Disgusting

The No Hope for us Party.

From Frank Rich

What makes the Democrats’ Mukasey cave-in so depressing is that it shows how far even exemplary sticklers for the law like Senators Feinstein and Schumer have lowered democracy’s bar. When they argued that Mr. Mukasey should be confirmed because he’s not as horrifying as Mr. Gonzales or as the acting attorney general who might get the job otherwise, they sounded whipped. After all these years of Bush-Cheney torture, they’ll say things they know are false just to move on.
In a Times OpEd article justifying his reluctant vote to confirm a man Dick Cheney promised would make "an outstanding attorney general," Mr. Schumer observed that waterboarding is already "illegal under current laws and conventions." But then he vowed to support a new bill "explicitly" making waterboarding illegal because Mr. Mukasey pledged to enforce it. Whatever. Even if Congress were to pass such legislation, Mr. Bush would veto it, and even if the veto were by some miracle overturned, Mr. Bush would void the law with a "signing statement." That’s what he effectively did in 2005 when he signed a bill that its authors thought outlawed the torture of detainees.
That Mr. Schumer is willing to employ blatant Catch-22 illogic to pretend that Mr. Mukasey’s pledge on waterboarding has any force shows what pathetic crumbs the Democrats will settle for after all these years of being beaten down. The judges and lawyers challenging General Musharraf have more fight left in them than this.
Last weekend a new Washington Post-ABC News poll found that the Democratic-controlled Congress and Mr. Bush are both roundly despised throughout the land, and that only 24 percent of Americans believe their country is on the right track. That’s almost as low as the United States’ rock-bottom approval ratings in the latest Pew surveys of Pakistan (15 percent) and Turkey (9 percent).
Wrong track is a euphemism. We are a people in clinical depression. Americans know that the ideals that once set our nation apart from the world have been vandalized, and no matter which party they belong to, they do not see a restoration anytime soon
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Politics of ethanol is to make more, Iowans agree
By Andrew Stern
MUSCATINE, Iowa (Reuters) - For Iowans, ethanol is a home-grown success story few presidential candidates would dare sully in their search for votes as the harvest season ends and campaigns ramp up in earnest.
In stump speeches and position papers, Democratic and Republican hopefuls vying for Iowa's January 3 first-in-the-nation caucuses pay regular homage to the biofuels industry.
The industry has created tens of thousands of jobs in Iowa -- and more than 150,000 across the United States -- and is credited with lifting the prices paid to farmers for their crops, and even eased the pain at the gas pump.
"Anything that helps the farm economy gets votes here," said Kenny Strasser, 62, whose family raises grain crops in Marengo.
But all is not well in the biofuels industry.
Ethanol plants in Iowa, the leading U.S. state for both corn and ethanol production, are struggling to make a profit despite soaring oil prices. A few plants on the drawing board have halted construction as price margins have shrunk due to a doubling of corn prices to near 10-year highs. Demand from ethanol producers consumed a quarter of the U.S. crop.
The country's ever-expanding ethanol output of 7 billion gallons (32 billion liters) this year, which gets blended with gasoline usually at a 10 percent ratio, does put a dent in America's growing appetite for gasoline, which is roughly 140 billion gallons (636 billion liters).
"It's tough because of the disconnect between ethanol producers and the consumer," said Monte Shaw, a spokesman for the Renewable Fuels Association in Des Moines. Consumers want blended fuel, but cannot always get it, he said.
Regional gluts of ethanol, pushing down prices, have been caused by purported distribution bottlenecks. But Shaw said the problems were illusory, created by oil companies resistant to a competing industry's product.

Among the top presidential contenders, only Republican Sen. John McCain would scrap the 51-cent-a-gallon federal tax incentive for ethanol, which goes to the blenders, usually oil companies.

OIL COMPANIES GETTING 51 CENTS PER GALLON THAT IS OVER THREE AND HALF BILLION DOLLARS !!! THE FUGGING BUSH ADMINISTRATION!

Add that to the cost of a gallon of ethanol and it is way more expensive then gasoline. Congress must have signed off on this. I am sick of oil companies getting welfare through a variety of tax breaks and subsidies. The oil companies make HUGH Profits.
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Hagel Calls Giuliani, Clinton `Cowboys' for Comments on Iran
By Jeff Bliss
Rudy Giuliani and Hillary Clinton were ``recklessly irresponsible'' and acting like ``cowboys'' for rejecting calls for direct talks with Iran over its nuclear program, charged Senator Chuck Hagel, a top Republican lawmaker.
Hagel, a member of the Foreign Relations Committee who supports talks, was critical of Giuliani, the top Republican contender, and Clinton, a New York senator and leader of the Democratic field, for lambasting presidential rival Barack Obama, who proposed such discussions.
When world leaders ``hear leading presidential candidates talk like cowboys with the lowest common denominator being `I can be tougher than you, I'll go to war before you or we aren't going to talk to anybody,' that's recklessly irresponsible,'' Hagel said in an interview on Bloomberg Television's ``Political Capital with Al Hunt,'' scheduled to air today.
Hagel, 61, also criticized Vice President Dick Cheney, who he said in recent speeches on Iran has sounded similar to his provocative comments against Iraq in 2002. ``Some in this administration are serious about that possibility'' of military action in Iran, Hagel said.
``We're over here sounding war calls,'' Hagel said. ``That's a very dangerous thing because it leads you into a cul-de-sac of war if you're not careful.''
Sitting down and talking to Iranian officials wouldn't be a sign of weakness, Hagel said. ``Great nations engage. What are we afraid of?'' he said. ``You shouldn't lead with the military option.''