Afternoon Grab Bag

by Steve

Media

You’ll never guess who Al Gore and Tony Blair convinced to lead the media world by example on global warming.

Katie Couric’s ratings are in the toilet.

Thankfully, NBC renewed “Law and Order” today, without figuring out what to do if Fred Thompson runs for president. Now, if they can just find the right time slot, ...

And don’t look for any women or minorities on the Sunday chat fests, because you won’t find any.

Pelosi

Despite the best efforts of the mainstream media to drive down Nancy Pelosi’s image in the aftermath of her trip to Syria, her approval rating wasn’t harmed.

Iraq

Even though the Iraqi government can’t get its act together on reconciliation and has no interest in playing ball with Big Oil on the Oil Law, at least it can do the Bush Administration’s bidding to help stifle media coverage of the surge’s failures. Hell, no one can even define what “success” means.

Tenet

At a time when Condi still refuses to comply with a subpoena to answer questions on pre-war intelligence, George Tenet may make things uncomfortable for her in mid-June when he testifies himself.

2008

John Edwards has outlined a college tuition program that would guarantee payment of first year college costs for any student who met certain requirements.

Barack Obama said over the weekend that he would roll back Bush’s upper-income tax cuts and use the money to pay for health care. He also said he could support an Iraq war funding measure that didn’t include a withdrawal timeline as long as it included benchmarks upon the Iraqis.

John McCain has been protecting the White House and GOP from getting gutted over the Jack Abramoff scandal.

Rudy shows himself to be profiting off of 9/11, even though he is jointly responsible for the increasing public health crisis plaguing emergency responders that day.

The Washington Post says that Chris Dodd’s prescription of a carbon tax to reduce emissions is better than the cap-and-trade approaches of his rivals.

Environment

After seven years of doing nothing of consequence on energy independence or the environment, Bush says today that federal agencies should do something about reducing emissions by the time he leaves office. He says this while his administration works to undermine the G8 on global warming.

Democratic Congressional Agenda

Now that they have the majority and access to the same corporate cash that the GOP had, is the Democratic leadership walking away from lobbying reform and their commitments to fair trade?