"This is not a time for greed!"

Senator Ted Kennedy said this on Meet the Press on Sunday.
But...don't worry, President Bush is on it! (yeah, right)

According to the New York Times, the GOPs effort isn't working too well. (My comments are in italics)

"Democrats quickly dismissed the new Republican approach [the inclusion of the drilling in ANWR in the bill] as a backdoor effort to overcome deep-seated opposition to drilling in the Arctic refuge.
"Americans are struggling to pay the rising cost of gas," said Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic leader, "and they are not interested in handouts to help oil companies make more money by letting them drill in wildlife refuges." Amen to that!

"Democrats pressed their own ideas, including a proposal by Senator Robert Menendez, Democrat of New Jersey, for a 60-day suspension on the 18.4-cent-per-gallon federal tax on gasoline and 24-cent diesel tax." There's an idea...cut out the money going into Bush and Cheney and all their rich friends pockets...oops did i say that? I meant taxes.

"Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, tied up the Senate for almost five hours on Thursday in an effort to force a vote on his proposal to prohibit oil companies from escaping federal royalties for drilling on public lands when oil prices exceeded $55 per barrel. (Prices recently rose above $75 a barrel.) But Republicans blocked that effort." I wonder why they blocked that effort... Does it have anything to do with their ties to the oil company execs??

"Democrats say they believe that the public unhappiness will play into their efforts to regain control of the House and Senate this fall as they try to convince voters of the close ties between Republicans and oil companies and remind voters of industry-friendly legislation advocated by Republicans."

I hope this becomes a major issue for Republicans and I hope that Democrats can address it in the right way so that people go to the polls thinking "Do I want my gas prices as high as they are now?" and when they answer no...then they vote Democrat. Hopefully this will add to the list of things going wrong for Republicans and will cost them the 2006 elections.

"The Central Intelligence Agency has dismissed a senior career officer for disclosing classified information to reporters, including material for Pulitzer Prize-winning articles in The Washington Post about the agency's secret overseas prisons for terror suspects, intelligence officials said Friday. "

Later on in the article, it discussed the relationship between this leak and the Valerie Plame leak.

"One veteran said the firing would not be well-received coming so soon after the disclosure of grand jury testimony by Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff that President Bush in 2003 approved the leak of portions of a secret national intelligence estimate on Iraqi weapons.

'"It's a terrible situation when the president approves the leak of a highly classified N.I.E., and people at the agency see management as so disastrous that they feel compelled to talk to the press,' said one former C.I.A. officer with extensive overseas experience.

"Paul R. Pillar, who was the agency's senior analyst for the Middle East until he retired late last year, said: 'Classified information is classified information. It's not to be leaked. It's not to be divulged.' He has recently criticized the Bush administration's handling of prewar intelligence about Saddam Hussein's unconventional weapons programs. "

Pillar is right. Classified information shouldn't be leaked. Why isn't this same standard held for George W. Bush?? I even feel that the information about the secret prisons should have been leaked. What they were doing wasn't right! However, leaking a C.I.A. operatives name to get back at her husband is definately not right. And if Mary McCarthy had to pay for it by being dismissed, shouldn't George W. Bush?

This cartoon is kind of old, but still applicable.

I found this petition opposing an attack on Iran. Please contribute your name and help their effort. here.

This is a very interesting article I found in The New York Times from April 10.

Some chilling statistics:


taken from: The New York Times

The statistics are even more striking among West Point graduates. After five years the retention rate of students in:
class of 2004 - 78.1 percent
class of 2005 - 65.8 precent
So, last year the Army lost more than a third (34.2 percent) of officers as they completed their initial five year commitment.

Later in the article it is stated that they made a new program that managed to recruit more people. But still, this is very scary. I don't blame these officers for quitting. However, this means that troops aren't being trained in America at the rate that we think they are. The 133,000 troops that are over in Iraq are going to have to be sent home at some point. Although I think we should get our troops home, we can't really do that right now. We are too far into this conflict and can't just pull out suddenly. Hopefully we will get out soon and we won't need these officers that are being trained right now. However, if we stay in Iraq, the officers over there will want to come home and we will have no one to fill their spots.

Another Setback in Iraq

Today, a parliamentry session was postponed after the Shiites, Sunnis, and Kurds failed to agree on their candidates for prime minister, president, and five other top posts. After the uncertainty over the Shiite prime minister, al-Jaafari, new candidates were going to be picked by the Shiites, Sunnis, and Kurds. The parliament was then going to vote for the person to fill the positions. However, the parties failed to pick their candidates in time.

Before this announcement, Shiite official Hussain al-Shahristani told Sunni and Kurdish leaders that his bloc, which controls 130 of the 275 parliament seats, would decide what to do about al-Jaafari “within the coming two days”. Majority Shiites have been giving similar assurances for the past two weeks, and it is unclear how soon the issue will be settled. (according to MSNBC)

The fight over al-Jaafari has heightened friction among the rival parties, raising the deadlock over the other top jobs.

The death toll for this month is already 47, compared with 31 for all of March.

The situation in Iraq is getting worse and worse. More and more Americans are dying. American officials believe "the best way to stem the violence is for the Iraqis to establish a government comprising Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds, paving the way for the United States to start withdrawing its 133,000 troops". This setback is just the latest of many. And I'm afraid that it'll be a long time before American troops are withdrawn. It doesn't seem like the sectarian violence is going to end any time soon, and forming a government seems nearly impossible.

McCain

"Blunt truth never lasts long. John McCain, for example, has become a born-again Bushophile, and that was the end of him as an honest, independent voice." --James Pinkerton, columnist who worked for former President Bush

I'm afraid this is very true. John McCain was a man who I trusted and who I believed that even if he became president, he wouldn't sell himself out, and he'd make decisions based on the good of the country. Not based on his own interests. I'm not so sure about this anymore. As this quote says, McCain is leaning toward Bush's side. When many Republicans are deserting Bush because of his falling popularity, McCain is standing right there next to him. I suspect that McCain is doing this to get the Republican nomination for president in '08 however, I think he is going against what he truly believes. And I'm not sure that I trust him anymore. When questioned about this on Meet the Press with Tim Russert, he just flip-flopped and sounded like a typical Republican, not the John McCain he was a few years ago. He even said that he was with the president shortly after what Bush did to him for the Republican nomination for president in 2000: criticizing his war record. Frankly, I don't think that the Republican nomination is worth this much. McCain shoudl be true to who he is, because the way he's going, he's losing the Democratic support that he had, and even losing Republicans who are trying to back away from Bush and his low approval rating.


perkel.com