the forest there who happened to see a microphone and a podium.

He says, "Oh, there's about 100,000 people out there. I think I'll go make a speech." This is change. But ladies and gentlemen, if you are wondering when you hear Obama talk about change, this is it. The change is: America sucks, America's deficient, America's guilty, but America is now willing to pay the price because we have a Messiah who understands the faults, the egregious errors made by the United States and her people. We are racists, sexists, bigots, homophobes. We discriminate against people who worship differently than we do, have skin color different from ours, and we have not always behaved properly in the world. And we torture. And we, of course, are biased against people who want to get into our country illegally. We have a lot to pay for. Not to mention that we are primarily the country responsible for climate change, shrinking the Atlantic coastline, melting the Arctic ice. This is the change. You want change? This is the change.

DKK
Rush Limbaugh Via Powerline

Scientists Discover What Everyone Knew About The Lottery -- More Importantly, There Is Something Called The 'Journal of Behavioral Decision Making'

A new Carnegie Mellon University study sheds light on the reasons why low-income lottery players eagerly invest in a product that provides poor returns.

In the study, published in the July issue of the Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, participants who were made to feel subjectively poor bought nearly twice as many lottery tickets as a comparison group that was made to feel subjectively more affluent. The Carnegie Mellon findings point to poverty's central role in people's decisions to buy lottery tickets.

"Some poor people see playing the lottery as their best opportunity for improving their financial situations, albeit wrongly so," said the study's lead author Emily Haisley,a doctoral student in the Department of Organizational Behavior and Theory at Carnegie Mellon's Tepper School of Business. "The hope of getting out of poverty encourages people to continue to buy tickets, even though their chances of stumbling upon a life-changing windfall are nearly impossibly slim and buying lottery tickets in fact exacerbates the very poverty that purchasers are hoping to escape."

Okay, so now we know what we already knew -- but we also know that there really is a magazine for everything. Be sure to pick up your copy of the Journal of Behavioral Decision Making for the full results.
DKK
Science Daily

Propaganda Art -- Obama Picks Winning Examples -- Too Bad Their Also Mass Murderers!

Certain precincts of the left are upset that conservative bloggers notice the creepy resemblance between Obama propaganda art and that of assorted demagogues. Now he is in Berlin, speaking at Hitler's favorite monument (moved to its location as the planned focal point of his reconfigured Berlin, to be re-named "Germania"). Teutonic Obama believers must be in charge of picking the poster art, and certain memories of poster art past are triggered by the latest Obama poster art, as noted by blogger Dr. Melissa Clothier.

Lots of examples and comparisions at the link.
DKK
American Thinker -- Avert Your Eyes!

So Barack, How's That Diplomacy Supposed To Work -- Obama A Study In Failure

Iran signaled today that it will no longer cooperate with U.N. experts probing for signs of clandestine nuclear weapons work, confirming the investigation is at a dead end a year after it began.

The announcement from the Iranian Vice President, Gholam Reza Aghazadeh, compounded skepticism about denting Tehran's nuclear defiance, just five days after Tehran stonewalled demands from six world powers that it halt activities capable of producing the fissile core of warheads.

Besides demanding a suspension of uranium enrichment — a process that can create both fuel for nuclear reactors and payloads for atomic bombs — the six powers have been pressing Tehran to cooperate with the International Atomic Energy Agency's probe.

In the past I have referred to Bush as a chess player, could this move have been designed to prove to Europe and Obama learners/supporters the fallacy of their positions?
DKK
NY Sun

Executed Murderer's Last Words -- Vote Obama!

I'm not kidding:

Before he died Wednesday evening, death row inmate Dale Leo Bishop apologized to his victim’s family, thanked America and urged people to vote for Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama.
This is the best endorsement he’s gotten since he picked up the William “Dollar Bill” Jefferson endorsement.

DKK
Patterico's Pontifications

Rice - NATO Warn Pakistan On Boarder Incursions

Pakistan needs to do more to prevent Taliban militants from launching attacks into Afghanistan from its territory, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Friday, echoing earlier remarks made by the chief of NATO.

Speaking in Australia, Rice suggested to reporters that a surge in Taliban-related violence in Afghanistan had its source in the restive semiautonomous tribal areas along Pakistan's border with Afghanistan.

"We understand that it's difficult, we understand that the northwest frontier area is difficult, but militants cannot be allowed to organize there and to plan there and to engage across the border," Rice said. "So yes, more needs to be done."

NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer called Thursday for Pakistan to be more involved in tackling extremist bases on its soil.

Scheffer made the remarks as he visited Kabul amid increasing tensions between Afghanistan and Pakistan over violence, including the bombing of the Indian embassy earlier this month that Pakistan has directly blamed on its neighbor's intelligence agency.

"I cannot think of anyone who would consider it acceptable that many terrorists from all over the world gather in a certain area and create mischief and havoc there," Scheffer told reporters, referencing militant bases in Pakistan.

DKK
Fox News

Bloomberg To Endorse McCain?

Fox is reporting that NY City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is having a press conference later today where he will, "if not endorse John McCain he will strongly support him."

Nothing online yet.
DKK

Daily Trek -- July 25, 2008

What'd I miss?

Everything you need to know to stay informed each day in 5 minutes or less! Read your regular news and include this and you will be able to participate in most any current events discussion.
---------------------------
Republican States Gaining Power At Next Reapportionment. That won't help for 2008, but will in 2012. See if your state is one of those gaining or losing representatives. Illinois is set to lose one seat.

As predicted the increase in minimum wage seems to have been accompanied by an increase in unemployment and inflation.

Obama criticized the President for going to the opening ceremonies of the Olympics so it would be really odd if he were to sponsor the games on TV. But he did.

Why did FARC trust the hostage rescuers? They were dressed as reporters.

How do Iraqi Islamists punish someone for being gay? Gay rape? "The men realized he was gay, Kamal said, when he took his shirt off and they saw his chest was shaved." But pluggin him in the butt, well that was their duty, they didn't enjoy it!

While Obama tours Europe McCain is running ads in every Berlin, Paris, and London here in the United States, you know where they can actually vote for him!

Keeping Promises Among Partners -- Condoleezza Rice makes a compelling argument for passage of the Columbia Free Trade Agreement.

OBAMA GAVE UP ON IRAQ - OBAMA GAVE UP ON THE US MILITARY

Obama wondered if the President got to choose the new channel the military watches since all he saw was Fox News -- Too bad he is too partisan to bother with half the nation.

Man threatened, called racist for having an anti-Obama bumper sticker (showed someone peeing on the name Obama, image at link)

LA To ban building of fast food restaurants!

Obama is already working on his transition team and strategy!
----------------------------------------------
DKK

Green Sources Of Energy = Continued Poverty -- Just As The Greenies Hoped!

The economy is by far the No. 1 issue on most Americans’ minds. Gas prices are a close second. The two issues are intimately related. But the spike in oil prices this year is just the tip of the iceberg. Due to similar developments in supply and demand, electricity prices are set to skyrocket next year.

While American oil consumption has grown only 15% since 1973, electricity use has shot up 115%. Right now the U.S. has 760 gigawatts of power to meet consumption. We will need 135 gigawatts of new capacity over the next decade to keep the lights on, but right now only 57 gigawatts of power are planned. No matter what Barack Obama and Al Gore tell you, alternative energy sources cannot meet demand. Solar is still only one-tenth as efficient as the cheapest fossil fuels. Today 97% of our electricity comes from fossil fuels, nuclear and hydro power. Wind provides 1% and solar .01%.

The rest of the world knows that green sources of energy are inadequate to keep their people out of poverty. That is why around the world, from Europe to South America to Asia, countries are building coal and nuclear power plants at a dizzying pace while also drilling for oil wherever they can find it. Meanwhile, the United States, crippled by an out-of-control environmental movement, is refusing to develop needed energy sources.

DKK
Morning Bell -- The world Is Powering Up While America Powers Down

Why Can't Obama Admit The Obvious

Why then can't Obama bring himself to acknowledge the surge worked better than he and other skeptics, including this page, thought it would? What does that stubbornness say about the kind of president he'd be?

In recent comments, the Democratic presidential candidate has grudgingly conceded that the troops helped lessen the violence, but he has insisted that the surge was a dubious policy because it allowed the situation in Afghanistan to deteriorate and failed to produce political breakthroughs in Iraq. Even knowing the outcome, he told CBS News Tuesday, he still wouldn't have supported the idea.

That's hard to fathom. Even if you believe that the invasion of Iraq was a grievous error — and it was — the U.S. should still make every effort to leave behind a stable situation. Obama seems stuck in the first part of that thought process, repeatedly proclaiming that he was right to oppose the war and disparaging worthwhile efforts to fix the mess it created. Hence, his dismissal of the surge as "a tactical victory imposed upon a huge strategic blunder."

The great irony, of course, is that the success of the surge has made Obama's plan to withdraw combat troops in 16 months far more plausible than when he proposed it. Another irony is that while Obama downplays the effectiveness of the surge in Iraq, he is urging a similar tactic now in Afghanistan.

The paper goes on to say that Obama should admit the truth just as McCain should admit that the war was a blunder to begin with -- that is just false conventional wisdom that is so devoid of facts that it becomes a throw away line. But it's there -- back handed slap for McCain even as they criticize Obama.

The USA Today has no way to know how many terror attacks were avoided here at home because the terrorist took Osama's advice and flocked to Iraq where they met the most effective fighting force man has known. They were shredded and now, as of today, they are losing ground worldwide.
DKK
USA Today via Ace Of Spades

Get America Moving Again By Getting Out Of The Way -- Senate Republicans Blocking All Bills That Don't Address Drilling Senate Republicans have threatened to block nearly all other bills pending before the August recess if Democrats refuse to vote with them on expanding offshore drilling.

Senate Republicans have threatened to block nearly all other bills pending before the August recess if Democrats refuse to vote with them on expanding offshore drilling.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said bills that do not pertain to energy can wait until after the August recess, with gas prices now surpassing $4 per gallon. McConnell and top Republicans indicated Wednesday they would oppose any procedural votes to take up other legislation, which require 60 votes to succeed. …

Following swift Senate action on the narrow energy bill, Reid wanted the Senate to approve a massive defense authorization bill, an overhaul of the Consumer Product Safety Commission, legislation to protect reporters’ sources, an extension of expiring energy tax incentives, and a major package of 33 bills held up by Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.).

But Republicans are planning to keep the Senate on the energy issue until their demands are resolved. The massive housing-rescue package might be the only other measure that gets valuable floor time before the August recess. (Hot Air)

Republicans could actually be serious about getting America moving again by getting out of the way!

House Republicans are strongly pushing The American Energy that is co-sponsored by our own Representative Don Manzullo (HR 6566).

There are even calls for the President to call congress back into session if they do not act before their recess, pulling a Truman:

Bush needs to do what Truman did in 1948. He needs to call a special 11-day session of Congress over the summer recess and force the Congress to come back to Washington (the recess is Aug.11-Sept.5th).
Bush could then deliver a message where he asks Congress to do their jobs - legislate (!!), for example:

(1) address the energy/gas crisis (i.e, offshore drilling and/or nuclear); and/or

(2) pass a budget — they have yet to pass one appropriations bill this year because as Pelosi and Reid admitted — they are waiting for Obama to become president to do a budget, which btw — is simply irresponsible and wrong.

I believe that the Democrats would whine and not pass a thing. Then Bush and McCain could hammer them for being a "do-nothing Congress." Moreover, McCain has the experience legislating to show up Obama in the Senate during a special session — it's his turf and I think he could make Obama look foolish.

I believe it would work because (a) congressional approval is lower than the president's approval (by about 20 points); (b) Rasmussen's tracking poll shows that the Democratic advantage on the "generic ballot" has decreased in each of the last 5 weeks (people are tired of blaming Bush); and (c) Pelosi is not liked at all (people will readily transfer their angst about the government to her).

It would do wonders for his popularity and if it backfires he really has nothing much to lose.
DKK

Green Doesn't Sell -- Which Should Be Good Since Greens Don't Really Care About Anything But Controling Everything

Last week, The New York Times noted that the advertising industry is pulling back from green-themed marketing, having “grasped the public’s growing skepticism over ads with environmental messages.

And advertisers’ concerns are buttressed by the recent sales figures for magazines that have published a “Green Issue” this year. Time’s Earth Day issue was the newsweekly’s third-lowest-selling issue of 2008 so far, according to ABC Rapid Report. A typical issue of Time sells 93,000 or so copies on the newsstand; the April 28 installment, which substituted green for red in the magazine’s trademarked cover design, sold only 72,000.

Elle’s May issue sold a mere 275,000 copies, versus the title’s year-to-date average of 328,500. The last issue of Elle to sell that badly was in May 2008—another green issue, probably not coincidentally.

Discover also published a green issue this year, and also took a hit for it, selling 86,000 newsstand copies, compared to an average of 117,000 in the first half of 2007. (Discover doesn’t participate in Rapid Report.)

The only magazine that didn’t take a bath on its green issue was Vanity Fair, which reported 370,000 single copy sales for May, only a little below its year-to-date average of 375,666.

Portifolio

A technological breakthrough might just allow CO2 to be "scrubbed" from the atmosphere. This from the Guardian:
It has long been the holy grail for those who believe that technology can save us from catastrophic climate change: a device that can "suck" carbon dioxide (CO2) from the air, reducing the warming effect of the billions of tonnes of greenhouse gas produced each year.

Now a group of US scientists say they have made a breakthrough towards creating such a machine. Led by Klaus Lackner, a physicist at Columbia University in New York, they plan to build and demonstrate a prototype within two years that could economically capture a tonne of CO2 a day from the air, about the same per passenger as a flight from London to New York.

The prototype so-called scrubber will be small enough to fit inside a shipping container. Lackner estimates it will initially cost around £100,000 to build, but the carbon cost of making each device would be "small potatoes" compared with the amount each would capture, he said.
You would think that this would be an environmentalists wet dream. The perfect solution to their problem! Turns out...not so much. This from the National Center for Policy Analysis:
While some see the scrubber as an efficient and economical way to reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide, many environmentalists oppose the technology because it allows people to use fossil fuels and emit carbon in the first place.
Doesn't that go to the heart of the agenda of the environmentalists? They're not really interested in solutions, just control. People shouldn't be able to emit carbon whether it has an effect on the environment or not.

Conservative Punk

Whose Moment Was That Again -- Today America and Berlin, Tomorrow The World!

DKK

Update: Typing correction in title made.

Iraqi Olympians Banned From Games -- Wait, China Is The Host And Iraq Is Banned?

A few months ago, it seemed liked nothing could stop Iraqi sprinter Dana Hussain from representing her country in the upcoming Summer Olympics.

Then, the International Olympic Committee banned Iraq from competing because of what it says is the government's political interference in sports.

Hussain cried for hours after hearing the news, which arrived in the form of a letter to Iraqi officials.

"She hasn't stopped. It's like finding out that a close relative has died," said her coach, Yousif Abdul Rahman. Abdul Rahman attempted to console Hussain by assuring her that she could compete in the 2012 Olympics.

CNN

The Iraq government dissolved the National Olympic Committee in May and the interim IOC ban was put in place on 4 June.

Davies added that the Iraqi government had been asked to travel to Switzerland to meet the IOC to discuss possible remedies but failed to do so.

The committee which the government dismissed was elected in 2004, in line with the Olympic movement's regulations.

The Iraqi government said it took the decision to appoint a new committee because the previous one was corrupt and had not been functioning properly.

BBC News