The Nightowl Newswrap

The brilliance of Lee Judge can be found regularly at McClatchy.
He is the editorial cartoonist at the Kansas City Star.

Heading for $110.00/bbl oil Light sweet crude traded at $109.72 on Tuesday, and closed at $108.75, up $.75 per barrel from the Monday closing price. Where prices go from here is anyones guess. Some analysts expect prices to moderate, while others expect prices to exceed $120.00 per barrel before that happens. As for me, with gas prices averaging $3.22 per gallon, I'm thankful for bus lines and discount fare cards.

Violence rocked Iraq on Tuesday claiming at least 42 confirmed victims. Sixteen perished in a blast that destroyed a bus and killed the passengers aboard. Eight Soldiers died in two separate incidents, five were killed by a suicide bomber and three died in a roadside bomb attack in Diyala. Monday was the deadliest day in exactly six months for American troops. On September 10, ten Americans were killed.

Maybe the House Democrats have a little spunk after all I thought the gig was up just a week ago, so I have been pleasantly surprised by the fact that they continue to defy Resident Occupant on immunity for telecoms. The proposal they are working on falls far short of what aWol wants, which is nothing short of full blanket retroactive immunity for the companies that were all too willing to turn over your phone and internet records to the government without court orders or oversight. For the record, I don't believe for a second that the administration is worried about national security. They are worried about the process of discovery and what that would mean if trials went forward. We would all know just how far these fascist assholes went in spying on their own citizens.

Michael O'Hanlon, for the love of god, shut up! When he says stuff like this, he just incentivises Pale Rider to take his ass to the woodshed...again...but he keeps on yammering, 'cuz he just doesn't learn...Although Fallon oversees the Middle East region, the success that General Petraeus has had in Iraq may overshadow his ability to be effective in the job, O'Hanlon says. (Blue Girl sez: Butch up, there, Sport. Your man-crush is showing again.)

Fifty Thousand troops would make a real difference in Afghanistan, you know. But instead, they are bogged down in Iraq, and the so-called CinC is reduced to chiding and pleading with NATO allies to provide more troops to the mission in Afghanistan because the Taliban is regrouping and strengthening and in control of wide swaths of the country. "I believe it is important for administrations to confront problems now and not pass them on to other people, and that's the choice I have made for the sake of peace and freedom," he told the annual convention of the National Religious Broadcasters, totally devoid of any appreciation of irony as he emphasized the plural that suggested an obligation on the part of his successors to take up the mission.

Boeing Filed a Formal Protest over the tanker deal that went to a consortium of Airbus and Northrup-Grumman. This sets up a political donnybrook over the use of foreign contractors for U.S. military jobs. PALE RIDER says: McCain is going to pay the price for this debacle, and the price he pays will mean his campaign donations are going to take a significant hit. He's already looking like Dole in 1996--a complete loser.