If John McCain thinks that the president should always rubberstamp whatever his generals tell him, then maybe he should drop out and and have Gen. Petraeus run for president instead. If McCain's Iraq policy is going to be totally based on what Petraeus wants, then put the general on the campaign trail to tell Americans what that is.
Seems McCain doesn't pass that commander-in-chief test after all. The president sets the policy, with advice from military leaders. Generals carry out that... Read Full Story
Even Texas Republicans are starting to grumble:
Gov. Rick Perry of Texas is asking the Environmental Protection Agency to temporarily waive regulations requiring the oil industry to blend ever-increasing amounts of ethanol into gasoline. A decision is expected in the next few weeks.
Mr. Perry says the billions of bushels of corn being used to produce all that mandated ethanol would be better suited as livestock feed than as fuel.
Feed prices have soared in the last two years as fuel has... Read Full Story
The McCain campaign got Robert Novak to do their dirty work, trying to steal headlines from Obama's trip, which McCain dare his opponent into taking:
"I got a suggestion from a very senior McCain aide late yesterday afternoon that he was going to announce it this week,'' Novak told Fox News Tuesday. "They didn't want it to come out the way it was going to come out, and they suggested I put it out.
"I then called another senior person who said, 'I can't talk about that, but wouldn't this be a... Read Full Story
A few weeks ago I wrote a column about how the push by oil companies to obtain permission to drill in ANWR and offshore was about tying up leases for the future, not to increase production.
Here is a big piece of evidence to support that view. The Big Five oil companies, who are reporting record-shattering profits, are pouring 55 percent of that money into stock buybacks and dividends, while the amount of money spent on increasing production has stayed virtually unchanged for years.
Hate to... Read Full Story
Nevada Democrats have filed an ethics complaint against Gov. Jim Gibbons for supposedly pressuring the Elko County assessor into granting an agriculture exemption for his property there.
Unfortunately, I think the press is missing the real scandal here.
The facts of the case are that Gibbons bought 40 acres for the express purpose of using it as a retirement residence. Because Nevada tax laws treat residential property different than farmland, Gibbons was hit with a $5k property tax bill... Read Full Story
With the Iraqis now calling for U.S. troops to leave, the Bush-McCain war effort is falling apart.
Even though both Bush and McCain said in the past that we would leave if the Iraqis want us to, they are now furiously trying to find a way out of this political mess.
There is a rather large elephant standing in the room here. So many people believe that Bush-McCain want to stay in Iraq because of oil. That might be partially true, but there is something even bigger at work here.
If America... Read Full Story
The same official who tried to walk back PM Maliki's endorsement of Obama's Iraq pullout plan now says that the government wants U.S. troops out by 2010.
That should put an end to the Bush/McCain spin that Maliki's comments were "misquoted." We now have it on record several times that the Iraqis want us to go home, soon, which matches Obama's plan.
John McCain will have to go find someplace else to fight his 100 years war. Read Full Story
First we have Iraqi PM Maliki endorsing Obama's 16-month pullout plan. The the Bush administration muscled Maliki's people to issue a statement that the PM was "misquoted" or "mistranslated." The funny part was that this sort-of retraction didn't name any specific part of Maliki's interview that was wrong, and the message itself came from CENTCOM. Gee, why would the Iraqi government send out a message through the U.S. Military?
But now we learn that the translator for this interview was... Read Full Story
Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's comments in support of Barack Obama's 16-month withdrawal timetable are bouncing around the net like a superball.
In addition to the previous quotes, try these on for size:
"Whoever is thinking about the shorter term is closer to reality. Artificially extending the stay of U.S. troops would cause problems."
And:
"The Americans have found it difficult to agree on a concrete timetable for the exit because it seems like an admission of defeat to them. But... Read Full Story
