Next Tuesday, May 20th, is a National Day of Action for clean energy!

On that day, members of over 100 clean energy support groups, environmental groups, and companies working to bring about the clean energy revolution will be contacting their legislators to demand that they take this, their 'last best' chance, to pass legislation that will keep the revolution alive.

Solar Nation is working with groups like The Sierra Club, Environment America, Vote Solar, the Natural Resources Defense Council and many more to bring this day of concentrated action about.  It's a case of 'all hands to the pump'.

Why?

Congress has been trying unsuccessfully for a year now to extend tax credits for individuals, businesses and developers who invest in clean power;  the credits expire at the end of this year, and it’s estimated that over a hundred thousand jobs and some $20 billion in investment will disappear if this happens (see the report here: http://seia.org/Navigant_Tax_Credit_Impact.pdf ).  According to our sources in the industry, these losses have already started to take their toll on the solar sector.

What would this legislation do for clean energy and energy efficiency?

• It would significantly reduce costs for individuals, businesses and developers trying to make use of such power sources as solar, wind, geothermal, biomass, and fuel cells.
• It would reward those who take steps to improve the energy efficiency of their homes and businesses, or who build new energy-efficient homes.
• It would encourage manufacturers to produce high-efficiency appliances.
• It would allow for bonds to be provided to finance certain renewable energy projects.

So, if the legislation is so clearly beneficial, why the difficulty in passing it?  

It’s because, until very recently, House leadership has insisted on funding the tax credits from oil & gas industry profits, an idea that the Senate has successfully resisted.  But in its latest form (HR 6049), the legislation would be funded from other, less contentious sources.  The bill has just passed out of the House Ways & Means Committee, and is expected to pass the House in due course.  Its final fate will rest upon the willingness of both chambers in Congress to find a mutually acceptable way to fund it.  And the National Day of Action is intended to remind Congresspersons just how important it will be for our future to find that common ground now.

So watch your e-mail on Tuesday;  that’s when we’ll ask you to reach out to your legislators on the National Day of Action for clean energy!

See the full text of the new bill here: http://waysandmeans.house.gov/media/pdf/110/6049.pdf 

Check the dates on these comments. Presumably Susan's blog was begun yesterday afternoon:))

It needs to be restated that John McCain has settled on his message and is sticking with it. It's the essentially same message we've heard from the GOP for the last three elections now: If you elect my opponent, you will die.

The McCain campaign just sent out -- proudly -- these remarks that McCain made today:

"Earlier today, Senator Obama made a few remarks I would like to respond to. I welcome a debate about protecting America. No issue is more important. Senator Obama claimed all I had to offer was the 'naive and irresponsible belief' that tough talk would cause Iran to give up its nuclear program. He should know better. I have some news for Senator Obama: Talking, not even with soaring rhetoric, in unconditional meetings with the man who calls Israel a 'stinking corpse' and arms terrorist who kill Americans will not convince Iran to give up its nuclear program. It is reckless to suggest that unconditional meetings will advance our interests.

"It would be a wonderful thing if we lived in a world where we don't have enemies. But that is not the world we live in, and until Senator Obama understands that reality, the American people have every reason to doubt whether he has the strength, judgment, and determination to keep us safe."

Note the tweak of Obama's "soaring rhetoric," a sign (if you needed one) that Obama will be portrayed as little more than a smooth-talking slickster.

More to the point, note the last lines, which are identical to what his spokesperson said today. They are, again, a slightly watered down version of what he said yesterday on the blogger conference call.

This time, according to McCain, it isn't a fact that Obama is unfit to defend America. Rather, his ability to protect us is something we should have "every reason to doubt."

Obama did a pretty decent job of hitting back at this stuff today, though. The battle is joined.

Debate With McCain And Bush Over Foreign Policy Is One "I Will Win"

In remarks in South Dakota just now, Barack Obama hit back hard at George Bush's and John McCain's foreign policy attacks yesterday, stating flatly that a debate with the two Republicans over foreign policy is a debate that "I will win."

"George Bush and John McCain have a lot to answer for," Obama said.

The fight is one that the Obama campaign is eager to have, because it accomplishes two things. First, it forces McCain to stand by Bush, making it easier to tie them together. And second, it puts Obama, sans Hillary, on the same stage as the current Republican president and his would-be successor, making the Dem primary seem a bit like a distant memory.

"If George Bush and John McCain want to have a debate about protecting the United States of America, that is a debate I am happy to have any time," Obama said. "That is a debate that I will win."

He proceeded to rattle off all the things Bush and McCain have to "answer for." The unnecessary Iraq War. The phantom WMDs. The strengthening of Iran. The fact that "Hamas now controls Gaza." And the fact that Osama Bin Laden is "sending out video tapes with impunity."

Obama also slammed the notion that he'd ever supported any sort of negotiations with terrorists. "They're trying to fool you, trying to scare you, and they're not telling you the truth because they can't win a foreign policy debate on the merits," he said.

At times, Obama hit what I think is the right tone -- ridicule and bemusement, rather than outrage. At one point, for instance, he noted that McCain has now promised an end to the war in 2013, after repeatedly suggesting a much longer open-ended commitment might be necessary.

"I think he noticed that it wasn't polling well," Obama joked.

--By Greg Sargent - May 16, 2008, TPM Cafe

Lest we not let this one go by the wayside, Bush needs to answer to it:

[. . .]

There is an effort underway to dislodge John Yoo, one of the key enablers of America's torture program, from his seat at UC Berkeley's Law School.

Read this bit in Vanity Fair by Philippe Sands who recently spoke at the New America Foundation and authored The Torture Team: The Rumsfeld Memo and the Betrayal of American Values as well as a post by economist, blogger, and UC Berkeley professor J. Bradford DeLong.

-- Steve Clemons

Read this bit in Vanity Fair by Philippe Sands who recently spoke at the New America Foundation and authored The Torture Team: The Rumsfeld Memo and the Betrayal of American Values as well as a post by economist, blogger, and UC Berkeley professor J. Bradford DeLong.

-- Steve Clemons

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy hospitalized with symptoms of stroke

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy hospitalized with symptoms of stroke.

Carbunkles.

Here's a race to watch closely:

Alaska Senate:

Begich (D) 47%

Stevens (R) 45%

Could Alaska be turning blue? If so, credit a guy named Howard Dean who set up a Dem office there while the DLCer's bemoaned the costs of it all.

It's good to note that Obama is making a spirited defence against the Bush-McSame smears. Even better that he's mounting an effective offence, something that neither Gore nor Kerry managed against Bush.

Keep it up Senator!

It's also good that Obama's fellow Democrats are unloading on Bush and McSame. That needs to continue too.

http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn05172008.html

The View from the Crusaders' Castle

By ALEXANDER COCKBURN

Krak des Chevaliers, Syria

Thirty years ago, when the state of Israel had traveled only half its present journey through time since 1948, I interviewed General Matti Peled in New York. As an army general Peled had been a notably tough administrator of the Occupied Territories, but in retirement had become a dove, publicly urging his country to negotiate seriously with the Palestinians, abandon the illegal settlements,  return to the ’67 borders and resolve all the other major issues obstructing a proper peace.

“What do you think will happen,” I asked the former general, “If no Israeli government ever emerges strong enough to take such a path?”

“Oh, I think we’ll end up like the Crusaders,” he answered. “It might take some time, but just like them, in the end, we’ll be gone.” It was startling at the time to hear any Israeli, particularly a military man, talk like that. Of course, then as always, the Israel lobby in the United States loved to depict embattled Israel as only one step from annihilation by  bloodthirsty Arabs unless the United States offered unconditional diplomatic support and limitless subsidies.

Hamas, the political party voted for by desperate Palestinians, is stigmatized by the US and EU as a terrorist body. When Jimmy Carter, the US president in office when I interviewed General Peled, denounced Israel’s siege of Gaza as an appalling crime against civilians a few weeks ago, he himself was savaged as the accomplice of terror.

In the United States there are, it’s true, more questions asked about the role of the Israel Lobby than a generation ago, but these are mere ripples on the wide ocean of full-throated congressional support for anything the hawks in Israel might request. This  year, as in all previous years, no mainstream US presidential candidate has dared do anything more than kow-tow to the Israel lobby. Hilary Clinton may have caused a stir by using the word “obliterate” as the treatment the US would mete out to Iran if it threatened Israel’s existence, but all her rivals would say the same thing if pressed. And of course ”threat” can mean almost anything.

Earlier this week I looked south toward Israel from the Krak des Chevaliers, the greatest of the Crusaders’ castles, looming above  the Syrian coastal plain about  four hours drive from Damascus.  The odious T.E.Lawrence called  it “perhaps the best preserved and most wholly admirable castle in the world.” Despite the efforts of Saladin, the Hospitallers were never dislodged from the Krak by force. It was eventually the Mamluk Sultan of Egypt, Baybars, who winkled them out by negotiation, in 1271 after the Crusaders had held it for 162 years.

Standing on the great south tower (actually completed by French engineers in the 1930s) I remembered Peled’s remarks about Israel and the Crusaders, who held the Krak three times longer than Israel’s present span. The  hawks, just as Peled and scores of other doves in recent years charge, have not buttressed Israel’s security. In the middle and long term they have gravely compromised it. The balance of forces in the region have changed drastically from the US dominance of a generation or two ago. Soon Bush will be gone; Olmert maybe sooner. Just as all new visitors to Israel are given a tour of Yad Vashem, perhaps all politicians pondering Israel’s security and justice for Palestinians should also be given a compulsory tour of the Krak des Chevaliers.

http://www.counterpunch.org/fantina05172008.html

Arizona Senator and apparent Republican presidential nominee John McCain has been riding his so-called ‘Straight Talk Express’ for some time now, carting his frail, aging carcass about the countryside as he smilingly promises Americans four more years of misery. Yet his happy train was derailed this week, when he lapsed into fairy tales that no toddler would accept. Surely, after this speech, any child would long for the realism of Cinderella or Harry Potter.

Senator Barrack Obama, the presumptive Democratic nominee, cannot be seen by those opposed to Mr. McCain as America’s savior, descending from his lofty throne in Illinois to rescue the poor and destitute from the clutches of the Republican nominee. Rather, he must be viewed as the most reasonable choice in an election that threatens four more years of the disasters Mr. Bush has rendered. Mr. Obama at least promises a change from eight years of war-mongering and pampering of the rich to the neglect of everyone else. What little a President Obama might be able to accomplish will at least be far better than the disasters of a President McCain.

It’s time for the ‘Straight Talk Express’ to retire, along with its engineer, to a place where they can do far less damage than can be done from the White House. Let’s hope the U.S. voters are listening carefully to Mr. McCain’s words, and send him back to Arizona in November.

http://www.counterpunch.org/lindorff05172008.html

One analyst, economist Ismael Hussein-Zadeh, a professor of economics at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, has a different explanation for the price rise, and American motorists and homeowners should pay close attention.

“Oil prices have gone from the mid $20 range in the fall of 2002 to $127 yesterday—a rise of $100/barrel in just over five years,” he says. “And the bulk of that increase can be attributed to the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and to the threats of war against Iran.”

Democrats have not jumped on this--they should.

He's reported to have had a seizure not a stroke.

http://my.barackobama.com/page/s/dsmrally

Rally with Barack and Michelle Obama

E. 6th Street and E. Locust Street
Des Moines, IA

Tuesday, May 20th, 2008
Doors Open: 7:30 p.m.

...

http://my.barackobama.com/page/s/tampa

LINK