I have a lot of catching up to do so this may get long…
First off, we have a fantastic graphic from a site Barry Ritholtz found called Oil Change USA, which tracks the dirty dealing of the energy industry. It's not very surprising to see who's in the center of the campaign money train this year – Mr. DRILLDRILLDRILL himself, Johnny McSame, who's already gotten $971,418 in direct contributions and we haven't even had the convention yet – that's astounding!
I don't know if the copy of the image will work but if you go to the web-site, you can mouse over each barrel of oil and see where the money is oozing in from. Note that these figures do NOT include the money funneled into McCain, the Senator or from "Leadership PACs" as that's a whole separate barrel of slime…
Of course the oil companies have no actual principles and they are hedging their bets and Barack got $345K for his campaign but no money at all from PACs, who tend to expect direct favors for their money so they gravitate towards the most pliable candidates. Also great on the site is the "Vote Tracker" which show's you just what an oil company can buy when it spends it's money wisely like the perfect voting records on oil legistlation of Robert Bennett (R – UT), Michael Crapo (R – ID), Dick Shelby (R – AL, was a Democrat until the Republicans gained a majority in 1994, then switched so you know he's got real principles!), Ted Stevens (R – AK, indicted), John Cronyn (R – TX), David Vitter (R – LA), James Inhofe (R – OK), Trent Lott (R – MS, brother in-law indicted – he resigned), Elizabeth Dole (R – NC), Mitch McConnell (R – KY), Lisa Murkowski (R – AL), John Isakson (R – GA), C. Saxby Chambliss (R – GA) (that's 2 from GA so guess who's getting offshore drilling for XMas!), Jim DeMint (R – SC), George Voinvich (R – OH), Jefferson Sessions (R – AL), Wayne Allard (R – CO), Orin Hatch (R – UT), Pat Roberts (R – KS), Christopher Bond (R – MO), Larry Craig (R – ID), Jim Bunning (R – KY), Thad Cochran (R – MS), Charles Grassley (R – IA), Charles Hagel (R – NE), Samuel Brownback (R – KS) and William Frist (R – TN).
That's 34 Republican Senators who've never seen a bill where they didn't vote the oil companies' side. Other than Vermont Democrat Bernie Sanders and Sheldon Whitehouse, who missed 6 of 9 votes on energy, no Senator has voted against more than 78% of the bills and only Olympia Snow (R – ME) and Lincoln Chafee (R – RI) are Republicans who've voted against the oil industry more than 50% of the time. With 34 locked votes and 15 Republicans averaging 80% in favor of oil companies (12 votes) the oil companies need an average of just 5 votes from 49 Democratic Senators to be sure any BS legislation they want goes through the Senate – NOW THAT IS SMART VOTE BUYING!
Harper's has a great article this week called "The Wrecking Crew: How a Gang of Right-Wing Con Men Destroyed Washington and Made a Killing" but it's subscription. It's exerped from agreat book by Thomas Frank but don't read it if you have a full stomach and nowhere to throw up…
Here's a nice picture of the President, sizing up some foriegn assets at the Olymics yesterday. Don't you wish the leader of the free world would at least tuck his shirt in while he's ogling girls?
8 people paid $999.99 at the IPhone store for a display picture of a glowing jewel. No, there's no more to it than that, it's pretty much a screen saver. It just shows what a fantastic opportunity selling things to IPhone people is going to be if you can get paid $8,000 for a GIF!
2,000 people died in Soviet Georgia this week and Georgia has declared it a war yet Fox News got a hold of PBS's Bonnie Erbe to ask about John Edwards' affair. "We have these huge stories going on like the one you’re reporting in Georgia,” Erbe noted when asked about Edwards. Fox's Gregg Jarrett, however, completely ignored Erbe’s comment on Georgia and continued to talk about Edwards, offering praise for the National Enquirer:
JARRETT: You know, his excuse for lying is absolutely stunning. He claims he denied the affair because the reporting by the National Enquirer was “99 percent wrong.” Well, so far, they’ve been about 100 percent right.
Throughout the segment, Jarrett refused to talk about anything except for Edwards’s affair:
ERBE: The American public have told pollsters, this political season they want substance. Both these candidates have expressed support for allowing Georgia into NATO. … We could have been on the verge of nuclear war. Those are the kinds of the things that the American public wants to see discussed.
JARRETT: Right. You know, but getting back to Edwards, during the Monica Lewinsky affair, Edwards absolutely ripped into Bill Clinton.
Erbe called the Edwards story “water cooler talk,” noting again that Edwards’s affair is “not the stuff the American public wants to hear about in this election cycle.” Again, Jarrett wholly ignored her, responding with more Edwards talk:
JARRETT: Well it’s amazing, he thought could get away with it, and if he had become the Democratic nominee, my goodness.
Kudos to Erbe for attempting to steer Fox News towards covering some news but I just flipped it on now (Sunday 11 am) and they are still talking about John Edwards but he has slipped to the #2 spot on Fox's main web site as Georgia declares a ceasefire so maybe she did have an effect after all.
Speaking of controlling the media – Turns out the letter given to the press that linked Saddam Hussein to the 9/11 attacks was ordered directly by our beloved Vice-President, Richard Bruce Cheney (we will now be using his full name because usually when dealing with mass murderers, psychopoths of evil dictators the press tends to use the full name so as not to ruin it for all the other Richard Cheneys who are going about their nice, everyday lives without destroying the world). This is according to the CIA's former Deputy Chief of Clendestine Operations Robert Richer.
Ron Suskind's new book asserts that senior Bush officials ordered the CIA to forge a document "proving" that Saddam Hussein had been trying to manufacture nuclear weapons and was collaborating with al Qaeda. The alleged result was a faked memorandum from then chief of Saddam's intelligence service Tahir Jalil Habbush dated July 1, 2001, and written to Hussein.
The bogus memo claimed that 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta had received training in Baghdad but also discussed the arrival of a "shipment" from Niger, which the Administration claimed had supplied Iraq with yellowcake uranium — based on yet another forged document whose source remains uncertain. The memo subsequently was treated as fact by the British Sunday Telegraph, and cited by William Safire in his New York Times column, providing fodder for Bush's efforts to take the US to war.
This account is backed up by The American Conservative who differ from Suskind only in that they identify the forgery as being carried out by Defense Undersecretary Doug Feith's Office of Special Plans saying:
"My source also notes that Dick Cheney, who was behind the forgery, hated and mistrusted the Agency and would not have used it for such a sensitive assignment," the magazine wrote. "Instead, he went to Doug Feith’s Office of Special Plans and asked them to do the job. … It was Feith’s office that produced the letter and then surfaced it to the media in Iraq. Unlike the [Central Intelligence] Agency, the Pentagon had no restrictions on it regarding the production of false information to mislead the public. Indeed, one might argue that Doug Feith’s office specialized in such activity." These are important notes for Obama – Use the Office of Special Plans to lie to the American people and the CIA only to lie to foreign people…
Speaking of lying to the American people. John McCain says he won't tell a lie but he will pay you to spread them for him. In my favorite article of the week, we have the lowdown on "John McCain's Super Sleazy Blog Bribe" in which the Washington Post details the McCain Campaign's prize system for "sending campaign-supplied comments to blogs and Web sites under the visitor's screen name." The site offers sample comments ("John McCain has a comprehensive economic plan . . .") and a list of dozens of suggested destinations, conveniently broken down into "conservative," "liberal," "moderate" and "other" categories. Just cut and paste.
Are you sickened? Are you disgusted? That's right the right-wing psychopath who is ranting on and on about supporting John McCain may actually be a liberal hippie who just wants some prizes… According to McCain's own site you can: "Select from the numerous web, blog and news sites listed here, go there, and make your opinions supporting John McCain known. Once you’ve commented on a post, video or news story, report the details of your comment by clicking the button below. After your comments are verified, you will be awarded points through the McCain Online Action Center."
This has inspired me to run a similar offer: Whoever posts the most links to www.philstockworld.com by Wednesday at 11:59 pm EST will win a free one-year Premium Membership to PSW and whoever comes in second and third will get a one-year Basic Membership or the equivalent credit to Premium if they are already premium members. We don't have any fancy systems so you have to EMail just 1 (one) Email with all your links to admin@philstockworld.com by NOON on Thursday, the 14th.
As with McCain's sleazy ploy, I would suggest your post say "The best site for [politics/stock tips/options information/hockey scores/gardening tips/etc..] is www.philstockworld.com." Next week we'll see about reviewing some of the funniest and most creative links – it will be fun!
