INXS - Elegantly Wasted - live 1997

This is for the Tech Crew, who after a day like today, deserve to be Elegantly Wasted. This is Late Late Nite FireDogLake, where off topic is the topic - so dive in.

The New York Times has noticed that Sen. Obama's campaign is interested in what appears in pictures of the candidate. This is apparently a new development in political campaigns.

We the public have shelled out for Shell (et al's ) new Iraqi oil contracts.

Guess someone at the DNC had their Wheaties: The Obama campaign and the DNC struck back at Giuliani for criticizing Obama for pointing out the handling of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing trial as an example of how to deal with terrorists in American courts....The DNC takes its shot at Giuliani with an e-mail with a title, parroting Joe Biden’s Greatest Debate Hits: “Rudy, ‘Noun, verb, 9/11’ Giuliani returns.” The DNC takes its shot at Giuliani with an e-mail with a title, parroting Joe Biden’s Greatest Debate Hits:

Maybe town-hall gatherings really are a way for presidential candidates to hear from ordinary people. Unless you bus in a pre-selected crowd of Latinos in the dead of night and hold your "town hall" meeting. Then, maybe you're just trying to play both sides of the immigration coin in a bid to two-facedly appeal to Latinos while not letting on that you're doing so to the immigration base.

Conservatives can't vouch for the promises they've made about a school voucher program foisted onto District of Columbia residents in the name of helping poor, African-American children. But they keep pushing it anyway. It's time to push back.

This story in the New York Times has already been widely noted across the blogiverse this morning: "Four Western oil companies are in the final stages of negotiations this month on contracts that will return them to Iraq, 36 years after losing their oil concession to nationalization as Saddam Hussein rose to power...."

As The Washington Post reports, yesterday Barack Obama had a meeting with a number of labor leaders in the AFL-CIO, important in that some of their major affiliates (such as AFSCME) endorsed his rival Sen. Hillary Clinton during the primary.

Obama has opted out of public financing.  Which is really the only sensible thing he could do, unless he thinks the broken FCC and the duplicitous McCain are going to somehow magically change overnight.

Thanks so much, House Democrats. We're now being told that the horrible FISA bill -- which allows the Attorney General to submit documents to the court that will have lawsuits against the telecoms dismissed in secret -- is going to have the supplemental added on to it. Hoyer doesn't want a situation where the Blue Dogs and the Republicans join together to get this passed, so they're going to strongarm other