But Obama also admitted that, despite what Obama senior adviser Robert Gibbs told reporters, there was a racial dimension to his Missouri remarks in which he said McCain and the Republicans would make an issue of the fact that he doesn't look like presidents who have been on the dollar bills.

"I don’t think it’s accurate to say that my comments have nothing to do with race," Obama said. "Here's what I was saying and I think this should be undisputed: That I don’t come out of central casting, when it comes to presidential races. For a whole range of reasons. I’m young, I’m new to the national scene, my name is Barack Obama, I am African American, I was born in Hawaii, I spent time in Indonesia. I do not have the typical biography of a presidential candidate. What that means is that I’m sort of unfamiliar and people are still trying to get a fix on who I am, where I come from, what my values are and so forth in a way that might not be true if I seemed more familiar."

Obama’s oil flip-flop about place as well as issue

Barack Obama has proven himself slippery on oil for the second time in his campaign.  In April, he accused his opponents of taking money from oil lobbies, when in fact Obama himself not only did the same thing but had oil executives as major bundlers to his campaign.  Now he’s reversed himself on drilling, and he did it in a remarkable place — Florida:

U.S. Sen. Barack Obama said today he would be willing to open Florida’s coast for more oil drilling if it meant winning approval for broad energy changes.

“My interest is in making sure we’ve got the kind of comprehensive energy policy that can bring down gas prices,” Obama said in an interview with The Palm Beach Post.

“If, in order to get that passed, we have to compromise in terms of a careful, well thought-out drilling strategy that was carefully circumscribed to avoid significant environmental damage - I don’t want to be so rigid that we can’t get something done,” Obama said.

Of course, this comes shortly after Obama called off-shore drilling “the latest scheme”, telling his supporters that drilling wouldn’t solve anything.  How shortly?  48 hours! Here’s Obama in Springfield, Missouri, insisting that drilling wouldn’t work:

Now the latest scheme is well, we’re going to drill offshore. Now, I want to be absolutely clear to everybody about this. If I thought that I could provide you some immediate relief on gas prices by drilling off the shores of California and New Jersey, I - I … I understand how desperate folks are. I met a guy who couldn’t go on a job search that lost his job, couldn’t go on a job search because of the high price of gas. Just couldn’t fill up his tank. I met a teacher in South Dakota who loved her job as a teacher on an Indian reservation, she had to quit because the drive was too far, it was taking up too much of her paycheck. I know how bad people are hurting. So If I thought that by drilling offshore, we could solve our problem, I’d do it.

So what happened in the following 48 hours to convince Obama to drill? He probably looked at the polls, especially in Florida. The Sunshine State had fiercely opposed off-shore drilling for decades, and would normally be a safe place to rail against Big Oil and talk about alternative energy sources. Not any longer, though; 60% of Floridians now support off-shore drilling, ten percent of whom acknowledge that their position has changed with the rise in gas prices.

NYT proclaims Obama “careful” on race?

And let’s not forget his June appearance in Jacksonville, where he accused the Republicans and the McCain campaign of preparing to scare people because, “did I mention he’s black?”  Careful?  Obama has been about as irresponsible with his charges of racism as he possibly could be.  McCain has stayed far away fromany attack points that could possibly be perceived as racist, as Jake Tapper wrote, and yet Obama smeared him anyway.  When McCain defended himself forcefully, though, the New York Times credits that as the start of the “furor”.

The Obama campaign is the one selling fear and smears.  It didn’t take much to provoke it from Obama himself, either.  Whenever McCain attacks his policies or his lack of experience, Obama shows himself as thin-skinned and reactionary, willing to toss rhetorical bombs that he can’t support.  That’s the antithesis of “careful”.  Given the incendiary nature of the accusation, it’s the epitome of recklessness, and it says quite a bit about the man who so carelessly throws that smear at his opponents.

WaPo: Obama … not careful

Quote of the day

STEWART: …When you talk to them, do you feel like, when he says the crazy things that he says–and he says crazy things–is he playing to his base? Is this just a politician? Because, wasn’t that the mistake we made with Saddam Hussein? His braggadocio, his all those things, were of necessity, because he has to play to this base. Are we misinterpreting their belligerence, and thinking it’s baiting us into a war, when it’s just a way to stay in power?

WILLIAMS: Well, that’s exactly what it is.

Calm down, you neo-conservative warmongers.  Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's no more a threat than Congressman Joe Blow back in Cleveland, trying to appeal to the good folks who make up his base. So suggests Brian Williams.  Hat tip jazr.  Fresh from his trip to Tehran, where he scored a big exclusive with the Iranian president, Williams sat down with Jon Stewart on last night's Daily Show.

STEWART: Sort of Jew. When you talk to them, do you feel like, when he says the crazy things that he says--and he says crazy things--is he playing to his base? Is this just a politician? Because, wasn't that the mistake we made with Saddam Hussein?  His braggadocio, his all those things, were of necessity, because he has to play to this base. Are we misinterpreting their belligerence, and thinking it's baiting us into a war, when it's just a way to stay in power?

WILLIAMS: Well, that's exactly what it is.  There's universals in politics.  He's playing to his base like a politician in Cleveland [NB: on behalf of Dennis Kucinich, I resent that!]  You can go through the transcript, and he, you were joking, he says all but "death to America."  At one point he said to me, and I'm paraphrasing very loosely, the atomic bomb is so 20th-century.  He wanted us to know there --

See, it's really our fault.  Poor Mahmoud wouldn't be making trouble were it not for our being his enemy.  And the harmless little fuzzball [with his 6,000 centrifuges] is no more a threat than was Saddam Hussein, the guy who gassed thousands of Kurds to death and was sitting on 550 tons of yellowcake.  I tell you, Ahmadinejad's no more capable of making nuclear weapons than another guy with bad hotels,  Kim Jong-il.  What's that?  North Korea did develop nuclear weapons, despite the bad decor?  Never mind

Read Full Article

Read Full Article

Read Full Article

Of course that's not the case. The composition of the rich and poor in this country is in constant flux, as the income distribution changes dramatically over relatively short periods. Few are "stuck" in poverty, or have a "lock" on wealth.

Obama would discover this if only he'd put down his class-warfare manuals and look closely at the IRS' own data.

Take those megarich he vilifies — the top hundredth of a percent. According to a recent Treasury study, three-fourths of them in 1996 fell out of the group by 2005.

Meanwhile, more than half of those in the bottom income group in 1996 moved to a higher income group by 2005, with more than 5% leapfrogging to the richest quintile.

He also fails to understand how taxes change behavior. He thinks raising taxes on the most productive members of society won't "curb incentives to work or invest." Even TV news anchor Charlie Gibson knows better.

During a primary debate, the ABC host took Obama to task for proposing a doubling in the capital gains tax. History shows, he pointed out, that raising the cap gains rate actually ends up costing the government revenues.

Obama just didn't get it. "Well, Charlie," he argued, "what I've said is that I would look at raising the capital gains tax for purposes of fairness."

Never mind that the top 1% of taxpayers already pay 38% of the total tax burden, according to recent IRS data, while the bottom 50% bear just 3% of the load.

Obama's economic plan also calls for mandating a "living wage." He plans to saddle retailers with a $10 minimum wage indexed to inflation, along with a mandate to provide seven days of paid sick leave to workers.

Obama assumes business owners will just eat the added costs.

Read Full Article

It's shocking that a mainstream candidate, with so many supposedly well-regarded economists advising him, would produce such a shoddy, poorly thought-out plan.

But the reality is that as Obama and his equally unknowing friends push windfall taxes, Exxon Mobil has already given the U.S. a massive windfall. As economist Mark Perry has noted, Exxon Mobil will pay more taxes this year to the U.S. Treasury than the bottom 50% of all taxpayers — combined.

In the first half, Exxon Mobil's after-tax income rose 15% to $22.6 billion. A lot of money, to be sure, until you consider that Exxon Mobil paid $61.7 billion in taxes — also a record.

The rest of Obama's plan is just as nonsensical. It would spend $50 billion on various kinds of stimulus, including $25 billion to help erase state government budget deficits. In other words, he'll reward profligate states and punish thrifty ones. This is "stimulus" only if you think stimulus is saving government jobs.

Another $25 billion would go towards "replenishing" the Highway Trust Fund to rebuild the nation's roads and bridges. The problem with this idea is that we're already paying for it, with a 18.3- cents-a-gallon tax on gasoline and even more on diesel.

The real problem is not that we pay too little in taxes, or that "Big Oil" is enjoying "windfall profits." It's a big-spending, big-taxing Congress that "emergency" plans such as Obama's will only embolden. This lame plan will hurt the economy, not stimulate it.

Read Full Article

It's shocking that a mainstream candidate, with so many supposedly well-regarded economists advising him, would produce such a shoddy, poorly thought-out plan.

But the reality is that as Obama and his equally unknowing friends push windfall taxes, Exxon Mobil has already given the U.S. a massive windfall. As economist Mark Perry has noted, Exxon Mobil will pay more taxes this year to the U.S. Treasury than the bottom 50% of all taxpayers — combined.

In the first half, Exxon Mobil's after-tax income rose 15% to $22.6 billion. A lot of money, to be sure, until you consider that Exxon Mobil paid $61.7 billion in taxes — also a record.

The rest of Obama's plan is just as nonsensical. It would spend $50 billion on various kinds of stimulus, including $25 billion to help erase state government budget deficits. In other words, he'll reward profligate states and punish thrifty ones. This is "stimulus" only if you think stimulus is saving government jobs.

Another $25 billion would go towards "replenishing" the Highway Trust Fund to rebuild the nation's roads and bridges. The problem with this idea is that we're already paying for it, with a 18.3- cents-a-gallon tax on gasoline and even more on diesel.

The real problem is not that we pay too little in taxes, or that "Big Oil" is enjoying "windfall profits." It's a big-spending, big-taxing Congress that "emergency" plans such as Obama's will only embolden. This lame plan will hurt the economy, not stimulate it.

Hope and change: Obama reverses, will support offshore drilling as part of compromise

An early dividend from today’s GOP House revolt? Nah. Obama’s simply on the wrong side of this issue politically and he knows it. And thanks to savvy Dems like Ken Salazar who think it’s a good idea to shrug off the prospect of $10 gas live with C-SPAN cameras rolling, Barry’s room to maneuver is narrowing by the day. Now that there’s momentum in the Senate for a compromise energy bill, the last partisan excuse to resist is disintegrating as we speak.

Let’s not call it a flip-flop. Rather, let’s borrow from his Iraq rhetoric and call it … a tactical readjustment.

Big breakthrough on solar power?

A research team at MIT claims they have discovered a process that will make solar power practical for mass production of energy, even when the sun doesn’t shine. Using photosynthesis as a guide, the team believes it has discovered the “nirvana” of exploiting the sun’s power to generate a reliable, stable, and safe source for electricity:

Until now, solar power has been a daytime-only energy source, because storing extra solar energy for later use is prohibitively expensive and grossly inefficient. With today’s announcement, MIT researchers have hit upon a simple, inexpensive, highly efficient process for storing solar energy.

Requiring nothing but abundant, non-toxic natural materials, this discovery could unlock the most potent, carbon-free energy source of all: the sun. “This is the nirvana of what we’ve been talking about for years,” said MIT’s Daniel Nocera, the Henry Dreyfus Professor of Energy at MIT and senior author of a paper describing the work in the July 31 issue of Science. “Solar power has always been a limited, far-off solution. Now we can seriously think about solar power as unlimited and soon.”

Inspired by the photosynthesis performed by plants, Nocera and Matthew Kanan, a postdoctoral fellow in Nocera’s lab, have developed an unprecedented process that will allow the sun’s energy to be used to split water into hydrogen and oxygen gases. Later, the oxygen and hydrogen may be recombined inside a fuel cell, creating carbon-free electricity to power your house or your electric car, day or night.

I’ve been through the cold-fusion roller coaster before, so color me skeptical at the moment. The study got published yesterday, and Nocera and Kanan will have to endure the scrutiny of their peers. However, if this works and is as cheap as people believe, it could revolutionize energy production, at least for certain applications.