Today’s edition of quick hits. <\/p>\n
* I’ll have a much more detailed report on this<\/a> first thing in the morning: “In the face of mounting controversy over headline-grabbing statements from Pastor John Hagee, CNN has learned presumptive Republican nominee John McCain has decided to reject his endorsement.”<\/p>\n * The news out of China continues to get worse<\/a>: “China said the toll of dead and missing from last week’s powerful earthquake jumped to more than 80,000, while the government appealed Thursday for millions of tents to shelter homeless survivors.”<\/p>\n * Keep an eye on this<\/a>: “At the same time that the House Judiciary Committee voted to issue a subpoena to former presidential adviser Karl Rove today, it released a May 5 letter from the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility to committee Chairman John Conyers (D-MI) disclosing that the OPR is investigating ‘allegations of selective prosecution relating to the prosecutions of Don Siegelman, Georgia Thompson, and Oliver Diaz and Paul Minor.'”<\/p>\n * In light of John McCain’s decision to oppose the bipartisan GI Bill, and his decision not to even show up to vote on troop benefits, Barack Obama took a hard line against McCain<\/a> while speaking on the Senate floor. McCain, in response, went kind of berserk<\/a>.<\/p>\n * I feel like I’ve heard this one<\/a> before: “Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in the war in Iraq, said that he expects this fall to recommend additional cuts in U.S. troop levels there…. He said he didn’t know how large those cuts might be.”<\/p>\n * On a related note, Petraeus isn’t sticking<\/a> to the Bush script on the greatest threats in the Middle East.<\/p>\n * Uh oh<\/a>: “Oil prices leaped above $135 a barrel in overnight trading on Thursday, a new record that underscored the growing pressures that runaway energy prices are placing on some of the biggest names in global industry…. Some investors reacted to a report on Thursday in The Wall Street Journal that the International Energy Agency, an Paris-based policy advisory group for industrialized countries, was concerned about a reduction in the long-term world supply of crude oil.” * I still can’t imagine how Susan Orr<\/a> got the job to oversee federal family planning programs at the Department of Health and Human Services in the first place.<\/p>\n * Oh dear<\/a>: “The U.S. Postal Service purchased more than 30,000 ethanol-capable trucks and minivans from 1999 to 2005, making it the biggest American buyer of alternative-fuel vehicles. Gasoline consumption jumped by more than 1.5 million gallons as a result…. A Postal Service study found the new vehicles got as much as 29 percent fewer miles to the gallon…. ‘You’re getting fewer miles per gallon, and it’s costing us more,’ Walt O’Tormey, the Postal Service’s Washington-based vice president of engineering, said in an interview. The agency may buy electric vehicles instead, he said.” (thanks to libra for the tip)<\/p>\n * More litigation<\/a> in Florida: “Three of Florida’s Democratic delegates filed a federal lawsuit Thursday in an attempt to force the Democratic National Committee to seat Florida’s delegation at the convention.”<\/p>\n * Sounds to me like the wrong broadcaster got canned<\/a>: “Boston-area TV journalist Barry Nolan made some news last month by calling out Bill O’Reilly, who was being honored with a local Emmy, and even invited Keith Olbermann to the ceremony as his date. Well, it didn’t work out so well for Nolan, who placed anti-O’Reilly fliers on tables during the dinner. He just got fired.” <\/p>\n * If you don’t want to get frustrated about bigotry and ignorance in West Virginia, be sure to steer clear of this report<\/a> from the West Virginia NPR affiliate.<\/p>\n * It’s only the Federal Election Commission<\/a> in an election year. Who needs it?<\/p>\n * And finally, even loyal Bushies realize that the president’s “appeasement” talk is nonsense, and they’re ignoring it while shaping administration policy. Many State Department officials “concede that the United States does not hew to one policy on engaging its enemies. ‘I’d rather be right than consistent<\/a>,’ a senior Bush administration official said.”<\/p>\n Anything to add? Consider this an end-of-the-day open thread.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Today’s edition of quick hits. * I’ll have a much more detailed report on this first thing in the morning: “In the face of mounting controversy over headline-grabbing statements from Pastor John Hagee, CNN has learned presumptive Republican nominee John McCain has decided to reject his endorsement.” * The news out of China continues to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15632","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15632","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15632"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15632\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15632"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15632"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15632"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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\n* All of a sudden, Arnold Schwarzenegger is warming up to the idea of gay marriages in California — because it’s likely to be a boon for the state’s economy<\/a>.<\/p>\n