All About the Oil

A free and independent Iraq:

A group of American advisers led by a small State Department team played an integral part in drawing up contracts between the Iraqi government and five major Western oil companies to develop some of the largest fields in Iraq, American officials say.

The disclosure, coming on the eve of the contracts’ announcement, is the first confirmation of direct involvement by the Bush administration in deals to open Iraq’s oil to commercial development and is likely to stoke criticism.

Iraqis are going to love this.

FISA Leadership

The Dodd:



Contact your Senators and talk to them about the need to strip retroactive immunity out of the FISA bill.

War?

Oh yeah, that war.

A suicide bomber struck Thursday inside a municipal building west of Baghdad, killing at least 20 people at a meeting of tribal sheiks opposed to al-Qaida, police said. The U.S. confirmed American casualties but gave no further details.

Another 18 people were killed and about 60 wounded in a car bombing near a government headquarters in the northern city of Mosul, officials said. Thursday's attacks were part of a spike in violence in Iraq after weeks of relative calm.

John McCain's favorite.

Always Winning All the Time!

No news is good news!

THE Iraq war’s defenders like to bash the press for pushing the bad news and ignoring the good. Maybe they’ll be happy to hear that the bad news doesn’t rate anymore. When a bomb killed at least 51 Iraqis at a Baghdad market on Tuesday, ending an extended run of relative calm, only one of the three network newscasts (NBC’s) even bothered to mention it.

The only problem is that no news from Iraq isn’t good news — it’s no news. The night of the Baghdad bombing the CBS war correspondent Lara Logan appeared as Jon Stewart’s guest on “The Daily Show” to lament the vanishing television coverage and the even steeper falloff in viewer interest. “Tell me the last time you saw the body of a dead American soldier,” she said. After pointing out that more soldiers died in Afghanistan than Iraq last month, she asked, “Who’s paying attention to that?”

If it doesn't get ratings, why do consumers need to know? Boring!

Our Punditry Is This Dumb

Bowers:

The long and short of it is that established media punditry has liked McCain more than Obama in the last couple of weeks, but the country disagrees. As such, what we are seeing is the fundamental problem with much election analysis: is the punditry trying to describe what is happening, or are they trying to create the reality themselves? Whenever polls numbers and pundits opinions of the campaign move in opposite directions, the answer is clearly the latter.

Unsurprisingly, Broder is railing about public finance. Heh.

Bad Omens

Republicans' choice to replace Vito Fossella (NY-13) has died:

Frank Powers, a retired Wall Street executive and MTA board member who had been recently chosen to run for Representative Vito Fossella's congressional seat this fall, died yesterday. The 67-year-old apparently died in his sleep, found by his wife Diane, in his Todt Hill home.

Condolences to his friends and family.

House Passes FISA Bill

Steny Hoyer is pathetic:

The U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill on Friday that could shield phone companies that participated in President George W. Bush's warrantless surveillance program begun after the September 11 attacks from billions of dollars in privacy lawsuits.

Drafted by Democratic and Republican negotiators, the White House-backed measure would also overhaul of U.S. spy powers. The Senate is expected to give the bill final approval next week, clearing the way for Bush to sign it into law.

Way to cave. Way to cave.

All About Me

Bush:

Noting that several hundred federal emergency workers are fanning across Iowa, he added: "That ought to help the people in the smaller communities know that somebody is there to listen to them."

I hear he can also cure leprosy by looking at people. Narcissist.

Obama to Opt Out of Public Financing

I get an email alert:

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama announced that he would become the first presidential candidate to forgo public financing of his general election campaign since the system was established three decades ago. Obama’s Republican opponent, John McCain, has been much less successful at raising money and the move sets up the likelihood of a big mismatch in money heading into the fall campaign. Here is the text of Obama’s announcement.

Good call. Time to crush McCain.

War Crimes

Bush Co:

The first extensive medical examinations of former detainees in U.S. military jails offer corroboration for prisoners' claims of physical and psychological abuse at the hands of their American captors, a Boston-based human rights group said in a report released yesterday.

...

In a statement accompanying the report, retired Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba, who led the Army's first official investigation on Abu Ghraib, said the new evidence suggested a "systematic regime of torture" inside U.S.-run detention camps.

The only remaining question is whether they'll be tried for it.