Opening the Day: $427.2 million in Political Spending from Oil and Coal This Year... So Far

by: Matt Stoller

Tue Aug 19, 2008 at 02:05


I love Seattle, though the traffic is pretty horrible.  With mass transit it'd literally be the perfect city.

  • Public campaign found some stunning numbers on oil and coal companies in the election.

    Today Public Campaign Action Fund, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization dedicated to improving America's campaign finance laws, released a new analysis finding that the oil and coal industries spent $427.2 million so far this year of the year to shift public opinion and to capture the eyes, ears, and support of Congress on critical energy issues.

  • Are the Republicans using the government to raise criminal suspicions against the Democratic Senate candidate in Mississippi?

  • The rumors are that Obama is going to announce his VP this week.

  • McCain is going to name his VP on August 29th, the day after the Democratic National Convention.  

  • Bob Woodward has a new terrible book coming out on September 8 called The War Within.  Get ready for lots of gossip around the Bush administration.  Hopefully it'll reflect badly on Bush and co, but if it does, it'll do so in a way that was obvious to us years ago.

  • This is why Google was being attacked by AT&T yesterday.

    Google and other technology giants like Microsoft, Intel and Dell, have long pushed for a plan to allow soon-to-be-vacant broadcast spectrum to be used to provide new high-speed wireless Internet access networks. The airwaves, known as "white spaces," will be unused after TV stations switch to all digital broadcasts next February, and the Federal Communications Commission is expected to decide their fate soon.

  • Musharraf resigns.

  • In Oklahoma, Andrew Rice has cut Inhofe's lead substantially, and Jonathan Singer comments.  Georgia's Senate Democratic candidate Jim Martin is behind Saxby Chambliss by five points.

  • It's primary day in Washington's eighth.  Vote!

  • Todd Beeton comments on McCain's vulnerabilities.

  • Newt Gingrich says that inflating tires helps big oil.

  • Ralph Reed refused to show up for a McCain fundraiser.

What are you reading?

Matt Stoller :: Opening the Day: $427.2 million in Political Spending from Oil and Coal This Year... So Far

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no surprise in Mississippi (4.00 / 1)
Christie's investigation of Senator Menendez never went anywhere once the election was past.

ps.  Newt must not know that in Blue States the air is free.


New Jersey politics at Blue Jersey.


and to think (0.00 / 0)
people pay for FoxNews, they pay to be misinformed.

The long term upside of all this is that progressives will save more money and ultimately be wealthier and thus have more influence than idiots who follow the advice of people like Newt. So I say, let them buy gas.

Michael Bloomberg, prince of corporate welfare


[ Parent ]
I'm reading the ad just to the right (0.00 / 0)
For a new book: "The Case Against Obama".  Seems its a book detailing why Obama is unfit to be Commander in Chief.

Can't someone from the "creative class" slap together a similar tome about Saint McCain?


"It sounds wrong...
     ...but its right."


They have .. (4.00 / 1)
the problem is that the TradMed ignores them

[ Parent ]
We need to not just get a book together, (4.00 / 1)
but organize ourselves into getting the book on the NYT list. It's actually not that hard.

The Ten Taboos of John McCain is my working title.


[ Parent ]
That may be irrelevant (4.00 / 1)
As is getting the putative book on the NYT best-sellers list (although that would help).

The advertising is a message in and of itself.

I haven't (and likely won't) read the book advertised here, but the title has communicated something already.

Its not just idle speculation and the campaign strategies of his opponents that Obama is not ready to be president, an entire book can be written making that case.

As mentioned in another thread on the site today - there's no "magick bullet" in these campaigns, there are multiple, overlapping, and even contradictory, attacks needed.

Disarming any attack simply because you don't think it will take out McCain in one fell swoop does not seem all that productive.

Take a hint from NewMax ads: feature a "poll" - in big letters on the front page of Yahoo and other sites: "McCain: Is He Qualified to be President?" Vote now!

The mere questioning of his credentials plants a seed of doubt, no?

"It sounds wrong...
     ...but its right."


[ Parent ]
McCain: Too Unstable To Be President? (4.00 / 2)


[ Parent ]
My goodness (0.00 / 0)
That Gingrich statement is just too ridiculous to believe. I've never paid for air. Most gas stations have free air pumps.

Michael Bloomberg, prince of corporate welfare

There are a few in Minneapolis that charge for air (0.00 / 0)
You have to put in quarters to get the pump to turn on.


"It sounds wrong...
     ...but its right."


[ Parent ]
oooooh a quarter (0.00 / 0)
the back breaker!

LOL

Michael Bloomberg, prince of corporate welfare


[ Parent ]
and the station down the street gives it away for free! (0.00 / 0)


"It sounds wrong...
     ...but its right."


[ Parent ]





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