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Tuesday’s Mini-Report

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Today’s edition of quick hits.

* Violence erupts near Kabul: “In unusually large and well-coordinated operations in eastern Afghanistan Monday , Taliban fighters killed 10 French soldiers and at least six suicide bombers attacked a base of NATO alliance troops, NATO and Afghan officials said Tuesday. The fighting with the French began late Monday afternoon when dozens of insurgents ambushed a French-led patrol near the town of Sarobi about 40 miles east of Kabul, according to NATO officials. Shortly after the ambush, a quick reaction force of NATO and Afghan soldiers and air support was sent to reinforce the French patrol.”

* Inflation: “Wholesale inflation surged in July

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, leaving prices for the past year rising at the fastest pace in 27 years, according to government data released Tuesday. The Labor Department reported that wholesale prices shot up 1.2 percent in July, pushed higher by rising costs for energy, motor vehicles and other products. The increase was more than twice the 0.5 percent gain that economists expected.”

* It sounds like Rep. Vern Buchanan (R-Fla.) is going to need a good lawyer.

* Harriet Miers has landed on her feet — she’s a lobbyist for Pakistan.

* Bush’s presidency may be ending soon, but the Hackocracy isn’t quite finished: “F. Chase Hutto III, a senior aide to Vice President Dick Cheney with a long history of promoting anti-environmental regulation policy, is a top choice for a post at the Energy Department, the Washington Post reports today.”

* A second stimulus package? Expect movement in a few weeks.

* Hmm: “Ralph Reed was a no-show at a fund-raiser for John McCain Monday evening, following nearly a week of considerable drama surrounding his involvement in the senator’s campaign…. ‘Faced with the embarrassing prospect of holding a fundraiser with one of Jack Abramoff’s closest associates, the McCain campaign scrambled today scratch Ralph Reed from tonight’s program,’ Obama spokesman Tommy Vietor said in a statement. ‘The real question isn’t why Reed isn’t showing up, but why a so-called reformer would invite him at all.'”

* Here, in a nutshell, is one of the more striking problems with our political system: “Joe Morton of Ohio

, who served as a Marine in the Korean War, admitted that he had other concerns about Obama, repeating the false rumor that the Illinois Democrat is a Muslim. Told that Obama, a Christian, isn’t Muslim, Morton said, ‘but his father was.’ Told that Obama grew up hardly knowing his father, Morton shrugged and said, ‘something like that.'”

* Big Oil spent $83 million last year on lobbying, an all-time record. The industry has already spent $55 million this year and is on pace to top last year.

* In his latest “Special Comment,” Keith Olbermann had some very good advice for John McCain: “Grow up.”

* Anytime I see the intersection of public policy and Monty Python

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, I’m happy.

* Fox News’ Gretchen Carlson insists that McCain “doesn’t like to talk about when he was a POW.” Does Carlson watch her own network?

* Sure enough, the NYT had to run another correction for a Bill Kristol error.

* Typo of the Day, from the AP’s Nedra Pickler: “Less traditional choices mentioned [for McCain’s running mate search] include … Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman

, the Democratic vice presidential prick in 2000 who now is an independent.”

Anything to add? Consider this an end-of-the-day open thread.

Comments

  • beep52

    says:

    Forgive me, Noah@1, for adding this re and Hillary fundraising at the convention…

    Hillary Clinton has announced she will award one lucky donor a trip to the convention – with her. And in case that’s not incentive enough, Bill Clinton sent an e-mail to potential contributors promising a memorable week with his wife.

    (Bites tongue. Again and again and…)

  • CJ

    says:

    The real question isn’t why Reed isn’t showing up, but why a so-called reformer would invite him at all.

    Because McCain thought that he could get away with it.

  • FreeProton

    says:

    “…repeating the false rumor that the Illinois Democrat is a Muslim. Told that Obama, a Christian, isn’t Muslim, Morton said, ‘but his father was.’ Told that Obama grew up hardly knowing his father, Morton shrugged and said, ’something like that.’”

    Muslims are the new Jews, ladies and gentlemen. Next, it’ll be enough to say: “Ya know, I heard from someone who heard that Obama passed a Muslim on a street and DIDN’T FROWN AT HIM! He’s a Muslim-lover. We hates him forever.”

    Gah.

  • Chopin

    says:

    beep52, what wasn’t mentioned was that second prize was 2 memorable weeks with Ms Clinton with a side of prick Lieberman.

  • N.Wells

    says:

    From the link on Buchanan First elected to Congress in 2006 by only 369 votes after a controversial recount, Buchanan is currently in a tight rematch with Democrat Christine Jennings. But this former co-chair of the Republican National Finance Committee and top fundraiser for Jeb Bush and Senator Mel Martinez may find his career derailed by seven civil suits that were filed against him, his executives, and his dealerships over the past three months in Sarasota County and Pasco County courts.

    The explosive allegations indicate that Buchanan and his dealership employees may have taken part in conspiracy, fraud, and retaliatory personnel actions. The plaintiffs, mainly former employees, describe incidents in which Buchanan and his staff appear to have violated campaign finance laws, hired undocumented workers, bilked customers, threatened employees, sent fraudulent information to banks, and misappropriated funds.

    With a background like that, I’d say his evolution from scummy automobile salesman to Republican politician was inevitable. It’s like pre-adaptation. I hope those 369 voters are very proud of themselves.

    Re Joe Morton of Ohio Told that Obama grew up hardly knowing his father, Morton shrugged and said, ’something like that.’” My suspicion is that translates to “he’s black, and I’m not going to vote for him, but I’m going to find some other excuse for my vote. Doesn’t much matter what, though.”

  • jhm

    says:

    In re Hon. Sen. McCain’s muddled speech about defining “rich,” there was a letter to the editor in the FT which is apropos:

    What about Europe’s internal peace, strong democracies, social market systems that avoid a US-style underclass, strong scientific and technological capacity, high educational attainments, generosity in aid given to the low-income world compared with aid given by other high-income countries, a proclivity to negotiate rather than to bomb, the highest life expectancy and lowest child mortality of any world region, impressive commitments to alternative energy and energy efficiency, high environmental awareness, ample leisure time for the broad population, and the stabilisation of the overall population, not to mention very high levels of self-reported life satisfaction in world surveys?

    It’s a cliché, but no less true for it, that the focus on gross national product growth in rich countries blinds us much more than it illuminates what is important in economic performance and the quality of life.

    If Senator McCain believes what he says, then he should not be so hung up on Club for Growth palaver, and focus on what he claims would make our country truly richer.

  • jhm

    says:

    Also in the FT was a follow up on the possible consequences of the recent court decision invalidating cap and trade controls for NOx and SOx:

    For all the time and money spent on climate change seminars, green-themed corporate graphics, and oil company adverts with loving depictions of windmills and meadows, few seem to have taken notice of a US Court of Appeals’ July 11 drive-by slaughter of the Clean Air Interstate Rule. CAIR is, sorry, was, the Environmental Protection Agency’s cap-and-trade programme for electric utilities’ emission allowances for sulphurous and nitrous oxides.

    The decision to bust a cap on cap-and-trade was issued without the usual warnings that precede the publication of a ruling. For once, utilities and environmentalists were united, if only by their shock at the court’s invalidation of what had become a significant market.

    […]

    “It is a fair reading of the decision that a new law is necessary. There may be sufficient support in Congress for a new law in 2009, and we believe it should include carbon dioxide in the same legislation. You do not want to have stranded investments from poorly conceived pollution control that would be superseded by greenhouse gas [controls].”

    Good luck. The last attempt at controlling greenhouse gas emissions through congressional action came this year. While that proposed law died tangled in procedural barbed wire, even an impressive set of Democratic victories this fall would seem unlikely to provide enough votes for CO2 controls.

    This might be music to the ears of Hon. Sen. McCain, seeing as he thought that thers was no cap in cap and trade (and also there might be some ‘strict constructionist’ angle here as well), but it is certainly bad news for the prospects of curbing greenhouse gas emissions.

    For the charm, I’ll link to one other FT piece; an editorial musing on the US presidential campaign and the paradox, if not the hypocrisy, of Americans and our candidates:

    The problem is that climate change, economic stability and geopolitics are not the factors that have pushed energy to the fore. The price of petrol at the pump – which one can describe, without exaggeration, as a national obsession – gets the credit for this. At $4 a US gallon, less than half of what one pays in the UK, the distress is extreme. The candidates therefore have to deal with contradictory public sentiments. Voters genuinely want the country to curb its carbon emissions and moderate its addiction to imported oil, but more than that – much more than that – they also want cheap petrol. Presidential candidates are understandably inclined to tell voters they can have everything they want, even when, as in this case, they cannot.

    Expensive oil and petrol are effective suppressants of America’s gluttonous appetite for conventional fuels. They spur the search for low- or zero-carbon alternatives, and focus minds on conservation. To the astonishment of many US analysts, the recent rise in oil prices has abruptly shifted demand from the colossal vehicles deployed as urban runabouts to cars with as few as four cylinders. Remarkably, people are also driving less. Prices work. No plan to curb carbon emissions or reduce US dependence on foreign oil can hope to succeed if oil and petrol stay as cheap as Americans think nature intended. Any plan implying otherwise is a confidence trick.

    Both candidates, especially Mr McCain, have seized on the price of petrol as a problem in need of a solution. They inveigh against speculators who conspired to drive prices up, though both know that speculation has played but a small part. They also promise relief of one sort or another. Mr McCain has proposed an absurd petrol tax “holiday”. Mr Obama offers income tax rebates, to be financed by a windfall profits tax on US oil companies – thus stirring anti-business additive into the blend. Crucially, neither can give their proposals for carbon cap-and-trade the attention they deserve, because a result of those regimes, if they were to be effective, would be dearer carbon-based fuels, including petrol.

    Mr McCain, sensing political advantage, is handily out-pandering Mr Obama and has come close to reorganising his entire campaign around an urgent call for new offshore drilling: “We need to drill here and we need to drill now,” he says. (What next? “We will drill on the beaches, we will drill in fields, in streets and on the hills”?) New exploration might very well be desirable, subject to proper environmental safeguards, since it makes sense to extract a valuable resource and diversify energy supplies further. But for years it would yield no extra production and even in the long term would have little or no effect on oil prices. The idea is popular, but for the wrong reason.

  • doubtful

    says:

    It’s like liberal musical chairs today. Everybody gets a new gig. You get a new gig, you get a new gig! You all get a new gig!

    Can’t wait to see Rachel on MSNBC.

  • SF

    says:

    Re: Wee Willy Kristol — not that I’m a fan of NYT establishment bias (and BTW, for newshounds, the new John Darnton mystery, “Black and White and Dead All Over,” set in a fictional NYT, is hilarious, features the only suicide note I’ve ever read that made me laugh out loud, and some really amazing demises) — but perhaps K. is there simply to showcase the transparent inanities of neo-con-pseudothink.

    Re: Pickler’s “typo” — as far as I can tell, given her far right biases, the most accurate and fair reporting she’s ever done.

  • Keori

    says:

    TCG @3 and all those who wish to keep up on LGBT political issues from medical coverage to marriage to DADT and beyond:

    Please visit http://www.pamshouseblend.com. Pam Spaulding has been covering these issues for several years, and is often the only blog this side of the ‘sphere to do so. She and her crew of Baristas have been granted official press credentials to cover the DNC. The news on the CA Supreme Court ruling on freedom-of-conscience vs anti-discrimination laws was on her website last night.

    That said, I have to add that we don’t see Hindus taking a job at McDonalds and then claiming religious exemption from flipping hamburgers. If your religion is at odds with your job, you have the right to not perform those duties. If a reasonable accomodation cannot be made, whether for logistical or legal reasons, you have the responsibility to find another line of work. It’s really that simple.

  • Nanuq

    says:

    What about Europe’s internal peace, strong democracies, social market systems that avoid a US-style underclass … (Quoted in #10)

    Um, not quite on the underclass comment from Prof Jeffrey D. Sachs on FT.com. What short memories we have! I’m not arguing Sachs’ main point, which is that Europe is prosperous and not in decline. But suggesting that Europe as a whole has no underclass is disingenuous. What about the riots in France just a year or so ago? One of the many issues there was that there was no meaningful work for an entire subclass of Muslim youth. In the 1970s, in Germany I saw for myself the Turkish men stalking the streets looking for jobs when the work they had been allowed into the country to do as “guest workers” dried up. No underclass? Heh.

  • Capt Kirk

    says:

    Have they got that oil rig up on the White House lawn yet? Maybe there’s oil in Sedona, let’s drillit!

    At the ranch in Crawford they’ve installed pop up oil rigs to launch themselves into pumping action the moment W arrives back at the ranch to push the button. The cameras are ready because it will be a little reenactment of James Dean in Giant to kick off the retirement. A little Bush family gesture, I’m sure.

    He wasn’t just cutting brush…serious oil man scoutin’.

  • JS

    says:

    I just watched Sarkozy, pres of France on BBC, when the 10 French soldiers were killed in Kabul, he left to go to Afghanistan, he went to the chapel where the flag draped coffins were, to pay his respects. What a difference – the moron we have in the White House has our soldiers shipped home as cargo, never to be seen or appreciated, has he ever attended a military funeral?.