From the Toronto Star: Afghan vote threatens Bush’s credibility Hmmm. Kash

IMHO, this is obviously true and quite easy to say: WASHINGTON (CNN) — Breaking ranks with his party and reversing his earlier stance, a senior retiring Republican lawmaker said Wednesday the military strike against Iraq was “a mistake,” and he blasted a “massive failure” of intelligence before the war. The unexpected four-page statement came from […]

An email from The Progress Report provides some nice context for Sen. Harkin’s characterization of Cheney (“When I hear this coming from Dick Cheney, who was a coward, who would not serve during the Vietnam War, it makes my blood boil. He’ll be tough, but he’ll be tough with someone else’s kid’s blood”): Cheney’s admiration […]

While campaigning in Pennsylvania yesterday, Bush brought up something that I haven’t heard about in a while: ballistic missile defense. From a Washington Post article: President Bush reaffirmed his administration’s commitment to building an antimissile system, accusing opponents of the program of “living in the past.” Although Bush did not mention his Democratic rival by […]

Of course Halliburton is treated just like any other company by the Pentagon. They get no special privileges. Right? WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Army reversed a decision late Tuesday to withhold payment on 15 percent of future invoices of Halliburton Co.’s logistics deal in Iraq and gave the company more time to resolve a […]

This is some good news, so I’ll have to give kudos to US and British intelligence: British police today charged eight men with conspiracy to murder and violations of the Terrorism Act after finding that they possessed surveillance information on the same financial centers in Washington, New York and New Jersey that were the focus […]

… Here’s Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) on Cheney’s attacks on Kerry for using the word “sensitive“: “It just outrages me that someone who got five deferments during Vietnam and said he had ‘other priorities’ at that time would say that. …[President Bush and Cheney are] running scared because John Kerry has a war record and […]

This November, voters in Colorado are going to decide on a referendum item that has just been certified for the ballot: should the state constitution be changed to allot its representatives in the Electoral College proportionally, rather than winner-take-all? If the measure passes, this means that Bush will probably get only 5 EC votes instead […]

Today’s new economic data fit into the larger picture of an economy that is noticeably losing steam. In the graph below I’ve presented the 3-month annualized rate of change in core consumer prices and industrial production, including today’s data. I’ve also included two other data series that reveal important clues about the health of the […]

We have two new pieces of economic data this morning, the CPI report and Industrial Production for July. The consumer price inflation report released this morning by the BLS showed a surprising fall in prices in July. Part of this was due to a small fallback in oil prices during the month (this will be […]