Light, sweet, delicious crude
Oil Industry Leans Toward McCain, But Big Producers Favor Obama
Much has been made of Barack Obama's TV ad this week that accuses John McCain of being "in the pocket" of the oil industry, and yesterday the Democratic Party launched a website pairing McCain and Exxon Mobil as running-mates. While McCain has raised considerably more money from this unpopular industry, CRP was surprised to notice that it's actually Obama who has received more from the pockets of employees at several of Big Oil's biggest and most recognizable companies. Tallying contributions by employees in the industry and their families, we found that Exxon, Chevron and BP have all contributed more money to Obama than to McCain.
Through June, Exxon employees have given Obama $42,100 to McCain's $35,166. Chevron favors Obama $35,157 to $28,500, and Obama edges out McCain with BP $16,046 vs. $11,500. McCain leads the money race with nearly every other top giver in the oil and gas industry, though -- Koch Industries, Valero, Marathon Oil, Occidental Petroleum, ConocoPhillips, the list goes on. (You can see detail on all these companies in the spreadsheet linked below.) McCain also has a big edge with Hess Corp. -- $91,000 to Obama's $8,000 -- which has gotten some attention. And, overall, McCain's campaign has gotten three times more money from the industry than Obama's has -- $1.3 million compared to about $394,000.
Comparing Obama's and McCain's financial ties to the oil industry, there's no question that McCain has benefited more from the industry's contributions, just as his Republican Party has for years and years. But Obama's edge with the oil producers Americans know best -- and might be cursing most these days -- makes it harder for him to continue to tar McCain as the industry's darling. Still, this chart shows vividly how the industry's support for McCain's candidacy has surged in the last few months. It's been pointed out that giving shot up after the presumptive Republican nominee announced his support for offshore drilling, but you'll see that the trend started months before that.
So, has oil money gushed toward McCain because he recently became a supporter of offshore drilling, or is the industry giving to him now because other Republican candidates, whom the industry preferred, dropped out? Ask your neighborhood oil executive, who may turn out to be an Obama supporter.
Source
Atlantic Scores Internal Clinton Campaign Emails
Just when you thought everyone had moved on... former advisers to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton are in a tizzy over an upcoming piece in the Atlantic Monthly that chronicles the inner workings of the now-defunct campaign. Of particular concern are nearly 200 internal memos that the author, Josh Green, obtained -- 130 or so of which he plans to scan in and post online. When the piece is published sometime next week, readers will be able to scroll through the memos, from senior strategists such as Mark Penn, Harold Ickes and Geoff Garin, and see what exactly was going on inside the infamously fractured Clinton organization. That has some former team members in a panic. And we thought the Abramoff e-mails were fun....
Source
Oil falls as low as $118 on demand concerns
Oil prices kept falling Tuesday, sinking as low as $118 a barrel on growing concerns that a U.S. economic slowdown and high energy costs are curbing consumer demand for gasoline and other petroleum products.
Crude's decline is giving Americans more relief at the pump. A gallon of regular gasoline on average fell another penny overnight to $3.871, according to auto club AAA, the Oil Price Information Service and Wright Express. Gas prices have fallen four straight weeks for the first time in December; prices are off 5.9 percent from their July high as U.S. motorists cut back on their driving to save money.
A day after plunging as much as $5 a barrel in a dramatic sell-off, crude continued its downward trend Tuesday as traders sold oil contracts on the belief that prices are still too high in relation to demand and have further room to fall.
Light, sweet crude for September delivery lost $1.86 to trade at $119.55 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, after earlier falling to $118, the lowest level since May 5.
Crude has now fallen more than $25 since reaching a trading high of $147.27 on July 11.
"The market psychology has finally shifted," said Stephen Schork, an analyst and trader in Villanova, Pa., adding that "$4-a-gallon gasoline has clearly killed demand."
On Monday, the Commerce Department said consumer spending after adjusting for inflation fell 0.2 percent in June - the biggest drop since February - as shoppers dealt with higher prices for gasoline, food and other items. Oil prices also fell after Tropical Storm Edouard did not severely disrupt oil and natural gas output in the Gulf of Mexico.
The dollar's gains against the euro also contributed to oil's decline Tuesday. The euro fell to $1.5467 from the $1.5587 it bought late in New York trading Monday, making oil and other commodities less attractive to investors seeking a hedge against inflation and dollar weakness.
Meanwhile, investors ignored continued tension over Iran's nuclear program. Representatives of the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council and Germany agreed Monday to seek new sanctions against Iran after the country failed to meet a weekend deadline to respond to an offer intended to defuse the dispute, State Department spokesman Gonzalo Gallegos said.
Also Monday, Iran announced that it has tested a new weapon capable of sinking ships nearly 200 miles away, and Tehran reiterated threats to close a strategic waterway at the mouth of the Gulf if attacked. Up to 40 percent of the world's oil passes through the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow passage along Iran's southern coast, and any move by Iran to close it to tanker traffic would send oil prices skyrocketing.
In other Nymex trading, heating oil futures fell 3.55 cents to $3.3146 a gallon, while gasoline prices dropped 4.67 cents to $2.9535 a gallon. In London, September Brent crude was down $2.48 to $118.20 a barrel on the ICE Futures exchange.
Natural gas futures rose 9.9 cents to $8.825 per 1,000 cubic feet. On Monday, natural gas plunged 66.3 cents, or 7 percent, to $8.726 per 1,000 cubic feet, its lowest level in nearly six months. Prices have closed lower in eight of the last 11 sessions and have dropped 36 percent from the contract's all-time trading high of $13.752, reached July 2.
The pullback is double the size of crude's recent slide. That has fed speculation on Wall Street that a large hedge fund or something like it may be near collapse and has dumped a vast amount of natural gas contracts to free up cash. Last month, SemGroup LP, based in Tulsa, Okla., folded after losing $2.4 billion in bad bets on oil futures. SemGroup's collapse came amid a massive sell off in the oil market.
"Anytime you get that kind of violent price action in a short amount of time, it reeks of someone big being in trouble," Schork said.
Source
Conservatives Try To Take Credit For Drop In Gas Prices: ‘The Market Is Responding’ To Our Political Stunts
House conservatives, engaging in a third day of political stunts on the floor of the House, are now claiming that gas prices across the nation have dropped in response to their theatrics calling for a vote on offshore oil drilling. “I think the market is responding to the fact that we are here talking,” said Rep. John Shadegg (R-AZ) in a GOP press conference today.
Shadegg claimed that “gas prices have gone down” because of the “pressure” coming from pro-drilling conservatives:
“Gas prices have gone down, and they’ve gone down in part because the market is realizing that this kind of pressure from the Congress may actually cause a change in American policy,” said Rep. John Shadegg (R-Ariz.), one of the ringleaders of the protest demanding that Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) bring Congress back to vote on oil exploration measures.
But actual experts don’t believe the political stunts have anything to do with the drop in prices. In fact, oil and gas prices are down because of simple economics as the high energy prices and the weak economy are “curbing consumer demand” for gas:
Oil prices kept falling Tuesday, sinking as low as $118 a barrel on growing concerns that a U.S. economic slowdown and high energy costs are curbing consumer demand for gasoline and other petroleum products
One analyst told the Los Angeles Times that demand has “finally hit a wall” while another put it more bluntly to the AP: “$4-a-gallon gasoline has clearly killed demand.” As evidence of this decreased demand, the Transportation Department recently reported that Americans drove nearly 10 billion fewer miles in May 2008 than May 2007.
Conservatives have previously tried to give credit for lower prices to President Bush’s call for offshore drilling, but even the White House rejected that logic. Though they’re crediting their theatrics for the drop in prices, The Hill reports that the conservatives refused to “answer questions about whether they would take the blame if gas prices go up again.”
Source
New evidence suggests Ron Suskind is right
What was an Iraqi politician doing at CIA headquarters just days before he distributed a fake memo incriminating Saddam Hussein in 9/11?
If Ron Suskind's sensational charge that the White House and CIA colluded in forging evidence to justify the Iraq invasion isn't proved conclusively in his new book, "The Way of the World," then the sorry record of the Bush administration offers no basis to dismiss his allegation. Setting aside the relative credibility of the author and the government, the relevant question is whether the available facts demand a full investigation by a congressional committee, with testimony under oath.
When we look back at the events surrounding the emergence of the faked letter that is at the center of this controversy, a strong circumstantial case certainly can be made in support of Suskind's story.
That story begins during the final weeks of 2003, when everyone in the White House was suffering severe embarrassment over both the origins and the consequences of the invasion of Iraq. No weapons of mass destruction had been found in Iraq. No evidence of significant connections between Saddam Hussein's regime and the al-Qaida terrorist organization had been discovered there either. Nothing in this costly misadventure was turning out as advertised by the Bush administration.
According to Suskind, the administration's highest officials -- presumably meaning President Bush and Vice President Cheney -- solved this problem by ordering the CIA to manufacture a document "proving" that Saddam had indeed been trying to build nuclear weapons and that he was also working with al-Qaida. The reported product of that order was a fake memorandum from Tahir Jalil Habbush, then chief of Saddam's intelligence service, to the dictator himself, dated July 1, 2001. The memo not only explicitly confirmed that 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta had received training in Baghdad for "attacking the targets that we have agreed to destroy" but also carefully noted the arrival of a "shipment" from Niger via Libya, presumably of uranium yellowcake, the sole export of that impoverished African country.
Very incriminating, very convenient and not very believable. Indeed, it may be hard to imagine that even the CIA at its bumbling worst would concoct such a blatant counterfeit. But there are a few reasons to believe that, too.
On Dec. 14, 2003, the Sunday Telegraph hyped the phony Habbush memo as a front-page exclusive over the byline of Con Coughlin, the paper's foreign editor and chief Mideast correspondent, who has earned a reputation for promoting neoconservative claptrap. As I explained in a Salon blog post on Dec. 18, the story's sudden appearance in London was the harbinger of a disinformation campaign that quickly blew back to the United States -- where it was cited by William Safire on the New York Times Op-Ed page. Ignoring the bizarre Niger yellowcake reference, which practically screamed bullshit, Safire seized on Coughlin's story as proof of his own cherished theory about Saddam's sponsorship of 9/11.
Soon enough, however, the Habbush memo was discredited in Newsweek and elsewhere as a forgery for many reasons, notably including its contradiction of established facts concerning Atta's travels during 2001.
But the credulous Telegraph coverage is still significant now, because Coughlin identified the source of his amazing scoop as Ayad Allawi. For those who have forgotten the ambitious Allawi, he is a former Baathist who rebelled against Saddam, formed the Iraqi National Accord movement to fight the dictator, and was appointed to Iraq's interim Governing Council by the U.S. occupation authorities after the invasion.
Although Coughlin quoted Allawi at some length, neither he nor his source revealed how the Habbush memo had fallen into the hands of the Iraqi politician. But the Safire column made an allusion that now seems crucial, describing Allawi as "an Iraqi leader long considered reliable by intelligence agencies."
Specifically, Allawi was a longtime asset of the Central Intelligence Agency, which had funded his struggle against Saddam for years prior to the invasion. His CIA sponsorship is noted in nearly every news article about Allawi, usually contrasted with the Pentagon sponsorship of his political rival, Ahmed Chalabi, the infamous fabricator of WMD intelligence (and suspected double agent for Iran).
Obviously, Allawi's relationship with the CIA is worth reconsidering today in light of the charges in Suskind's book, even though by itself that relationship proves nothing. There is more, however.
On Dec. 11, 2003 -- three days before the Telegraph launched its "exclusive" on the Habbush memo -- the Washington Post published an article by Dana Priest and Robin Wright headlined "Iraq Spy Service Planned by U.S. to Stem Attacks." Buried inside on Page A41, their story outlined the CIA's efforts to create a new Iraqi intelligence agency:
"The new service will be trained, financed and equipped largely by the CIA with help from Jordan. Initially the agency will be headed by Iraqi Interior Minister Nouri Badran, a secular Shiite and activist in the Jordan-based Iraqi National Accord, a former exile group that includes former Baath Party military and intelligence officials.
"Badran and Ayad Allawi, leader of the INA, are spending much of this week at CIA headquarters in Langley to work out the details of the new program. Both men have worked closely with the CIA over the past decade in unsuccessful efforts to incite coups against Saddam Hussein." (The Web link to the full story is broken but it can be found on Nexis.)
So Allawi was at the CIA during the week before Coughlin got that wonderful scoop. That may not be proof of anything, either, but a picture is beginning to form.
That picture becomes sharper in the months that followed Allawi's release of the Habbush forgery, when he suddenly returned to favor in Baghdad and eclipsed Chalabi, at least for a while. Five months later, in May 2004, the Iraqi Governing Council elected Allawi as his country's interim prime minister, reportedly under pressure from the American authorities. Combining subservience to the occupiers with iron-fisted tactics, he quickly squandered any popularity he might have enjoyed, and his INA party placed a humiliating third in the 2005 national elections.
That was the end of Allawi as a politician, yet perhaps he had already served his purpose. And it might be very interesting to hear what he would say today about the Habbush forgery -- and his broader relationship to the CIA and the Bush White House -- especially if he were to tell his story in a congressional hearing.
Until then there is much more to learn from Suskind's reporting, including new evidence that Bush and other officials knew there were no WMD in Iraq. Read an excerpt from "The Way of the World" here (where you can also sign up to receive a copy for $1 from Progressive Book Club, which happens to be run by my wife, Elizabeth Wagley).
Source
Introductions
by Scott Kleeb
Tomorrow night, as Nebraskan families sit down to watch the opening ceremonies of the Olympics, my campaign is going to launch the first ad of the Senate general election cycle in homes across the state.
Significantly, we are going up on TV before my opponent. We will have the airwaves to ourselves, and we've crafted an ad to take advantage of the moment. This ad, called "Future," will introduce me to Nebraskans as a father and a candidate for United States Senate...
Introductions are as essential in life as they are in politics. They can be as simple as a handshake and a how-do, or as elaborately crafted as a policy brief or a power-point-presentation.
When I first introduced myself to the netroots three years ago, I was running for Congress in Nebraska's 3rd Congressional District. As I criss-crossed that district in my pick-up truck, I was able to introduce myself to Nebraskans where they lived. In small towns across Nebraska's west, people learned my name, my ideas and my character. They took the measure of me as a candidate.
As I run for the United States Senate this year I'm bringing my message to the entire state of Nebraska. In doing so, I'm introducing myself in places like Lincoln and Norfolk and Omaha, big cities and towns across the eastern part of my state where people don't know me as well as out west.
This is our answer to that:
Click to viewThe netroots understands the power of introductions. Candidates routinely come here to introduce themselves to readers and activists across the nation. What I'm asking tonight is if you can help me introduce myself to Nebraskans in their homes across my entire state.
We've set an ambitious goal of raising $15,000 to get this ad out across Nebraska. Fortunately, a media dollar goes further in Nebraska than it does in other states. Already, 73 generous donors have contributed over $5,000 to this effort.
We all know that winning this election will take more than a handshake and a how-do. It will take more than the aggressive listening tour that has taken me across the entire state. Winning this election will also take a savvy media strategy that gets my name, my character and my ideas before the voters in every town and city of my state.
You can help with that tonight with donations large or small. In fact, I'm sharing this video with you because so many of you have helped in the past.
If you can, please contribute to this effort.
Thank you,
Scott Kleeb
Source
Obama Camp To Hit McCain Hard In Ohio On Job-Killing Deal
The Obama campaign signaled today that they'll be making a major issue of job losses in the big swing state of Ohio -- and aggressively tying John McCain and his campaign manager Rick Davis directly to the problems hurting voters there.
Earlier today the Obama campaign released a radio ad to run in the Cincinnati area, regarding the closure of a DHL facility in Wilmington. "It was McCain who used his influence in the Senate to help foreign-owned DHL buy a U.S. company and gain control over the jobs that are now on the chopping block in Ohio," the ad said.
The issue at hand involves Davis' work back in 2003, when he successfully lobbied Congress -- winning McCain's support -- to approve a buyout of Airborne Express by DHL. Five years later, DHL is planning to shut down the old Airborne Express hub in Wilmington, which would lead to the loss of 8,000 jobs.
On a conference call with reporters earlier today, Obama campaign manager David Plouffe made it clear that he thinks this issue will be haunting McCain's efforts to win this state: "His appearances in Ohio were completely overshadowed by this. And by November 4 in the Cincinnati and Dayton markets this is something that is going to be known by every voter in this area."
Plouffe also sees an opening to chip away at John McCain's clean image. "He was there a month ago in this community and was asked a question about this DHL issue and did not say one word about his role in this or the role of his campaign manager," Plouffe said. "That is the furthest thing from straight talk that we can imagine."
The McCain campaign has been trying to portray Obama as "grand" and out of touch with working folks because he's a "celebrity." The Obama campaign has its response: McCain's own campaign manager profited directly off lobbying that led to a job-killing deal in your state. Which will carry the day?
Source
How Would McCain Mediate A Russia-Georgia Conflict?
Russia’s invasion of Georgia today raises some questions about how a McCain administration might deal with a crisis like this.
McCain’s main foreign policy adviser and spokesperson, Randy Scheunemann, is a former registered lobbyist for the Republic of Georgia. Back in April, in an interview with Radio Free Europe, Scheunemann took a strongly pro-Georgia anti-Russia line, insisting that the United States should move forward with missile defense in Poland and the Czech Republic, as well as supporting the NATO membership of Ukraine and Georgia, regardless of the negative consequences that these policies would likely have for U.S.-Russia relations.
Given McCain’s provocative statements regarding Russia, it’s clear that he shares Scheunemann’s hardline views on the subject. As we wrote last month, this has troubling implications for the prospect of Russia’s essential cooperation in dealing with the Iranian nuclear program. But is also raises the question of how a McCain administration - staffed by committed Georgian partisans like Randy Scheunemann - could conceivably be seen as an honest broker for dealing with the growing crisis between Russia and Georgia?
UPDATE: The McCain campaign issued a statement calling on Russia to “immediately and unconditionally cease its military operations and withdraw all forces from sovereign Georgian territory,” and calling for the international community “to establish a truly independent and neutral peacekeeping force in South Ossetia.”
As Jonathan Martin notes, McCain has taken a much harder pro-Georgia line on the situation than the Bush administration. It remains to be seen how a McCain administration could productively mediate such a conflict, especially given Randy Scheunemann’s past statements dismissing diplomatic “trade offs” with Russia as “kind of a relic of a bygone era of power politics.”
UPDATE 2: Rob Farley has this analysis, also noting here Georgia’s bombardment last night of Tskhinvali, the capital of South Ossetia, which prompted today’s Russian action in support of Georgian separatists.
Source
Bloomberg Exposes Jigga's Hard Knock Wife
Mayor Bloomberg has confirmed the worst kept secret in America -- Jay-Z and Beyonce are married!
Source
lol TMZ!