BEIJING–China's inflation rate has accelerated to the highest monthly rate in a decade, driven by a 15.4 per cent annual surge in politically sensitive food prices. Prices of pork and other meat leaped 45.2 per cent and eggs 30.6 per cent in July over the year-earlier period, China's National Bureau of Statistics reported yesterday. The month's inflation rate of 5.6 per cent was the highest since February 1997, and an increase over June's 4.4 per cent. Chinese leaders fear the country's boom – the economy grew 11.9 per cent in the latest quarter – might ignite inflation. They have tried to cool things off by raising interest rates three times in the past six months, and economists expect one to two more increases this year. But a statistics bureau spokesperson yesterday tried to quell fears of a pickup in overall inflation, stressing that July's sharpest increases were limited to food. Prices of clothing and other non-food goods rose just 0.9 per cent in July from a year earlier. "As industrial-product prices and service prices remain relatively stable, the prices should not rise in an all-around and sharp way," said spokesperson Li Xiaochao, quoted by the official Xinhua News Agency. Yao Jingyuan, the bureau's chief economist, said inflation might continue to rise over the next two months due to food-price hikes, Xinhua also reported. It said Yao predicted the inflation rate would fall in the final quarter of the year.

According to sources, Bush Presidential Press Secretary Tony Snow is jumping from Bush's sinking ship like that rat he is. In a radio interview Snow said "I'm not going to be able to go the distance, but that's primarily for financial reasons. I've told people when my money runs out, then I've got to go." So Snow, like so many of GOP politicians that leave public service, is leaving for the money. So much for doing your duty for your country. I would understand if Snow has said he was leaving for health reasons. After all he has battled cancer for a second time and has come out on the winner's side. Snow cited his kids pending college tuition as one reason to quit. But at the $186,000 he makes per year Snow was not exactly hurting. There are many Americans that would be happy to make that kind of money as they get ready to send their kids to college. So maybe its not the money. Maybe Snow is sick and tired of going in front of the American people and lying his ass off. On any given day Snow has had to lie a multitude of times. Maybe Snow is sick of Bush's fake conservatism. Snow after all is a card carrying Reagan conservative, whatever that means. Regardless of the reason, Karl Rove and Snow have now jumped from the sinking ship just like a rat does. The question now is who is next.

Andrew Leonard, Salon, August 17, 2007 From New York to Hong Kong and everywhere in between, alarm bells are ringing. Central bankers are on 24/7 alert, ready to perform life support on catatonic markets. Stock traders are panicking -- the Dow's wild ride on Wednesday, down 350 points and then almost all the way back, is just the latest declaration of confusion and fear. If you had been paying only casual attention to the financial markets as summer rolled along, you could be excused for glancing at the headlines and wondering, what the hell is going on? By many measures the global economy is growing faster than it has for decades. But in our globalized world, anxiety is everywhere. Soon after the markets close in New York, Asia's traders start running for cover. By the time they're exhausted, Europe is picking up the relay. And then back to the United States it comes. People who devote their entire lives to studying the intricacies of high finance are confused right now. But the basic story line isn't that complicated once you break it down into simple building blocks. And that's what Salon is going to do. Here are some simple questions and, we hope, some simple answers. Q. How did this happen? How did we get here? What does it all mean? A. There is a standard explanation included as a paragraph in almost every story attempting to explain the current turmoil. It goes like this: Anxious to goose the U.S. economy out of its dot-com-bust doldrums, Alan Greenspan and the Federal Reserve Bank lowered interest rates to rock bottom in 2001. The resulting flood of cheap money encouraged an orgy of borrowing at every level of the U.S. and world economies. Whether you wanted to buy a house or a multibillion-dollar conglomerate, lenders were your best friends, falling over themselves to offer you whatever amount of capital you desired -- and charging low, low rates of interest. Cheap money led to a growing complacency about risk. If you ran into trouble, you could just refinance your house, or borrow a few billion more dollars today to pay off the billions you might owe tomorrow. Greenspan's policies are being blamed for inciting the greatest housing bubble in U.S. history. The collapse of that bubble set off a wave of defaults by homeowners no longer able to make the payments on their mortgages. Mortgage lenders were the next link of the chain to break, followed by the investors who were trading in bonds and securities whose value was tied to these loans. Suddenly, risk was back! Read More Here

Tony Capaccio, Bloomberg News, August 17, 2007 (Bloomberg) -- A small South Carolina parts supplier collected about $20.5 million over six years from the Pentagon for fraudulent shipping costs, including $998,798 for sending two 19-cent washers to a Texas base, U.S. officials said. The company also billed and was paid $455,009 to ship three machine screws costing $1.31 each to Marines in Habbaniyah, Iraq, and $293,451 to ship an 89-cent split washer to Patrick Air Force Base in Cape Canaveral, Florida, Pentagon records show. The owners of C&D Distributors in Lexington, South Carolina -- twin sisters -- exploited a flaw in an automated Defense Department purchasing system: bills for shipping to combat areas or U.S. bases that were labeled ``priority'' were usually paid automatically, said Cynthia Stroot, a Pentagon investigator. C&D's fraudulent billing started in 2000, Stroot, the Defense Criminal Investigative Service's chief agent in Raleigh, North Carolina, said in an interview. ``As time went on they got more aggressive in the amounts they put in.'' The price the military paid for each item shipped rarely reached $100 and totaled just $68,000 over the six years in contrast to the $20.5 million paid for shipping, she said. ``The majority, if not all of these parts, were going to high-priority, conflict areas -- that's why they got paid,'' Stroot said. If the item was earmarked ``priority,'' destined for the military in Iraq, Afghanistan or certain other locations, ``there was no oversight.'' Read More Here

A new CBS News national poll finds Sen. Hillary Clinton leading the Democratic presidential race with 45%, followed by Obama at 25% and Edwards at 14%. ...yet everyday you hear someone say she can't win.

"Massive Dem Failure".... Hey Bart: My comment (below) probably will be censored (not approved) by HuffPost (I think they got some Wingo editors), but AT LEAST, for the first time I can recall in 6 years, someone is actually mentioning - Democratic OPPOSITION RESEARCH, or more specifically, the ENTIRE AWOL LACK THEREOF! Lj.... --------------------------------------------------------- (This comment is pending approval and won't be displayed until it is approved.) http://www.huffingtonpost.com/martin-lewis/cheney-youtube-clip-revea_b_60632.html BRAVO! Martin Lewis points out something that I have been shouting fruitlessly (into the wind) for 3- 4 years now, if not a dozen: that Dem party "opposition research" has been NEGLIGENT bordering on Derliction of Duty, if not Criminal negligence. It's not just the Kerry campaign IGNORING Cheney (and Bush Sr's) rationals for _not_ invading Iraq in 1991. Kerry stood there like a punching bag as Bush sneered into national TV (during the 3rd debate) "my opponent is a FLIP-FLOPPER." Kerry too stupid, or too cowed, to respond the obvious: "George Bush pledged to 'Get Osama bin Laden dead or alive,' and here it is on the eve of another presidential election, and bin Laden is sending videos to America from his undisclosed location, safe and free from US persecution." MoveOn.org even put together the video, contrasting Bush's "dead or alive" pledge with his infamous "I'm not that concerned about him [bin Laden] anymore" pledge - the Kerry campaign and DLC refused to use it. (This official WhiteHouse.gov link is even the first one that pops up in a "Bush I'm not that concerned about bin Laden" search!) http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/03/20020313-8.html More recently, federal prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald did the _heavy lifting_ securing the conviction of Scooter Libby - a FRAUD and PERJURY CONVICTION from within the very highest reaches of the Bush-Cheney White House. Speaker Pelosi and the Democrat "leadership" threw that conviction, that hard work, on the rubbish heap of neglect and disuse, too. (Speaking of, that OBSTRUCTION OF JUSTICE is what helped swing election 2004 in Bush's favor, if you discount New Mexico, Iowa, and Ohio in that election.) The Democrats are darn close guilty of FRAUD these past 6 months: the PROMISED us an _opposition party_, and then they keep bowing and genuflecting to the "conventional wisdom" as spouted by the DC talking heads like Broder, Gergen, and Will - which are no more than a rough polish of the Karl Rove/Rush Limbaugh talking points in the first place. ================ Cheney YouTube Clip Reveals Massive Dem Failure by Martin Lewis Posted August 15, 2007 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/martin-lewis/cheney-youtube-clip-revea_b_60632.html By now most readers will have seen the TV clip that recently surfaced on YouTube and other websites showing Dick Cheney in 1994 explaining -- in his usual condescending tone -- precisely why America should NOT invade or occupy Iraq. The full litany of reasons -- including the reticence to waste American lives on the endeavor is beyond any definition of irony. Email Print Comment The "Vice" President has yet to offer an explanation for the staggering 180-degree turnaround of his views. Apart from the reflexive catch-all excuse "this was before 9/11" -- maybe he will offer that whopper offered by all exposed humbug-wafflers: "My remarks are being taken out of context." (I've often thought that I should start a magazine called Context -- just to be able to issue publisher's denials that such miscreants had ever been quoted IN Context...) But beyond the obvious ire that this clip raises among the truly moral majority of people in America and around the world who oppose the war for exactly the reasons that Cheney outlined in 1994 -- is a profoundly disturbing matter. This interview with Cheney took place on April 14th 1994. NINETEEN NINETY FOUR. Ten and a half years before the 2004 Presidential Elections. In January 2004, the DNC knew (one hopes) that there was going to be a Presidential Election in November 2004. The DNC knew from at least January 2004 that the Iraq War was going to be a major issue. Most commentators were predicting this from the moment the illusion of the slam-dunk liberation started to evaporate in the summer of 2003. So why on earth did the DNC not discover and secure a copy of this videotape at some point between the invasion of Iraq in May 2003 and the election in November 2004? Or at the very least why did they not secure a transcript of Cheney's utterly damaging words. Imagine the impact ... Why didn't the campaign of John Kerry -- led by Bob Shrum (the self-styled "strategist" who in 2004 proudly declared that he didn't use computers or e-mail) -- find this tape or transcript? Kerry was under fire in the summer of 2004 for being a "flip-flopper". Imagine the power of elections ads showing Cheney in 1994 -- flat-out contradicting Cheney in 2004. Republicans would have been too busy planning to fire-bomb C-Span to have time to level such comparatively fatuous accusations at Kerry. But the DNC and Kerry campaigns failed miserably. The name of this game is Oppo Research. Two days before the 2000 election, as I watched what should have been Gore's landslide election victory disappear into the horizon, I wrote what i called a PRE-Mortem of the election in one of my columns for TIME.com. My column reported on a new BBC documentary that showed the RNC's then head of Oppo Research -- one Tim Griffin (later to be rewarded for his seditious work by Karl Rove gifting him with the job of one of those Republican Attorneys -- sacked for the crime of not being sycophantic enough to Bush) hard at work sabotaging the Gore campaign. (Not that Gore and -- yes Bob Shrum again -- weren't doing a pretty good job of screwing it up themselves.) Griffin and his team were superb at digging up the most minute examples of contradictions by Gore. And this was still in the comparative infancy of the Google search engine era. A lot of the RNC work was old-fashioned detective work. Of course it then took Karl Rove & co to manipulate the uncovered speeches and soundbites and blow discrepancies up out of all proportion. The 2008 election is going to be no less combative. And probably far, far worse. One hopes that the DNC will politely decline offers of help from Bob Shrum (currently batting 0-8 in Presidential election campaigns.) The RNC -- no doubt with help and guidance from Karl Rove and all the young "lads" he's been "grooming" since 2000 (just as he was groomed by Donald Segretti and Lee Atwater) -- will be digging deeper than ever for shards and specks of past speeches and utterances with which to slime the Democratic candidates for President, Senate and House. The RNC has been preparing for the November 2008 elections since January 2001. So it has already amassed a gargantuan databank of innocent soundbites ready to twist into damaging adverts. That is why the failure of the DNC -- and indeed of other organizations such as MoveOn.org - to discover and expose the 1994 Cheney video clip or transcript until very recently -- is so worrying. A quick look at YouTube reveals that there were a couple of shorter audio versions of this interview posted by an individual as early as July of 2006. But why didn't the DNC or MoveOn track down the video clip till 5 days ago? I titled my November 2000 column for TIME describing the dirty work of the RNC Oppo Research team after a war slogan that Tim Griffin had placed on his bunker-style office wall. "Unleash Hell On Al" And so they did ... If the Democrats intend to reclaim the White House in 2008 -- and intend to secure comfortable majorities in the Senate and House -- then the DNC, MoveOn.org and other groups who support a civilized, progressive agenda had better be a lot more alert and effective at digging up such hidden ammunition than they appear to have been in the case of Cheney's 1994 "Iraq-Quagmire" interview. ======================================================== This comment is pending approval and won't be displayed until it is approved. BRAVO! Martin Lewis points out something that I have been shouting fruitlessly (into the wind) for 3- 4 years now, if not a dozen: that Dem party "opposition research" has been NEGLIGENT bordering on Derliction of Duty, if not Criminal negligence. It's not just the Kerry campaign IGNORING Cheney (and Bush Sr's) rationals for _not_ invading Iraq in 1991. Kerry stood there like a punching bag as Bush sneered into national TV (during the 3rd debate) "my opponent is a FLIP-FLOPPER." Kerry too stupid, or too cowed, to respond the obvious: "George Bush pledged to 'Get Osama bin Laden dead or alive,' and here it is on the eve of another presidential election, and bin Laden is sending videos to America from his undisclosed location, safe and free from US persecution." MoveOn.org even put together the video, contrasting Bush's "dead or alive" pledge with his infamous "I'm not that concerned about him [bin Laden] anymore" pledge - the Kerry campaign and DLC refused to use it. (This official WhiteHouse.gov link is even the first one that pops up in a "Bush I'm not that concerned about bin Laden" search!) http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/03/20020313-8.html More recently, federal prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald did the _heavy lifting_ securing the conviction of Scooter Libby - a FRAUD and PERJURY CONVICTION from within the very highest reaches of the Bush-Cheney White House. Speaker Pelosi and the Democrat "leadership" threw that conviction, that hard work, on the rubbish heap of neglect and disuse, too. (Speaking of, that OBSTRUCTION OF JUSTICE is what helped swing election 2004 in Bush's favor, if you discount New Mexico, Iowa, and Ohio in that election.) The Democrats are darn close guilty of FRAUD these past 6 months: the PROMISED us an _opposition party_, and then they keep bowing and genuflecting to the "conventional wisdom" as spouted by the DC talking heads like Broder, Gergen, and Will - which are no more than a rough polish of the Karl Rove/Rush Limbaugh talking points in the first place. written by LJBK