126 Ss Revised Politics Generic

DDI 2008 SS Lab

1 Politics Generic Revamped!

Elections and Politics Elections and Politics.....................................................1 Obama 1NC...................................................................9 Obama 1NC.................................................................10 Obama 1NC.................................................................11 McCain 1NC................................................................12 McCain 1NC................................................................13 McCain 1NC................................................................14 SS Lab New Obama Good 1NC..................................15 ***ELECTIONS U......................................................19 Obama will win – energy.............................................20 Obama will win – “change”.........................................21 Obama will win – McCain tied to Bush.......................22 Obama will win – McCain tied to Bush.......................23 Obama will win – GOP brand fail...............................24 Obama will win – GOP brand fail...............................25 Obama will win – A2: all their args.............................26 Obama will win – McCain is old.................................27 Obama will win – turnout............................................28 Obama will win – economy.........................................29 Obama will win – laundry list......................................30 Obama will win – laundry list......................................31 Obama will win – frontrunner......................................32 Obama will win – Hispanics........................................33 Obama will win – A2: polls.........................................34 Obama will win – Barr.................................................35 Obama will win – swing states....................................36 Obama will win – swing states....................................37 Obama will win swing states.......................................38 Obama will win swing states ......................................39 Oil Lobbyists=>Obama wins now...............................40 McCain will win – Iraq drawdown..............................42 McCain will win – security..........................................43 McCain will win – momentum....................................44 McCain will win – economy........................................45 McCain will win – undecideds....................................46 McCain will win – PUMAs.........................................47 McCain will win – Hispanic outreach.........................48 Brink............................................................................49 Dems win.....................................................................50 ***PLAN HELPS MCCAIN ......................................51 Energy policy  McCain win.....................................52 Energy policy  McCain win.....................................53 Energy policy  McCain win.....................................54 McCain will take credit................................................55 Energy key to McCain.................................................56 Cheap energy policy helps McCain.............................57 Obama winning on energy...........................................58 Bush popularity key to McCain...................................59 Cap-and-Trade – Helps McCain..................................60 Nuc—Helps McCain ...................................................61 AE Helps McCain – Independence Spin.....................62 ***PLAN HELPS OBAMA........................................63 Dems get credit for plan...............................................64

DDI 2008 SS Lab Energy key to distance from Bush...............................65 Distance from Bush key to McCain.............................66 Distance from Bush key to McCain.............................67 Pro-Obama policy kills McCain..................................68 Plan Passage removes McCain Support ......................69 GOP winning on energy – positive incentives.............70 ***GENERAL LINKS................................................71 Energy key to elections................................................72 Energy key to elections................................................73 McCain would vote against RE...................................74 Obama would vote for RE...........................................75 Both would vote for AE...............................................76 Ethanol – Obama Supports..........................................77 Ethanol – McCain Against...........................................78 RPS – Obama Supports................................................79 Tax=>Dem Victory .....................................................80 Hispanics Key to Election............................................81 Independents key to McCain.......................................82 ***TURNS THE CASE..............................................83 Obama key to solve global warming...........................84 McCain court kills climate policy................................85 Both sides solve warming............................................86 McCain  nuclear.......................................................87 McCain  nuclear.......................................................88 McCain  nuclear.......................................................89 Obama kills nuclear.....................................................90 Obama  alternative energy.......................................91 Obama  alternative energy.......................................92 Obama  alternative energy R&D..............................93 McCain  alternative energy......................................94 Obama  Cap and Trade............................................95 Obama  Revenue Recycling.....................................96 Obama  Cap and Trade – EU Rels...........................97 McCain  Cap and Trade...........................................98 ***IRAN STRIKES.....................................................99 McCain = Global War................................................100 McCain = Global War................................................101 McCain will strike......................................................102 McCain will strike......................................................104 McCain will strike......................................................105 McCain will strike......................................................106 McCain will strike......................................................107 McCain will strike......................................................108 McCain won’t strike..................................................109 Obama will strike.......................................................110 Obama won’t strike....................................................112 Obama won’t strike....................................................113 Obama win  Bush strike on Iran............................114 Obama win  Israel strike on Iran............................115 Obama win  Israel strike on Iran............................116 Israel strike on Iran bad..............................................117 Iran Strikes Bad..........................................................118 Iran Strikes bad..........................................................119 Iran strikes bad...........................................................120

2 Politics Generic Revamped!

DDI 2008 SS Lab Iran strikes bad – A2: preventative............................121 Iran strikes bad – A2: wouldn’t escalate....................122 Iran strikes bad – prolif..............................................123 Iran strikes good.........................................................124 Strikes inevitable........................................................125 ***IRAQ....................................................................126 Obama withdrawal bad..............................................127 Obama withdrawal bad..............................................128 Obama withdrawal bad..............................................129 Withdrawal bad..........................................................130 Withdrawal bad..........................................................131 Withdrawal bad..........................................................132 Withdrawal bad..........................................................134 Withdrawal bad..........................................................135 Withdrawal bad..........................................................136 Withdrawal bad..........................................................137 Withdrawal good........................................................138 Withdrawal good........................................................139 Withdrawal good........................................................140 Obama withdrawal good – other objectives...............141 Obama withdrawal good – other objectives...............142 Obama will pull out...................................................143 McCain won’t pull out...............................................144 Obama won’t pull out................................................145 ***MIDDLE EAST...................................................146 Obama key to Mideast peace.....................................147 McCain  Mideast peace..........................................148 Obama = anti-Israel...................................................149 Obama  two state solution......................................150 Obama  two state solution......................................151 McCain = pro-Israel...................................................152 No difference on Israel/Palestine...............................153 Both sides avoid Mideast war....................................154 ***NMD + SPACE WEAPONS...............................155 McCain key to NMD.................................................156 Obama will cut NMD.................................................157 Obama will cut NMD.................................................158 Obama will cut NMD and space weapons.................159 Space Weapons Bad...................................................160 No Space Weapons....................................................161 Missile Defense Good................................................162 Missile Defense Good................................................163 ***SOFT POWER/GENERAL FOREIGN POLICY164 McCain key to global survival...................................165 Obama key to soft power/relations............................166 Obama key to solve isolationism...............................167 No difference on soft power......................................168 No difference on foreign policy.................................169 No difference on foreign policy.................................170 A2: McCain is a secret realist....................................171 Obama doesn’t solve soft power/EU.........................172 No difference on WOT..............................................173 Obama key to CTBT..................................................174 ***RUSSIA...............................................................175 McCain  new Cold War.........................................176

3 Politics Generic Revamped!

DDI 2008 SS Lab McCain kills US/Russian relations............................177 2008 key to Russian relations....................................178 ***CUBA..................................................................179 Obama will lift embargo............................................180 Obama will lift embargo............................................181 McCain won’t lift embargo........................................182 Obama won’t lift embargo.........................................183 ***SPACE.................................................................184 Obama kills space – funding......................................185 Obama kills space – funding......................................186 Obama kills space – research.....................................187 Obama kills space – shuttle crash..............................188 McCain  space exploration.....................................189 McCain  space exploration.....................................190 Obama  space – changes the framework................191 Obama  space – satellite tech.................................192 McCain kills space – NASA funding.........................193 2008 key to space.......................................................194 2008 key to space.......................................................195 VSE key to survival...................................................196 A2: VSE not key to exploration.................................197 VSE key to whole space program..............................198 Space exploration key to heg.....................................199 VSE key to space leadership (heg)............................200 A2: VSE  unilateralism..........................................201 A2: VSE bad for science............................................202 Both sides kill space exploration...............................203 ***COURT................................................................204 McCain  super conservative court..........................205 McCain court overturn Roe.......................................206 McCain  war on drugs............................................207 War on drugs bad – rainforests..................................208 War on drugs bad – prison.........................................209 McCain  stem cell research ...................................210 ***EXECUTIVE POWER........................................211 Obama key to limit executive power.........................212 Obama key to limit executive power.........................213 Obama key to limit executive power.........................214 McCain court  torture/Gitmo.................................215 McCain court  deference........................................216 Executive power bad – war........................................217 Executive power bad – unilateralism.........................218 Executive power bad – Bush Doctrine.......................219 Executive power bad – Constitution..........................220 Executive power bad – Constitution..........................221 Executive power bad – A2: heg.................................222 Executive power good – nuclear war.........................223 Executive power good – heg......................................224 Executive power good – terrorism.............................225 Executive power good – laundry list.........................226 ***TRADE................................................................227 Obama  China bashing...........................................228 Obama  China bashing...........................................229 McCain key to Colombia FTA..................................230 McCain key to free trade............................................231

4 Politics Generic Revamped!

DDI 2008 SS Lab McCain key to free trade............................................232 ***HEALTH CARE..................................................233 McCain health care policy bad .................................234 ***AGENDA UNIQUENESS..................................235 Yes capital..................................................................236 Yes capital – FISA proves.........................................237 No capital...................................................................238 No agenda – A2: lame duck session..........................239 Gridlock now.............................................................240 ***AGENDA UNIQUENESS..................................241 No bipartisan cooperation now..................................242 McCain Flip-Flop now...............................................243 Subsidy Links Non Unique .......................................244 ***AGENDA LINKS................................................245 AE costs capital – subsidy cuts..................................246 AE unpopular – compromise/A2: Bipart...................247 AE unpopular – A2: turns..........................................248 AE unpopular – divisive............................................249 AE Unpopular—Expensive ......................................250 A2: Dems like AE – auto states.................................252 AE popular – public...................................................253 AE popular – Congress..............................................255 AE Bipart...................................................................256 AE Bipart...................................................................257 AE Kills Bipart..........................................................259 AE = Concession to Dems.........................................260 Dems Support Alt Energy..........................................261 AE – Dems Push........................................................262 Cap-and-Trade – Popular – Recycling.......................263 Cap-and-Trade – Unpopular – Grandfathering..........264 Cap-and-Trade – Bipart.............................................265 Ethanol – Unpopular – Lobbies.................................266 Fossil Fuel Tax – Popular – Dems.............................267 Hydrogen – Bipart......................................................268 Hydrogen Popular – Big Oil......................................269 Tax Breaks – Unpopular – GOP................................270 Regulations Unpopular..............................................271 RPS—Bipart .............................................................272 Solar Popular..............................................................273 Nuc Power Unpopular—Dems .................................274 Subsidies Unpopular .................................................275 Ethanol Unpopular.....................................................276 ***AGENDA ILs......................................................277 Political Capital Key..................................................278 PC Ensures Passage...................................................279 Capital is finite...........................................................280 Capital key – Issue Spillover.....................................281 Capital key – Issue Spillover.....................................282 Capital key – Cooperation.........................................283 Capital can only help – no turns................................284 Capital not key...........................................................285 President Gets Blame.................................................286 Popularity Key...........................................................287 A2: Popularity Key....................................................288 Winners Win..............................................................289 Winners Lose.............................................................290

5 Politics Generic Revamped!

DDI 2008 SS Lab Bipart Key..................................................................291 Bipart key...................................................................292 Bipart key...................................................................293 Moderates Key...........................................................294 Concessions Key........................................................295 Concessions key.........................................................296 Concessions key.........................................................298 Concessions not key...................................................299 Flip-Flops Hurts Agenda............................................300 Flip-Flops Hurts Agenda............................................301 ***OUTER CONTINENTAL SHELF***................302 1NC OCS – Bush good (1/2).....................................303 1NC OCS – Bush good (2/2).....................................304 1NC OCS – Bush bad (1/2).......................................305 1NC OCS – Bush bad (2/2).......................................307 **UNIQUENESS – WONT PASS**........................308 Wont pass - security...................................................309 Wont pass – Pelosi.....................................................310 Wont pass - Democrats..............................................311 Wont pass – Democrats.............................................312 **UNIQUENESS – WILL PASS**..........................313 Will pass - prices........................................................314 Will pass – public pressure (bipart)...........................315 Will pass - compromise.............................................316 Will pass - compromise.............................................317 Will pass – political climate.......................................318 Will pass - expiration.................................................319 Will pass – company pressure....................................320 Will be up for vote.....................................................321 Now key - expiration.................................................322 Now key - elections...................................................323 Bush pushing..............................................................324 Bush pushing..............................................................325 High prices  spin....................................................326 High prices  compromise.......................................327 Bush blamed for prices..............................................328 Bipart key...................................................................329 Concessions key.........................................................330 OCS key for compromise...........................................331 AT: House key...........................................................332 AT: Pelosi key............................................................333 AT: Lame duck congress/minority............................334 Elections??.................................................................335 **IMPACTS - GOOD**...........................................336 Oil Drilling Good – Dependence...............................337 Oil Drilling Good – Dependence (quals)...................338 Oil Drilling Good – Dependence (signal)..................339 Oil Drilling Good – Economy....................................340 Oil Drilling Good – AT: Environment.......................341 Oil Drilling Good – AT: Environment.......................342 Oil Drilling Good - Perception..................................343 Oil Drilling Good – Trans/Manufacturing.................344 Oil Drilling Good – Trucking....................................345 Oil Drilling Good  Renewables..............................346 Oil Drilling Good - AT: SPR solves..........................347

6 Politics Generic Revamped!

DDI 2008 SS Lab **IMPACTS – BAD**..............................................348 Oil Drilling Bad – Oil Spills Ext................................349 Oil Drilling Bad – Environment  Extinction..........350 Oil Drilling Bad – No Impact....................................351 **IMPACTS – AT: DEPENDENCE**.....................352 Oil Drilling Bad – Russian Instability.......................353 Oil Drilling Bad – Hegemony....................................354 Oil Drilling Bad – Iran Nuclearization......................355 Oil Drilling Bad – Iran Nuclearization......................356 **IMPACTS – TURNS CASE**..............................357 Oil Drilling Bad – Economy......................................358 Oil Drilling Bad – Trades Off with RE .....................359 Oil Drilling Bad – A2: Solves Dependency...............360 Oil Drilling Bad – A2: Solves Dependency...............361 Oil Drilling Bad – A2: Solves Dependency...............362 ***COLOMBIA FREE TRADE***.........................363 1NC – Colombia FTA (1/2).......................................364 1NC – Colombia FTA (2/2).......................................365 **UNIQUENESS – WILL PASS**..........................366 Will pass – Concession..............................................367 Will pass – Concession..............................................368 Will pass – Concession..............................................369 Will pass – Bipart.......................................................370 **UNIQUENESS – WONT PASS** .......................371 Wont pass – Democrats/Pelosi...................................372 Wont pass – Democrats/Pelosi...................................373 Wont pass – Violence................................................374 AT: Hostage Rescue  passage................................375 AT: Tax cuts  passage............................................376 **PELOSI KEY**.....................................................377 Pelosi Key..................................................................378 Pelosi Key - Jobs........................................................379 Pelosi Key - Economy...............................................380 Concessions key to agenda........................................381 **LINKS**................................................................382 Link - Wind................................................................383 Link – Ethanol/Bio-diesel..........................................384 Link – Wind/Solar......................................................385 Colombia key to other FTA’s....................................386 AT: Labor Violence...................................................387 **IMPACTS – FTA GOOD**..................................388 Colombia Good - Naroctics.......................................389 Colombia Good – Economy.......................................390 Colombia Good - Economy.......................................391 Colombia Good – Terrorism/Security.......................392 **IMPACTS – FTA BAD**.....................................393 FTA bad – Human Rights Cred - Terrorism .............394 FTA bad – Human Rights Cred - Terrorism..............395 FTA bad – Human Rights Cred - Demo Promo........396 FTA bad – Human Rights Cred.................................397 FTA bad – Columbian Civil War...............................398 FTA bad – Civil War  US Economic Collapse .....399 FTA bad – Civil War  Brazil Nuclearization.........400 FTA bad – Civil War  Brazil Nuclearization ........401 FTA bad – Columbia Instability................................402

7 Politics Generic Revamped!

DDI 2008 SS Lab FTA bad – Columbia Instability................................403 FTA bad – Columbian Instability..............................404 FTA bad – Human Rights Violations........................405 FTA bad – Human Rights Violations........................406 FTA bad – Columbian Economy...............................407 ***RANDOM INTERNAL SCENARIOS ..............408 Pickens Important .....................................................410 Pickens Not Important ..............................................411 Plan helps bush—Pickens .........................................412 AE in Connecticut Key .............................................414 Minnesota Uniqueness ..............................................415 Minnesota Links and Internals ..................................416 Oil Companies Not Important ...................................417 2AC No Link..............................................................418 Gag rule internal .......................................................419

8 Politics Generic Revamped!

DDI 2008 SS Lab

9 Politics Generic Revamped!

Obama 1NC Obama is winning because he can control the framing on energy Andrew Ward, 6-22-08 “Energy concerns could swing Ohio result”, http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/235879bc-4098-11dd-bd480000779fd2ac,dwp_uuid=f2b40164-cfea-11dc-9309-0000779fd2ac.htm[Ian Miller] Richard Daley hoped he would spend more time at his Kentucky vacation home in retirement. Instead, the 60-year-old former engineer, has cut his number of visits by half because of the soaring cost of driving the 200 miles from his home in West Chester, Ohio. “On a fixed income, we just can’t keep absorbing these increases,” he says. Mr Daley is one of millions of Americans rethinking their approach to energy consumption as petrol prices hit record levels. According to the Department of Transportation, US drivers travelled 30bn fewer miles between November and April, compared with a year earlier, the biggest drop since the 1979 energy crisis. While Mr Daley’s story is increasingly familiar, his carries added weight because he lives in one of the most important battleground states in November’s presidential election. His heavily Republican county on the edge of Cincinnati helped deliver George W. Bush’s narrow victory in Ohio four years ago and John McCain needs to win by a big margin there if he is to hold the state. Describing himself as an undecided independent, Mr Daley supports Mr McCain’s plan to lift the ban on fresh offshore oil and gas drilling around the US coast. But he also favours Barack Obama’s proposal to levy a windfall profit tax on oil companies and invest the proceeds in renewable fuels: “We need to exploit all the oil we have, but, in the long term, we have to find alternatives,” says Mr Daley. Energy has soared towards the top of the election agenda as petrol prices have topped $4 a gallon for the first time. Three in four voters say the issue will be “very important” in determining their vote – outranking taxes, terrorism and the Iraq war – according to a recent poll by the Pew Research Centre. Asked who they trusted most to handle the energy issue, respondents favoured Mr Obama over Mr McCain by 18 percentage points. “Voters are making the simple conclusion that if you change the party in the White House somehow things will get better,” says Larry Sabato, a political scientist at the University of Virginia.

DDI 2008 SS Lab

10 Politics Generic Revamped!

Obama 1NC The plan dooms Obama. McCain will pounce on a new energy policy to revitalize the GOP brand – it will tip the election (Theo Caldwell, President of Caldwell Asset Management, Inc/ investment advisor in the United States and Canada, 6-17-08, “Theo Caldwell: If the Republicans promise to cut fuel costs, 2008 could be their year”, http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2008/06/17/theo-caldwell-if-the-republicanspromise-to-cut-fuel-costs-2008-could-be-their-year.aspx, [Ian Miller]) Drill here, drill now, pay less. This is the mantra of former U.S. speaker of the house Newt Gingrich, whose American Solutions policy group is campaigning for America to begin tapping its own oil resources to combat high gas prices. For all the environmental constraints the U.S. government has placed on domestic oil production (China and Cuba are drilling closer to the U.S. coastline than American companies are allowed to do), polls show Americans would rather pay less for gasoline than fight global warming. Indeed, the price of gas now permeates almost every policy discussion, from foreign affairs to inflation. As we approach the 2008 elections, whichever presidential candidate and party conjures a cogent energy plan — incorporating domestic drilling and defying environmental alarmism — will be rewarded. At first glance, it would seem that spiralling gas prices and frustration at the pumps would hurt the incumbent party. Notwithstanding the Democrats’ majorities in both houses of Congress, it is the Republican party that the public identifies with incumbency, saddled as they are with an unpopular president who catches blame for everything from poor Iraq war planning to inclement weather. But the religious environmental zealotry of much of the Democrats’ base makes them the party of windmills and stern lectures, not practical solutions. Congressional Democrats have contented themselves with browbeating today’s most politically correct villains, oil executives, while reflexively voting down any proposed energy solution, from domestic drilling to nuclear power. The Democrats’ presidential candidate, Senator Barack Obama, has suggested that high energy costs might carry the benefit of forcing America to change its gluttonous ways, recently chiding his countrymen: “We can’t drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times ... and then just expect that other countries are going to say OK.” Americans did not win the Cold War so they would have to consult Sweden before setting their thermostats. This kind of thinking is anathema to the Land of the Free, and it opens the door for the GOP to capitalize on the energy issue. In 1994, Gingrich’s Republicans achieved a majority in Congress through a simple, common sense platform known as the Contract with America. A one-page roster of eight reforms and 10 proposed Acts, the Contract neatly answered voters’ principal questions of those who seek to govern. To wit, who are you, what do you hope to accomplish, and how will you do it? In 2008, with energy prices fixing to become the top election issue, combining foreign and domestic policy concerns into a monstrous hybrid of a problem, an understandable and workable proposal could help the GOP again. If every Republican running for office, from freshman House candidates to their presidential nominee, Senator John McCain, spoke with a single, sensible voice on this issue, they could snatch victory from defeat. A first draft might read: “We are Americans too, and we know that energy prices have gotten out of hand. We want to reduce fuel costs for all of us, and cut the number of dollars we send to hostile, oil-producing countries in the Middle East and South America. If you elect us, we will do the following three things: We will begin to tap America’s vast oil reserves, using technological drilling advances that protect the environment. We will also promote alternative energy sources, such as nuclear power, to move us away from an oil-based economy. Finally, we will eliminate barriers to the import of cheaper, more efficient automotive systems that have been successful in other parts of the world.” If the Republicans agree on such a platform, 2008 could be their year after all.

DDI 2008 SS Lab

11 Politics Generic Revamped!

Obama 1NC McCain will attack Iran David Edwards & Muriel Kane 1/28/08 (“Buchanan: McCain win would mean war with Iran”, http://rawstory.com/news/2007/Buchanan_McCain_win_means_war_with_0128.html) Says McCain would provoke new wars, 'he's in everybody's face' "More wars" could prove to be the oddest of all presidential campaign slogans. Especially if it works. Presidential candidate John McCain shocked observers on Sunday when he told a crowd of supporters, "There's going to be other wars. ... I'm sorry to tell you, there's going to be other wars. We will never surrender but there will be other wars." MSNBC's Joe Scarborough asked old-line conservative Pat Buchanan about McCain's remarks, saying, "He talked about promising that more wars were coming. ... Is he so desperate to get off the economic issue?" Pat Buchanan replied that McCain never used the word "promise" but simply said there would be more wars, and that from McCain's point of view, "that is straight talk. ... You get John McCain in the White House, and I do believe we will be at war with Iran." "That's one of the things that makes me very nervous about him," Buchanan went on. "There's no doubt John McCain is going to be a war president. ... His whole career is wrapped up in the military, national security. He's in Putin's face, he's threatening the Iranians, we're going to be in Iraq a hundred years." "So when he says more war," Scarborough commented, "he is promising you, if he gets in the White House, we'll not only be fighting this war but starting new wars. Is that what conservative Republicans want? "I don't say he's starting them," Buchanan answered. "He expects more wars. ... I think he's talking straight, because if you take a look at the McCain foreign policy, he is in everybody's face. Did you see Thad Cochran's comment when he endorsed Romney? He said, look, John McCain is a bellicose, red-faced, angry guy, who constantly explodes." "Not a happy message," commented Scarborough. "Not Reaganesque."

Global nuclear war Jorge Hirsch, a professor of physics at the University of California San Diego. He is one of the originators of the physicists' petition on nuclear weapons policies started at the UCSD, 1/3/2006, America's nuclear ticking bomb, http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20060103/news_mz1e3hirsch.html If only conventional bombs are used in an unprovoked U.S. or Israeli aerial attack against Iran's facilities, Iran is likely to retaliate with missiles against coalition forces in Iraq and against Israel, as well as possibly a ground invasion of southern Iraq, that the 150,000 U.S. troops in Iraq would not be able to withstand. Iranian missiles could potentially contain chemical warheads, and it certainly would be impossible to rule out such possibility. Iran has signed and ratified the Chemical Weapons Convention (in 1993 and 1997 respectively), however it is still likely to have supplies, as determined by the U.S. State Department in August 2005. Early use by the United States of low-yield nuclear bombs with better bunker-busting ability than conventional bombs targeting Iranian nuclear, chemical and missile installations would be consistent with the new U.S. nuclear weapons doctrine and could be argued to be necessary to protect the lives of 150,000 U.S. soldiers in Iraq and of Israeli citizens. It would also send a clear message to Iran that any response would be answered by a far more devastating nuclear attack, thus potentially saving both American and Iranian lives. However, the nuclear threshold is a line of no return. Once the United States uses a nuclear weapon against a nonnuclear adversary, the 182 countries that are signatories of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation treaty will rightly feel at risk, and many of them will rush to develop their own nuclear deterrent while they can. A new world with many more nuclear countries, and a high risk of any regional conflict exploding into all-out nuclear war, will be the consequence. The scientific community (which created nuclear weapons) is alarmed over the new U.S. nuclear weapons policies. A petition to reverse these policies launched by physicists at the University of California San Diego has gathered over 1,500 physicists' signatures including eight Nobel laureates and many prominent members of the U.S. scientific establishment (http://physics.ucsd.edu/petition/). Scientists object strongly to the concept of WMD, that lumps together nuclear weapons with other "weapons of mass destruction" and blurs the sharp line that separates immensely more destructive nuclear weapons from all other weapons. An escalating nuclear war could lead to the destruction of civilization. There is no fundamental difference between small nuclear bombs and large ones, nor between nuclear bombs targeting underground installations versus those targeting cities or armies.

DDI 2008 SS Lab

12 Politics Generic Revamped!

McCain 1NC McCain will win – he’ll control the framing of the economy James Pethokoukis, Staff Writer, 7-15, 2008 US News and World Report “4 Reasons the Weak Economy Is Now Helping McCain” http://www.usnews.com/blogs/capital-commerce/2008/7/15/4-reasons-the-weak-economy-is-now-helpingmccain.html But I think we may now be at the point where this economic mess has started working in McCain's favor. The dynamic no longer seems to be a linear phenomenon in which a bad economy is good for Obama and a worse economy is even better. Rather, the situation has become chaotic and almost impossible to predict in view of all the emerging variables. But within the range of realistic possibilities, McCain may now have a roughly fifty-fifty shot at victory. Here's why: 1) Gas prices. Polls show the public wants lower gas prices and thinks oil drilling can help get them. And McCain and the Republicans have positioned themselves as the party of more energy and lower prices. They want to drill, and they want to build more nuclear plants. But instead of opening up new areas to drilling, Democrats want to tap the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. And who can forget Obama's response when asked what he thought of higher gas prices: "I would have preferred a gradual adjustment." One problem may be that Obama fashioned his energy plan when oil was a mere $60 a barrel. McCain seems to be smartly tweaking his policies on the fly—drilling, the gas tax moratorium—to appeal to voters furious about higher prices at the pump. 2) Stale Obamanomics. Like his energy policy, Obama's economic policy was crafted when the economy was clearly expanding, unemployment was below 5 percent, and the budget deficit was plunging. Now growth is sporadic at best, unemployment is rising sharply, and the deficit is likely to top a record $500 billion. Yet Obama still wants to raise investment, income, and payroll taxes while expanding spending. McCain, on the other hand, is talking about pro-growth tax cuts and balancing the budget by the end of his first term. Just as Obama's Iraq policy seems stuck in the past, so does his economic policy.3) The Fannie and Freddie fiasco. Up until the announcement of the Paulson-Bernanke bailout, the mortgage mess and credit crunch looked to many like examples of free-market failure. But Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are creations of a federal government trying to promote a specific economic policy—greater homeownership. And the artificial existence of these quasi-corporate creatures has contributed mightily to the housing mess, explains economist Brian Wesbury, by dominating the mortgage market "using subsidized credit" and pushing "private firms toward the fringes of the securitization process and into territory which included subprime and Alt-A loans." In any event, the Fannie-Freddie mess could be used by Team McCain to vividly display the incompetency of big government at the exact time Obama is arguing for more government involvement in healthcare and energy. 4) A skeptical public. America doesn't think too much of its government right now. Approval ratings of President Bush and Congress are minuscule. Indeed, pollsters will tell you that bad economies make voters skeptical of government rather than pushing them to embrace it. A recent Zogby poll showed that 46 percent of Democrats favored corporate taxes over taxpayer-funded federal programs as the best way to spur economic growth. Recall that a big corporate tax cut is at the heart of the McCain economic program. A big risk for Obama is that he will mistake a dislike of the GOP for a love of bigger government and overreach on policy and rhetoric.

DDI 2008 SS Lab

13 Politics Generic Revamped!

McCain 1NC The plan dooms McCain. He is counting on energy to create distance from Bush – the plan locks him into an unpopular president Scott Horsley, NPR business correspondent, 5/13/2008, “McCain Targets Independents with 'Green' Effort,” http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=90411556 But for the moment, McCain's tone is very different as he tries to reach out to independent and moderate voters at campaigns stops in the Pacific Northwest. McCain visited a watershed center outside Seattle on Tuesday, where he stressed his commitment to environmental protection. McCain even planned a nature walk around Washington's Cedar River Reservoir, with reporters and photographers in tow, and held a roundtable discussion with a group of Washington state conservation advocates. Sally Jewell heads the Seattle-based outdoor gear company REI, a cooperative with 3.5 million active members. "We have members that span from the far right to the far left of the political spectrum," she said. "But I think the one thing they all appreciate is a healthy environment." By wrapping himself in the fleece vest of environmentalism, McCain hopes to reach out to that constituency. He repeated his pledge to combat greenhouse gases by limiting the amount of these gases that companies can emit and encouraging those who emit less to sell their permits to others. This "cap-and-trade" system is similar to plans proposed by Illinois Sen. Barack Obama and New York Sen. Hillary Clinton — albeit with less stringent limits on carbon pollution. McCain's Green Campaign Aimed at Moderate Voters "McCain simply cannot win in November if he can't consolidate the center and win the swing independents who determine every presidential election," said Larry Sabato, a University of Virginia political analyst. "His task is tough enough because of President Bush's unpopularity, the unpopularity of the Iraq war and the tanking of the economy. If he gets too identified with the right wing of his own party, he's going to alienate those swing independents, and he'll lose the election." McCain is closely identified with President Bush in his support for the Iraq war and an economic policy built on tax cuts. But Sabato says so far, that has not been the drag on McCain's campaign that it might be. "Right now, he has that maverick image, and he's running 20 to 25 points better than the Republican brand," Sabato added. "The Democrats' job is to make sure that doesn't continue. McCain's job is to make sure that it does." The environment is one area where McCain can put some daylight between his views and President Bush's. Speaking on Monday in Portland, Ore., McCain subtly criticized the president for not doing more to combat global warming. "I will not permit eight long years to pass without serious action on serious challenges," he said. McCain also went out of his way to praise Oregon's Democratic governor and to promise more bipartisan cooperation if he is elected president. "We need to draw on the best ideas of both parties and on all the resources a free market can provide," he said.

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14 Politics Generic Revamped!

McCain 1NC McCain is key to space. Obama will exploration to spite Bush Thomson Dialog NewsEdge, 3-9-07, http://www.tmcnet.com/usubmit/2007/03/09/2404370.htm But certainly the new Congress -- contrary to my earlier speculations -- is unwilling after all to take an axe and give the same forty whacks to the Shuttle/ISS budget that it has done to Bush's follow up manned space program, although many outside observers think on balance Bush's VSE is more justifiable and cost-effective than the almost useless Station is at this point. The real political factor is simply that a very large number of Congressional Democrats as well as Republicans loyally voted funds for Shuttle and Station over the last two decades -- including President Clinton's two terms -- and, in the classic tradition of politicians everywhere, they are unwilling to publicly admit that they were mistaken in doing so. By contrast, the VSE is Bush's personal creation, is just now beginning -- and so is a natural target for politicians of the other party.

The Bush/McCain plan for exploration is key to human survival Paul Spudis, Principal Investigator in the Planetary Geology Program of the NASA Office of Space Science, Solar System Exploration Division and Senior Professional Staff, Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, August 4, 2004, http://www.spudislunarresources.com/Opinion_Editorial/The%20Space%20Program%20and %20the%20Meaning%20of%20Life.htm The race to the Moon did more than prove American technical skill and the power of a free society. The real lesson and gift from Apollo was a wholly unexpected glimpse into our future. From both the chemical and physical evidence of impact (which we learned from the record of the lunar rocks) and the fossil record, we discovered that large body collisions had occurred in our past and will occur again in our future. Such catastrophes resulted in the widespread destruction of life, in some cases instantaneously eliminating more than 90% of all living species. In short, we discovered that ultimately, life on Earth is doomed. Our new understanding of impact as a fundamental geological force, leaves us only with the question of when, not if, the next large collision will occur. And ‘when’ is something we cannot predict. Human civilization is cumulative. Our culture provides positive and beautiful things through music, art and knowledge – it embodies the wisdom of all who have gone before us. With that wisdom, we have rejected the evil doctrines of slavery, Nazism and communism. People live longer, happier and more productive lives as time goes on. So one must ask, are we here for a reason and if so, to what purpose? Before passing the torch to their children, humans feel the need to create something of long-term value – something that will exist long after their time here on Earth. Be it a garden or a cure for cancer, we want to leave this world a little bit better than we found it. Will the prospect of our extinction harden our resolve to survive, or will it hasten the decay of our culture? Without an escape hatch, our children will lose focus - lose sight of goals and grand visions. The President’s Vision for Space directs us to extend human reach by developing new capabilities in space travel. Returning to the Moon will facilitate that goal. There we will gain technical ability and learn how to use the abundant energy and material resources waiting on other worlds. With the knowledge of how to “live off the land” in space, we can move out into the universe – populating one world after another. We must not die out here on Earth. Our values, culture and ability to leave this planet set us apart as a species. We have looked into the past and have seen the future of our world. Life here on Earth is destined for extinction. By venturing forth beyond Earth, we can ensure our survival. To extend and preserve humanity and human achievement, we must advance new capabilities in space travel. The President has asked for $1 Billion (about 0.0004 of the Federal budget) spread over the next four years, to begin this journey. As we acquire capability with resources derived from the Moon and elsewhere, we will create a spacefaring infrastructure.

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SS Lab New Obama Good 1NC A. Obama winning but McCain is still in the race Steven Thomma, McClatcy Newspapers, 7-25-08, http://www.mcclatchydc.com/homepage/story/45643.html WASHINGTON — If conventional wisdom ruled politics, Barack Obama would be on his way to the White House after this week. He went overseas with the national news media in tow and staged a series of well choreographed scenes that were designed to make him appear "presidential" and to address the fact that many voters still consider him inexperienced and a risky choice. Heads of state shook his hand. The prime minister of Iraq welcomed part of Obama's plan to get U.S. troops out. Two hundred thousand Germans cheered him in Berlin. The French president fawned over him. That may all pay off for the Illinois Democrat. But it's July, and he shouldn't pick the White House china just yet. At home, even as he struggled to steal some of the national spotlight away, rival John McCain managed to stay in the game. The Arizona Republican went to the battleground states of Ohio and Pennsylvania, dominating local news coverage and talking about gas prices, an issue mentioned in local coffee shops much more than Obama's trip. Polls show Obama with an edge, but the contest still very close. In surveys of battleground states taken just before Obama's trip and during its first days, Quinnipiac University found McCain gaining on him in Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin and pulling narrowly ahead in Colorado. "The race is tightening," said Peter Brown, assistant director of the Connecticut University's Polling Institute. "McCain's doing a little better because Obama's post-primary bounce is wearing off." Nationally, two daily tracking polls showed Obama getting a bounce of support by Thursday night. The Rasmussen poll found Obama leading 49-44 percent, gaining five points from earlier in the week. The Gallup poll found Obama leading 47-41 percent, a four-point gain from earlier in the week. But short-term bounces often disappear. In fact, Obama had a six-point lead in the Gallup poll a week ago as he started his well-publicized trek. "The drop-off in Obama's support earlier this week . . . suggests caution in assuming that the trip will have any lasting impact on the structure of the race," said Gallup editor Frank Newport. "The jury is still out."

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B. Energy is the top issue for voters due to the prolonged stalemate over energy issues. Without this issue, Obama would lose his marginal lead STEPHEN POWER, SARA MURRAY and SIOBHAN HUGHES, 7-25-08, The Wall Street Journal, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121694403620182961.html?mod=googlenews_wsj Congress will likely break for the summer without passing legislation to curb high gasoline prices. But Americans are fashioning their own energy policy, founded on conservation and support for more production. A new Wall Street Journal/NBC news poll finds that energy -including gasoline and utility costs -- ranks as the economic issue that voters say affects them the most personally.New data indicate Americans are conserving energy with fervor. The Energy Information Administration reported Wednesday that gasoline stocks posted a 2.8 million-barrel build in the week ended July 18, exceeding the 200,000-barrel increase forecast by analysts. In the past two weeks, the price of crude oil has fallen 14% from its New York Mercantile Exchange record close of $145.29 reached July 3, in part due to weakening demand. Thursday on the Nymex, crude oil for September delivery rose $1.05 per barrel, or 0.8%, to settle at $125.49. The prolonged stalemate over energy policy raises the stakes for both parties heading into the fall election. Republicans, emboldened by polls indicating rising support among Americans for increased domestic drilling for oil and natural gas, are trying to cast Congress's Democratic leaders and the party's presidential candidate, Barack Obama, as obstructionists responsible for the country's energy crisis. Polls indicate voters trust Democrats over Republicans, by substantial margins, to do a better job on energy. The Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll found that 42% of respondents preferred Democrats for dealing with energy policy, versus 22% favoring Republicans. The poll indicated that Democrats' edge on the issue may be slipping; the July poll gave Democrats a 20-point advantage on the issue, versus a 28-point lead in a January poll by The Wall Street Journal and NBC News. Polls of likely voters in four battleground states, conducted this month by Quinnipiac University in partnership with The Wall Street Journal and Washingtonpost.com, show voters in each state say energy policy is more important to them than the war in Iraq.

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McCain will attack Iran David Edwards & Muriel Kane 1/28/08 (“Buchanan: McCain win would mean war with Iran”, http://rawstory.com/news/2007/Buchanan_McCain_win_means_war_with_0128.html) Says McCain would provoke new wars, 'he's in everybody's face' "More wars" could prove to be the oddest of all presidential campaign slogans. Especially if it works. Presidential candidate John McCain shocked observers on Sunday when he told a crowd of supporters, "There's going to be other wars. ... I'm sorry to tell you, there's going to be other wars. We will never surrender but there will be other wars." MSNBC's Joe Scarborough asked old-line conservative Pat Buchanan about McCain's remarks, saying, "He talked about promising that more wars were coming. ... Is he so desperate to get off the economic issue?" Pat Buchanan replied that McCain never used the word "promise" but simply said there would be more wars, and that from McCain's point of view, "that is straight talk. ... You get John McCain in the White House, and I do believe we will be at war with Iran." "That's one of the things that makes me very nervous about him," Buchanan went on. "There's no doubt John McCain is going to be a war president. ... His whole career is wrapped up in the military, national security. He's in Putin's face, he's threatening the Iranians, we're going to be in Iraq a hundred years." "So when he says more war," Scarborough commented, "he is promising you, if he gets in the White House, we'll not only be fighting this war but starting new wars. Is that what conservative Republicans want? "I don't say he's starting them," Buchanan answered. "He expects more wars. ... I think he's talking straight, because if you take a look at the McCain foreign policy, he is in everybody's face. Did you see Thad Cochran's comment when he endorsed Romney? He said, look, John McCain is a bellicose, red-faced, angry guy, who constantly explodes." "Not a happy message," commented Scarborough. "Not Reaganesque."

Global nuclear war Jorge Hirsch, a professor of physics at the University of California San Diego. He is one of the originators of the physicists' petition on nuclear weapons policies started at the UCSD, 1/3/2006, America's nuclear ticking bomb, http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20060103/news_mz1e3hirsch.html If only conventional bombs are used in an unprovoked U.S. or Israeli aerial attack against Iran's facilities, Iran is likely to retaliate with missiles against coalition forces in Iraq and against Israel, as well as possibly a ground invasion of southern Iraq, that the 150,000 U.S. troops in Iraq would not be able to withstand. Iranian missiles could potentially contain chemical warheads, and it certainly would be impossible to rule out such possibility. Iran has signed and ratified the Chemical Weapons Convention (in 1993 and 1997 respectively), however it is still likely to have supplies, as determined by the U.S. State Department in August 2005. Early use by the United States of low-yield nuclear bombs with better bunker-busting ability than conventional bombs targeting Iranian nuclear, chemical and missile installations would be consistent with the new U.S. nuclear weapons doctrine and could be argued to be necessary to protect the lives of 150,000 U.S. soldiers in Iraq and of Israeli citizens. It would also send a clear message to Iran that any response would be answered by a far more devastating nuclear attack, thus potentially saving both American and Iranian lives. However, the nuclear threshold is a line of no return. Once the United States uses a nuclear weapon against a nonnuclear adversary, the 182 countries that are signatories of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation treaty will rightly feel at risk, and many of them will rush to develop their own nuclear deterrent while they can. A new world with many more nuclear countries, and a high risk of any regional conflict exploding into all-out nuclear war, will be the consequence. The scientific community (which created nuclear weapons) is alarmed over the new U.S. nuclear weapons policies. A petition to reverse these policies launched by physicists at the University of California San Diego has gathered over 1,500 physicists' signatures including eight Nobel laureates and many prominent members of the U.S. scientific establishment (http://physics.ucsd.edu/petition/). Scientists object strongly to the concept of WMD, that lumps together nuclear weapons with other "weapons of mass destruction" and blurs the sharp line that separates immensely more destructive nuclear weapons from all other weapons. An escalating nuclear war could lead to the destruction of civilization. There is no fundamental difference between small nuclear bombs and large ones, nor between nuclear bombs targeting underground installations versus those targeting cities or armies.

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***ELECTIONS U

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Obama will win – energy Energy is the key to the election – Obama’s up. Tom Raum, AP staff writer, 6/23/2008, Gas at $4 brings promises, pandering, http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5isJU4OyzZglXxAWlzkvmnslNP3-wD91FUOI00 [ND] Obama and McCain have made high gas prices a top issue in their campaigns and have offered dueling remedies aimed at easing them. Their positions are being echoed daily by their surrogates on Capitol Hill. And both make it sound as if only their proposals would chart the path to lower fuel prices and a final cure for what President Bush once labeled the nation's addiction to foreign oil. This debate is certain to get louder as the November election approaches. In a USA Today-Gallup Poll released Monday, nine in 10 people said energy, including gas prices, would be very or extremely important in deciding their presidential vote in November, tying it with the economy as the top issue. People said Obama would do a better job than McCain on energy issues by 19 percentage points.

OBAMA IS LEADING ON ENERGY- MCCAIN NEEDS TO MAKE PROGRESS HERE TO WIN THE ELECTION (Associated Press, 7-8-08, “Obama Ad Attacks McCain On Energy Solutions, http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/07/08/ap/politics/main4242287.shtml, [Ian Miller]) (AP) In his first negative ad of the general election campaign, Democrat Barack Obama says John McCain is "part of the problem" on energy, tackling an issue that is quickly becoming the top worry of voters. The 30second commercial is a direct response to a Republican Party ad that began airing this weekend. The GOP spot accuses Obama of offering no new solutions to solve high gas prices and global warming. Obama's ad will run in the same states where the Republican National Committee placed its ad _ Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, his campaign said. Obama's sharp retort represents an early escalation in the presidential ad wars. The ad comes as Americans, faced with gasoline prices of $4 and more, appear to be embracing some of McCain's proposed solutions, including increased oil drilling in the United States. "On gas prices, John McCain's part of the problem," the Obama ad states. "McCain and Bush support a drilling plan that won't produce a drop of oil for seven years. McCain will give more tax breaks to big oil. He's voted with Bush 95 percent of the time. "Barack Obama will make energy independence an urgent priority. Raise mileage standards. Fast-track technology for alternative fuels. A $1,000 tax cut to help families as we break the grip of foreign oil. A real plan and new energy." McCain and Bush want Congress to lift the ban on drilling on the continental shelf. If Congress agrees and states then permit it, energy experts say it would take at least five to seven years before new drilling could begin. Obama's claim that McCain would give more tax breaks to oil companies is based on McCain's proposal to cut overall corporate tax rates. The campaign cited a study by the Democratic-leaning Center for American Progress Action Fund that concluded McCain's proposal to cut corporate tax rates from 35 percent to 25 percent would cut taxes on the top five U.S. oil companies by $3.8 billion a year. McCain, however, did vote against a 2005 energy bill backed by President Bush, saying at the time that it included billions of dollars in unnecessary tax breaks for the oil industry. Obama voted for the legislation. While Obama's ad correctly states that McCain voted with Bush 95 percent of the time in 2007, his support for Bush's position on legislation in 2005 was a low of 77 percent. "Barack Obama today launched the first attack ad from either campaign in this election, which follows a string of calculating position changes proving that Barack Obama's commitment to a new type of politics is officially over," said McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds. "Even worse, Barack Obama actually voted for the Bush-Cheney energy bill and its big-oil tax breaks that he is attacking, so let's end the pretense that Obama is anything other than a typical politician." Over the past several weeks, as fuel prices continued to rise, both candidates have staked out ever more specific positions on energy. A poll released last week by the Pew Research Center showed that nearly one of every two Americans now rate energy exploration, drilling and building new power plants as the top priority _ all of them stands embraced by McCain. Only 35 percent gave those steps top priority five months ago. At the same time, a USA Today-Gallup Poll released last month showed that nine in 10 people said energy, including gas prices, would be very or extremely important in deciding their presidential vote in November. People surveyed also said Obama would do a better job than McCain on energy issues by 19 percentage points.

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Obama will win – “change” Obama is winning by embracing the “change” approach and distinguishing himself from Bush USA Today; 5-18-08; “Obama links McCain to Bush economic policies” http://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/election2008/2008-05-18-obama-mccain-bush_N.htm GRESHAM, Oregon (AP) — After challenging John McCain on foreign policy, Democrat Barack Obama fired off a new broadside Sunday as he linked the likely Republican nominee with President George W. Bush's unpopular economic policies as he tested general election strategies. Obama was campaigning ahead of Tuesday's primaries in Oregon and Kentucky which should leave him less than 100 delegates away from reaching the total 2,026 needed to secure his party's nomination after an epic battle with Hillary Rodham Clinton. Obama has begun casting himself as the inevitable nominee and using his time to distinguish himself from McCain as he pivots toward the November election campaign. He has scheduled appearances later this week in Iowa and Florida, two key swing states that have already held their primaries. Obama, who is bidding to be the first black U.S. president, has also started tailoring his message to voting blocs like senior citizens that favored Clinton in their nomination contest and will be important in the November election. On Sunday, Obama tried to undermine McCain's appeal to fellow senior citizens by turning to a bedrock, pocketbook issue as he spoke to about 130 people at an assisted living facility in Gresham, Oregon. He said the Republican candidate would threaten the Social Security retirement benefits that they depend on because he supports Bush's policy of privatizing the program. Let me be clear, privatizing Social Security was a bad idea when George W. Bush proposed it, it's a bad idea today," Obama said. "That's why I stood up against this plan in the Senate and that's why I won't stand for it as president." Bush proposed a Social Security plan in 2005 that focused on creating private accounts for younger workers, but it never came up for a vote in Congress. Democrats strongly opposed the idea and few Republicans embraced it. Obama said McCain would push to raise the retirement age for collecting Social Security benefits or trim annual cost-of-living increases. Obama has rejected both ideas as solutions to the funding crisis projected for Social Security in favor of making higher-income workers pay more into the system. "We have to protect Social Security for future generations without pushing the burden onto seniors who have earned the right to retire in dignity," he said. McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds accused Obama of making "misinformed partisan attacks." "John McCain has been clear about his belief that we must fix Social Security for future generations and keep our promises to today's retirees, but raising taxes should not be the answer to every problem," Bounds said. On Saturday, Obama again challenged McCain on foreign policy, arguing that the Arizona senator would merely follow Bush's failed policy. His remarks came after Bush and McCain suggested Democrats could not be trusted to be tough on terrorists. "If you agree that we've had a great foreign policy over the last eight years, then you should vote for John McCain, you shouldn't vote for me," Obama told a town hall meeting in Roseburg, Oregon. "That's what this debate is all about, that's the choice in this election. Do you want more of the same or do you want change?" McCain's spokesman Bounds argued that Obama's foreign policy shows "incredibly weak judgment. We're a nation rooted in a history of sacrifice and achievement, not in lofty campaign rhetoric or campaign promises." Obama campaigned over the weekend in Oregon, where polls show he is comfortably ahead. Later Sunday, he was headed for a big outdoor rally in Portland and a second town hall meeting in Pendleton before a late flight to Montana for a day of campaigning on Monday. Obama's aides announced that he planned to hold a rally on primary night Tuesday in Iowa, where his solid win in January's leadoff caucuses propelled him to his status as the front-runner.

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Obama will win – McCain tied to Bush McCain loses because he is tied to an unpopular Bush Judson Berger, staff writer, July 7, 2008 Fox News“MEET THE CANDIDATES: OBAMA, MCCAIN FINE TUNE IMAGE FOR NOVEMBER” http://elections.foxnews.com/2008/07/07/meet-the-candidates-obama-mccainfine-tune-image-for-november/ Still, moderate voters swing elections. A June FOX News/Opinion Dynamics poll found that 16 percent of voters consider themselves independents. That’s a far larger percentage than the gap that separates McCain and Obama in national polls. McCain is also trying to foster a patriotic image. At a town hall meeting stacked with McCain supporters, questioners last month praised him for his military service and called him a “hero.” For McCain, the biggest challenge to closing the polling gap with Obama will be to distance himself from President Bush. On June 3, the night Obama secured the Democratic delegates to win the nomination, McCain insisted he is not, as Democrats charge, running for a third Bush term. He has called such claims “false,” and highlighted his past disagreements with Bush over detainee treatment, federal spending, climate change and energy policy. But McCain, a Vietnam POW, is tied to Bush in that he supports a stay-the-course approach in Iraq. In his first general election ad, he says he’s running “to keep the country I love safe,” but adds, “Only a fool or a fraud talks tough or romantically about war … I hate war.”

McCain loses- no distance from Bush Judson Berger, staff writer, July 7, 2008 Fox News“MEET THE CANDIDATES: OBAMA, MCCAIN FINE TUNE IMAGE FOR NOVEMBER” http://elections.foxnews.com/2008/07/07/meet-the-candidates-obama-mccainfine-tune-image-for-november/ Obama’s depiction of McCain has been crystal clear since he clinched the Democratic nomination. McCain is an older and more tired third Bush term — and despite his maverick record he’s traded in his independent stripes to run for president. “Bush is a millstone around his neck, and unless he can get to the center, he can’t win. It’s just impossible,” said Democratic pollster Doug Schoen. In practically every move McCain makes — from traveling to Latin America to promote free trade to reversing position to support lifting a ban on offshore oil drilling — the Obama campaign says McCain is mimicking the current, unpopular president. “While John McCain can legitimately tout moments of independence from his party in the past, such independence has not been the hallmark of his presidential campaign,” Obama said in St. Paul, Minn., when he clinched the nomination. “It’s not change when John McCain decided to stand with George Bush 95 percent of the time, as he did in the Senate last year.”

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Obama will win – McCain tied to Bush McCain will always be associated with the unpopularity of the Bush administration – Iraq and the economy prove Michael Connery, Yahoo News, 6/24/08, “Even ‘Maverick McCain’ Can’t Connect With Young Voters” http://news.yahoo.com/s/thenation/20080624/cm_thenation/769332309 I've long worried that John McCain could be, as Arianna Huffington put it yesterday at the Personal Democracy Forum conference, a "Trojan Horse" candidate for the GOP. His perceived status as a maverick and his cultural savvy has long inoculated him from the troubles plaguing the Republican Party and boosted his image among young voters. Out of all the GOP contenders, he seemed most capable of reviving the Republican brand among a generation trending heavily Democratic. According to a new poll by Democracy Corps, that image of McCain the Maverick has shattered. Since Democracy Corps' last survey in April, John McCain's favorable ratings among young voters has dropped from 34 to 30%, and his unfavorable ratings have jumped over ten points, rising from 37 to 49%. Two of the supposedly biggest advantages a McCain candidacy brings to the GOP - his popularity with independents and his "liberal" views on immigration reform - also took serious hits in recent months. Among independent young voters, McCain's unfavorable rating nearly doubled, rising from 27% in April to 49% in June, and among Hispanics his unfavorable rating is now a whopping 70%. Apparently McCain's "principled" stand on immigration during the primaries was not enough to pull Hispanics back towards the Republican Party. According to the report, McCain's favorable/unfavorable numbers now mirror those of the Republican Party, which has seen its brand collapse among young voters in the past two years: In a head to head match-up against Barack Obama, McCain loses the youth vote 66 - 33% among likely voters, a larger margin than Democrats enjoyed during the wave election of 2006. What happened to McCain the Maverick? How did his highly-cultivated independent brand crash so fast? Democracy Corps points to the transformation of McCain into "McSame," a typical politician tied to the failures of the Bush Presidency and the Republican Party. That notion has gained great traction in recent months, in particular around the issues of Iraq and the economy, the two most pressing issues in the eyes of young voters and two areas in which McCain is most tightly tied to the policies of the Bush Administration and the GOP. According to Democracy Corps, when McCain's policies on Iraq and the economy are laid before young voters, along with potential consequences for young Americans, a majority of young voters (60 - 65%) express serious to very serious doubts about McCain's candidacy. As long as McCain holds policy positions simlar to Bush and the GOP on those two major policy issues, and as long as Democrats, bloggers, and activists continue to explain the consequences of those policies to young voters, it's hard to see how McCain can recover his maverick status and gain ground among young voters.

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Obama will win – GOP brand fail Obama will wipe the floor with McCain – the GOP brand is toast Guy T. Saperstein , past president of the Sierra Club Foundation;the National Law Journal's "100 Most Influential Lawyers in America.”, 2008, Independent Media Institute, http://www.alternet.org/story/87225/ In early December 2007, at a time when Hillary Clinton was tracking 20-plus points ahead of the Democratic field in national polls, I published an article contending that Hillary Clinton was an inherently weak candidate, a beatable candidate, and that Barack Obama would be a stronger match against Republicans. I argued that she had the highest "unfavorable" rating of anyone who ever had run for the presidency; that she was the only Democratic candidate who could unite and energize the Republican base; that she was running 10 to 15 points behind in generic Democrat vs. Republican presidential polls; that her head-to-head matchups with the Republican candidates were poor; that in Iowa, where she was the only female candidate with seven men, she was polling only 26 percent; that several Democratic U.S. Senate candidates had told me she would pull the ticket down in their states; and that Bill was a potentially large, uncontrollable liability (even I did not know how true that prediction would become!). Hillary never was "inevitable." The evidence of her imminent demise was there for anyone who wanted to look. OK, that was then, this is now. The November presidential election is not going to be close. Barack Obama is going to beat John McCain by 8 to 10 points in the national popular vote and win 300 to 350 electoral votes. Obama is going to wipe out McCain mano a mano. I am far more confident making this prediction than I was in predicting Hillary's demise. There are many reasons why. The Political Environment The Republican Party is led -- and branded -- by an extraordinarily unpopular president, whose policies McCain has staunchly defended and supported (95 percent voting congruence in 2007). In the recent CBS News/NYTimes poll, Bush is at 28 percent approval, 65 percent disapproval; in the Hart/Newhouse poll, he is at 27 percent approval, 66 percent disapproval. While some presidents have fallen to low levels in the past, what is truly remarkable about Bush is how longterm and persistent voter disapproval of him has been, and the depth of voter sentiment: A May 12 Washington Post/ABC poll showed only 15 percent of voters "strongly approve," while 52 percent "strongly disapprove." Voters think, correctly, that the country is on the wrong track. In the Hart/Newhouse poll, 15 percent of voters said the country was headed in the "right direction," while an astounding 73 percent said "wrong direction." Remember, these polls include all voters, not just Democrats. On issues, Republicans are on the short end of everything except the military and national security. Among voters, in the NYTimes/CBS poll, when asked which party is better, on health care 63 percent say Democrats while only 19 percent say Republicans; the economy, 56 percent say Democrats, 28 percent say Republicans; sharing your moral values, 50 percent say Democrats, 34 percent say Republicans; and, dealing with Iraq, 50 percent say Democrats, 34 percent say Republicans. The Democratic Party has a 52 percent favorable and 41 percent unfavorable rating; the Republican Party has a 33 percent favorable and 58 percent unfavorable rating. A whopping 63 percent say the United States needs to withdraw from Iraq within 12 months; McCain wants to stay roughly forever -- and attack Iran. The Washington Post/ABC poll asked, "Which party do you trust to do a better job coping with the main problems the nation faces over the next few years?" Democrats were chosen over Republicans, 53 percent to 32 percent. The U.S. economy is sinking (while McCain has said he doesn't know much about the economy); gas prices are skyrocketing; the housing market has collapsed and people are losing their homes; and the Iraq Recession shows no signs of abating. McCain has been able to stay close to parity in polls matching him with Obama, but that is the product of the bashing Obama has taken from the Clinton campaign. Once that internal scrap is behind him and he can go head to head against McCain, his polling is going to soar. Even in fund-raising, a traditional Republican strength, the Republicans are at a disadvantage. At last reported count, Obama had $51 million in cash on hand; McCain had $11 million. In the combined cash of the national party committees, Republicans had $55.5 million; Democrats $87.1 million. The netroots has raised unprecedented amounts of money for Democrats, especially Obama; labor unions have gone deeper into their pockets and are raising more money for Democrats than in prior elections; and, even business PACs have given more money to Democrats! Business blows with the wind, and it knows which way the wind is blowing. Simply put, this is the worst possible time for any Republican to be running for president. And this is not simply my opinion; it is an opinion that has many adherents in the Republican Party and among traditional Republican supporters. Representative Tom Davis, from Virginia, in an internal memo to Republicans, recently wrote, "The political atmosphere facing Republicans this November is the worst since Watergate and is far more toxic than the fall of 2006.The Republican brand is in the trash can. [I]f we were dog food, they would take us off the shelf."

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Obama will win – GOP brand fail Scholarly consensus says McCain will lose – ties to Bush’s policies will overwhelm him. David Paul Kuhn, Politico.com staff, Posted: 2008-06-15, http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm? uuid=8BE81940-3048-5C12-006952400AA347A One week into the general election, the polls show a dead heat. But many presidential scholars doubt that John McCain stands much of a chance, if any. Historians belonging to both parties offered a litany of historical comparisons that give little hope to the Republican. Several saw Barack Obama’s prospects as the most promising for a Democrat since Roosevelt trounced Hoover in 1932. “This should be an overwhelming Democratic victory,” said Allan Lichtman, an American University presidential historian who ran in a Maryland Democratic senatorial primary in 2006. Lichtman, whose forecasting model has correctly predicted the last six presidential popular vote winners, predicts that this year, “Republicans face what have always been insurmountable historical odds.” His system gives McCain a score on par with Jimmy Carter’s in 1980. “McCain shouldn’t win it,” said presidential historian Joan Hoff, a professor at Montana State University and former president of the Center for the Study of the Presidency. She compared McCain’s prospects to those of Hubert Humphrey, whose 1968 loss to Richard Nixon resulted in large part from the unpopularity of sitting Democratic president Lyndon Johnson. “It is one of the worst political environments for the party in power since World War II,” added Alan Abramowitz, a professor of public opinion and the presidency at Emory University. His forecasting model — which factors in gross domestic product, whether a party has completed two terms in the White House and net presidential approval rating — gives McCain about the same odds as Adlai Stevenson in 1952 and Carter in 1980 — both of whom were handily defeated in elections that returned the presidency to the previously out-of-power party. “It would be a pretty stunning upset if McCain won,” Abramowitz said. What’s more, Republicans have held the presidency for all but 12 years since the South became solidly Republican in the realignment of 1968 — which is among the longest runs with one party dominating in American history. “These things go in cycles,” said presidential historian Robert Dallek, a professor at the University of California at Los Angeles. “The public gets tired of one approach to politics. There is always a measure of optimism in this country, so they turn to the other party.” But the biggest obstacle in McCain’s path may be running in the same party as the most unpopular president America has had since at least the advent of modern polling. Only Harry Truman and Nixon — both of whom were dogged by unpopular wars abroad and political scandals at home — have been nearly as unpopular in their last year in office, and both men’s parties lost the presidency in the following election. Though the Democratic-controlled Congress is nearly as unpopular as the president, Lichtman says the Democrats’ 2006 midterm wins resemble the midterm congressional gains of the out-party in 1966 and 1974, which both preceded a retaking of the White House two years later. One of the few bright spots historians noted is that the public generally does not view McCain as a traditional Republican. And, as Republicans frequently point out, McCain is not an incumbent. “Open-seat elections are somewhat different, so the referendum aspect is somewhat muted,” said James Campbell, a professor at the State University of New York at Buffalo who specializes in campaigns and elections. “McCain would be in much better shape if Bush’s approval rating were at 45 to 50 percent,” Campbell continued. “But the history is that in-party candidates are not penalized or rewarded to the same degree as incumbents.” Campbell still casts McCain as the underdog. But he said McCain might have more appeal to moderates than Obama if the electorate decides McCain is “center right” while Obama is “far left.” Democrats have been repeatedly undone when their nominee was viewed as too liberal, and even as polls show a rise in the number of self-identified Democrats, there has been no corresponding increase in the number of self-identified liberals. Campbell also notes that McCain may benefit from the Democratic divisions that were on display in the primary, as Republicans did in 1968, when Democratic divisions over the war in Vietnam dogged Humphrey and helped hand Nixon victory. Still, many historians remain extremely skeptical about McCain’s prospects. “I can’t think of an upset where the underdog faced quite the odds that McCain faces in this election,” said Sidney Milkis, a professor of presidential politics at the University of Virginia. Even "Truman didn’t face as difficult a political context as McCain.”

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Obama will win – A2: all their args *Their arguments are from beat reporters obsessed with the horserace – objective analysis of underlying factors proves Obama is conclusively ahead Alan Abramowitz, professor of political science at Emory University, Thomas E. Mann, senior fellow at The Brookings Institution, and Larry J. Sabat, professor of politics at the University of Virginia and Director of its Center for Politics, 7/19/08, “The Myth of a Toss-up Election” "Too close to call." "Within the margin of error." "A statistical dead heat." If you've been following news coverage of the 2008 presidential election, you're probably familiar with these phrases. Media commentary on the presidential horserace, reflecting the results of a series of new national polls, has strained to make a case for a hotly contested election that is essentially up for grabs. Signs of Barack Obama's weaknesses allegedly abound. The huge generic Democratic Party advantage is not reflected in the McCain-Obama pairings in national polls. Why, according to the constant refrain, hasn't Obama put this election away? A large number of Clinton supporters in the primaries refuse to commit to Obama. White working class and senior voters tilt decidedly to McCain. Racial resentment limits Obama's support among these two critical voting blocs. Enthusiasm among young voters and African-Americans, two groups strongly attracted to Obama, is waning. McCain is widely seen as better prepared to step up to the responsibilities of commander-in-chief. Blah, blah, blah. While no election outcome is guaranteed and McCain's prospects could improve over the next three and a half months, virtually all of the evidence that we have reviewed historical patterns, structural features of this election cycle, and national and state polls conducted over the last several months - points to a comfortable Obama/Democratic party victory in November. Trumpeting this race as a toss-up, almost certain to produce another nail-biter finish, distorts the evidence and does a disservice to readers and viewers who rely upon such punditry. Consider the following. Except for a few days when the Gallup and Rasmussen tracking polls showed a tie, Barack Obama has led John McCain in every national poll in the past two months. Obama's average margin has consistently been in the 4-6 point range during this time. By contrast, the polls in 2000 and 2004 showed much more variation over time. State polling data have also consistently given Obama the advantage. According to realclearpolitics.com, Obama is currently leading in 26 states and the District of Columbia with a total of 322 electoral votes; McCain is currently leading in 24 states with a total of 216 electoral votes. Obama is leading in every state carried by John Kerry in 2004 along with seven states carried by George Bush: Iowa, New Mexico, Ohio, Indiana, Virginia, Nevada and Colorado. Obama is leading in 11 of the 12 swing states that were decided by a margin of five points or less in 2004 including five of the six that were carried by George Bush. And while Obama has a comfortable lead in every state that John Kerry won by a margin of more than five points in 2004, McCain is in a difficult battle in a number of states that Bush carried by a margin of more than five points including such solidly red states as Indiana, Montana, North Dakota, Virginia, and North Carolina. And remember these June and July polls may well understate Obama's eventual margin. Ronald Reagan did not capitalize on the huge structural advantage Republicans enjoyed in 1980 until after the party conventions and presidential debate. It took a while and a sufficient level of comfort with the challenger for anti-Carter votes to translate into support for Reagan. If Obama's performance over the last eighteen months is any guide, a similar pattern is likely to unfold in 2008. Aside from the horserace results, there is evidence of a growing Democratic Party advantage in the electorate. A recent analysis by Rhodes Cook of voter registration data in 29 states and the District of Columbia that permit registration by party shows that since November of 2004, Democratic registration has increased by almost 700 thousand while Republican registration has declined by almost one million. Democrats now enjoy a substantial lead over Republicans in voter identification. According to the Gallup Poll, the two parties have gone from near parity four years ago to a 12 point Democratic advantage in the first half of 2008. And polling data continue to show that Democrats are more satisfied with their party's nominee than Republicans voters and more highly motivated to vote. While Republicans normally benefit from higher turnout among their supporters, that may not be the case this year. In order to defeat Barack Obama, John McCain will have to convince a lot of disgruntled Republicans to turn out and vote for him. But mobilizing the Republican base, a strategy employed successfully by Karl Rove in 2002 and 2004, won't be enough for McCain to win in 2008. He'll also have to convince a majority of independents and a substantial number of Democrats to vote for him. That's a task that proved too difficult even for Rove in the 2006 midterm election and it may be even more difficult in 2008. That's because since 2006 the political environment has gone from bad to worse for Republicans.

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Obama will win – McCain is old McCain is old and will make mistakes that will doom him Guy T. Saperstein , past president of the Sierra Club Foundation;the National Law Journal's "100 Most Influential Lawyers in America.”, 2008, Independent Media Institute, http://www.alternet.org/story/87225/ The Candidates While many ardent Democrats would disagree with this assessment, I personally consider McCain to be an honorable, decent man. I have enormous respect for -- and cannot forget -- the fact that he declined the opportunity to be released from a North Vietnamese prison because his father had been a Navy admiral and chose instead to stay with his comrades for 5½ years. Very few of us would have done that -- I know I would not have. There is a loyalty and integrity there that we need to remember and honor. And, despite efforts to disparage the "maverick" label, the reality is that, for a substantial part of his political career, he was a Republican maverick on a variety of issues, including the environment, immigration, campaign reform, taxes and the budget. These are not inconsequential disagreements with the Republican Party, and he has been almost singular in being willing to disagree with the Republican establishment. But that is the previous incarnation of McCain, not the version we've seen for the last four years or the version who has to run between now and November. The problem with McCain is that his brain is no longer working. There is something wrong. Many doctor friends of mine hypothesize Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, which is consistent with his 5½ years of great stress in prison and which can explain his violent temper, his memory lapses and his frequent mental disconnects. It also is possible that he is suffering ministrokes, which cause momentary double vision, partial blackouts and confusion, and which could explain why he can say incredibly stupid things, sometimes the same dumb thing several times in one day, without appearing to understand what he just said. Whatever the specific cause, he is not healthy, and mentally he is struggling to hold it together. What we are going to see in the general election from McCain is a ton of mistakes. The very thing the press likes about him, his candor and shoot-from-the-hip style, is going to kill him when the full weight of media attention is trained on him. He never has been a good speaker with a prepared text (last night, his speech was characteristically wooden, with several word confusions). The media has always loved the quick, gritty, candid McCain, but that version is gone; he now is a damaged, slowerthinking McCain, but his habits will remain the same. He will still try to be the quick wit, the maverick; it just isn't going to work. And while McCain is still capable (with help) of firing off some zingers that hit, he will be unable to sustain a narrative -- or fool the American voters -- for the next five months. This is not just about being 71; it is about being a very old 71. It might be sad to watch, but I for one will have no sympathy. There is too much at stake. Obama is the perfect candidate for Democrats, and a nightmare for McCain. Obama, who by every metric is a brilliant strategist, thinker and speaker, is going to run circles around McCain. McCain, who is not a very good speaker even on his best day, will appear slow, befuddled and confused; he will make gaffes. Obama will be charismatic, smart, thoughtful, high-minded, alert and substantive. It will be no contest. And adding to Obama's natural advantages, McCain has just enough integrity to try to match up with Obama on issues. In that debate on substance, Obama's overwhelming intellectual superiority and mental alertness will become obvious. There will be the believers, who have jumped aboard the Obama campaign and will continue to multiply, but there also is going to be another type of vote that is going to swing heavily to Obama: the default vote. Voters are going to default to Obama because it will become obvious that McCain simply is not up to the task of being president. This is going to be the first not-close presidential election since 1988. You heard it here first.

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Obama will win – turnout Obama wins because of general support of Democrats in all elections Associated Press 7-14-08 “Governor races may influence presidential outcome” http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gEJZo9e6BWEvqJaOBmvVpvJQt-mgD91TR4UG0 Democratic and Republican governors' groups are raising record amounts of campaign cash for their candidates, and say a strong turnout for supporters at the state level can only help their parties' presidential candidates. That could be slightly better news for Democrats, since governors from their party outnumber their GOP counterparts 28-22 this year, an edge Democrats gained two years ago after being in the minority since 1992. Both parties say they haven't coordinated any turnout efforts with the campaigns of Barack Obama or John McCain, which would be illegal.

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Obama will win – economy McCain loses key states because of his ties to Bush’s unpopular economic policies Dante Chinni, staff writer, 07.14.2008 Christian Science Monitor “As economic distress deepens, McCain has toughest climb” http://www.csmonitor.com/patchworknation/csmstaff/2008/0714/as-economic-distress-deepensmccain-has-toughest-climb/ That means that the 2008 election is likely to be even more about choosing a president who will usher in “change” – which helps Barack Obama and hurts Senator McCain. For one, the economy is not McCain’s strongest issue, national security is. Then, there are McCain’s ties to the Bush administration’s economic policies, which many Americans associate with today’s tough times. Last week, in particular, showed the trouble McCain is having connecting with voters on the economy. As the Arizona senator campaigned throughout the country talking about its financial state, former Sen. Phil Gramm, a top McCain adviser, said America was suffering through a “mental recession” and that the United States had become a “nation of whiners.” At the same time, the Dow Jones Industrials officially fell into bear-market territory and mortgagefinance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were rumored to be headed for a government bailout. The Hardship Index scores bring into sharper relief the pains that many places around the country are feeling. The pocketbook issues of rising food and fuel prices on top of a bad mortgage market are poised to affect voting decisions. That’s especially true in the Mountain West. Counties in the key battleground states of Colorado, Nevada, and New Mexico are experiencing some of the steepest declines of the downturn, according to the July index – hurt by gasoline prices and foreclosures. Senator Obama is making a serious play for these red states that went for President Bush in 2004.

Obama wins because of economic policy John Whitesides, Political Correspondent 7-16-08 Reuters “Obama has 7-point edge on McCain” http://uk.reuters.com/article/UKNews1/idUKN1535315320080716 WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democrat Barack Obama has a 7-point lead on Republican John McCain in the U.S. presidential race, and holds a small edge on the crucial question of who would best manage the economy, according to a Reuters/Zogby poll released on Wednesday. More than a month after kicking off the general election campaign, Obama leads McCain by 47 percent to 40 percent. That is slightly better than his 5-point cushion in mid-June, shortly after he clinched the Democratic nomination fight against New York Sen. Hillary Clinton.But Obama's 22-point advantage in June among independents, a critical voting bloc that could swing either way in the November election, shrunk to 3 points during a month in which the candidates battled on the economy and Obama was accused of shifting to the centre on several issues.Obama had a 44 percent to 40 percent edge nationally over McCain on who would be best at managing the economy, virtually unchanged from last month. Among independents, the two were tied on the economy."There has been a real tightening up among independents, and that has to be worrisome for Obama," pollster John Zogby said. "It doesn't seem like Obama is coming across on the economy."The economy was ranked as the top issue by nearly half of all likely voters, 47 percent. The Iraq war, in second place, trailed well behind at 12 percent. Energy prices was third at 8 percent.The faltering economy had been expected to be a weakness for McCain, an Arizona senator and former Vietnam prisoner of war who has admitted a lack of economic expertise.

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Obama will win – laundry list Obama will win – people love him and McCain is clueless Doavid Usborne, staff writer for The independent, 5/30/08, http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4158/is_20080530/ai_n25481332/print?tag=artBody;col1 Rupert Murdoch, the media mogul who has a history of subordinating his conservative instincts to pragmatism when it comes to choosing sides in national elections, has spoken up for Barack Obama, terming him a "rock star" who is "likely to win" the White House in November. Stopping short of offering an actual endorsement, Mr Murdoch made plain his enthusiasm for the Democratic hopeful when speaking on the fringes of a digital conference in California sponsored by The Wall Street Journal, recently acquired by News Corp. "He is a rock star," said Mr Murdoch. "I love what he is saying about education. I think he will win and I am anxious to meet him." Recalling a surprising loss of a safe Republican seat in a Mississippi by-election recently, Mr Murdoch suggested November may see a Democrat landslide. "You have probably the making of complete phenomenon in this country," he noted. John McCain, he said, goes into the election with "lots of problems". Mr Obama is tantalisingly close to seizing the Democratic nomination. Only three more primary votes remain - Puerto Rico on Sunday, followed by Montana and South Dakota on Tuesday. A potential bump on the road is a meeting tomorrow of the party's rules committee, which will consider proposals to reinstate votes cast in Florida and Michigan that were disqualified because both states voted too early. Mr Murdoch called Mr McCain, the Republican nominee, a "friend of mine" but was unexpectedly harsh in his assessment of him. "He's been in Congress a long time, and you have to make a lot of compromises. I think he has a lot of problems." He added Mr McCain "doesn't know much about the economy". While he was a "patriot", "he doesn't know much about organising a campaign, it would seem". Not everyone will be surprised by Mr Murdoch's comments. Earlier this year, his newspaper The New York Post endorsed Mr Obama over Hillary Clinton on the eve of New York's primary election, even though Mr Murdoch had previously appeared to have courted both the former first lady and her husband, Bill Clinton. He admitted in California that he had been involved in the newspaper's nod for Mr Obama. He predicted that the deteriorating economy will aid Mr Obama's bid. "The average American is really getting hurt financially and that all bodes well for him," he said. And while he said the race issue would be a challenge, "it looks like he will overcome that totally".

Obama wins- Nadar and Barr, dissatisfaction with Bush Administration, and economic issues CTV 7-16-08 “Obama leads McCain in new election poll” http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20080716/us_poll_080716/20080716?hub=TopStories A new poll suggests Barack Obama has a seven-point lead over John McCain in the race to the White House, but nearly 10 per cent of voters have yet to make up their minds. The Zogby poll, released Wednesday, also suggests independent candidate Ralph Nader and Libertarian candidate Bob Barr would draw votes away from McCain, thereby extending Obama's lead even further. When respondents were asked who they would vote for if only given the choice between Obama, McCain and "someone else," most said they would support the Democratic candidate: Obama: 47 per cent McCain: 40.3 per cent Other: 2.9 per cent Undecided: 9.8 per cent However, when the same question was repeated with the names of Nader and Barr added, McCain lost support. Obama: 46.3 per cent McCain: 36.3 per cent Nader: 3.3 per cent Barr: 3.4 per cent Other: 1.1 per cent Undecided: 9.6 per cent "The key thing here, in this poll anyway, is that Obama is doing better among fellow Democrats than McCain is with fellow Republicans," pollster John Zogby told CTV's Canada AM on Wednesday. The poll also suggests McCain faces an uphill battle in the election because of voter dissatisfaction with the current Republican government. More than two thirds of voters -- 72.9 per cent -- said the U.S. was on the "wrong track." Also, only 12 per cent of respondents felt that McCain's main campaign issue -- the Iraq war -- would be a deciding factor in who to vote for. The economy was by far the top issue, with 47.1 per cent saying it would determine who got their support. The poll suggested that 43.6 per cent of voters felt that Obama was better able to handle economic issues, compared to 40.3 per cent for McCain.

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Obama will win – laundry list Obama is winning on many of the issues for the election, particularly the economy Maurice Carroll, Director, Quinnipiac University Polling Institute, 7-15-08, Quinnipiac University, http://www.quinnipiac.edu/x1295.xml?ReleaseID=1192 With commanding leads among women and young voters and near unanimous support from black voters, Illinois Sen. Barack Obama has a 50 – 41 percent lead over Arizona Sen. John McCain, according to a Quinnipiac University national poll of likely voters released today. Independent voters split 44 – 44 percent, the independent Quinnipiac (KWIN-uh-pe-ack) University poll finds. Sen. McCain has a slight 47 – 44 percent edge among men voters and a larger 49 – 42 percent lead among white voters.But black voters back Sen. Obama 94 – 1 percent, while women support him 55 – 36 percent. Obama leads 63 – 31 percent among voters 18 to 34 years old and 48 – 44 percent among voters 35 to 54, while voters over 55 split with 45 percent for McCain and 44 percent for Obama. The Democrat gets 44 percent to the Republican’s 47 percent in red states, which went Republican by more than 5 percent in 2004, and leads 50 – 39 percent in purple or swing states.“Sen. Barack Obama’s national lead is solid – but it’s not monolithic,” said Maurice Carroll, director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute. “His support in the black community is about as close to unanimous as you can get. Politicians say that the only uncertainty will be turnout. Sen. John McCain leads among white voters. “As is usually the case, the outcome probably will be decided in the middle, among the independent voters, who are evenly split at this point.” “About one-fifth of those who voted for New York Sen. Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primaries decline – so far, anyway – to come home to their party.” By a 55 – 29 percent margin, likely voters nationwide have a favorable opinion of Obama. McCain gets a 50 – 31 percent favorability. A total of 88 percent of American voters say they are “entirely comfortable” or “somewhat comfortable” having a black President, but 9 percent are “somewhat uncomfortable” or “entirely uncomfortable.” And 86 percent say Obama’s race won’t affect their vote. A total of 64 percent of voters say they are “entirely comfortable” or “somewhat comfortable” with a President who is 72 years old, while 34 percent are “somewhat uncomfortable” or “entirely uncomfortable.” Because of his age, 20 percent say they are less likely to vote for McCain, while 75 percent say it won’t make a difference. The economy is the single most important issue in their vote, 53 percent of American voters say, followed by 16 percent who list the war in Iraq and 11 percent who list health care. Obama leads McCain 53 – 39 percent among those who list the economy, 65 – 27 percent among those who cite the war and 67 – 27 percent among those worried about health care. “We note with a grain of salt that voters tell us they’re not prejudiced against Obama because of race, or that only 20 percent are worried about McCain’s age,” Carroll said. Democrats say 56 – 33 percent that Obama should pick New York Sen. Hillary Clinton as his running mate. But independent voters reject the idea 50 – 35 percent and voters overall reject it 49 – 36 percent.

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Obama will win – frontrunner All national polls show Obama leads McCain The Sun, 7-16, 2008, “Polls Show Obama Maintains Lead Over McCain” http://www.nysun.com/national/pollsshow-obama-maintains-lead-over-mccain/81947/ Senator Obama maintains a significant but far from overwhelming lead over Senator McCain with less than four months to go before Election Day, according to three new national polls released yesterday. The presumptive Democratic nominee held a 9-point advantage, 50% to 41%, in a Quinnipiac University poll, while a survey by CBS News and the New York Times put his lead at 6 points, 45% to 39%. An ABC News/Washington Post poll showed him up 8 points, 50% to 42%. In all three cases, Mr. Obama's edge exceeded the margin of error. Opinion polls have fluctuated in the month since the general election campaign began in earnest, but Mr. Obama has held a lead in almost all of them. The margin was as high as 15 points in one poll late last month, while surveys last week suggested the race was a virtual dead heat.

Obama Leads Polls Martina Stewart, CNN Associate Producer, 6-16-08, CNN, http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2008/06/16/pollmajority-believe-obama-will-win-general-election/ In a new Gallup survey, Obama leads McCain by eleven percentage points – 52 percent to McCain’s 41 percent – on the question of who Americans believe will win the White House this November. Seventy-six percent of Democrats believe Obama will win while 67 percent of Republicans believe McCain will keep the presidency in their party. Although both men enjoy support from independent voters, more independents believe Obama will beat McCain with 50 percent of the critical group believing Obama will take the White House and 41 percent believing McCain will.

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Obama will win – Hispanics Obama winning key Hispanic voting block now – McCain’s separation solves gap. Adam Nagourney and Megan Thee, International Herald Tribune staff writers, 7/15/2008, Race divides U.S. sharply, poll finds, http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/07/16/america/poll.php [ND] After a Democratic primary season in which Obama had difficulty competing for Hispanic votes against Hillary Rodham Clinton, Obama leads McCain among Hispanic voters in the likely general election matchup by 62 to 23 percent. By significant margins, Hispanic voters - who seem poised to play a critical role the election in states like Nevada, New Mexico and Colorado - believe that Obama will do a better job of dealing with immigration. The findings come at a time when McCain has been trying to distance himself from members of his party who have advocated a tough policy against permitting illegal immigrants to stay in the country.

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Obama will win – A2: polls Obama wins the election – current polls don’t mean anything Jay Bookman, Staff Writer, 7-13, 2008, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution “Democrats coming out of the woodwork” http://www.ajc.com/blogs/content/sharedblogs/ajc/bookman/entries/2008/07/13/obama_winning_the_intensity_fa.html#postcomment While most of the polls show a fairly tight presidential race, it doesn’t feel that way. As I mentioned in comments a while back, the body language and attitude of the Obama campaign indicate they believe Obama’s going to win, while the language and attitude of the McCain camp also indicate they believe Obama will win. And maybe I’m wrong, but I don’t remember polls showing such widely divergent results, with some showing an Obama lead of 3 or 4 points and others claiming an Obama lead of 15 or so. Here’s a news story from the South Florida Sun-Sentinel that suggests one reason why this race has been difficult to pin down. A gain of 90,000 voters for Democrats is a large number in Florida, where elections have been excruciatingly close. It also reflects a difference in passion among the two parties that could have repercussions all the way down the ticket to dogcatcher.

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Obama will win – Barr Barr allows Obama to win the election Max Deveson, Staff Writer, 7-15-08 BBC News, Washington “Bob Barr and the Nader effect” http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7496678.stm With the mood of the country now turning against the war - and the Republican Party brand - it's possible Mr Barr could pick up a number of anti-war voters who are disaffected with the Republican Party, but who still baulk at the idea of voting for a Democrat. As a consequence, Mr Barr could eat into John McCain's support base, especially in Georgia (Mr Barr's home state) and in north-western states with a strong libertarian streak, such as Montana and Alaska. In fact, if Mr Barr manages to pick up enough alienated Republicans, and if Mr Obama succeeds in rallying African-Americans, then Georgia could even flip into the Democratic column , just as Mr Nader's ability to woo Floridian Democrats allowed George Bush to win the Sunshine State in 2000. So Mr Barr could have an impact in certain states - but it's debatable how decisive his role would be. For Mr Obama to be doing well enough to be in a position to take Georgia with Mr Barr's help, the electoral maths suggests that he would already be beating John McCain by a wide margin - the election would already be his. The same applies to Montana or Alaska, according to Steve Kornacki of the New York Observer. "If Obama is within a few points of winning either state come November, then he'll almost certainly be in position to score a sweeping electoral college route, no matter what effect Barr has," he writes.

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Obama will win – swing states Obama will win the election in November because of 11 swing state victories Alan I. Abramowitz et al, Alben W. Barkley Professor of Political Science, B.A., Tom Mann, congressional scholar, Dr. Larry J. Sabato, director of the UVA Center for Politics, July 19, 2008 Huffington Post“The Myth of a Toss-up Election” http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alan-abramowitz-thomas-e-mann-and-larry-j-sabato/the-myth-ofa-toss-up-ele_b_113827.html While no election outcome is guaranteed and McCain's prospects could improve over the next three and a half months, virtually all of the evidence that we have reviewed - historical patterns, structural features of this election cycle, and national and state polls conducted over the last several months - points to a comfortable Obama/Democratic party victory in November. Trumpeting this race as a toss-up, almost certain to produce another nail-biter finish, distorts the evidence and does a disservice to readers and viewers who rely upon such punditry. Consider the following. Except for a few days when the Gallup and Rasmussen tracking polls showed a tie, Barack Obama has led John McCain in every national poll in the past two months. Obama's average margin has consistently been in the 4-6 point range during this time. By contrast, the polls in 2000 and 2004 showed much more variation over time. State polling data have also consistently given Obama the advantage. According to realclearpolitics.com, Obama is currently leading in 26 states and the District of Columbia with a total of 322 electoral votes; McCain is currently leading in 24 states with a total of 216 electoral votes. Obama is leading in every state carried by John Kerry in 2004 along with seven states carried by George Bush: Iowa, New Mexico, Ohio, Indiana, Virginia, Nevada and Colorado. Obama is leading in 11 of the 12 swing states that were decided by a margin of five points or less in 2004 including five of the six that were carried by George Bush. And while Obama has a comfortable lead in every state that John Kerry won by a margin of more than five points in 2004, McCain is in a difficult battle in a number of states that Bush carried by a margin of more than five points including such solidly red states as Indiana, Montana, North Dakota, Virginia, and North Carolina. And remember these June and July polls may well understate Obama's eventual margin. Ronald Reagan did not capitalize on the huge structural advantage Republicans enjoyed in 1980 until after the party conventions and presidential debate. It took a while and a sufficient level of comfort with the challenger for anti-Carter votes to translate into support for Reagan. If Obama's performance over the last eighteen months is any guide, a similar pattern is likely to unfold in 2008.Aside from the horserace results, there is evidence of a growing Democratic Party advantage in the electorate. A recent analysis by Rhodes Cook of voter registration data in 29 states and the District of Columbia that permit registration by party shows that since November of 2004, Democratic registration has increased by almost 700 thousand while Republican registration has declined by almost one million. Democrats now enjoy a substantial lead over Republicans in voter identification. According to the Gallup Poll, the two parties have gone from near parity four years ago to a 12 point Democratic advantage in the first half of 2008. And polling data continue to show that Democrats are more satisfied with their party's nominee than Republicans voters and more highly motivated to vote. While Republicans normally benefit from higher turnout among their supporters, that may not be the case this year.

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Obama will win – swing states Obama wins in numerous swing states The Associated Press, 6- 26, 2008“Poll: Obama leads McCain in swing states” http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5g8WvoRnUTs6fEo8Os3k4YlshdOvQD91HTS780 THE RACE: The presidential race in Colorado Barack Obama, 49 percent John McCain, 44 percent Obama has a solid 12 percentage point edge among Colorado's independent voters. McCain has a small lead among men, but women lean solidly toward Obama. Whites are closely divided between the two while six in 10 Hispanics prefer Obama. Voters over age 55 are split about evenly, while those younger tilt toward Obama. By 10 points, more voters say having Hillary Rodham Clinton on the ticket would make it less likely they would vote for Obama. President Bush carried Colorado by 4 points over Democrat John Kerry in 2004, while Obama easily won the state's Democratic presidential caucus in February. THE RACE: The presidential race in Michigan Barack Obama, 48 percent John McCain, 42 percent Obama leads by 8 percentage points among Michigan's independent voters, though by a two-to-one margin they oppose his choosing Hillary Rodham Clinton as his running mate. Obama has a large lead among women, while men are divided about evenly between him and McCain. McCain has a narrow edge with whites, and blacks overwhelmingly back Obama. Young voters strongly prefer Obama; middle-aged and older people are more closely divided. Clinton was the only candidate on the ballot when she carried this state's primary in January, while Democrat John Kerry defeated President Bush here narrowly in 2004. THE RACE: The presidential race in Minnesota Barack Obama, 54 percent John McCain, 37 percent Obama's advantage over McCain in Minnesota is deep and broad. Independents prefer him by an overwhelming 21 percentage points. He is the favorite of both genders, as well as the young and old. Whites back him by 12 points, and even white men — a group that traditionally leans toward Republicans — are evenly split. By 16 points, independents would rather he not pick Hillary Rodham Clinton as his vice presidential running mate, though they're closely divided over whether that would make them likelier or less likely to back the Democratic ticket. Obama won Minnesota's Democratic presidential caucus in February, and THE RACE: The presidential race in Wisconsin Barack Obama, 52 percent John McCain, 39 percent Obama is ahead of McCain virtually across the board in Wisconsin, including clear leads among men and women, whites, and the young and middle aged. They run closely among older voters. Even whites who have not completed college — a group that strongly preferred Hillary Rodham Clinton over Obama during the Democratic primaries — are about evenly divided between Obama and McCain. Independents favor the Democrat by 13 percentage points. John Kerry won Wisconsin by a hair in 2004 over President Bush, and Obama carried it easily over Clinton in the state primary in February.

Obama Winning Swing States Andrew Sullivan, Staff Writer, The Sunday Times, 6-29-08 http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/andrew_sullivan/article4231204.ece?openComment=true “We’re going in to win [these states],” Hildebrand insisted. And this may not be a total delusion. Two polls have just put Obama a hefty 15 points ahead of McCain (although Gallup shows a resiliently close contest). Plus a raft of new polls in key swing states show big Obama gains in recent weeks. In Minnesota his lead is now an impressive 17 points; in Wisconsin 13 points; in Michigan six points; and in Colorado five.

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Obama will win swing states Obama wins key swing states- Missouri Associated Press. 7-14-08“Can Obama win Missouri? New poll shows a slight lead over McCain...” Information from: St. Louis Post-Dispatch, http://primebuzz.kcstar.com/?q=node/12976 Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama appears to have a slight lead over Republican John McCain in a poll of likely Missouri voters. Obama received the support of 48 percent of those polled, compared with 43 percent for McCain and 9 percent who were undecided. The telephone poll of 800 likely voters was conducted July 7-10 by Research 2000 for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and television station KMOV. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points. Obama held a sizable lead among women, receiving support from 52 percent of those polled, compared with 37 percent for McCain. Among men, McCain received the support of 49 percent of those polled and Obama 44 percent. A majority of those polled said they trust Obama more on such issues as the economy, energy policy, health care and the environment. More people said they trusted McCain to handle the U.S. effort against terrorism. The economy and jobs was cited by 26 percent of poll respondents as the most important issue determining their presidential votes. That was followed by 16 percent citing the Iraq war, 14 percent citing the need for lower gas prices and 12 percent citing health care. About three-fourths of those surveyed said the economy is in fair or poor condition. About three-fifths of the respondents said going to war against Iraq was not worth it. The poll also asked people their opinions about President Bush. Sixty-nine percent viewed him unfavorably, similar to the 67 percent who described his job performance as either fair or poor.

Obama Leads in Missouri Matt Schofield, Staff Writer, Associated Press, July 14, 2008, , http://primebuzz.kcstar.com/?q=node/12976 ST. LOUIS | Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama appears to have a slight lead over Republican John McCain in a poll of likely Missouri voters. Obama received the support of 48 percent of those polled, compared with 43 percent for McCain and 9 percent who were undecided.

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Obama will win swing states Obama wins Virginia, a usually Republican state E. J. Dionne Jr., columnist, 7- 15- 2008, Washington Post “In Virginia, Thawing a Map http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/14/AR2008071401847.html?hpid=opinionsbox1 If the 2008 election is destined to break up a frozen electoral map, Virginia is one of the most likely venues for the great political thaw. The state has not voted for a Democratic presidential candidate in 44 years, yet the trends are decidedly in the party's favor. Demographic change, often a driver of realignment, is occurring at a furious clip. The Old Dominion is now the New Dominion, particularly in the suburban and exurban counties north of the Rappahannock River. Barack Obama could not have carried Virginia as it once was. But he is running even with John McCain in a paradoxical state that was home to the Confederacy's capital but also gave the nation its first elected African American governor, Doug Wilder, in 1989. And no other state can boast that it has had three plausible names on the list of potential vice presidential choices: its current governor, Tim Kaine; former governor Mark Warner; and Sen. Jim Webb. Elleithee sees the path for Obama in Virginia as similar to Kaine's: Win just enough in the state's rural areas and overwhelm McCain in the Washington suburbs and among African Americans, notably in Hampton Roads.

Obama wins Iowa, which is a key swing state THOMAS BEAUMONT, Staff Writer 7-14-2008 Des Moines Register “Obama leaps to early Iowa start; McCain slowly digs in” http://www.desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article? AID=/20080714/NEWS09/807140319/-1/ent05 Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is off to a more aggressive campaign in Iowa than John McCain, despite the Republican having clinched the nomination three months earlier than his rival.Obama has 15 campaign offices open and staffed in Iowa, while McCain is still plotting where to locate about half as many.Though Obama campaign officials declined to disclose their hiring plans, they said its safe to say their 2-to-1 edge in local headquarters is a sign Obama's staff will outnumber McCain's team, which could reach 20 by this fall. McCain's recent hiring of a state director and opening of a Des Moines-area headquarters last week soothed county GOP leaders who had worried that McCain waited too long.But Obama's organizational advantage - in part the product of his winning caucus campaign - and the Democrats' favorable voter registration trend has some national observers taking Iowa off the list of toss-up states."It's in the realm of possibility that McCain could pull an upset in Iowa, but it's unlikely," said Larry Sabato, director of University of Virginia's Center for Politics. "Obama has had strength in Iowa from the beginning, which we saw on January 3. And McCain, Iowa's just not his state." Iowa is among 18 states listed as top targets by both campaigns in the effort to cross the 270 electoral-vote threshold required to win.In the past two presidential elections, few states were determined by narrower margins than Iowa. A difference of 4,000 votes put the state in Democrat Al Gore's column in 2000 and roughly 10,000 put it in the Republican George Bush's four years later.As evidence of Iowa's early status as a battleground, both campaigns have included the state in its early advertising. McCain has been more aggressive so far, having aired eight television ads here to Obama's two. Obama's organizational edge with a little less than four months until the election is due in part to the intense effort he invested in Iowa last year and the state's pivotal role in shaping the Democratic nominating campaign.Obama spent almost a year campaigning in Iowa before January, building up a staff of more than 150 and a volunteer network of about 3,500. That network had little time to rest after the caucuses.

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Oil Lobbyists=>Obama wins now Oil lobbyists hurt McCain’s image now and spell Obama victory Lisa Loring 7-10-08, DailyKenoshan News, http://dailykenoshan.com/index.php? option=com_content&task=view&id=6095&Itemid=1 “Big Oil has American consumers over a barrel,” said Rosemary Wehnes, Sierra Club Midwest Associate Rep. “We literally cannot afford to continue the failed policies of the Bush administration and it seems unlikely that a campaign full of oil industry lobbyists and awash in millions made at the expense of American consumers is going to stand up to Big Oil and deliver the kind of change we need. By contrast, Barack Obama has stood up to special interests and has a plan to help Wisconsinites get through today’s crisis, while putting us on the path to energy independence in order to rid us of Big Oil’s chokehold once and for all.”Campaign finance reports filed June 30, 2008 and analyzed by the non-partisan Center for Responsive Politics show that John McCain has received $1,001,668 from the oil and gas industry, while the Republican Party has separately raked in an astonishing $4,002,662. These new reports show that McCain hauled in nearly $210,000 from the industry in the month of June alone—a month in which he flip-flopped on offshore drilling and held numerous fundraisers in Big Oil’s backyard. “The failed policies of the Bush administration and its allies like John McCain have crippled our economy and now tens of millions of hardworking Americans are suffering,” said Wehnes. “Barack Obama went to Detroit and told the automakers what they needed to hear—that they must make cars that get better gas mileage; John McCain went straight to Houston and told the oil industry what it wanted to hear—that he strongly supported their desire to begin the wholesale, unfettered ‘exploitation’ of our coasts. It’s clear that neither our economy, nor our environment can afford more of the same.” Lobbying disclosure forms also indicate that at least 23 lobbyists who lobby on behalf of some of the biggest oil companies in the world are involved in John McCain’s campaign. The nuclear industry is getting slapped with some serious sticker shock. A wary acceptance of nuclear has only recently entered the public conversation. As America grapples with its dependence on ever more expensive foreign oil and the perils of climate change, many cite nuclear power as an attractive energy alternative. Yet critics and even some supporters argue that the only thing keeping the nuclear dream alive is support from federal subsidies. This could give taxpayers something to worry about over the next few years. The Wall Street Journal reports that cost estimates for new plants are up to four times higher than originally anticipated, soaring to $12 billion and beyond for an individual unit. EnergyBiz says (pdf here) that rising costs could "put an end to the nuclear renaissance before it ever gets started." High construction costs threaten the future of the nuclear industry, before it really takes off, but plans for new projects remain on the table. Every energy sector is struggling right now with rising costs of materials and labor for new and expanding power plants. But nuclear is getting hit the hardest. The industry is particularly vulnerable because of its high electricity costs relative to coal or natural gas. A 2003 report by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology entitled "The Future of Nuclear Power" raised significant economic concerns. "Today, nuclear power is not an economically competitive choice," the report said. This is partly because the federal government would have to foot the bill for many costs. New nuclear plants would require major government involvement to deal with issues of safety, waste and proliferation, MIT researchers found. In order to make nuclear energy competitive with coal and natural gas, the university recommended that the federal government should share costs for construction and operating licenses, certification and site banking. It also recommended a "modest" federal subsidy in the form of a production tax credit for the first round of nuclear plants to demonstrate feasibility. Cost estimates have only gone up -- and by a whole lot -- since the MIT report was released, so federal subsidies could play an even bigger role in keeping new nuclear plants afloat in the coming years. The 2005 energy bill offers $13 billion in subsidies and tax breaks, in addition to loan guarantees and other incentives, something which might concern taxpayers. That actually might not be enough, though, to support fledgling plants. Take the example of the Florida Public Service Commission, which plans on building two nuclear units at Turkey Point in south Florida. According to reports fromEnergyBiz and Plenty Magazine, the utility, Florida Power & Light, estimated that the cost would be between $18 billion and $24 billion for both units -- (up to $8,000 per kilowatt-hour). A second estimate, this time from the company Progress Energy, said that the costs would be much lower -- $14 billion for both units plus $3 billion for transmission and distribution. Even this more moderate estimate is twice as much as industry contractors originally promised. However, MIT says that a carbon tax or an equivalent cap-and-trade system could push costs down. If Congress votes on new climate change legislation next year, CO2-emitting industries are likely to be hit with such a measure. Since nuclear energy does not release CO2, it would benefit greatly from such government action. If a carbon tax is enforced, some environmental groups say, investment should target solar and wind technologies and fuel efficiency efforts, not nuclear power. "It's a costly technology and

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a dirty and dangerous distraction from what we really need to focus on," said Sierra Club spokesman JoshDorner, "which is a dramatic improvement in energy efficiency and an increase in renewables." Dorner says the nuclear industry's future depends "entirely" on federal subsidies. "The real reason that we haven't had a new nuclear plant built in really 20 years or longer is not because people were too afraid or because the industry has not found a way to solve its waste problem," he said. "They haven't been built because they're super-expensive andnobody's been willing to put up the money to build them."

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McCain will win – Iraq drawdown Planned withdrawl of combat troops in Iraq allows McCain to get support to win the election Leonard Doyle 7-14- 2008 The Independent “Bush to hasten Iraq troop withdrawal in bid to help McCain win White House” http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/bush-to-hasten-iraq-troop-withdrawal-in-bid-to-help-mccainwin-white-house-866885.html President George Bush wants to speed up the withdrawal of American combat troops from Iraq, a move that could help to quell the anti-war anxieties of voters before November's presidential election. Drawing down large numbers of troops would enable the Republican candidate, John McCain, to say that his forceful military strategy for Iraq was correct. Alone among Republican and Democratic politicians, he consistently urged Mr Bush to take on the insurgents with extra forces. He is now attacking his Democratic opponent, Barack Obama, for preaching policies of defeat by calling for a withdrawal in 16 months. American commanders want to reduce their deployment in Iraq to ease the strain on the military and free up troops for Afghanistan where they are taking a beating from the Taliban and other militants.

Bush pushing through military victory helps McCain win election Antonio C. Abaya 6-17-08 Manila Standard toay “Obama and Iraq” http://www.manilastandardtoday.com/? page=antonioAbaya_june17_2008 In my article Obama and Israel (June 5), I raised the possibility that the new-cons in Washington might collude with Israel to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities just before the Nov. 4 elections, knowing fully well that a President Obama would most likely NOT initiate such a move. A President Obama would thus be stuck with a fait accompli from which he cannot and will not retreat, given his unequivocal support for Israel stated during his recent speech before Aipac, the powerful Jewish lobby group. A further complication would be the recent (June 5) disclosure, made by The Independent newspaper in London, that a secret deal is being negotiated in Baghdad that would give the Americans 58 permanent military bases in Iraq, control of Iraqi air space up to 30,000 feet, immunity of American troops and contractors from Iraqi law, and the right to launch military operations without prior consultation with the Iraqi government. President Bush “wants to push it through by the end of next month so he can declare a military victory and claim his 2003 invasion has been vindicated… The timing of the agreement would also boost the Republican candidate, John McCain, who has claimed the US is on the verge of victory in Iraq—a victory that he says Mr. Obama would throw away by a premature military withdrawal…” This could be what gives McCain— an authentic Vietnam War hero—the confidence that he can beat the more seasoned debater Obama in a series of debates: A combination of fait accompli, in Iran as well as in Iraq, from which Obama—who has never served in the military—cannot retreat without his patriotism being questioned. All this while the 9/11 Five—led by mastermind Khaled Sheikh Mohammed—are being tried by a military tribunal for the most devastating terrorist attack ever on US soil.

Bush withdrawing troops quelling antiwar feelings Leonard Doyle, Staff Writer, The Independent, 7-14-08, “Bush to hasten Iraq troop withdrawal in bid to help McCain win White House”, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/bush-to-hasten-iraq-troopwithdrawal-in-bid-to-help-mccain-win-white-house-866885.html President George Bush wants to speed up the withdrawal of American combat troops from Iraq, a move that could help to quell the anti-war anxieties of voters before November's presidential election. Drawing down large numbers of troops would enable the Republican candidate, John McCain, to say that his forceful military strategy for Iraq was correct. Alone among Republican and Democratic politicians, he consistently urged Mr Bush to take on the insurgents with extra forces. He is now attacking his Democratic opponent, Barack Obama, for preaching policies of defeat by calling for a withdrawal in 16 months.

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McCain will win – security McCain wins because of ability to command the military New York Times 7-16-08 “Voters believe McCain better military leader than Obama http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24025817-26397,00.html Iraq strategies supported by Republican presidential hopeful John McCain and Democratic rival Barack Obama enjoy equal US voter support, but Senator McCain is seen as the superior commander-in-chief, according to a poll released yesterday. The ABC News/Washington Post poll found 72 per cent of the 1119 adults surveyed viewed the Vietnam War veteran as a good supreme commander of the military, while only 48 per cent thought the same of the Illinois senator. Military experience aside, both candidates had equal support in the survey as far as how they propose to handle Iraq if they win the White House in November. Senator McCain's plan to leave US troops in Iraq as long as it takes to win the war on terror met with 50 per cent approval, while Senator Obama's vow to pull out of Iraq by mid-2010 had a poll approval of 49 per cent. The poll found 63 per cent of Americans think the Iraq war was not worth fighting, against 60 per cent who believe winning the war is key in the struggle to defeat global terrorism. Senator Obama reiterated his withdrawal plan in an opinion piece in The New York Times, but pledged to redeploy two combat brigades, or up to 10,000 troops to Afghanistan. Senator McCain maintains early troop withdrawals from Iraq would squander the success of last year's troop surge strategy, and could lead to chaos in the fragile country, leaving it vulnerable to Iranian influence.

McCain wins because of military experience and ability The Economic Times 7-15, 2008, “McCain ties Obama on Iraq, but outpolls him as US military chief” http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/News/PoliticsNation/McCain_ties_Obama_on_Iraq_but_outpolls_him_as_US _military_chief/articleshow/3234474.cms WASHINGTON: Iraq strategies supported by Republican presidential hopeful John McCain and Democratic rival Barack Obama enjoy equal US voter support, but McCain is seen as the better commander-in-chief, according to a poll released Monday. A full 72 percent of the 1,119 adults surveyed by telephone in the July 10-13 ABC News/Washington Post poll viewed the former Vietnam War veteran as a good supreme commander of the military, while only 48 percent thought the same of the Illinois senator. Military experience aside however, both candidates had equal support in the survey as far as how they propose to handle Iraq if they win the White House in November. McCain's plan to leave US troops in Iraq as long as it takes to win the war on terror met with a 50 percent approval in the survey, while Obama's vow to pull out of Iraq by mid-2010 had a poll approval of 49 percent. The poll found that 63 percent of Americans think the Iraq War was not worth fighting, against 60 percent who believe winning the war is key in the overall struggle to defeat global terrorism. Obama on Monday reiterated his withdrawal plan in an opinion piece in The New York Times, but pledged to redeploy two combat brigades, or up to 10,000 troops to Afghanistan. McCain said his rival would trade defeat in Iraq for an election win. Obama is due to make a major address on Iraq, in Washington Tuesday, while the McCain Campaign announced a speech on Afghan war policy later this week

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McCain will win – momentum McCain is quickly gaining ground in the election Eric Kleefeld, staff writer, 7-14-2008, Talking Points Memo “Another National Poll Finds Prez Race Nearly Tied” http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/07/another_national_poll_finds_pr.php It's starting to look like the presidential race is narrowing once more. The latest Rasmussen tracking poll now has a nearly-tied race at Obama 47%, McCain 46%, the latest national poll showing the race to be practically even. Rasmussen also registered a dead-even tie yesterday of 46%-46%, after Barack Obama had previously held a steady five-point lead for several weeks.This is on top of the Newsweek poll from last week, which showed Obama's lead shrinking from 15 points to a mere three. The Gallup poll also has Obama up by three points.

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McCain will win – economy McCain wins because of his economic policy appeals during the economic downturn James Pethokoukis, Staff Writer, 7-15, 2008 US News and World Report “4 Reasons the Weak Economy Is Now Helping McCain” http://www.usnews.com/blogs/capital-commerce/2008/7/15/4-reasons-the-weak-economy-is-now-helpingmccain.html But I think we may now be at the point where this economic mess has started working in McCain's favor. The dynamic no longer seems to be a linear phenomenon in which a bad economy is good for Obama and a worse economy is even better. Rather, the situation has become chaotic and almost impossible to predict in view of all the emerging variables. But within the range of realistic possibilities, McCain may now have a roughly fifty-fifty shot at victory. Here's why: 1) Gas prices. Polls show the public wants lower gas prices and thinks oil drilling can help get them. And McCain and the Republicans have positioned themselves as the party of more energy and lower prices. They want to drill, and they want to build more nuclear plants. But instead of opening up new areas to drilling, Democrats want to tap the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. And who can forget Obama's response when asked what he thought of higher gas prices: "I would have preferred a gradual adjustment." One problem may be that Obama fashioned his energy plan when oil was a mere $60 a barrel. McCain seems to be smartly tweaking his policies on the fly—drilling, the gas tax moratorium—to appeal to voters furious about higher prices at the pump. 2) Stale Obamanomics. Like his energy policy, Obama's economic policy was crafted when the economy was clearly expanding, unemployment was below 5 percent, and the budget deficit was plunging. Now growth is sporadic at best, unemployment is rising sharply, and the deficit is likely to top a record $500 billion. Yet Obama still wants to raise investment, income, and payroll taxes while expanding spending. McCain, on the other hand, is talking about pro-growth tax cuts and balancing the budget by the end of his first term. Just as Obama's Iraq policy seems stuck in the past, so does his economic policy.3) The Fannie and Freddie fiasco. Up until the announcement of the Paulson-Bernanke bailout, the mortgage mess and credit crunch looked to many like examples of free-market failure. But Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are creations of a federal government trying to promote a specific economic policy—greater homeownership. And the artificial existence of these quasi-corporate creatures has contributed mightily to the housing mess, explains economist Brian Wesbury, by dominating the mortgage market "using subsidized credit" and pushing "private firms toward the fringes of the securitization process and into territory which included subprime and Alt-A loans." In any event, the Fannie-Freddie mess could be used by Team McCain to vividly display the incompetency of big government at the exact time Obama is arguing for more government involvement in healthcare and energy. 4) A skeptical public. America doesn't think too much of its government right now. Approval ratings of President Bush and Congress are minuscule. Indeed, pollsters will tell you that bad economies make voters skeptical of government rather than pushing them to embrace it. A recent Zogby poll showed that 46 percent of Democrats favored corporate taxes over taxpayer-funded federal programs as the best way to spur economic growth. Recall that a big corporate tax cut is at the heart of the McCain economic program. A big risk for Obama is that he will mistake a dislike of the GOP for a love of bigger government and overreach on policy and rhetoric.

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McCain will win – undecideds Undecideds will swing to McCain, winning him the election JIM PROVANCE, BLADE COLUMBUS BUREAU CHIEF, 6- 27, 2008 Toledo Blade“McCain woos undecided in 4th Ohio visit; Candidate says win here crucial” http://toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article? AID=/20080627/NEWS09/806270375 CINCINNATI - Rosemary Meinders, a Democrat complete with a Hillary Clinton cap, looked out of place yesterday at an invitation-only event for Republican John McCain."I'm a registered Democrat looking for a presidential candidate," she told the Arizona senator, who filled half of his town hall meeting at Xavier University with undecided voters selected in advance through phone polling in a state even he says is a must win for the next president of the United States."The state of Ohio has been and is going to be a battleground," he told the crowd of about 160. "The person who wins this state will probably, if history holds, be the next president of the United States."He talked women's rights with Ms. Meinders, debated the merits of the Iraq War with a college professor, praised a Blue Ash entrepreneur pursuing development of an electric car, and even sparred with an independent blogger who pressed him on the failed articles of impeachment against President Bush.This marked Mr. McCain's fourth visit to Ohio since the state helped him secure the Republican nomination on March 4. After wooing undecided voters at the noon event, he wooed the party's deep-pocketed faithful last night at a minimum $2,300-per-person fund-raiser at the suburban Cincinnati home of financier Carl Lindner III.He met with the region's conservative leaders while in town as he continued to work to shore up his Republican base while simultaneously reaching out to undecideds like Ms. Meinders who will ultimately hold the key to this election.Today he will tour General Motors' Lordstown Assembly Plant in Warren."I cannot imagine what Senator McCain would hope to gain in the Mahoning Valley, which has been devastated by the Bush Administration's policies," said Gov. Ted Strickland, who helped deliver Ohio to Mrs. Clinton but is now stumping with presumptive Democratic nominee Barack Obama. "I really see nothing in Sen. McCain's economic policies that would have an appeal in these distressed Ohio communities," he said. Citing rising gasoline prices, Mr. McCain reiterated his promise to provide $300 million in government funding for the one who develops a better battery for electric cars. And he pushed for development of new nuclear power plants in a state that still has fresh memories of the 2002 scare at the Davis-Besse plant near Oak Harbor."We have to have nuclear power," he said. "My proposal is to build 45 nuclear power plants in the next 15 years or so. We have got to do that."Reaching out to undecided voters in the room, frequently invoking the name of Ronald Reagan while distancing himself from some of President Bush's policies, he repeated his call for the closing of the Guantanamo Bay prison and suggested an insufficient number of troops on the ground in Iraq immediately after the initial invasion only emboldened the enemy.

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McCain will win – PUMAs McCain wins because of Hilary supporters JASON MOON, Managing Editor, 7- 7, 2008, Brazil Times, Indiana “Readers predict McCain win” http://www.thebraziltimes.com/story/1442785.html Close to 400 readers chose to vote on The Brazil Times' latest online poll regarding the upcoming Presidential election. The Times asked its readers, "Who will win the 2008 Presidential election?" Readers were given four options, including: John McCain, Barack Obama, Ralph Nader, or Other. Of the 381 readers that responded to the poll, 197 (51.7 percent) believe McCain will win the nomination. A total of 156 readers (40.9 percent) said Obama would win the election while 15 readers (3.9 percent) said Nader would win. Thirteen other readers, however, believed another candidate would win the election. A total of seven readers also responded to the poll. One reader stated, "The United States is a multicultural, open society. Mr. Obama can best represent our rich varied customs and beliefs as he has had other experiences and can understand the need for the US to be more engaged with the world." Another reader said, "We really don't have a choice," while another reader stated, "Obama is unelectable. It appears many women that supported (New York Sen. Hillary) Clinton and working class Democrats either won't be going to the polls or will be voting for McCain. McCain will have a problem getting conservative Republicans to vote for him. It is critical for McCain to find a true conservative running mate. It also needs to be noted that Obama did very poorly outside of the Chicago area when he ran for the Senate against a Republican. Obama needs more than just the inner-city and Hollywood left vote in order to win."

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McCain will win – Hispanic outreach McCain wins Hispanic vote BETH REINHARD, staff writer, 6- 23, 2008 “Poll: Obama leads in South Florida” Miami Herald http://www.miamiherald.com/campaign08/story/580609.html 'When Hispanic voters have an opportunity to focus on McCain's record on issues like education, economic development, free trade and immigration, the candidate who best represents the Hispanic community is McCain,'' said Ana Carbonell, a Miami member of the McCain campaign's steering committee. ``The campaign plans an aggressive effort to reach out to Hispanic voters, especially in Florida.'' But Democrats point to signs that the Hispanic community's political stripes are changing. A protest Saturday outside Obama's speech in Miami drew only about three dozen people, mostly older Cuban-Americans. The group attacked Obama for surrounding himself with two high-level advisors who helped send Cuban rafter Elián González back to his father in Cuba. When the custody battle raged eight years ago, Cuban-Americans rose up in droves. ''We understand the Elián González issue is something that passed, and that it was not Obama's fault,'' said Ramón Saúl Sánchez of the Miami-based Democracy Movement, who tussled with the federal agents who seized Elián from his relatives' home in Little Havana. ``People are giving more weight to other issues, like lifting the travel ban.'' Carbonell said younger Cuban-Americans may not have attended the protest but were buzzing about Obama's advisors on Spanish-language blogs. Of the Cuban-Americans in the Herald poll, a majority support McCain. Obama has called for lifting the Bush administration's restrictions on Cuban-Americans who want to visit family on the island. McCain has criticized Obama for wanting to ease sanctions and for his willingness to meet with the Cuban government in the hope of sparking democratic reform. ''A lot of Cuban Americans are very disappointed with President Bush,'' Sanchez said. ``If McCain says he's going to follow the same policies as Bush, that says a lot.''

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Brink 50/50 Shot for either candidate ART FEMISTER, Volunteers in Law Enforcement Contributor, 7-10-08, Officer.com, “Preparing for an Obama win”, http://www.officer.com/web/online/On-the-Street/Preparing-for-an-Obamawin/21$42206 Regardless of what you think about Senator Barack Obama or your beliefs in polls and campaign momentum, if the 2008 presidential elections were held today, based on current information, it appears Senator Obama would have the upper hand in the election. Having said that, each day brings new information and with that anything could happen or change in a heart beat. However I think it's fair to say at this point there is a 50/50 chance either candidate could win the upcoming November 2008 presidential election and as such, there is a 50/50 chance your recruiting plans could be affected.

High favorability for both means it’s anyone’s game The Frontrunner, 7-10-08, “McCain Seen as Needing to Stick to Consistent Attack Plan” Lexis In a "Political Diary" column in the Wall Street Journal (7/10, 2.07M), John Fund writes about the findings of Democratic pollster Doug Schoen, based on a "survey he conducted for the Aspen Institute's Ideas Festival" which found that "Barack Obama is a slight favorite to win the presidential election, but John McCain can win if he gets his campaign focused and mounts a targeted attack on his opponent." Fund notes that both candidates have high favorability rates, making the race more competitive, noting that Schoen believes that the McCain campaign is squandering it's potential to form and adhere to a consistent attack strategy against Obama.

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Dems win REPUBLICANS WILL LOSE NOW (Brian Darling, Director of U.S. Senate Relations at The Heritage Foundation., 05/05/2008, “Climate Change, Gas Tax and Incumbency”, http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=26318, [Ian Miller]) Incumbents should be very worried this year. Congressional approval ratings are at 20% and President Bush’s popularity is at historic lows. This may be the “Throw the Bums Out” year. Conservatives should be happy if some incumbents are sent packing, so new blood can come to Capitol Hill. The Hill newspaper reports “worrisome news for Sens. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and John Kerry (D-Mass.)” -- their approval ratings have sunk below 50%. Although they’re still favored to win their respective races, the other 33 senators up for election should note that the Senate Republican Leader and the 2004 Democrat presidential nominee may be in for a tough year. Both will be favorites to hold their respective seats -- yet others in close races should be looking over their shoulder. In 1986, the sixth year of Ronald Reagan’s presidency, seven incumbent Republican senators lost as Democrats took control of the Senate with a 55-45 advantage. Two years ago, six Senate Republican incumbents felt the wrath of voters, and Democrats picked up 31 seats in the House. The Rothenberg Political Report has Virginia, New Mexico, Colorado, Minnesota, Louisiana and New Hampshire listed as potential turnovers this fall in the Senate.

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***PLAN HELPS MCCAIN

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Energy policy  McCain win **A NEW ENERGY POLICY WILL ALLOW MCCAIN TO TAKE THE CREDIT, AND WIN THE ELECTION (Free Republic, 6-19-08, “How McCain and the GOP Can Ride An Energy Wave To Victory”, http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2033687/posts, [Ian Miller]) The energy problem in the US is lightning in a bottle for the candidate and/or party that can unleash it. The issue is there for the GOP to take advantage of as they by far have been much more on the right side of the issue. I'm no big fan of McCain. He wasn't my 1st, 2nd, or 3rd choice but it's who we have. It appears that he is getting the message about the energy crisis in the country, unlike Obama who keeps mouthing the same empty liberal rhetoric. Americans have had it with high energy prices because they know that rising food prices and rising prices of just about everything else is related to the higher energy costs. They are also learning that we have more oil available under our ground and shores than the entire Middle East. Even democrats with half a brain left are saying "it's time to drill!" Different republicans are offering different, albeit very similar solutions. McCain has some ideas. Current members of Congress have some ideas. Newt Gingrich has some ideas and has perhaps been in front on this issue with his "Drill Here. Drill Now. Pay Less." campaign. What the GOP needs to do is rally around a singular plan, much like they did in the 1992 elections with Newt's "Contract With America" plan. Here's how I think they get there and how they can "drop the bomb" on the democrats. First, McCain make ENERGY INDEPENDENCE along with national security the #1 campaign issue. There is simply NO down side to this. Energy independence means HUGE JOB GROWTH in a slumping economy, BIG DROP in energy prices, food prices, and all related industries, which all adds up to a roaring economy, and it means NO MORE RELIANCE on foreign thugs, dictators, and terrorists for our energy. These are the points that need to be stressed. Second, the way McCain brings this front and center is to pick a VP candidate to be his point man on this. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you...Newt Gingrich. Again, Newt is not the perfect conservative. He has some baggage, but in this day and age, who doesn't? I think he IS the perfect VP candidate under these conditions. He knows the energy issue inside-and-out and can bring instant authority and credibility to the ticket on this issue. Of course, Newt is a strong conservative on most other issues as well. Then, McCain and Newt need to have an "emergency energy conference" with GOP members of Congress and those GOP challengers running for office. You think Newt could work with Congressional GOP members? Obviously. Slam Dunk. They come up with a singular energy plan, basically calling for the opening up of onshore and offshore oil fields, coal fields, nuclear energy, etc., AND "fast-tracking" these through Congress. Similar to the "Contract with America", these candidates sign a pledge to back these measures in office. Then, a massive, coordinated ad campaign follows. They can use Newt's "Drill Here. Drill Now" slogan, and add "VOTE - " at the end. These ads will highlight how the democrats have blocked our energy independence, what the GOP plan is, how it would lead to energy independence, and all the benefits that would result. The ads then end with the slogan. If it's a Presidential ad, it ends with "DRILL HERE. DRILL NOW. VOTE MCCAIN/GINGRICH.". If it's a national GOP ad, it ends with "DRILL HERE. DRILL NOW. VOTE REPUBLICAN". It it's an ad for a Congressional candidate it can end with "DRILL HERE. DRILL NOW. VOTE THOMPSON.", or whoever the candidate is. I believe that IF the GOP can coordinate a plan and strategy such as this, that they can ride a tsunami into office. Really, that could be the tip of the iceberg.

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Energy policy  McCain win OBAMA IS WINNING BUT THE MARGIN IS SMALL ENOUGH THAT SEPARATION ON ENERGY IS KEY. THE PLAN NEUTRALIZES THE ADVANTAGE (Frank Newport, 6-24-08, “Obama Has Edge on Key Election Issues Better positioned than McCain on top two issues -- gas prices and economy”, http://www.gallup.com/poll/108331/Obama-Has-Edge-Key-Election-Issues.aspx, [Ian Miller]) Americans see Barack Obama as better able than John McCain to handle energy issues and the economy, the two most important election issues in the public's eyes, according to a recent Gallup survey. Six other issues were tested in the poll, with the two candidates positioned roughly evenly on Iraq, moral values, and illegal immigration, while Obama has an edge on healthcare and taxes. McCain's only advantage is on terrorism. The June 15-19 USA Today/Gallup poll asked Americans to rate the importance of the presidential candidates' positions on eight policy issues. The poll then asked respondents questions designed to measure the degree to which they perceive Obama and McCain as comparatively able to handle each of the eight issues. A majority of Americans believe that the candidates' positions on all issues tested will be either "extremely" or "very important" to their vote, not a surprising finding given that each issue included in the list was one that has received attention and focus in the campaign this year. The proportion of Americans who rate each issue as "extremely" important, perhaps a better test of each issue's impact this fall, ranges from 27% to 51%. Two issues top the list, based on the percentage rating each as extremely important in choosing between candidates: energy/gas prices and the economy. (Energy has spiked in its importance to voters in recent months as gas prices have risen to the $4-per-gallon level.) Obama has a clear advantage over McCain on both of these top two issues. Americans give Obama a 19-point edge over McCain as best able to deal with energy, with 47% choosing Obama and 28% McCain. On the economy, Obama has a 16point margin over McCain, 48% to 32%. The next tier of issues -- Iraq, healthcare, and terrorism -- receive "extremely important" ratings from 41% to 44% of Americans. The positioning of the candidates on these three issues is mixed. Obama and McCain are tied as to who would be best able to handle Iraq; Obama wins by a substantial 25-point margin on healthcare; and McCain wins over Obama on terrorism by 19 points. (Terrorism is the only issue of the eight tested on which McCain has a significant margin over Obama.) The bottom tier of issues is seen as extremely important by no more than a third of Americans: taxes, moral values, and illegal immigration. On two of these issues -- moral values and illegal immigration -- Obama and McCain are tied. Obama has a smaller, nine-point lead over McCain on taxes. Summary Obama is leading McCain by six points among registered voters in the head-to-head matchup included in the current USA Today/Gallup poll, and there are significantly more Americans at the moment who identify themselves as Democrats than as Republicans. So it may not be surprising that Obama is rated as better able to handle more of the tested issues than is McCain. Regardless of the cause, the finding that Obama has significant strength on domestic issues is potentially quite meaningful in this year's election, given that gas prices and the economy are the two issues the public is most likely to see as important in choosing between presidential candidates. In fact, further analysis of the poll results shows that less than half of Americans believe McCain would be able to do a good job of handling either gas prices or the economy, while 59% say Obama would be able to do a good job on both of these issues. Iraq, on which the two candidates have sharply divergent positions, is not too far behind energy/gas prices and the economy in terms of imputed importance. At the moment, Americans are equally likely to choose Obama as positioned to do the better job on Iraq as they are to choose McCain. The poll points to one undisputed strength for McCain: terrorism. Slightly less than half of Americans say Obama would do a good job of handing terrorism, while 70% say that about McCain. But terrorism is slightly less important as a voting issue in Americans' eyes than are economic issues, gas prices, and Iraq. Indeed, a separate question in the poll, to be examined in detail later this week on gallup.com, shows that given a choice, Americans would rather have a president whose greatest strength is fixing the economy rather than one whose greatest strength is fighting terrorism. These data would suggest that from a campaign perspective, Obama would be advised to play off his domestic strengths, particularly in terms of the economy, to attempt to neutralize McCain's strength on terrorism, and to increase his (Obama's) perceived strength on Iraq. McCain, on the other hand, has a clear base of strength on national security, but needs to move into a more competitive position with Obama in terms of critical domestic issues relating to the economy and gas prices.

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Energy policy  McCain win New energy policy would put McCain ahead with environmentalists – distance between Bush and Obama AP, 6/17/2008, McCain's Energy Plan Seeks Break From Bush, http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/06/17/politics/main4186261.shtml?source=RSSattr=Politics_4186261 Republican Sen. John McCain called for a clean break from Bush administration energy policies on Tuesday, then promptly pivoted to accuse campaign rival Barack Obama of supporting recycled measures that failed in the past. McCain's bid to chart a middle course on a major issue hit a bump, though, when he criticized Obama for proposing a windfall profits tax despite saying last month he would consider the same proposal. In a speech in energy-producing Texas, McCain said the United States needs more oil than during the Arab oil embargo of the 1970s, yet produces less. Now, he warned, a single successful terror attack at an oil installation could plunge the country into an "economic crisis of monumental proportions." With President Bush's poll ratings at historically low levels, McCain often emphasizes his differences with the current administration, and he coupled his speech with the release of a new television commercial stressing an issue that appeals to environmentalists. "John McCain stood up to the president and sounded the alarm on global warming - five years ago," the ad states. "Today, he has a realistic plan that will curb greenhouse gas emissions. A plan that will help grow our economy and protect our environment." Aides said the commercial would run in several battleground states and on cable television over the next several days. Democrats immediately said McCain was not credible on the issue. "How can we trust John McCain to confront soaring gas prices or break America's dependence on foreign oil when he caved in to Big Oil on drilling and tax breaks ... and he has repeatedly opposed incentives for green jobs and renewable energy?" said Karen Finney, a spokeswoman at the Democratic National Committee. McCain included little in the way of new proposals in his speech, other than to call for reform of the laws governing the oil futures trading market and to repeat his day-old support for an end to the federal moratorium on offshore oil drilling. He favors allowing states to decide whether to explore offshore waters. He said he would outline additional specific measures in the next two weeks, and instead, used his speech to make the case for eliminating U.S. dependence on foreign oil, call for a break from Bush policies and criticize Obama. "... In effect, our petrodollars are underwriting tyranny, anti-Semitism, the brutal repression of women in the Middle East, and dictators and criminal syndicates in our own hemisphere," said the Republican presidential nominee-in-waiting in his prepared remarks. "The next president must be willing to break with the energy policies not just of the current Administration, but the administrations that preceded it, and lead a great national campaign to achieve energy security for America," he said. McCain also reiterated his opposition to a 2005 energy bill that Bush backed and Obama voted for.

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McCain will take credit McCain will take credit regardless of the legislation – he supports any mix of alternatives. AP, 6/17/2008, McCain's Energy Plan Seeks Break From Bush, http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/06/17/politics/main4186261.shtml?source=RSSattr=Politics_4186261 A spokeswoman said McCain had neither erred in his earlier comment nor changed his mind since. "He said he is willing to look at all ideas not simply Republican or Democratic ideas," said Jill Hazelbaker, McCain's communications director. McCain said the time has come for the United States to make a "great turn away from carbon-emitting fuels." He called for greater use of nuclear power as well as for alternative energy sources and greater conservation measures. "Over time, we must shift our entire energy economy toward a sustainable mix of new and cleaner power sources. This will include some we use already, such as wind, solar, biofuels, and other sources yet to be invented," he said. "It will include a variety of new automotive and fuel technologies - clean-burning coal and nuclear energy and a new system of incentives, under a cap-and-trade policy, to put the power of the market on the side of environmental protection," he said.

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Energy key to McCain MCCAIN NEEDS TO TAKE THE LEAD ON ENERGY TO WIN (BOB RAYNER, TIMES-DISPATCH COLUMNIST, 7-13-08, “How McCain Can Use a Struggling Economy to Beat Obama”, http://www.inrich.com/cva/ric/opinion.apx.-content-articles-RTD-2008-07-13-0054.html, [Ian Miller]) Amercians are smart, but we like to be able to conjure simple ideas about our prospective leaders. Who are they and what do they stand for? John McCain still has some work to do if he wants to become the next president. So here's some help: Spend less. Drill more. Don't raise taxes. Seven words. Just about right for a compelling domestic program. Sure, McCain should remind people that he is a war hero who hates war but understands -- in his bones -the tough stances needed to protect the country in a dangerous world. He must signal that he recognizes people are worried about health care -- and that his consumer-friendly, less-government approach is more compassionate, more effective, and more American than his opponent's. BUT MOST OF ALL, McCain has to convince voters that he has the right plan for attacking the country's economic malaise. He is surprisingly well positioned to do just that. So far, though, his message remains hazy, but that should be easy to fix. # Spend less: Nothing has done more to damage Republican credibility with moderate and conservative voters than the six-year spending orgy initiated by a GOP-controlled Congress and encouraged by a Republican White House. McCain's record is earmark-free and he has spent -- pardon the pun -- years scolding his GOP colleagues for their irresponsible ways. He is the perfect candidate to restore financial discipline in Washington. Barack Obama is not. # Drill more: McCain's record is less perfect on energy policy. But he's learning. The Arizona senator has already called for giving states the option to explore and produce offshore oil and natural gas. Perhaps he should consider a trip to Alaska and a visit with the state's energetic and persuasive young governor, Sarah Palin. Just as Obama's trip to Iraq will provide opportunities to develop more responsible policies about the war, McCain's journey north might open his eyes about the need to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Americans are ready for a sensible, comprehensive energy policy. But they also understand that oil and gas must be an important part of the equation for the next few decades. And they are justifiably concerned that rising global demand could keep pushing prices higher for years. Common sense has persuaded a majority that increased supplies will ease prices -- no matter how many obscure professors NPR and The New York Times dredge up to proclaim that energy markets are immune to the forces of supply and demand. McCain can and should propose bold and immediate increases in domestic energy production, including nuclear. He is certain to win this fight because Obama's green flank will never allow him to move far enough onto rational ground.

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Cheap energy policy helps McCain A cheap energy policy would put McCain ahead – strikes core voters. James Pethokoukis, money and politics columnist for US News & World Report, where he writes the monthly Capital Commerce magazine column, 6/16/2008, 7 Ways McCain Can Use Energy to Beat Obama, http://www.usnews.com/blogs/capital-commerce/2008/6/16/7-ways-mccain-can-use-energy-to-beatobama.html 7) Advocate a cheap Manhattan Project. Obama wants to spend something like $200 billion over 10 years on various energy schemes like a government-sponsored venture capital fund to invest in clean energy. A more modest approach comes from the group Set America Free. It wants American taxpayers to spend $12 billion over the next four years to provide incentives to auto manufacturers to produce, and consumers to purchase, plug-in and flex-fuel hybrid vehicles, as well as to mandate substantial incorporation of plug-ins and FFVs into government fleets. It also advocates providing incentives to transform existing fueling stations so they serve all liquid fuels and to enable utilities to enter the transportation fuel market. In addition, it favors government policies to encourage mass transit and reduce vehicle-miles traveled. Now all that stuff may anger some free-market conservatives, but it would probably strike voters who want Uncle Sam to do something as both prudent and fiscally responsible.

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Obama winning on energy MCCAIN IS CURRENTLY FAILING ON ENERGY- HE ISN’T ENACTING REAL POLICIES THAT HE NEEDS TO WIN THE ELECTION (Steve Benen, 6-25-08, “McCain ups the ante, vows ’strategic independence’ from foreign oil”, http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/15995.html, [Ian Miller]) The McCain campaign’s internal polling must show energy policy at the very top of voters’ priority list, because the senator has talked about little else the last couple of weeks. Unfortunately, for McCain, the pitch has been pretty weak. First, McCain talked up a “gas-tax holiday,” which most voters recognized as cheap, unhelpful pandering. Second, he embraced Bush’s coastal-drilling plan, which his own campaign concedes wouldn’t affect the price of gas. This week, he’s going with an X-Prize-like policy for cars that run on some yet-to-be-invented lowemissions battery. Today, however, McCain started getting more specific with his ambitious goals. Greg Sargent reports this excerpt from a speech McCain will deliver today in Nevada: “In recent days I have set before the American people an energy plan. “And let it begin today with this commitment: In a world of hostile and unstable suppliers of oil, this nation will achieve strategic independence by 2025…. “Some will say this goal is unattainable within that relatively short span of years — it’s too hard and we need more time. Let me remind them that in the space of half that time — about eight years — this nation conceived and carried out a plan to take three Americans to the Moon and bring them safely home.” Well, that certainly sounds pleasant, doesn’t it? I have no idea what “strategic independence” means — and McCain didn’t explain it — but the phrase sounds terrific. Who’d be against “strategic independence”? What’s more, it creates quite an ambitious picture. Greg noted, “[A]ssuming ’strategic independence’ means ‘independence,’ McCain is promising us stability in the Mideast in five years (2013); and independence from foreign oil in less than two decades.” I’m all for ambition, but does this make any sense? Atrios had an item a couple of months ago featuring McCain telling an audience, “My friends, I will have an energy policy that we will be talking about, which will eliminate our dependence on oil from the Middle East that will — that will then prevent us — that will prevent us from having ever to send our young men and women into conflict again in the Middle East.” Now, as a political matter, the obvious controversy with the remarks was McCain’s implicit suggestion that we fight wars for oil. He’s not supposed to say that, of course, making this an interesting Michael Kinsley Moment. But it’s that first part of the quote that’s interesting, too. McCain believes he has a policy to “eliminate our dependence on oil from the Middle East.” Coupled with today’s comments, that offers some hints as to what McCain means by “strategic independence” (as in, geo-political “strategy”). In this reality, though, McCain’s talking nonsense. [T]here isn’t an energy expert in the world — not one — who thinks we can “eliminate our dependence on oil from the Middle East.” It’s a child’s fantasy, but McCain spouts this stuff as if solving our problems really were just that easy. It reminds me of his solution to the fighting in Iraq: “One of the things I would do if I were President would be to sit the Shiites and the Sunnis down and say, ‘Stop the bullshit.’” Yep. McCain’s team probably saw a poll showing that Americans care a lot about energy policy, and trust Obama on the issue by a large margin. McCain, scrambling, keeps coming up with new promises and ideas to offer. I guess we’re not supposed to notice that they don’t make a lot of sense.

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Bush popularity key to McCain Low Bush popularity is a death knell – improving his ratings boosts McCain By Dick Morris, a political analyst for Fox and a columnist for the Hill, 5/18/2008, Obama Has the Upper Hand. But McCain Can Still Take Him, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/article/2008/05/16/AR2008051603729_pf.html [ND] Which brings us to George W. Bush, the least popular president of modern times. Unlikely as it sounds, the soon-to-be former president needs to get out of the White House, reenter the political arena (much as it will pain him) and go around the country telling us two things: First, we are winning in Iraq; second, the economy is not as bad as most people think. With the Dow at around 12,800 and unemployment at 5 percent, Bush can make a good case that things aren't really headed for the rocks. And he'll have to. Republicans cannot win with an incumbent president with rock-bottom ratings. Bush can help McCain, but that doesn't mean that McCain should support Bush. As Bush makes the case for himself, McCain must put distance between them. A lot of distance. Once, McCain ran against Bush. But since then, he has basked in the glow of Bush's warm welcome back to the mainstream of the party. Now McCain needs to free himself of Bush's spell, go out again into the cold and show the country the difference between his agenda and Bush's.

Low bush popularity dooms McCain – he needs independents to warm to Bush JOHN D. MCKINNON, staff writer, July 2, 2008 “How Bush Ratings Complicate : McCain's Presidential Fight” Wall Street Journal http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121493389576919869.html?mod=googlenews_wsj WASHINGTON -- President Bush's record unpopularity is playing an unprecedented role in the 2008 campaign, complicating John McCain's task among key constituencies. Mr. Bush received a 66% disapproval rating in The Wall Street Journal/NBC poll for June, tying his own record for the highest ever for any president in the Journal/NBC poll. The previous highs were a 56% rating for Mr. Bush's father in late 1992, and a 50% score for President Clinton in 1993. In the long-running Gallup Poll, Mr. Bush's disapproval rating reached 69% this spring -- a record going back to the Truman administration. His disapproval rating in the Journal poll is particularly striking among a number of key voter blocs for Mr. McCain in the November election: older voters (67%), women (71%) and independents (75%). Mr. Bush's second-term slide in the polls has been especially sharp among independents, a group that Sen. McCain depends on. Now for Mr. McCain to win in November, "at least one-third of McCain's voters will have to be people who disapprove of the job George Bush is doing," most of them independents, says Republican pollster Neil Newhouse. And Sen. McCain must accomplish that feat while continuing to align himself with Mr. Bush on some of the administration's most controversial policies, notably the Iraq war. Despite some slippage, Mr. Bush remains popular among self-identified Republicans, with a 62% approval rate, but the GOP's strength relative to Democrats has diminished under his tenure, according to surveys. As a result, Mr. McCain also will have to do significantly better among Republicans than Mr. Obama does among Democrats, in addition to winning independents by a wide margin, Mr. Newhouse says. Mr. Bush's popularity also has suffered among women, who sometimes complain in focus groups that he doesn't listen to the public. His overall approval rating now stands at 28% in the current Journal/NBC poll. Among women it's just 23%, compared with 42% four years ago. Mr. Bush has also lost substantial support among whites (20 points); moderates (21 points); retirees (22 points); and those with annual incomes of $30,000 to $50,000 (22 points).

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Cap-and-Trade – Helps McCain McCain will spin Obama’s cap-and-trade as an economic disaster – a populist approach puts him ahead. James Pethokoukis, money and politics columnist for US News & World Report, where he writes the monthly Capital Commerce magazine column, 6/16/2008, 7 Ways McCain Can Use Energy to Beat Obama, http://www.usnews.com/blogs/capital-commerce/2008/6/16/7-ways-mccain-can-use-energy-to-beatobama.html 4) Accuse Obama of wanting to launch a pre-emptive war on the American economy. McCain could attack Obama's plan on two main fronts: its overreliance on alternative energy vs. fossil fuels and nukes, and Obama's seeming willingness to go ahead with capping carbon emissions even if India and China— America's two main economic rivals of the future—take a pass. I can almost hear McCain now: "Senator Obama's policies would be tantamount to unilateral disarmament in our economic competition with our global competitors. It is another example of his naiveté." 5) Stop blaming Big Oil. Why should McCain echo Obama in criticizing the oil companies—a blame game that a Republican can't win—when he could easily blast the Democrats for a generation of policies that have limited oil drilling and the exploitation of nuclear energy? 6) Go with a populist "cost of living" argument. You can't expect McCain to abandon his plan to cap U.S. carbon emissions. But since his plan and Obama's similar approach would both raise energy prices for consumers, McCain could explicitly call for rebating money from the auctioning of carbon allowances—we are talking trillions of dollars over the coming decades—back to consumers in the form of lower taxes. It's a populist move that he could contrast with the Democratic plan to have the government keep that money and spend it on various "green" programs.

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Nuc—Helps McCain McCain gets credit for Nuclear Power—he is pushing it now US News and World Report 7-24-08, http://www.usnews.com/usnews/politics/bulletin/bulletin_080724.htm The AP reports that at a town hall meeting in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania yesterday, Sen. John McCain talked about ways to bring down the price of oil, such as offshore drilling. McClatchy adds McCain also "pledged to build more nuclear power plants and support offshore oil drilling." The Wilkes-Barre Times Tribune reported McCain also talked about his gas-tax holiday plan, and "said his idea was rebuffed by congressional critics concerned that eliminating the 18 cents per gallon federal tax would reduce funding for their favorite pork barrel projects. 'I don't have to tell anybody here that every time you go to the gas station you are shocked at the cost of a gallon of oil,' he said. 'I wanted to give you a little gas tax holiday, so that you wouldn't have to pay for a while. But you know what they said: 'We might not be able to spend on some of those pork barrel projects that Congress likes to spend money on.

Plan is a win—McCain is a loud proponent of nuclear power, which the public supports Robert Schroeder, MarketWatch, 7-24-08 “Nuclear power wins support on the campaign trail,” http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/nuclear-power-wins-support-campaign/story.aspx?guid=%7B4C4C7CA5E406-4E17-AA8C-55E59DBD68CE%7D&dist=msr_4 Experts say that the public is warming up to nuclear energy despite long-held reservations. So expect nuclear power to be on the table no matter who is elected president. McCain urges full speed ahead Republican McCain is a loud proponent of nuclear power. In speeches and on his web site, the Arizona senator touts it as "a proven, zero-emission source of energy," and calls for building 45 new nuclear power plants by 2030. McCain ultimately aims to build 100 new plants. "It is time we recommit to advancing our use of nuclear power," McCain's web site declares. McCain is also supportive of a proposed, controversial storage facility for nuclear waste at Nevada's Yucca Mountain. He also says it's critical that the U.S. build the components for the plants and reactors domestically "so that we are not dependent on foreign suppliers with long wait times." Obama supports nukes -- with caveats Democrat Obama supports nuclear power, too -- but with a few caveats. "I think that nuclear power should be in the mix when it comes to energy," the Illinois senator said in Florida in June. However, he said, "I don't think it's our optimal energy source because we haven't figured out how to store the waste safely or recycle the waste." Disposing of the waste is perhaps the biggest dividing point between Obama and McCain. Obama opposes storing waste at Yucca Mountain, but has not proposed an alternative.

No risk of Nuclear power hurting McCain—he is loudly advocating and defending Nuclear energy now Borys Krawczeniuk, The Times-Tribune 7-24-08 http://www.istockanalyst.com/article/viewiStockNews+articleid_2432549&title=McCain_Touts_Energy.html

Mr. McCain didn't shy away from touting proposals sure to draw fire: nuclear energy and cleancoal technology. While he favors wind and solar power as alternative energy sources, Mr. McCain said building 45 new nuclear power plants could create 700,000 new jobs. He promised to invest $2 billion a year in clean-coal technology -- the conversion of coal into diesel gasoline or other fuels -- because the nation has the largest untapped coal reserve in the world. A cleancoal plant is proposed in Schuylkill County. Environmentalists criticize both technologies as potentially harmful, but Mr. McCain said the nation's military has been powering its submarines with nuclear fuel for 60 years without an accident.

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AE Helps McCain – Independence Spin Spinning alternative energy as energy independence wins the election – voter concern. James Pethokoukis, money and politics columnist for US News & World Report, where he writes the monthly Capital Commerce magazine column, 6/16/2008, 7 Ways McCain Can Use Energy to Beat Obama, http://www.usnews.com/blogs/capital-commerce/2008/6/16/7-ways-mccain-can-use-energy-to-beatobama.html "Climate change is never going to rise to the status of a top-tier political issue" is how one top climate-policy expert recently described the political lay of the land to me. Just take a look at the results of a recent NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll. The top issue for voters (27 percent) was job creation and economic growth. Right behind was the war in Iraq (24 percent). Then came energy and gas prices (18 percent). Far down the list were the environment and global warming, at a minuscule 4 percent. So despite all the media attention on global warming as an existential threat to humanity, it still scores a bit below illegal immigration in the hierarchy of voter concerns. And there lies an opportunity for John McCain to turn the issues of energy and the environment to his advantage in his race against Barack Obama. Here are a few pieces of advice for Team McCain that I have gathered after talking to some political folks in recent days. 1) Stop talking about global warming. Or at least don't talk about it nearly as much as "energy independence." The latter has an incredible resonance with voters for national security and economic reasons. The former, apparently, not so much. In his much-derided New Orleans speech, McCain mentioned "climate" or "environment" a total of four times, "energy" eight times. Since voters seem to be about four times as concerned with the cost of energy as with climate change, maybe the ratio of "energy" mentions to "climate change" mentions should be at least 4 to 1 rather than 2 to 1 in all speeches. Move energy from being an environmental issue to being an economic and national security issue.

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***PLAN HELPS OBAMA

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Dems get credit for plan Democrats get credit for the plan—in congressional debates the democrats’ view is alternative energy and the republicans’ is drilling New York Times 7-24-08 http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/24/us/24cong.html?ref=politics WASHINGTON — Congressional Republicans and Democrats agree that high gasoline prices are the driving domestic political issue of the moment, spurring new campaign advertisements and maneuvering almost every day. But that is about all they can agree on when it comes to the national panic at the pump. Making it increasingly clear that the Congressional debate is more a matter of political positioning than policy creation, the Senate failed Wednesday to come to terms on the ground rules for considering an energy bill, delaying a proposal to curb speculation in oil futures and stymieing a broader review of energy initiatives. The stalemate is drawing sharp contrasts for the November election. On the one side is the Democratic leadership, pushing its view that oil companies must be pressed to explore their current holdings and that the nation should pursue more alternative energy sources without opening areas now off limits to drilling. On the other are Republicans with their dominant message: Drill. “We should come out for developing more American energy, and not rely on expensive foreign sources,” said Senator Thad Cochran of Mississippi, senior Republican on the Appropriations Committee. “We can develop our offshore resources far from the coastline in the Gulf of Mexico, for example, and add to our energy supply.” Republicans say they are willing to back alternative energy proposals and conservation as well but drilling has been their priority. And in an election season when the terrain has been steeply tilted against them, Republicans say they have finally struck pay dirt on an issue they can exploit with some success. Polls show that Americans want cheaper gasoline and that many are willing to embrace new drilling if it can bring down the price. Democrats, worried about defections in the ranks, are scrambling to avoid votes on expanded drilling and this week canceled a series of Senate committee sessions that could have provided an opening for Republicans. In the House, Democrats are increasingly bringing legislation to the floor under rules that deny Republicans the chance to counter with a drilling proposal. “What does Nancy Pelosi have to fear from allowing the House to vote?” Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, the Republican leader, asked Wednesday as he and some Republican colleagues rallied outside the Capitol, taunting the speaker of the House for her opposition to a vote on expanded offshore drilling.

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Energy key to distance from Bush Energy is McCain’s only opportunity to create distance from Bush – the plan blocks any chance of him generating a “change” narrative Scott Horsley, NPR business correspondent, 5/13/2008, “McCain Targets Independents with 'Green' Effort,” http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=90411556 But for the moment, McCain's tone is very different as he tries to reach out to independent and moderate voters at campaigns stops in the Pacific Northwest. McCain visited a watershed center outside Seattle on Tuesday, where he stressed his commitment to environmental protection. McCain even planned a nature walk around Washington's Cedar River Reservoir, with reporters and photographers in tow, and held a roundtable discussion with a group of Washington state conservation advocates. Sally Jewell heads the Seattle-based outdoor gear company REI, a cooperative with 3.5 million active members. "We have members that span from the far right to the far left of the political spectrum," she said. "But I think the one thing they all appreciate is a healthy environment." By wrapping himself in the fleece vest of environmentalism, McCain hopes to reach out to that constituency. He repeated his pledge to combat greenhouse gases by limiting the amount of these gases that companies can emit and encouraging those who emit less to sell their permits to others. This "cap-and-trade" system is similar to plans proposed by Illinois Sen. Barack Obama and New York Sen. Hillary Clinton — albeit with less stringent limits on carbon pollution. McCain's Green Campaign Aimed at Moderate Voters "McCain simply cannot win in November if he can't consolidate the center and win the swing independents who determine every presidential election," said Larry Sabato, a University of Virginia political analyst. "His task is tough enough because of President Bush's unpopularity, the unpopularity of the Iraq war and the tanking of the economy. If he gets too identified with the right wing of his own party, he's going to alienate those swing independents, and he'll lose the election." McCain is closely identified with President Bush in his support for the Iraq war and an economic policy built on tax cuts. But Sabato says so far, that has not been the drag on McCain's campaign that it might be. "Right now, he has that maverick image, and he's running 20 to 25 points better than the Republican brand," Sabato added. "The Democrats' job is to make sure that doesn't continue. McCain's job is to make sure that it does." The environment is one area where McCain can put some daylight between his views and President Bush's. Speaking on Monday in Portland, Ore., McCain subtly criticized the president for not doing more to combat global warming. "I will not permit eight long years to pass without serious action on serious challenges," he said. McCain also went out of his way to praise Oregon's Democratic governor and to promise more bipartisan cooperation if he is elected president. "We need to draw on the best ideas of both parties and on all the resources a free market can provide," he said.

McCain is relying on energy to generate distance from Bush Reuters, 6/3/2008, McCain attacks Obama, distances himself from Bush, http://www.reuters.com/article/politicsNews/idUSWAT00958120080603 NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) - Republican presidential candidate John McCain said he would bring "the right kind of change" to the U.S. presidency as he launched a general election campaign on Tuesday against likely Democratic opponent Barack Obama. McCain, an Arizona senator who has wrapped up his party's White House nomination, also sought to distance himself from President George W. Bush by promising a new energy policy and a plan to curb global warming. "He is an impressive man, who makes a great first impression," McCain says of Obama, according to a copy of prepared remarks he will deliver later on Tuesday. "But he hasn't been willing to make the tough calls, to challenge his party, to risk criticism from his supporters to bring real change to Washington. I have."

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Distance from Bush key to McCain Separation key to McCain – needs to distance himself from Bush. By Dick Morris, a political analyst for Fox and a columnist for the Hill, 5/18/2008, Obama Has the Upper Hand. But McCain Can Still Take Him, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/article/2008/05/16/AR2008051603729_pf.html [ND] Which brings us to George W. Bush, the least popular president of modern times. Unlikely as it sounds, the soon-to-be former president needs to get out of the White House, reenter the political arena (much as it will pain him) and go around the country telling us two things: First, we are winning in Iraq; second, the economy is not as bad as most people think. With the Dow at around 12,800 and unemployment at 5 percent, Bush can make a good case that things aren't really headed for the rocks. And he'll have to. Republicans cannot win with an incumbent president with rock-bottom ratings. Bush can help McCain, but that doesn't mean that McCain should support Bush. As Bush makes the case for himself, McCain must put distance between them. A lot of distance. Once, McCain ran against Bush. But since then, he has basked in the glow of Bush's warm welcome back to the mainstream of the party. Now McCain needs to free himself of Bush's spell, go out again into the cold and show the country the difference between his agenda and Bush's.

McCain needs to get away from Bush to win Chris Cillizza – Washington Post political analyst; 6-18-08; “The Fix” Washington Post, http://blog.washingtonpost.com/thefix/2008/06/fix_pick_mcsame.html John McCain = George W. Bush. For much of the last few months, Democrats and their affiliate groups have worked hard to ensure voters become familiar with that equation. The Democratic National Committee has run ads that end with a picture of President Bush with his arm around McCain. Campaign to Defend America, a since-defunct third party group aligned with Democrats, called McCain the "McSame as Bush." In nearly ever speech he gives, Obama makes clear that he believes McCain's agenda for the country -- on issues ranging from the economy to Iraq -- represents nothing more than a third Bush term. It's hard to miss the message. And, according to a new poll conducted by the Washington Post and ABC News voters are internalizing the message. Thirty eight percent of those surveyed said McCain would take the country in a "new" direction, while 57 percent said a McCain administration would mostly keep America on the "same" course. In a New York Times/CBS poll conducted earlier this month, 43 percent of respondents said McCain would "continue Bush's policies," 28 percent said McCain would be less conservative than Bush, and 21 percent said McCain would be more conservative. Does that perception of McCain match the reality of the Arizona Senator's record over the last eight years? Elizabeth Bumiller of the New York Times attempted to answer that question in a front page story that ran on Tuesday. (One benefit of a cross country flight is that you can read all the major papers cover to cover.) Bumiller's conclusion? Yes and no. Yes on many major issues including the future of American involvement in Iraq, the economy and health care. No on the environment (McCain has been relatively outspoken within his party regarding the perils of global warming) and American diplomacy. "While it would be hard to categorize him as a doctrinaire Republican or conservative, Mr. McCain appears to have ceded some of his carefully cultivated reputation as a maverick," writes Bumiller, noting McCain's reversal on Bush's tax cuts -- he voted against them in 2001 but is now a supporter. But, she also notes -- and this is an important point -- that McCain and Bush are stylistically opposite, meaning that a McCain presidency might resemble the current administration on many policy matters but would have a very different personality. "Presidencies are about more than policies, of course, and Mr. McCain would bring a different style, background and world view to the White House should he be elected in November," says Bumiller. One of the biggest and most important decisions for voters in the coming general election is whether or not they believe that McCain will be the same as or different (in a good way) than Bush. Given Bush's dismal approval ratings, if voters decide McCain is too much like the current chief executive Republicans will have little hope of keeping the White House this fall. McCain and his campaign are well aware of the peril posed by being tied too tightly to Bush and are doing everything they can to put distance between the two men. Witness McCain's latest ad in which a narrator notes: "John McCain stood up to the president and sounded the alarm on global warming, five years ago." One ad will not solve McCain's "same as Bush" problem. According to the current numbers, McCain must create more space between himself and Bush in order to win the White House.

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Distance from Bush key to McCain MCCAIN CAN’T GET TIED TO BUSH (Jonathan Martin, July 08, 2008, “Obama hits back on energy”, http://www.politico.com/blogs/jonathanmartin/0708/Obama_hits_back_on_energy_.html, [Ian Miller]) Responding to the RNC's campaign knocking him on energy, Barack Obama has responded with what Dems hope is their trump card: tying McCain to President Bush. Obama doesn't just link the GOP nominee and the incumbent on the policy issue at hand, but shows them literally linked in imagery from the 2004 campaign that has already become a staple of Democratic and liberal advertising this cycle. With gas prices over $4 a gallon, the issue matters. But one gets the sense that the Bush third-term counterattack is a versatile one and will be used to punch back on pretty much any and all issues over the next few months.

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Pro-Obama policy kills McCain The plan dooms McCain by moving toward Obama talking points – it undercuts the GOP message – Iran rapprochement proves Kevin Drum, Washington Monthly, 7-17-08, http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2008_07/014112.php Am I off base, or is it sort of weird that there's been so little followup to the news that the Bush administration plans to open an "interests section" in Tehran? None of the big U.S. newspapers has so much as mentioned this story yet, which either means they don't think it's a big deal (unlikely) or that not a single one of them has been able to confirm the original Guardian report (also unlikely). Over at The Corner, where I figured they'd be going ballistic, the news has been met with nothing more than a shrug. Now, sure, an interests section is not an embassy (we already have one in Cuba, for example), but this would still be a pretty stunning turnaround, wouldn't it? Especially since the rapprochement appears to be mutual. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has indicated he's open to a U.S. proposal and an Iranian spokesman later confirmed that Iran is open to direct talks. How cordial! So why the radio silence? At the very least, shouldn't the talking heads be talking about the political implications of this news? Barack Obama favors direct talks with Iran and John McCain doesn't, and now here comes George Bush apparently clearing the deck for direct talks. So what does McCain do now? He'll tap dance a bit, of course, claiming that Bush is not doing precisely what Obama proposed (which is true), but he's certainly moving in that direction. Doesn't this cut McCain's legs out from under him? Doesn't it make Obama look more prescient and presidential? Shouldn't this at a minimum be a fascinating topic for fact-free cable news speculation and talk radio bloviation? I think so!

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Plan Passage removes McCain Support McCain is garnering support on the energy issue—plan passage would eliminate this issue and hurt him David Lightman, McClatchy Newspapers, 7-23-08, http://www.mcclatchydc.com/311/story/45261.html WILKES-BARRE, Pa. — John McCain got warm applause Wednesday in this politically important bluecollar city when he pledged to build more nuclear power plants and support offshore oil drilling — but his town-hall meeting was only half-full. McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, also took aim at Democratic rival Barack Obama, who's traveling in the Middle East after spending three days in Iraq and Afghanistan. He said that Obama's insistence on setting a timetable for withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq and his opposition to last year's increase of American troops there were a formula for defeat that Obama endorses to curry favor with antiwar voters. "Senator Obama said the strategy of the surge would not succeed. He said he was doomed to fail . . . he said to this day the surge has not succeeded," McCain charged. "It is a remarkable failure to understand the facts upon the ground. Apparently Senator Obama would rather lose a war in order to win a campaign." McCain's chief message, though, involved energy. He stood on the stage at the downtown Kirby Center in front of a huge banner that said "Energy Solutions," and explained how energy is directly tied to national security. "This is an economic issue, it is an environmental issue and it is a national security issue. We are sending $700 billion of American money overseas to pay for this gasoline to countries that don't like us very much. And some of it ends up in the hands of terrorist organizations. That's just a fact." During the hour-long town meeting, he reiterated his support for suspending the federal 18.4 cents-a-gallon gasoline tax until Labor Day and got applause, but the bigger cheer came from his drilling proposal. President Bush lifted the executive ban on offshore drilling last week, and McCain noted that oil prices came down immediately. While the price drop probably had little to do with Bush's decision — the ban remains in effect because Congress hasn't agreed to end it — the audience still liked what McCain had to say. "I don't know that the gas-tax holiday will have much impact, but at least McCain has a plan," said Josh Recine, a graphic artist. "I'm not sure Obama does." McCain's town hall meeting was another chapter in his weeklong effort to counter the Illinois senator's high-publicity tour of the war zone, the Middle East and Europe. McCain has spent the week alternately blasting Obama in national news interviews and conducting town hall meetings in swing areas. While the town halls are hardly likely to shove Obama's trip out of the spotlight, analysts thought they could help McCain in the long run. "He gets lots of local ink out of them, in places where he needs to do well," said Randall Miller, a professor of history at St. Joseph's University in Philadelphia. The Arizona senator has been focusing a lot of his recent advertising, notably ads pledging to bring down high energy prices, in this state.

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GOP winning on energy – positive incentives Republicans are winning on energy now by focusing on positive incentives (Richard Baehr, July 10, 2008, “How McCain Could Win”, http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/07/how_mccain_could_win.html, [Ian Miller]) Finally, there is the energy issue, which is now playing into the hands of the Republicans, if properly handled. Obama and the Democrats say no - to more drilling, and to increased use of nuclear power, and are offering no solutions to the increase in energy costs, which are proving to be a significant and damaging new burden for most American families. The Obama approach: to tax more of oil company profits and to end energy futures speculation, will not change the growing supply demand imbalance, which is a primary reason for rising energy costs. McCain is supporting more drilling, and more nuclear power, and greater conservation. So McCain is for more supply, and reduced demand. Obama and his Party appear to be looking for villains, not solutions.

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Energy key to elections ENERGY IS THE MOST IMPORTANT ISSUE FOR THE ELECTION- MCCAIN SUPPORTS ALTERNATIVE ENERGY WHILE OBAMA SUPPORTS REGULATIONS (Ariel Sabar, Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor, June 30, 2008, “McCain and Obama share energy goals, not methods”, http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0630/p01s02-uspo.html) Washington - John McCain and Barack Obama know that most Americans need look no further than the gas pump for proof of America's energy crunch. With fuel topping $4 a gallon and oil at a record price, energy now ties the economy in polls as voters' top concern, and the presidential candidates spent the past week trying to outflank each other on an issue that's thinning billfolds from Maine to California. Their plans share key goals – less reliance on foreign oil, a push for cleaner fuels – but their methods differ sharply. Senator McCain, the presumptive GOP nominee, wants 45 new nuclear power plants by 2030 and an end to the federal moratorium on new offshore drilling. He would use market lures – tax rebates for electric cars, a $300 million prize for a better car battery – to promote alternative sources of energy. He would offer motorists immediate relief in the form of a hiatus in the federal gas tax. Senator Obama, the presumptive Democratic nominee, opposes new offshore drilling and is wary of nuclear power. He would double auto fuel-efficiency standards within 18 years, subsidize development of ethanol, and force power companies to generate one- quarter of their energy from wind, solar, and other renewable sources by 2025. An opponent of the gas-tax holiday, Obama favors a "windfall profits" tax on multinational oil companies. In many ways, their approaches square with party ideology. On the Republican side, financial carrots and a significant role for the private sector. On the Democratic side, subsidies, taxes, and regulation. But in a departure from GOP predecessors, McCain has refused to cede the "green" label to his Democratic rival. His aides say his plan strikes the right balance among short-term relief for consumers, environmental stewardship, and long-term energy independence. They have taken to calling Obama "Dr. No," portraying him as an obstructionist with too narrow a view of the country's energy woes. In a speech in Las Vegas Wednesday, McCain trumpeted his plan as a breakthrough after "three decades of partisan paralysis." He vowed Wednesday to wean America of its dependence on foreign oil by 2025 and gave his proposal no less momentous a title than "The Lexington Project," after the Revolutionary War site where "Americans asserted their independence once before." Obama last week called McCain's proposals a series of "cheap gimmicks" that "will only increase our oil addiction for another four years." Obama wants to reduce oil use 35 percent by 2030, pass a law to phase out all incandescent light bulbs, and spend $150 billion over the next decade to develop and market clean-energy technology, from hybrid vehicles to biofuels like ethanol. The campaigns are keen to the politics of their plans in important swing states. Ethanol is an economic engine in corn-growing Iowa and Minnesota; offshore drilling is a divisive issue in Florida; and nuclear power is a lightning rod in Nevada, home of the federal government's proposed nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain. While Obama's plan is more in keeping with traditional interests in those states, McCain frames his proposals as a boon for consumers and another example of his "straight talk." "With gasoline running at more than four bucks a gallon, many do not have the luxury of waiting on the far-off plans of futurists and politicians," he said this month in a speech in Houston. With McCain trailing Obama on most domestic issues in voter opinion polls, the Arizona senator has strived to link his energy plan to national security, where his ratings are higher. "When we buy oil, we are enriching some of our worst enemies," he said last week in Las Vegas, naming the Middle East, Venezuela, and Al Qaeda as beneficiaries of America's dependence on overseas oil. Obama has said that new oil exploration would not lead to lower prices at the pump – not anytime soon, anyway. "We can't drill our way out of the problems we're facing," he said this month in Florida. The war of words between the senators escalated throughout the week, with dueling conference calls for reporters and new standalone websites devoted to energy. Both McCain and Obama support tougher government oversight of energy futures traders whose speculation has been blamed for spikes in oil prices. They also agree that the federal government – with its giant fleet of cars and square miles of office space – should become a model of energy efficiency. But where Obama sees stricter standards as key to a more energy independent and efficient America, McCain looks to domestic oil exploration and entrepreneurialism. "I won't support subsidizing every alternative, or tariffs that restrict the healthy competition that stimulates innovation and lowers costs," McCain said in a speech last year. "But I'll encourage the development of infrastructure and market growth necessary for these products to compete, and then let consumers choose the winners." McCain backs a tax credit of up to $5,000 for consumers who buy cars with low- to zero-carbon emissions, and proposes a $300 million prize for the first person to invent a battery for plug-in cars that "leap frogs" current technology and supplies power at 30 percent of today's costs.

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Energy key to elections Alternative Energy popular and important in the elections Kevin Diaz, Star Tribune, 7-13, 2008, http://www.startribune.com/politics/national/president/25130389.html?page=3&c=y PHILADELPHIA - The price of oil has doubled since Gov. Tim Pawlenty became chairman of the National Governors Association a year ago and made energy his signature policy issue.With Americans now reeling from $4a-gallon gas, his fellow governors said Sunday that it turned out to be a pretty good pick, particularly in the run-up to an election in which the Minnesota Republican is often mentioned as a presidential running mate to Sen. John McCain of Arizona. "He had great foresight to focus on this," said Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, a Democrat who will take over the association's gavel from Pawlenty today. "He was ahead of the curve." As the governors hunkered down to tackle energy policy at their four-day annual meeting, Pawlenty acknowledged the prescience of his choice. "In Minnesota we try to be modest. But at the risk of being a little immodest, I think we saw it coming," he said. "We're fortunate that we picked a topic that became explosively relevant to the national debate." As host of the meeting, Pawlenty has tried forge an all-of-the-above consensus on energy policy, emphasizing the importance of conservation and alternative energy sources such as wind, solar and ethanol, an important Minnesota industry.

Polls prove high prices are the top concern and congress wants to act R.A. Dillon, Newsminer. Com, 7-20-08, “ANWR debate continues in Wash 8ington,” http://newsminer.com/news/2008/jul/20/anwr-debate-continues-washington/ A number of recent national polls have found that record-high gasoline prices remain a chief concern of most Americans and Congress is eager to appear to be doing something to knock down prices before going home to face constituents. Time is tight, though, with only a couple of weeks remaining before the August recess and just two more weeks available on the congressional calendar once lawmakers return in September. While oil prices nosedived in the last half of the week — oil was trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange just below $129 a barrel at the end of the day Friday, a drop of more than $16 dollars from the start of the week — drivers continued to pay dearly at the pump. The average national price for regular unleaded remained above $4 a gallon, according to the motorist group AAA. In Alaska, the statewide average price for regular unleaded was $4.67 a gallon. And in Fairbanks, drivers were paying between $4.44 and $4.57 at the pump. “It’s clear that the American people are suffering and deserve our attention, and hopefully, some solutions,” Reid said Thursday.

Energy is the most important election issue AP 7-23-08, http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5iNxTApa2sQRu0Xx99P3jt2bEXw7gD923QG4G2 WASHINGTON (AP) — What's rising faster than gas prices this summer? Americans' worries about them. The economy is the nation's top concern by far, but anxiety about energy has grown more since spring than any other issue while the focus on Iraq continues to fade, according to a poll released Wednesday. The findings by the Associated Press-Ipsos poll provide the latest confirmation of how economic woes — including job losses, rising inflation and the ailing financial and housing markets — are dominating voters' worries as this fall's presidential election approaches. Forty-four percent said the economy was the country's most important problem, a small increase from the 39 percent who said so in April. Another 22 percent named energy problems including rising gasoline costs, an enormous boost from the 4 percent who said so last spring. Gasoline averaged about $3.33 per gallon in early April, about 70 cents less than it does now, according to the federal Energy Information Administration. The Iraq war and other foreign affairs issues were named by just 15 percent in the poll. Iraq was cited by 25 percent in April and 40 percent in January.

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McCain would vote against RE McCain would oppose wind and solar energy George Dailey – writer for the newspaper, Santa Maria Times; 07-15-08; Santa Maria Times, http://www.santamariatimes.com/articles/2008/07/15/opinion/letters/letter2.txt While spending a recent week focusing on energy policy, Sen. John McCain made some surprising, and inaccurate, statements. Among them: He said that ending a moratorium on offshore oil drilling “would be very helpful in the short term in resolving our energy crisis.” But, according to a government report, offshore oil wouldn't have much of an impact on supply or prices until 2030. But, at a town hall event on June 23, McCain didn't claim offshore drilling would lower prices in the short term, but that it would provide “psychological impact that I think is beneficial.” McCain tried to paint Obama as an opponent of nuclear power, but Obama has said he is open to nuclear energy being part of the solution, and has supported bills that contained nuclear subsidies. McCain has soft-pedaled the “cap” portion of his cap-and-trade proposal for greenhouse gases, even denying that it would be a mandate. The cap is a mandatory limit, however, and McCain even says so on his Web site. In a new ad, McCain rightly said that he bucked his party in supporting action on climate change years ago. But its images of windmills and solar panels are misleading, in that he supports subsidies for nuclear power, which isn't pictured, and opposes them for wind and solar energy. McCain continues to say that a suspension of the federal gas tax will lower prices for consumers, though hundreds of economists say he is wrong.

McCain would support continual use of fossil fuels Jim Kuhnhenn – is a writer for the Associated Press; 7-9-08; Associated Press, http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gbENfaT7YaeWuH7e20fYcRLJXCGAD91PU1001 WASHINGTON (AP) — In his first negative ad of the general election campaign, Democrat Barack Obama said John McCain is "part of the problem" of high gas prices and tried to parry Republican criticism of his own energy policy. The 30-second commercial is a direct response to a Republican Party ad launched this weekend. The GOP spot — airing at a cost of $3 million in four states — accuses Obama of offering no new solutions to solve high gas prices and global warming. Obama's ad will run in the same states where the Republican National Committee placed its ad — Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, his campaign said. Obama's sharp retort comes as worried voters have made the spiking cost of fuel one of the top issues in the presidential campaign. The ad fight also flared amid evidence that Americans appear to be more receptive to some of McCain's proposed solutions, including increased oil drilling in the United States. "On gas prices, John McCain's part of the problem," the Obama ad states. "McCain and Bush support a drilling plan that won't produce a drop of oil for seven years. McCain will give more tax breaks to big oil. He's voted with Bush 95 percent of the time. "Barack Obama will make energy independence an urgent priority. Raise mileage standards. Fast-track technology for alternative fuels. A $1,000 tax cut to help families as we break the grip of foreign oil. A real plan and new energy." McCain and Bush want Congress to lift the ban on drilling on the continental shelf. If Congress agrees and states then permit it, energy experts say it would take at least five to seven years before new drilling could begin. Obama's claim that McCain would give more tax breaks to oil companies is based on McCain's proposal to cut overall corporate tax rates. The campaign cited a study by the Democratic-leaning Center for American Progress Action Fund that concluded McCain's proposal to cut corporate tax rates from 35 percent to 25 percent would cut taxes on the top five U.S. oil companies by $3.8 billion a year.

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Obama would vote for RE Obama would vote for alternative energy incentives Emi Kolawole; 7-9-08; Newsweek Report, http://www.newsweek.com/id/145160 A new ad from the Republican National Committee claims Barack Obama proposes "no new solutions" for the energy and climate crises. In fact, the Illinois senator has proposed $150 billion in spending over 10 years for biofuels, plug-in hybrids, low-emission coal plants and the rapid commercialization of other new, clean energy technologies. The ad also recycles the misleading claim that Obama has said "no" to nuclear. Obama said he is open to nuclear if it is clean and safe. And while the ad correctly says that Obama is against lifting the gas tax and against more production "here at home" (read: lifting the federal ban on more offshore oil drilling), neither of those steps is likely to be a "solution" for the problems at hand. The ad's most misleading claim is that Obama proposes "no new solutions" to the intertwined climate change and energy crises. In fact, Obama has an entire Web page dedicated to his proposals for the future of energy policy. One is a 10-year, $150 billion spending plan that would go toward clean coal technology; further development of plug-in hybrid cars; and commercialization of wind, solar and other renewable fuels. The RNC and McCain may not like all of Obama's ideas, just as Obama may not support all of McCain's, but that doesn't mean that they don't exist. While McCain recently proposed The Lexington Project, which includes spending $2 billion annually toward clean coal technology advancement, McCain doesn't have a plan comparable to Obama's in scale of spending. In addition, Obama's spending proposal predates McCain's Lexington Project by over six months.

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Both would vote for AE Alternative energy’s tied to Obama and McCain – they’ll both get credit. Tom Raum, AP staff writer, 6/23/2008, Gas at $4 brings promises, pandering, http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5isJU4OyzZglXxAWlzkvmnslNP3-wD91FUOI00 [ND] Yet, on some long-range issues they're closer together than their current rhetoric would suggest. Both want to boost alternative energy technology, press for more fuel efficiency and promote more conservation. Both McCain and Obama favor expanding the electricity grid, implementing caps on carbon emissions to curb global warming, spend billions on clean-coal research and give nuclear energy a larger role. They differ on offshore drilling, but agree on keeping the ban on oil exploration in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

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Ethanol – Obama Supports Obama will support ethanol – Illinois and special interests. Tom Raum, AP staff writer, 6/23/2008, Gas at $4 brings promises, pandering, http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5isJU4OyzZglXxAWlzkvmnslNP3-wD91FUOI00 [ND] Obama, coming from the country's second largest corn-producing state, has supported such subsidies, although he has said the federal government might have to rethink its support for corn ethanol because of surging corn prices which hit the world's poorest people the hardest. And while Obama is calling for reducing the influence of special interests, some of his top supporters and advisers are tied to the ethanol industry. Former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota is on the board of several ethanol companies and works at a Washington law firm where he lists advice to clients in renewable energy among his specialties. Obama energy adviser Jason Grumet previously worked at the National Commission on Energy Policy, a bipartisan initiative associated with both Daschle and former Kansas Republican Sen. Bob Dole, a big ethanol backer, according to a story in Monday's editions of The New York Times.

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Ethanol – McCain Against McCain opposes ethanol – wants to cap it now. Stephanie I. Cohen, marketwatch staff writer, 5/28/2008, CAPITOL REPORT Senators begin to ponder an ethanol exit plan, L/N [ND] Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison recently introduced a bill, S. 3031, that would freeze federal ethanol production mandates at 2008 levels. Ten other Republican senators, including Republican presidential nominee John McCain, R-Ariz., signed on as co-sponsors of the legislation. Needless-to-say the biofuels debate isn't going away anytime soon.

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RPS – Obama Supports Obama supports RPS – key upcoming priority. Senator Barack Obama, Questionnaire from LCV (League of Conservation Voters), Site Accessed: 6-2908, “’08: On The Record, League of Conservation Voters Environmental Profiles for all 2008 Candidates, http://www.presidentialprofiles2008.org/McCain/tab1.html [ND] Fuel Efficiency Standards [click here to read question seven] "It is shameful that the fuel economy of passenger cars has not increased in over twenty years. While I believe that the Executive Branch has the authority right now to increase fuel economy standards for motor vehicles, I will work to ensure that authority is strengthened so that continual, forward progress is made in fuel economy for both cars and trucks. I will require that fuel economy standards are improved by four percent per year towards the goal of 40 miles per gallon within ten years and 60 miles per gallon within twenty years of implementation." Renewable Energy Standards [click here to read question eight] "I believe that a 20% federal RPS will add critical momentum to the renewable energy revolution. We have vast potential in this country to produce clean renewable energy and reduce our reliance on dwindling domestic natural gas reserves. The investment certainty provided by a significant RPS will encourage innovation, bring down the costs of renewable power, encourage necessary investment in new transmission, inspire new domestic industries, and strengthen rural economies. Passing a federal RPS is a priority for me in the upcoming Senate energy legislation." Efficiency Standards [click here to read question nine] "I worked with Senator Jim Jeffords (I-VT) to introduce the High-Performance Green Buildings Act, which would increase the energy efficiency of federal buildings and schools. I also support Congressional efforts to strengthen energy efficiency standards. As president, I will establish new green building standards for all federal facilities to redouble and improve upon such improvements to date. I will implement federal policies (i.e., improved federal cost sharing for grants, set-asides in formula funding) to encourage more cities and states to enact efficient buildings codes and standards."

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Tax=>Dem Victory Tax increase means democratic victory Mark Schmitt, New America Foundation, The Washington Monthly, January/February 2007, http://www.newamerica.net/publications/articles/2007/read_my_lips_raise_taxes_4758

But the truth is that we are heading down a path toward fiscal crisis that will inevitably require a major increase in revenues. In case that sounds like a euphemism, I’ll say it plainly: Taxes must go up. If Democrats try to avoid that fact, they’ll become mired in trench warfare with Republicans over small-bore increases that will cost them political support and won’t really address the problem. But if Democrats seize the opportunity to define a new era of the politics of taxes, as Republicans did 30 years ago, they can shape the debate in a way that may actually help them to achieve some of their most-cherished policy goals.

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81 Politics Generic Revamped!

Hispanics Key to Election Latinos are key to the election Dante Chinni, Staff Writer, 07.15.2008 The Christian Science Monitor, “McCain and Obama court Latinos, carefully” http://www.csmonitor.com/patchworknation/csmstaff/2008/0715/mccain-and-obama-court-latinoscarefully/ It was also very necessary. Latinos are the largest and fastest growing minority group in America. They make up about 15 percent of the population and about 9 percent of eligible voters. Some key battleground states in the West and the South have large Hispanic populations. For instance, in New Mexico, 37 percent of the population is Hispanic. In Florida, the figure is 14 percent. In both Colorado and Nevada, it’s 12 percent. In Patchwork Nation, counties with a large number of Hispanics and recent immigrants are classified as “Immigration Nation.” In many states, such counties are scattered around the country where the vote could be close, including Iowa and Missouri. But courting the Latino vote also means wandering into the issue thicket that is immigration in the United States. The Republican Party learned this last year when a White House-backed proposal for “comprehensive immigration reform,” which included a path to citizenship for many illegal immigrants, sparked a firestorm. Conservatives attacked it as “amnesty.”

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Independents key to McCain McCain’s base not key – independents and moderate dems determine the election. Dick Morris, a political analyst for Fox and a columnist for the Hill, 5/18/2008, Obama Has the Upper Hand. But McCain Can Still Take Him, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/article/2008/05/16/AR2008051603729_pf.html [ND] John McCain is America's favorite kind of candidate. With his record of extraordinary patriotism and his distinctive Senate tenure, McCain is a nominee whom voters from both parties -- and independents, too -could easily support. But he has been dealt a terrible hand: a tanking economy, an unpopular war, a Republican incumbent whose approval ratings are at their all-time low and a gloomy national mood, with 82 percent of Americans saying in a Washington Post-ABC News poll last week that the country is on the wrong track. Political scientists add all that up and predict that the Democrats are destined to win the White House. But I don't do political science; I do politics, and I'm convinced that McCain can still win -- if he's willing to follow the road map below. McCain needs to not run as a traditional Republican, which is easy, since he's not one. After all, how did an anti-torture, anti-tobacco, pro-campaign finance reform, anti-pork, pro-alternative-energy Republican ever emerge from the primaries alive? Simple: The GOP electorate, along with the rest of the country, has moved somewhat to the left. (In Florida, for example, exit polls showed that only 27 percent of Republican primary voters described themselves as "very conservative," while 28 percent said they were "moderate" and 2 percent said they were "very liberal.") Meanwhile, McCain's likely rival, Barack Obama, has raised such doubts among voters that their concerns momentarily energized even Hillary Rodham Clinton's sagging campaign. With the help of the incendiary comments of his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., Obama's negatives have been rising even as he nears the finish line. Still, voters are tending heavily toward the Democratic Party. Normally, party preferences are about even, but recent national polls give Democrats a decided edge. In last week's Post-ABC poll, 53 percent of Americans identified themselves as Democrats or leaned toward the party, compared with 39 percent who were Republicans or tilted to the GOP. To sum it up: A candidate who cannot get elected is being nominated by a party that cannot be defeated, while a candidate who is eminently electable is running as the nominee of a party doomed to defeat. In this environment, McCain can win by running to the center. His base will be there for him; indeed, it will turn out in massive numbers. Wright has become the honorary chairman of McCain's get-out-the-vote efforts. It would be nice to think that race isn't a factor in American politics anymore, but it is. The growing fear of Obama, who remains something of an unknown, will drag every last white Republican male off the golf course to vote for McCain, and he will need no further layingon of hands from either evangelical Christians or fiscal conservatives. So McCain doesn't have to spend a lot of time wooing his base. What he does need to do is reduce the size of the synapse over which independents and fearful Democrats need to pass in order to back his candidacy. If the synapse is wide, they will stay with Obama. But if they perceive McCain as an acceptable alternative, there is every chance that they will cross over to back him in November.

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***TURNS THE CASE

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84 Politics Generic Revamped!

Obama key to solve global warming Democratic victory is key to action on global warming – failure ensures global inaction and extinction Workface, Climate & Energy Report, August 2006, http://www.workfacelimited.co.uk/html/cande_200608_total.html The potential of climate change to affect the future of all life on earth is huge, and so are the difficulties involved in dealing with it. The science is uncertain and the costs are hard to determine. The survey will examine whether it is worth trying to stop the climate changing and how the world might go about it. The climate has not changed much so far, though we are already seeing some effects—more frequent heatwaves and hurricanes. But it’s going to change more in the future. Some of the effect will be welcome – for example, oil and gas resources in the Arctic, which account for a quarter of the world's total, will become more easily accessible. Other consequences are alarming: if the whole of Greenland's ice-cap melts, sea levels will rise by six metres, flooding coastal cities. For business, Hurricane Katrina last year demonstrated how expensive climate change could be, with the insurance sector being hit particularly badly. But attitudes throughout the business world have been changing anyway, for three reasons. Companies believe that governments will act to mitigate climate change, and want to be part of that process. They also see new markets opening up, mostly in cleaner technologies. And they believe that consumers are concerned about global warming, so they want to show concern too. But business will go green only if governments give it the incentive to do so. And, because it deals with consequences across borders and across generations, climate change is the most difficult policy issue that governments have ever had to deal with. America is the key. America, the world’s biggest emitter of greenhouse

gases, refused to sign the Kyoto protocol, the first serious attempt to deal with this problem. But attitudes are changing in America. The Bush administration now accepts that climate change is real, though it still insists that it is best dealt with by supporting cleaner technologies rather than by controlling carbon emissions. But a Democratic president would almost certainly take a different view, and some Republicans are also leaning towards controls. If America moves, then there’s a chance that the big emitters in the developing world, China and India, will also take action. If it doesn’t, they won’t. While opinion in both business and politics is clearly swinging towards the idea that the world must deal with climate change, the complexities of reaching global agreement on how and when to do it are immense. This survey will lay out the debate as only The Economist can: it will set aside the sacred cows and entrenched positions, it will bring together ideas from a broad range of disciplines, and it will get to the heart of the most critical issues. Read the full survey on climate change in The Economist. Available at newsstands from 8th September.

Democratic victory is key to prevent extinction from global warming Robert Kahne, “Not Good Enough,” March 3, 2007, http://www.collegedems.com/a/2007/03/not_good_enough.php In case anybody needs a reason to work hard to elect a Democratic President in 2008 it is this: we could all die if we don't. This article in the NY Times details how the United States will steadily increase our emissions for the foreseeable future. The Bush administration is trying to spin this as a victory, because "the president's portfolio of actions addressing climate change and his unparalleled financial commitments are working." Look, I don't think any of us want to hurt our economy, but I think we all should think the problem of global change should be addressed with all seriousness, and not just as an afterthought. If we don't, it could cost us seriously.

Obama is more likely to act on global warming Joel Makower, Two Steps Forward, 1-27-07, lexis Whether such companies garner obscene profits from solving climate problems remains to be seen, of course, but Citigroup's intention of bringing these companies to investors' attention makes perfect sense. Environmentalists and regulators similarly stand to gain from this report, as they come to grips with this brave new world of "profiteering," in which companies offering climate solutions are rewarded in the marketplace. And maybe some conservative media folks will learn something, too. In her WSJ essay, Kim Strassel warns that the current wave of climate profiteering is merely a sign of what's to come. She notes that Democrats want global warming as an issue through 2008. With Al Gore getting his Oscar nod, they've got a "problem" that captures the public imagination, as well as an endless supply of cash from thrilled environmental groups. No need to spoil it with a solution. And a Democratic president in 2009 would be more open to any ultimate legislation. Best yet, they've got the "support" of the business community, or at least the savvier elements of it. Welcome, Big CarbonCap; we're likely to be hearing a lot from you.

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85 Politics Generic Revamped!

McCain court kills climate policy THE NEXT PRESIDENT WILL CHOOSE WHAT TYPE OF COURT EXISTS- MCCAIN’S JUSTICES WILL DESTROY EFFORTS TO COMBAT CLIMATE CHANGE (BRYAN WALSH, Time Magazine, Jul. 15, 2008, “A Green Crossroads for the Supreme Court”, http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1822528,00.html, [Ian Miller] John McCain and Barack Obama are clearly divided on a number of issues — the economy, the war in Iraq, health care, abortion rights. But on the environment, it can appear that there's not much difference between the candidates. McCain has strong bona fides on climate change: he became convinced of its dangers well before many of his Senate colleagues, and is on the record for supporting a carbon cap-and-trade system. (He has wavered a bit in recent weeks.) Obama holds many of the same positions, though he does favor generally tougher measures. So, if the environment is your top concern, does it matter who gets your vote in November? Doug Kendall says yes — but not for the reasons you might expect. Kendall is the founder of the Constitutional Accountability Center (CAC), a left-leaning legal think tank that watches Supreme Court decisions and advocates public-interest law. He points out that with the Court frequently deadlocked between more conservative voices (like Antonin Scalia and John Roberts) and more liberal ones (like Stephen Breyer and Ruth Bader Ginsburg), the next President has the power to appoint a new Justice who will tilt the Court. Perennially debated matters, like abortion rights, could be at stake, along with new hot-button issues such as the rights of prisoners held at Guantánamo. What's less well known is that there are also a number of vital environmental cases facing the Court that could go either way, depending on who wins the Presidency. "There are few areas where the battle lines are as clearly drawn between environmentalists and their opponents as the Supreme Court," says Kendall. (Listen to Kendall talk about the future of the Court on this week's Greencast.) We've already seen the power the Court has over global warming legislation. In April of 2007, the Court shocked the Bush Administration when it ruled against the federal government in the landmark case of Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The state was pushing the EPA to regulate greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act; the agency denied it had that right. To the surprise of many, the White House not the least, the Court ruled in favor of Massachusetts, issuing a majority opinion that the EPA did have the right to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, and that under the Clean Air Act, it needed to do so. That decision helped push the Bush Administration, kicking and screaming, toward climate change action, and provided momentum for individual states like California looking to pass their own carbon caps. That case might make the current Court appear hospitable to environmentalists. But Massachusetts v. EPA was another of the Court's many 5-4, bitterly divided rulings, with both Justice Scalia and Chief Justice John Roberts dissenting from the majority. Those two happen to be the Justices whom McCain says he would like his possible future Court nominees to emulate. "One more conservative on the Court and [the Massachusetts] case would have likely gone the other way," says Kendall. "You have to think about what's going to happen to the composition of the Court over the next eight years." Conservative voters who oppose what they see as heavy-handed government regulation in the environment have every reason to push for McCain, because Obama's nominations would likely halt that rightward slide. But Kendall notes that while Republicans traditionally place a high value on the fate of the Court when voting for Presidents, Democratic voters are less likely to do the same. "I don't think progressives in general understand how much is at stake in the Court," he says. "They're used to the Court coming out generally in their favor, and they don't realize how big a deal it is if the Court starts radically limiting access to ensure environmental protections." The most complacent of environmentalists should have received a wake-up call last month, when the Justices, by a 5-3 decision, drastically reduced the punitive damages awarded to victims of the Exxon Valdez oil spill — from $5 billion to $500 million. That decision could have a chilling effect on punitive damages overall. "It's potentially a very sweeping ruling against the effort to hold corporations accountable for environmental damage and misconduct," says Kendall. "Already the court is favoring corporate interests, and it could clearly get worse." Beyond the Court, the next President will also control the EPA, an agency that under Bush has been almost wholly defanged: that much became clearer on July 11, when the EPA released a 588-page federal notice rejecting federal regulation of greenhouse gases — essentially ignoring the Court's 2007 ruling. The agency claimed that greenhouse gas regulation would lead to too many job losses, and found it wasn't clear that global warming poses a threat to people's health. Given enough time, environmental groups would almost certainly sue to reverse the EPA's ruling, but with the Bush Administration in its last six months, that decision will be handed off to the next Administration. Which is just another reminder of how much will be at stake for the environment — for both parties — when voters go to the polls on Nov. 4.

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Both sides solve warming Both sides will deal with warming Washington Times, 1-19-07 Presidential candidates for 2008 mostly agree that global warming is a problem that merits government action, a signal that debate on the issue will be more practical than conceptual. Democrats actively seeking the nomination or thought to be considering White House bids say climate change is real and promise plans to curb carbon emissions, a view shared by several Republican hopefuls. "I would anticipate that both the Republican and the Democratic nominee will be arguing over who is best to solve the problem of global warming," said Sen. Barbara Boxer, California Democrat and chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee. "We're going to need a president who gets it."

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McCain  nuclear McCain would build 45 new nuclear plants – Obama opposes Joshua Simmons, economics senior and the executive director of the Florida Federation of College Republicans, 6/15/08, The Independent Florida Alligator “Liberals have it wrong on energy policy” http://www.alligator.org/articles/2008/07/15/opinion/columns/080715_col1.txt [Mills] Besides tapping the billions of barrels of oil under American soil and just offshore, the mere suggestion of which sends liberals into fits, perhaps the most obvious solution to securing both stable oil prices and energy independence lies deep within the atom. Hardly one-fifth of America’s electricity comes from nuclear sources, far less than Europe and soon even China. To this end, Sen. John McCain has proposed building 45 new nuclear power plants in America, while Sen. Barack Obama has simply stated that he is “not a nuclear energy proponent.” This anxious, idealistic attitude lies at the base of most liberal proposals on the issue. All Americans want greater energy independence and lower energy prices, but conservatives seem to be the only ones presenting logical, realistic policy proposals for attaining them.

McCain separating himself from Obama on nuke energy Maria Gavrilovic; 7-11-08; “Obama To Focus on Energy Security Today” CBS News http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2008/07/11/politics/fromtheroad/entry4250866.shtml (CHICAGO) Barack Obama will focus on energy security today at a campaign stop in Dayton, Ohio. Obama will accuse the Bush Administration and John McCain of lacking a long term energy plan, and will argue that the dependence on foreign oil poses a threat to national security. Both McCain and Obama have been squabbling about their respective energy plans for months now. Yesterday McCain called Obama the “Dr. No” on energy policy. “He's against nuclear power. He's against the storing of spent nuclear fuel and he's against reprocessing. He's against offshore drilling. He's against offering a reward for the development of an electric car,” McCain said, “He's against everything we need to do in order to make this nation energy independent.” The Obama campaign released an ad earlier this week accusing McCain of cozying up with oil and gas companies. "On gas prices, John McCain's part of the problem," the narrator says, "McCain and Bush support a drilling plan that won't produce a drop of oil for seven years. McCain will give more tax breaks to big oil. He's voted with Bush 95 percent of the time."

Energy is k2 the outcome of the elections and the public supports McCain’s energy policies David R. Baker and Steve Rubenstein – staff writers for the San Francisco Chronicle; 7-17-08; “Nuclear Plants, offshore drilling gain support” San Francisco Chronicle http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi? f=/c/a/2008/07/17/MN0511QA3H.DTL In a sign that record-high gas prices are changing the way Californians think and live, a new poll shows that state residents are losing their long-held hostility to nuclear power and may even reconsider their opposition to oil drilling off their scenic coast. For the first time since the 1970s, half of Californians support building more nuclear plants in the state, according to the latest Field Poll, to be released today. A strong majority, 63 percent, want shipping terminals to import liquefied natural gas, a condensed and super-cooled fuel that critics say can turn into a fireball if it leaks. Fifty-one percent still oppose offshore drilling. But that opposition appears to be softening. The last time the Field Poll asked about offshore drilling, in 2005, 56 percent of Californians opposed it. Those changes in sentiment could have big political ramifications. Energy costs are becoming a crucial issue in the presidential campaign. Democrats and Republicans are sparring over offshore drilling and the fight against global warming, which most scientists blame on the greenhouse gases that come from burning fossil fuels. Californians haven't lost their environmental bent. Seventy percent of those surveyed by the nonpartisan Field Poll support the state's tough air pollution standards for cars. And Field Poll Director Mark DiCamillo said it's significant that 51 percent of respondents still oppose offshore drilling, despite watching oil and gasoline prices smash records. "Nuclear power doesn't contribute to global warming, and it's seen as a remedy to the situation, whereas offshore drilling is more of the same," he said.

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88 Politics Generic Revamped!

McCain  nuclear McCain pushing for nuke power now Laura Meckler and Rebecca Smith; 6-19-08; “McCain Sees Need for More Nuclear Power” Wall Street Journal http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121383325471986715.html? mod=googlenews_wsj John McCain continued his push for nuclear energy, calling for the U.S. to build another 45 reactors by 2030 in a bid to break U.S. dependence on pollution-generating fossil fuels. It would be a challenging goal given the high costs, potential local opposition and questions about how to store the nuclear waste these plants would produce. But the Republican presidential candidate Wednesday argued that nuclear power is clean, efficient and not meeting its potential. "Every year, [nuclear] reactors alone spare the atmosphere from the equivalent of nearly all auto emissions in America. Yet for all these benefits, we have not broken ground on a single nuclear plant in over 30 years," he said at Missouri State University in Springfield, Mo. The Republican senator views energy as a critical issue in his presidential campaign, as oil prices soar and consumer pain grows at the pump. It is also an opportunity to separate himself from the unpopular President Bush. Sen. McCain departs from the president on issues including on the candidate's support for caps on carbon emissions to curb global warming and opposition to drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska. But for the second straight day, Sen. McCain embraced an idea popular with conservatives. On Tuesday, he came out for offshore oil drilling, an idea Mr. Bush also embraced. Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has generally voiced support for nuclear power, but has voiced concern over storage and safety issues. He hasn't presented a specific plan on the issue. Today, the U.S. has 104 nuclear reactors, which generate 20% of the nation's electricity. But until recently, no new reactors had been proposed, after the 1979 Three Mile Island disaster strengthened public concerns over the potential risks of nuclear power. Sen. McCain said that eventually the U.S. should build 100 new plants, but that was a long-term goal. The federal government offers billions of dollars in subsidies for the construction of new plants, but that is expected to be enough to cover only part of the costs of the first few reactors that get built. Sen. McCain isn't proposing any new subsidy dollars, said Doug Holtz-Eakin, his senior policy adviser. Mr. Holtz-Eakin said the new goal could be accomplished by speeding up the permit process and developing domestic capability to manufacture key parts. Mr. Holtz-Eakin said Sen. McCain would resolve the issue of how to store the nuclear waste. Sen. McCain also said Wednesday that he would spend $2 billion a year on clean-coal research and development, a goal that Sen. Obama also supports. Many experts say technology to capture and permanently store carbon-dioxide emissions is decades away from widespread commercial viability. The federal government approves licensing of nuclear plants through the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. But states typically have the greatest control over electric-industry resource decisions because in most places, state utility commissions control the flow of dollars from energy consumers to energy producers. The biggest challenge facing the nuclear industry is fast-rising estimates of what new plants will cost to construct. Those estimates have more than quadrupled in recent years as prices surge for commodities like steel and concrete. Recent estimates put the cost for building a nuclear power station at between $5 billion and $14 billion, an amount that could push up electricity prices.

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McCain  nuclear McCain supports nuclear energy Michael McCord; 12-4-07; “McCain: Nuclear has role in energy mix” Seacoastonline.com http://www.seacoastonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071204/NEWS/712040393 PORTSMOUTH — Republican presidential hopeful John McCain wants America to get serious about nuclear power. "How can you possibly talk about alternative energy sources without nuclear power?" said McCain, who will take part in a candidate forum Thursday hosted by Seacoast Media Group, the parent company of the Portsmouth Herald. "It can have a real impact on decreasing greenhouse gases." At the forum, the Arizona senator will talk to voters about his energy security and global climate change policies. He said that facilities such as Seabrook Station nuclear power plant will be a vital component of his energy proposals, which he believes will enhance the country's long-term energy security and help reverse the effects of global warming. "We can do storage or reprocessing," McCain said about the issue of disposing of spent nuclear fuel rods. Look at what the French and other industrialized countries are doing. It's not a matter of technology, but leadership, and the American people can be convinced this is one of the smart routes to take." McCain, who won the 2000 New Hampshire primary in an upset victory over then-Texas Gov. George W. Bush, spoke to the Herald Monday while campaigning in the Manchester area. He said that he first encountered questions about global warming during that 2000 primary campaign and believes that for many younger voters it has become a "transcendent" issue. "I support free-market, capital investment and incentive-oriented solutions," McCain said about plans that include conservation and an extensive cap-and-trade system for companies that emit greenhouse gases. "We can do these things and not hurt the economy. I believe in fact we can spur economic development through the birth of green technologies." McCain supports increasing fuel-efficiency standards and for closing vehicle loopholes, such as those for SUVs, but does not support ethanol subsidies and ethanol mandates because he doesn't believe it's a wise environmental choice. He said that since 2000 he had visited the South Pole, Brazil, and the Arctic polar areas in Norway and Greenland to see for himself the impact that global warming has had on the planet. The federal government has an important research-and-development role to play, McCain said, to foster green technology growth in areas such as wind, solar and clean coal usage. "I really believe if we put our minds to it, we can solve many of these problems. I want to let a thousand flowers bloom," said McCain in quoting the Chinese Communist leader Mao Zedong. McCain's campaign stalled earlier this year in New Hampshire when he encountered low poll numbers and lackluster fund-raising totals. But one veteran New Hampshire political analyst said that McCain has been the most consistent advocate of dealing with global climate change among the Republican candidates. "This isn't a last-minute conversion. He's been involved in this for a while," said Dean Spiliotes of Concord, who runs the Web site nhpolitcalcapital.com. "It's an excellent wedge issue for him because it cuts across party lines and it helps differentiate him from the other candidates who have much cloudier proposals." Spiliotes is less certain whether it will help McCain generate the type of Republican and independent voter support that helped propel him to victory in 2000. The war in Iraq and health care are the top two issues for independents likely to vote in the Jan. 8 primary, Spiliotes said. Climate change is not the main motivating factor for an overwhelming majority of voters.

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Obama kills nuclear Obama plans to exclude nuclear power from his energy policy. Daniel Koffler, staff writer for the Guardian, 7/8/08 “The Case for Nuclear Power” http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/jul/08/nuclearpower.energy [Mills] Nuclear power, however, does not figure into Obama's proposed alternatives to reliance on petroleum. On the contrary, he used the Las Vegas setting to hammer home, literally, his objection to McCain's proposal for the construction of 45 new nuclear power plants - a touchy subject in Nevada, given that the only site the US department of energy has designated for the storage of nuclear waste in the continental US (under the Clinton administration, incidentally) is the repository at Yucca Mountain, about 130 km from metropolitan Las Vegas. Now, to be clear, Obama's energy programme on the whole is a sound and long-overdue, if not terribly ambitious, adjustment in the US approach to fuelling its economy. McCain's programme, by contrast, is a counterproductive, incoherent mash. But on the specific issue of nuclear power, McCain is exactly right, and Obama is badly wrong. Nuclear power is green in multiple senses. The most important criterion by which to judge any viable alternative to petroleum is the magnitude of its contribution to global warming. Well, uranium or petroleum fission produces no carbon emissions whatsoever, since there is no carbon involved. The cooling process does produce water vapour, but water vapour and carbon dioxide are both greenhouse gases in the same sense that Roger Federer and I are both tennis players (and water vapour emissions, moreover, can be controlled). The environmental downsides of nuclear power are therefore not any more severe than other alternative energy sources, such as wind or solar power, and are arguably less severe than biofuels like the ethanol that Obama heartily supports. These energy sources all entail waste heat, produce solid waste and have other drawbacks - but the environmental drawbacks of all of them, nukes included, are quite modest. From a fiscal perspective, nuclear power enjoys enormous advantages over other environmentally friendly energies. At their present state of technological development, nuclear reactors can already power large industrial societies. Wind and solar power are not there yet, and biofuels (particularly ethanol) are something of an embarrassing racket, being extraordinarily inefficient and requiring huge government subsidies to be propped up. The case for nuclear power is even stronger when considering the weakness of the case against it, which rests largely on a series of panics 20 to 30 years old. For example, the Chernobyl disaster was the product of horrific Soviet mismanagement over the many years prior to the meltdown, followed by equally abysmal crisis management. It simply had nothing to do with the upkeep challenges of a modern nuclear plant. Worries about the impact of radioactive waste, by contrast, are at least marginally connected to real features of current nuclear plants, but they are wildly overblown. For one thing, the vast majority of nuclear waste - as much as 95% or more - can be reprocessed and reused, making it a truly renewable resource. For another, the technology required to render radioactive waste inert and harmless already exists, and it ought to be largely perfected by the time any new plants go online. Then there are the silly and borderline mystical grounds for opposition to nuclear power, about which the less said the better (but let's be indulgent). Nuclear power plants, as the anti-nuclear movement frequently points out, use the same fuel sources and much of the same science as nuclear weapons. But that makes them as much like nuclear weapons as heart medications containing nitroglycerin are like dynamite. Alternatively, some anti-nuclear activists treat all nuclear technology as some sort of inherent transgression against nature. That argument relies on deeply reactionary concepts of "naturalness" and "unnaturalness" that also form the basis of opposition to any number of technologies that improve the quality of human life in countless ways. The argument against nuclear power as unnatural deserves no more or less respect than the arguments against childhood vaccination and stem-cell research as unnatural. Whatever else can be said about them, such sentiments have precious little to do with environmentalism. Obama, however, brushed aside nuclear power as a policy option in approximately one half of one sentence in his speech, on grounds different from and even worse than any of the foregoing. McCain's "proposal to build 45 new nuclear reactors without a plan to store the waste some place other than right here at Yucca Mountain" makes no sense, Obama told the Las Vegas crowd. But did Obama propose some other site for storing nuclear waste or offer some further argument against nuclear power? No, he just dropped the subject. In other words, even as he rightly mocked the risible gimmicks McCain has cobbled together as an ersatz energy policy, Obama's opposition to nuclear energy, in its entirety, is nothing more than a naked pander for Nevada's five electoral votes. For a politician ostensibly committed to environmentalism in general and curbing global warming in particular, omitting nuclear power from his energy programme - let alone doing so on no principle higher than grabbing votes - is irresponsible

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Obama  alternative energy Obama plans to invest heavily in alternative energy development. Daniel Koffler, staff writer for the Guardian, 7/8/08 “The Case for Nuclear Power” http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/jul/08/nuclearpower.energy [Mills] In keeping with the frenetic, rhetorical ping-pong that has marked virtually every moment of this young general election, Barack Obama gave a big energy policy speech in Las Vegas last month to counter the big energy speech John McCain gave just prior to it. Obama proposed a substantial federal investment in alternative energy sources, including wind power, solar power and biofuels, and he promised to hike fuel efficiency standards for cars and trucks (though he didn't say by how much). He has already proposed a capand-trade scheme with auctions for emissions permits, which are key to making any such scheme work. (John McCain's version of cap-and-trade does not include auctions.)

Obama will implement a laundry list of renewable energy policies. Cooler Planet, global warming blog, 2/13/08 “What Do The Presidential Candidates Think of Solar Energy? Next, Barak Obama” http://blog.coolerplanet.com/2008/02/13/what-do-the-presidential-candidates-think-of-solar-energynext-barak-obama/ [Mills] Barak Obama momentum grows after his string of wins in seven state caucuses and primaries these past few days. We’ll examine his stance on solar energy next. Obama certainly has a longer list of energy policy targets and objectives than McCain has stated on their respective presidential campaign websites. Specific to renewable energy, Obama wants to ensure that by 2025, 25% of the electricity we use comes from clean energy sources such as solar, wind, and geothermal. To achieve his goal, Obama proposes to establish a 25% federal Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS). Obama has made climate change one of his central campaign themes. In a speech he made in Iowa last fall, Obama asserted, “I don’t believe that climate change is just an issue that’s convenient to bring up during a campaign. I believe it’s one of the greatest moral challenges of our generation.” As a result, Obama lays out a plan to raise fuel efficiency standards for automobiles and light trucks (which include SUVs), create a cap-and-trade program for greenhouse gas emissions, and increase production of “clean” biofuels. Alec MacGills, Washington Post elections blog, 10/8/07 “A Green(er) Obama” http://blog.washingtonpost.com/thetrail/2007/10/08/obama_goes_greener.html [Mills] Not so long ago, Barack Obama was regarded warily by many environmentalists and advocates of aggressive measures to combat global warming. While his record was generally pro-environment, he voted for the 2005 energy bill, which was laden with subsidies for the oil industry, and later mystified environmentalists with his vocal support for huge new federal subsidies for converting coal to liquid transportation fuel, a technology that would benefit coal-rich areas like southern Illinois but would result in even more carbon emissions than does gasoline. Today, after months of criticism from green corners, Obama is signaling that he has fully returned to the environmentalist fold, in a speech in Portsmouth, N.H., laying out his presidential campaign's energy plan. The plan is chock full of proposals favored by environmentalists and climate scientists, including a strict cap and trade program for carbon emissions, ambitious energy efficiency targets and billions of dollars in investments in energy research. And notably absent from the 10-page proposal is any mention of coal to liquid. According to excerpts provided by his campaign, Obama is framing energy reform as another area where the Washington establishment as failed the country, an echo of his charges last week against those who, unlike him, did not stand up in opposition of the war in Iraq. While the speech does not name Hillary Clinton, it contains what appear to be veiled criticisms of her vote in 2005 against phased increases in vehicle mileage standards, and her past opposition to ethanol subsidies and mandates. "There are some in this race who actually make the argument that the more time you spend immersed in the broken politics of Washington, the more likely you are to change it. I always find this a little amusing. I know that change makes for good campaign rhetoric, but when these same people had the chance to actually make it happen, they didn't lead," Obama is expected to say. "When they had the chance to stand up and require automakers to raise their fuel standards, they refused. When they had multiple chances to reduce our dependence on foreign oil by investing in renewable fuels that we can literally grow right here in America, they said no."

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Obama  alternative energy Alec MacGills, Washington Post elections blog, 10/8/07 “A Green(er) Obama” http://blog.washingtonpost.com/thetrail/2007/10/08/obama_goes_greener.html [Mills] Obama would use much of the revenue from auctioning emissions permits to invest $150 billion over 10 years in research to develop the next generation of biofuels, plug-in hybrids and coal plants that could capturing and store emissions. Like Edwards, Obama proposes banning new coal-fired plants that lack the capacity to capture and store emissions, a stronger stance than he took just a few months ago, when he suggested that the cap and trade system alone would be sufficient to discourage traditional coal-fired plants. Unlike Edwards, who also argues against expanded use of nuclear energy, Obama acknowledges that reducing carbon emissions means using more nuclear energy, but says any expansion would require measures to improve nuclear fuel security and waste storage. "It is unlikely that we can meet our aggressive climate goals if we eliminate nuclear power from the table," his plan states. Obama, who sponsored legislation this year coupling tougher mileage standards with incentives for automakers, would establish a low-carbon fuel standard to further reduce oil reliance. He would spur wind and solar energy by requiring that 25 percent of electricity come from renewable sources by 2025. He would establish new rules and incentives for energy efficiency in buildings and appliances, and phase out traditional incandescent light bulbs by 2014. And he would reform transportation funding to build more public transit and restrain suburban sprawl. Internationally, he would "re-engage" with the U.N.'s Framework Convention on Climate Change, using the passage of an ambitious cap and trade system in America as leverage to goad emissions reductions around the globe. "Making the U.S. a leader in combating climate change will require the United States to get its own house in order," the plan states, "and most importantly, to do so with the urgency this brewing crisis demands."

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Obama  alternative energy R&D Obama would provide crucial funding for renewables research David Lightman, staff writer for McClatchy Newspapers, 7/10/08 “Obama, McCain offer very different energy plans” http://www.mcclatchydc.com/227/story/43652.html [Mills] Obama, who also supports a form of cap and trade, would spend $150 billion over 10 years to help develop biofuels, "commercial-scale renewable energy," plug-in hybrids, low-emission coal plants and other exotic sources. The Illinois senator also pledges to double federal research funding for clean energy projects, notably biomass, solar and wind. Such a commitment is crucial, said David Sandalow, an energy expert at Washington's Brookings Institution, a center-left research center. "We need steady and dependable support for solar and wind power and other renewables," he said, "and if we do that, I think this industry will grow enormously and be a potentially huge engine of job growth over the course of the next couple of decades."

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McCain  alternative energy McCain’s intends to free up the market and promote innovation – solves necessary alternative energy. Ed Pilkington, reporter for the Guardian, 7/17/08 “Both candidates talk the talk on green issues but who can deliver?” http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/jul/17/uselections2008.barackobama [Mills] McCain eschews putting a figure to most of his policies. He has only one headline target - to reduce CO2 emissions by 65% on 1990 levels by 2050, compared with Obama's more ambitious goal, in line with the thinking of many climate scientists, of 80%. In the absence of targets, McCain says freeing up the market will unleash the power of innovation. That bears the hallmark of his main environmental adviser, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, who served as an economist in both Bush administrations. Rather than imposing change on car makers and power producers, Holtz-Eakin proposes tax rebates for consumers of low-emissions cars. The campaign has also offered a $300m (about £150m) prize for the inventor of the car battery of the future - an offer denounced by the Democrats as a gimmick. Environmentalists on the right of US politics back McCain's approach because although it may be less radical than Obama's they think it will work. "To pass climate legislation we are going to need Republicans on board," said Jim DiPeso of Republicans for Environmental Protection. "He can drag Republicans kicking and screaming behind him in a way Obama never would be able." But to the further ire of groups such as FoE, McCain has supported an end to the ban on offshore oil drilling, something Bush announced this week. He has also consistently pushed for expansion of nuclear power. Blackwelder estimates that renewable energies would go six to 10 times further per dollar of investment than building 45 new nuclear power stations as McCain proposes because of the huge waste management and security costs associated with the industry. Add to that the fact that last year McCain failed to turn up to all 15 major environmental votes in the Senate, pleading lack of time on the campaign trail (Obama made several of them) and a picture begins to emerge that is out of kilter with his pro-environmental reputation. The League of Conservation Voters, a non-partisan body that campaigns for an eco-friendly Congress, has awarded McCain 24 out of 100 points for his lifetime record, compared with 86 for Obama. "McCain has been getting a free pass as he's assumed to be good on the environment. But ... there is a mismatch between his words and his deeds," said the League's Tim Greeff. Obama's great weakness is ethanol. Obama supports subsidies for the controversial biofuel that is much loved in the corn-growing hinterland of his home state, Illinois. He also approves the high import barriers on Brazilian ethanol that is made from sugar cane, prompting grumbles from both development economists and many environmentalists who believe ethanol is of limited value. A recent New York Times investigation drew links between Obama's main environmental adviser, Jason Grumet, and big backers of ethanol in turn associated with the agribusiness giant Archer Daniels Midland. Obama has promised to look again at the ethanol issue and change tack if necessary. The big question hanging over the race is which candidate - if either - can steer the world away from its path to climate disaster. With scientists warning that the danger zone for global warming is just decades away, Gore's rhetoric about the future of the planet hanging in the balance will resonate all the way to the polling booths.

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Obama  Cap and Trade Obama will implement a significant cap and trade BarackObama.com, October 8, 2007, http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2007/10/8/11550/3692 Reduce Carbon Emissions 80 percent by 2050: Barack Obama is a champion of the national effort to cut greenhouse gas emissions. Obama supports implementation of a market-based cap-and-trade system to reduce carbon emissions by the amount scientists say is necessary: 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050. Obama will start reducing emissions immediately in his administration by establishing strong annual reduction targets, and he’ll also implement a mandate of reducing emissions to 1990 levels by 2020. In contrast to other approaches like a carbon tax, cap-and-trade programs provide maximum assurances that emissions will decline to desired levels by the targeted dates. A cap-and-trade program draws on the power of the marketplace to reduce emissions in a costeffective and flexible manner. Under the program, an overall cap on carbon emissions is established. The emissions allowed under the cap are divided up into individual allowances that represent the permission to emit that amount. Because the emissions cap restricts the amount of pollution allowed, allowances that give a company the ability to pollute take on financial value. Companies are free to buy and sell allowances in order to continue operating in the most profitable manner available to them. Those that are able to reduce pollution at a low cost can sell their extra allowances to companies facing high costs. Each year the number of allowances will decline to match the required annual reduction targets. 100% Allowance Auction: Without a profit motive or incentive to innovate, corporations do not spend time or money to develop new clean ways of doing business. Obama’s cap-and-trade system will require all pollution credits to be auctioned. A 100% auction ensures that all polluters pay for every ton of emissions they release, rather than giving these emission rights away for free to coal and oil companies. Invest Revenue for a Clean Energy Future: Some of the revenue generated by auctioning allowances will be used to support the development and deployment of clean energy, invest in energy efficiency improvements and address transition costs, including helping American workers affected by this economic transition and helping lower-income Americans afford their energy bills by expanding the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, expanding weatherization grants for low-income individuals to make their homes more energy efficient, and establishing a dedicated fund to assist low-income Americans afford higher electricity and energy bills

The Register (London), 6/23/08 “Cap, trade, subsidise - Obama's energy plan goes off piste” http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/06/23/obama_energy_economics/ [Mills]

Obama's main plank is a proposal to reduce carbon emissions by 80 per cent by 2050 via a cap and trade system, with all permits auctioned. OK, not to my taste perhaps but he's creating a property right that can then be traded - we know this works on the Tragedy of the Commons. Alongside this we have reducing deforestation, plus investment in new technologies, R&D, yadda, yadda. Yes, at least some of this is pork, undoubtedly some of it will be wasteful but the flip side of our argument that we slap a tax on negative externalities like pollution is that we subsidise positive externalities: like, for example, long term basic research. Or, indeed, the education system which we subsidise on exactly the same argument. It's also worth noting that at $10 billion a year here and $15 billion a year there (that latter is $50 per head per year) in the context of a $13 trillion economy he's not exactly raping the Treasury to do this. Overall his plan therefore seems well informed, with no major shockers aside from the ritual genuflection to the ethanol lobby. That this is a vastly expensive fuel, that it has higher emissions than gasoline itself, isn't unfortunately going to make much difference in a country where the Presidential elections start every four years in Iowa cornfields. We'll never get rid of that beast until the Primary system is changed.

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Obama  Revenue Recycling William L. Watts, reporter for MarketWatch, 10/8/07 “Obama calls for cap-and-trade program” http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/obama-calls-pollution-cap-and-tradeprogram/story.aspx?guid=%7BE704950B-F8D6-49EB-9C20-BCCECEB72374%7D [Mills] Under the Obama plan, the government would set annual reduction targets and would require that overall emissions be reduced to 1990 levels by 2020, and would be reduced to 80% below 1990 levels by 2050. Edwards and Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton have also called for reducing emissions to that level by 2050. New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, a fellow candidate, has called for an 80% reduction from 1990 levels by 2040, with a 90% reduction by 2050. Obama's plan would also spend $150 billion over 10 years on the development of climate-friendly supplies and technologies and sets a goal of reducing overall oil consumption by 35%, or 10 million barrels, by 2030. It also calls on the United States to lead a new international partnership to combat global warming. Obama, a freshman U.S. senator, cast himself as a Washington outsider who is more willing than other candidates to pursue needed but politically risky measures to combat global warming and reduce dependence on fossil fuels.

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Obama  Cap and Trade – EU Rels James Murray, staff writer for BusinessGreen, 10/9/07 “Obama unveils plans for carbon cap and trade” http://www.businessgreen.com/business-green/news/2200768/obama-unveils-plans-carbon-cap [Mills] But Obama insisted that unlike Edwards' proposed scheme, his plan would see all firms have to pay for their assigned credits at auction rather than having them initially assigned for free by industry."The market will set the price, but unlike the other cap-and-trade proposals that have been offered in this race, no business will be allowed to emit any greenhouses gases for free," he said. This auction approach would effectively introduce a tax on carbon emissions and would be likely to add significant costs for businesses operating in the US. But Obama's camp argued that it would ensure polluters pay for all emissions, creating a major incentive for them to achieve cuts in their carbon footprintThe announcement is likely to be welcomed by European politicians who are still smarting over their treatment at President Bush's recent conference of the world's largest emitters. According to BBC reports, several attendees at Bush's Washington conference are furious at being denied the opportunity to voice their concerns in public and feel they were outmanoeuvred in the press by the White House's media machine. With Bush repeating his refusal to countenance binding emissions cuts, European negotiators are now reliant on the next incumbent of the White House to deliver a global successor to the Kyoto Treaty. As such they will have been heartened by Obama's latest plans, as well as recent calls for quantifiable carbon emission reduction targets from his rival Democratic presidential frontrunners, Hillary Clinton and John Edwards, and support for climate change legislation from Republican candidate John McCain.

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McCain  Cap and Trade McCain would implement a cap-and-trade system Dan Gainor, Boone Pickens Free Market Fellow, 3/19/08 “McCain Pushes 'Cap-And-Trade' Plan to Fight Global Warming” http://www.businessandmedia.org/printer/2008/20080319133739.aspx [Mills] Presumptive GOP presidential nominee John McCain is using the idea of global togetherness to promote “a cap-and-trade system” to battle climate change. He said “Americans and Europeans need to get serious about substantially reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the coming years or we will hand over a muchdiminished world to our grandchildren.” According to the Arizona senator, whose opinion column appeared in the March 19 Financial Times, the United States needs to work with Europe to create a replacement for the Kyoto treaty. “We need a successor to Kyoto, a cap-and-trade system that delivers the necessary environmental impact in an economically responsible manner.” He said America needs to be willing to be “persuaded” by our European allies. McCain’s column was headlined “America must be a good role model.” However, he never addressed the potential costs of his proposal. McCain talked about Americans and Europeans leading together but only said he wanted to “encourage the participation of the rest of the world, including most importantly, the developing economic powerhouses of China and India.” But experience has already shown that government intervention in environmental issues can have negative consequences. Ethanol mandates have artificially inflated demand for corn and affected grocery prices. And recent studies have shown ethanol isn’t any better for the environment than burning fossil fuels. A recent report from the Nikkei estimated it would cost the Japanese economy $500 billion – split evenly between businesses and consumers – to meet its carbon reduction goals by 2020. McCain in his column did advocate for increased use of nuclear power. “Right now safe, climate-friendly nuclear energy is a critical way both to improve the quality of our air and to reduce our dependence on foreign energy sources.” McCain’s cap-and-trade position is similar to both of his liberal potential adversaries. According to his campaign Web site, Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) also supports “implementation of a market-based cap-and-trade system to reduce carbon emissions by the amount scientists say is necessary: 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050.” Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) also has a climate plan “centered on a cap and trade system for carbon emissions.”

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***IRAN STRIKES

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McCain = Global War McCain would start wars on every continent Doug Bandow –Washington based political writer and analyst; 7-18-08; Foreign Follies, “John McCain: The Candidate of god – Mars, the god of war http://www.antiwar.com/bandow/?articleid=13154 It is fine to think of the unborn. But how about the born? Shouldn't conservatives who claim to be Christians care about the human impact of the foreign policy advanced by the presidential candidates? James Dobson declared that "What terrifies me is the thought that" Obama might end up as military commander-in-chief. But, in truth, the really terrifying thought is of John McCain at the ready to invade, bomb, coerce, and threaten other nations as his heart, or temper, moves him. After all, he, not Obama – at least, maybe not quite as much – sang about bombing Iran, even though it is years away from creating, let alone deploying, an atomic weapon. He, not Obama, wrote an article suggesting an assault on North Korea, despite the risk of triggering a full-scale war. He, not Obama, clamored for a ground offensive against Serbia in the needless war over Kosovo a decade ago. He, not Obama, supported the invasion of Iraq, which has turned out so differently than promised by most of its advocates. He, not Obama, wants to preserve obsolete American military occupations and mount counterproductive military interventions around the globe. Many foreign policy questions are largely prudential – what policies advance the interests of the United States? That cannot be the only question asked, but it is an essential standard by which to measure America's foreign actions. And all of the wars and occupations backed by McCain fail the test of serving America's interests. Washington policymakers might like them. But treating war as a discretionary activity, and one guaranteed to lead to group hugs and mass flower tosses, is practically foolish and morally grotesque. In fact, Christians overseas have proved to be among the greatest victims of the Bush administration's aggressive military actions. Iraq's historic Christian community has been destroyed, with up to half of the population forced into exile, internally or abroad. Sadly, few American Christian leaders, many of whom backed the war, have owned up to their responsibility for the catastrophe which has enveloped Iraq's Christians. There is an additional irony when social conservatives crusade for war: can there be a more anti-family program than initiating a conflict which kills parents, leaves kids without fathers and even mothers, spurs divorce and family break up, and steals parents from children's lives for an extended period, time and time again? It is one thing to claim that necessity sometimes requires paying such a cost. But none of John McCain's wars was or is necessary. It has become obvious to all but the most unregenerate neoconservative that Iraq posed no threat to America. Unleashing the dogs of war on Iraq, killing hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, wounding even more of them, and driving millions of them into exile, while utterly destroying the fabric of Iraqi society, certainly was not humanitarian, even though Saddam Hussein's removal was a plus. U.S. intelligence doesn't believe Iran even has an ongoing nuclear weapons program, and Tehran certainly is not poised to create a nuclear arsenal. The idea of attacking Iran before actually testing the possibility of a negotiated settlement is obscene. And the practical consequences of war would be hideous. North Korea is dismantling the reactor that would be the most likely target of U.S. military action, obviating the purpose of such a strike. Anyway, committing an act of war against the unpredictable totalitarian regime of Kim Jong-il would risk sparking full-scale war, which would have catastrophic consequences for all concerned, and South Korea in particular. The attack on Serbia was unprovoked, the geopolitical interests at stake were frivolous, and the intervention was hypocritical. At the same time the U.S. initiated war to resolve a minor guerrilla war among white Europeans, it ignored much larger and more costly conflicts in Africa. Nevertheless, John McCain sees war as a solution to potentially any geopolitical situation. The spectacle of religious conservatives backing John McCain's veritable policy of a war on every continent is even more bizarre given Christianity's message of peace. Christian theologians have argued for centuries over the legitimacy of serving in the military and going to war. The dominant view reflects some sense of Just War theory, that under specific and narrow circumstances, war is justified. In practice, alas, clerics could always be found to pronounce almost every war to be just and necessary, turning Just War theory into more an excuse for than limit on war. Still, despite the spirited case for neo-pacifism made by some Christians, it is hard not to countenance national selfdefense just as most Christians accept personal self-defense. But this really means self-defense, not romping around the globe attempting to micro-manage the affairs of other nations at the point of a gun. If God acknowledges cases in which the moral good is better served by going to war than surrendering to evil, it

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McCain = Global War Continued – no text removed… likely is a very reluctant acknowledgement, for war is the embodiment of evil: committing death and destruction writ large, wrecking entire countries and continents, and targeting God's creation, human and natural. No wonder Jesus Christ declared in the Sermon on the Mount, "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God." (Matthew 5:9) Thus, making peace obviously is better than making war. While the latter sometime might be unavoidable – when the consequences of any alternative course are far worse – most often it is not. And even when war might be theoretically justified, resolving the controversy peacefully if possible would still be far preferable. But if there is one thing John McCain is not, it is a peacemaker. He sees war and the threat of war, backed by an even larger military – bigger than today's already largest, most sophisticated, most powerful armed forces on earth – as a simple tool to be promiscuously deployed not just against smaller powers such as Iraq, but serious states, such as China and Russia. His policy of confrontation all the time, everywhere, may be favored by the usual neoconservative suspects, but is likely to generate conflict and war, and perhaps protracted conflict and catastrophic war. Such a policy would seem inconsistent with Christian teaching. Forget general injunctions for peace. Most wars turn into widespread murder and theft, behaviors proscribed by the Ten Commandments, as well as other Biblical teachings. While war sometimes brings out the best and most heroic in people, it far more often brings out the worst and most base personal characteristics. In short, it is something Christians should strongly resist, not welcome.

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McCain will strike McCain is absolutely committed to rogue state rollback – he’ll force the issue and strike Iran Matthew Yglesias, Associate Editor of The Atlantic Monthly, The American Prospect, 4-28-08, http://prospect.org/cs/articles?article=the_militarist But despite McCain's loss in 2000, the strategic concepts he outlined back in 1999 came to be at the core of what we today term the Bush doctrine. Most significant is the emphasis on preventive war as a tool of policy. As outlined in McCain's disquisition on North Korea, the fact that some state does not, in fact, pose an imminent threat to the United States is no reason to refrain from attacking it. On the contrary, the fact that a state is nonthreatening is a reason to attack it as soon as possible, lest it become more powerful over time. In Bush's hands, this concept has led not only to the fiasco in Iraq but also to North Korea's acquisition of nuclear weapons and to several missed opportunities to secure the verifiable disarmament of Iran. McCain has pushed this doctrine longer, harder, and more consistently than has Bush. In the spring of 2002, when the Bush administration was still formally committed to reinvigorating the inspections process in Iraq, McCain was planted firmly on the administration's right flank, offering a strident call for regime change in Baghdad. In a speech to the American Jewish Committee, McCain explicitly drew the links between his 1999 rollback vision and the disastrous course on which Bush was about to embark the nation, saying proudly that "several years ago, I and many others argued that the United States, in concert with willing allies, should work to undermine from within and without outlaw regimes." Now, he said, the president had articulated a policy wherein "dictators that support and harbor terrorists and build [nuclear, chemical, or biological] weapons are now on notice that such behavior is, in itself, a casus belli. Nowhere is such an ultimatum more applicable than in Saddam Hussein's Iraq." At a time when politicians were bowing to the pressure to support the war but also offering careful caveats, McCain did the reverse. He went further than even Bush in predicting that the liberation of Baghdad "will serve as a counterpoint to the state-directed Arab media's distortion of the Palestinian conflict," embracing the view, then popular on the neoconservative fringe, that the road to Jerusalem ran through Baghdad. Likewise, McCain advanced the idea that remaking Iraq as a democracy "cannot be the end" of an American effort to re-order political conditions throughout the Middle East. This commitment is precisely the blunder that led the United States to compound the error of invading Iraq by later spurning peace offerings from Iran and rejecting all entreaties to make a serious effort at stabilizing the regional situation through engagement with Iraq's neighbors. And of course it's the same commitment that has led to repeated outbursts of anti-Iranian saber-rattling from the Bush administration, as the hawk faction with which McCain has consistently aligned himself threatens to seize control of the policy agenda and plunge the country into a new conflict. *** Optimistic liberals note that McCain has shown some capacity to change his mind, and that he has expanded his circle of advisers beyond the core group of neoconservative fanatics. But despite the disaster of Iraq, McCain remains as committed to a far-right vision of American foreign policy as ever. Well-known campaign "gaffes," like when he sang "bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran" to the tune of The Beach Boys' "Barbara Ann," are more than verbal fumbles on the part of a 71-year-old man? they are expressions of views McCain articulates with regularity. While Bush has been criticized for advancing an unduly broad conception of the terrorism problem, allowing Iraq, Iran, Hamas, and Hezbollah to all be swept together with al-Qaeda, McCain sees a need to go even bigger. In a May 2007 speech to the Hoover Institution, McCain explained that the so-called war on terror is merely part of a "worldwide political, economic, and philosophical struggle between the future and the past, between progress and reaction, and between liberty and despotism." The despotism problem, in McCain's view, goes beyond the traditional axis of evil and requires us to not only "not put pressure on dictators in Iran, Sudan, Zimbabwe, Burma, and other pariah states" but also to fret that Russia and China have joined forces to block such pressure. At a time when the Bush administration has to some extent backed away from rogue-state rollback, McCain has decided to double down, concluding that the rogue-state problem can't be resolved until all autocratic powers are brought down. "Iran is able to aggressively pursue nuclear weapons and hegemony in the Persian Gulf," he said in the Hoover speech, "in part, because it has been shielded by the world's powerful autocracies." To combat this alleged conspiracy of dictatorships, McCain has proposed creating a "worldwide League of Democracies," whose role would be to create an alternative mechanism to the United Nations that could facilitate coercive action "with or without Moscow's and Beijing's approval." His

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McCain will strike Continued – no text removed… campaign Web site further ups the ante for conflict with Russia and China by going beyond the standard missile defense mumbo jumbo to describe his planned shield as intended to "hedge against potential threats from possible strategic competitors like Russia and China," in contrast to a Bush administration which has limited its shield rhetoric to rogue states. McCain would take an impractical and somewhat provocative idea and then make it worse by injecting additional provocation for no real reason. At Hoover, McCain referred to his foreign-policy agenda as a "vision of a new era of enduring peace based on freedom," but it's clear that his policies will lead to more conflict than peace. Some of McCain's ideas are so unrealistic that it's hard to know what they would amount to in practice -- for example, there's no indication that any countries are eager to sign up for his League of Democracies. But a policy of rogue-state rollback would be a recipe for a new cold war (or two) with a few proxy conflicts thrown in for good measure. If we take McCain at his word, his administration will be prepared to back up our proxies with direct military intervention if necessary. What's more, McCain has made it clear over the years that he holds an unusually expansive view of what military action entails?namely a willingness to press through to the end and hold out for total victory irrespective of the cost. McCain correctly observes in a November/December 2007 Foreign Affairs article that it should be possible to get the existing nuclear powers to push for revisions aimed at closing some of the loopholes in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and thus greatly enhance American security. Unfortunately, the rest of his agenda pushes in the direction of much more nuclear proliferation. An avowed American policy of undermining Russia's and China's nuclear deterrent would force Russia and China to engage in new nuclear buildups to re-establish it, prompting a cascade of proliferation in India, Pakistan, and possibly beyond, and likely wreck all effort at reviving the multilateral arms-control regime. Meanwhile, the rollback policy will prevent any sort of diplomatic arrangement with potential proliferators like Iran and North Korea. McCain has said that in his opinion, "there's only one thing worse than the United States exercising the military option; that is a nuclear-armed Iran." If he means those words seriously, then a policy that takes meaningful diplomacy off the table will mean war with Tehran? just as McCain's "joke" about The Beach Boys song indicated. If he doesn't, it'll mean Iran moving closer to nuclear weapons capabilities.

McCain will attack Iran – the only tool he understands is regime change John Judis, visiting fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, The New Republic, 7-30-08, http://tnr.com/story_print.html?id=220a2dab-3d4b-45e4-9355-b03d44b6b844 So could McCain still do a "Nixon-goes-to-China"? Nixon was a realist whose achievement as a statesman (as distinct from his failure as president) rested on his recognition of the limits of American power. He understood when he came to office that the United States could not hope to achieve victory in Vietnam but would have to settle for an imperfect compromise and, after backtracking, eventually did. Nixon, who could get into a funk over domestic opponents, was capable of an eerie detachment when it came to evaluating foreign leaders. He could also appreciate the historic insecurities that led countries to distrust the United States and each other. He confined his apocalyptic warnings of a worldwide communist conspiracy to domestic politics. He understood that beneath the appearance of socialist solidarity lay growing hostility between Russia and China, which the United States could exploit. By contrast, McCain is a radical idealist who wants to transform the world and is reluctant to acknowledge limits to this enterprise. He imagines a "democratic" Iraq opposed to Iran and occupied indefinitely by American troops. And McCain does not seem to possess Nixon's detachment when it comes to foreign affairs. He can't see what drove Putin and now his successor to distance themselves from the United States; or what--since the time of the pro-American Shah-has driven Iran, irrespective of Ahmadinejad, to seek a nuclear capability. If anything, McCain brings the same readiness to anger to bear in foreign relations that marked his tenure in the Senate. But it's one thing to blow up at a colleague and quite another to do so at a foreign president. The former may lead to difficulties in getting a bill passed; the latter to protracted conflict and even war. If one insists upon identifying a nation with its leader and seeing that leader as either incurably wicked or deeply irrational, then that rules out diplomacy or deterrence. Regime change becomes the only way of addressing a foe's antagonism. That, of course, was the argument that McCain and others used to justify the invasion of Iraq, and he seems to be making the same argument about Russia and Iran. John McCain has certainly had moments of greatness as a man and a politician, but, as a statesman, he's no Richard Nixon.

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McCain will strike McCain will use force – he is an unrepentant neocon Hannes Artens 2/22/08 (Author of The Writing on the Wall & former academic think-tank author, “Neocon President John “Bomb Iran” McCain?” http://agonist.org/hannes_artens_author_of_the_writing_on_the_wall/20080222/neocon_president_john_bomb_iran_mccain)

Here, in the years after the fall of the Iron Curtain and the descent of a dozen of new nations in Europe and Central Asia, yearning for individual freedom and Western-style democracy, lies the natal hour of John McCain the neocon, best illustrated in his chairmanship of the International Republican Institute. More telling than his 100-years-in-Iraq comment and his stubborn support for the surge, is his biblical hate for Vladimir Putin and Alexander Lukashenko, together with his and IRI's behind-the-scenes activities in Eastern Europe. Hans Werner Klausen from the Berliner Umschau provides us with an exhaustive list of McCain's neocon supporters, advisers and dogsbodies - this eyeopening compilation together with McCain's personal Damascus experience of the victorious First Gulf War in combination with the democratization of the Ukraine, Georgia, Poland et al. leads me to believe that the true neocon in the White House is yet to come. Heilbrunn is right in his Washington Post op-ed: George Bush has never been a neocon, but John McCain is to the bottom of his heart. For him the democratization of the Middle East, by force if necessary, is not a pretense you can seek refuge in if the damn WMDs turn out not to exist; for John McCain and the neocons this is the essence of American exceptionalism, her raison d'etre in the twenty-first century. And Iraq is where they will take up a stance. They have tied their entire ideological concept to success there. Worse, in John McCain's case, I can't help myself but fear that he seeks to cure his own personal Vietnam trauma at the banks of the Euphrates and the Tigris. And this is where my book proves outdated. The Iranian nuclear program no longer is the sticking point; except for Israeli hawks it does not even suit as an official casus belli anymore. The issue over which John McCain and Tehran will clash is the future of Iraq and the latter's sway over it. A weakened, lame duck George Bush may have had to grin and bear it by reluctantly greenlighting talks on ambassodarial level between the U.S. and Iran. For a reinvigorated John McCain and his neocon team, endowed with a public mandate to fight the "War on Terror" and elected on a national security ticket, this is no option. That smells too much of the Paris Peace Accords and Kissinger-détente. Neither is containment or harsher sanctions, as still nonsensically considered a better than nothing response to Iran's stubbornness on the nuclear issue, a viable approach here. It would only postpone the inevitable confrontation. I never get tired of referring to Peter Galbraith's brilliant analysis of the situation in Iraq on Salon.com from last year: Iran is the major gainer of George Bush's war in Mesopotamia, and Tehran is the one who dictates terms there now. Something the neocons are all too aware of. Given this predicament of their let's-make-the-world-free-for-democracy crusade having played into the hands of the hated mullahs better than dealing them a Royal Flush, any future American administration is left with two choices: you either start allissues-on-the-table, no precondition talks with Iran trying to get them to adopt a constructive role in Baghdad with a healthy combination of incentives and threats - which, of course, would result in America having to make painful sacrifices and accepting Iran as a regional power - or you take Iran out of the Iraqi equation. To John McCain, the former would be like losing Vietnam again. If yielding to his Vietcong guards was out of the question, abandoning a people America has liberated to an Islamist theocracy and state sponsor of terrorism certainly is. Then rather go down in flames in defending freedom's cause and Teddy Roosevelt's legacy. No, we should make no mistake, John McCain is no Jim Whitman. He doesn't need to be manipulated into war with Iran.

McCain will strike Iran Irish Times, 2-9-08 WorldView: Ever since the revised US National Intelligence Estimate saying that Iran had stopped its nuclear weapons programme in 2003 was published in early December, the prospect that the US and/or Israel might mount a military strike against Iran's nuclear enrichment facilities has been completely discounted at home and abroad. Hillary Clinton does not have to worry about being so pre-empted in April or May, forcing her to approve or disapprove. Barack Obama supports engaging Iran in talks, while John McCain favours confronting the Iranians directly with sanctions and military means if necessary.

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McCain will strike McCain will attack Iran – he will never back down on military force Matthew Yglesias, Associate Editor of The Atlantic Monthly, The American Prospect, 4-28-08, http://prospect.org/cs/articles?article=the_militarist Things were looking bleak for Republicans in February, and it was clear that only a candidate with crossover appeal to war opponents stood any chance of going toe-to-toe with a Democrat. Thus, though it may have angered the conservative base, the Republicans got lucky as McCain emerged as the front-runner over Mitt Romney, the preferred choice of Bush-lovers. But there is a problem. Despite neoconservatism's close association in the public imagination with the Bush administration, and despite McCain's image as a moderate, a look at the record makes clear that McCain, not Bush, is the real neocon in the Republican Party. McCain was the neocons' candidate in 2000, McCain adhered to a truer version of the faith during the early years of hubris that followed September 11, and as president McCain would likely pursue policies that will make what we've seen from Bush look like a pale imitation of the real thing. McCain, after all, is the candidate of perpetual war in Iraq. The candidate who, despite his protestations in a March speech that he "hates war," not only stridently backed the 2003 invasion of Iraq but has spent years calling on the United States to depose every dictator in the world. He's the candidate of ratcheting-up action against North Korea and Iran, of new efforts to undermine the United Nations, and of new cold wars with Russia and China. Rather than hating war, he sees it as integral to the greatness of the nation, and military service as the highest calling imaginable. It is, in short, not Bush but McCain, who among practical politicians holds truest to the vision of a foreign policy dominated by militaristic unilateralism.

McCain’s anti-terrorism, pro-Israel stance ensures strikes and wars – Obama would negotiate. FOXNews.com 5 /19, 2008 “Obama, McCain Feud Continues Over U.S. Policy on Talking to Despots” http://elections.foxnews.com/2008/05/19/obama-mccain-feud-continues-over-us-policy-on-talking-to-despots/ The foreign policy fight between John McCain and Barack Obama flared up again Monday when the candidates jabbed one another over over how to address the threat posed by Iran. While the two have been feuding since President Bush last week told the Israeli Knesset, or parliament, that a policy of appeasement is a “foolish delusion,” the heated rhetoric rose a notch after Obama said Sunday night that Iran is not an equivalent threat to the Soviet Union. “Iran, Cuba, Venezuela — these countries are tiny compared to the Soviet Union. They don’t pose a serious threat to us the way the Soviet Union posed a threat to us. And yet we were willing to talk to the Soviet Union at the time when they were saying we’re going to wipe you off the planet,” Obama told voters in Pendleton, Ore. “You know, Iran, they spend one-one hundredth of what we spend on the military. If Iran ever tried to pose a serious threat to us, they wouldn’t stand a chance. And we should use that position of strength that we have to be bold enough to go ahead and listen,” he said. Obama has called for unconditional direct talks between the U.S. and Iran, saying the U.S. would be negotiating from a position of strength. He has since modified that call, saying that mid-level meetings would have to set an agenda and criteria before direct talks could be conducted. Speaking to the National Restaurant Association on Monday, McCain said Obama doesn’t understand that a summit meeting with a U.S. president is the ultimate form of diplomacy, and not one to be squandered on a nation that is unrepentant about its pursuit of nuclear weapons, its desire to blow Israel off the map and its frequent attacks on U.S. soldiers in Iraq. “Senator Obama has declared, and repeatedly reaffirmed his intention to meet the president of Iran without any preconditions, likening it to meetings between former American presidents and the leaders of the Soviet Union. Such a statement betrays the depth of Senator Obama’’s inexperience and reckless judgment. Those are very serious deficiencies for an American president to possess,” McCain said. “It is likely such a meeting would not only fail to persuade him to abandon Iran’s nuclear ambitions; its support of terrorists and commitment to Israel’s extinction, it could very well convince him that those policies are succeeding in strengthening his hold on power, and embolden him to continue his very dangerous behavior. The next president ought to understand such basic realities of international relations,” he continued. Responding almost immediately, Obama, who was in Billings, Mont., on Monday, said he understands that Iran is a grave threat, but it’s important to engage enemies as well as friends. “That is what diplomacy is all about,” he said, adding that Iran’s strength has grown primarily “because of the Bush-McCain policy of fighting an endless war in Iraq.” Iran, Obama said, is the “single biggest beneficiary of a war that should never have been authorized and never have been waged.”

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McCain will strike Iran’s missile tests make it even more likely that McCain will use military force if elected Press TV 7/9/08 (“McCain to world: United against Iran”, http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx? id=63127§ionid=3510203) Republican nominee-to-be John McCain says the international community must unite to counter Iran after Tehran test-fired its missiles. "Iran's most recent missile tests demonstrate again the dangers it poses to its neighbors and to the wider region, especially Israel," Senator McCain said in a statement. The Arizona senator took advantage of Iran's missile tests to justify Washington's planned missile defense sites in the Czech Republic and Poland, arguing that it highlighted the need for effective missile defense for the US 'now and in the future.' "Working with our European and regional allies is the best way to meet the threat posed by Iran, not unilateral concessions that undermine multilateral diplomacy," McCain said. Iran's IRGC forces test-fired nine state-of-the-art long and medium-range missiles on Wednesday as a response to Israeli and US threats against the country. Military officials added that the maneuver was carried out for defensive purposes and was not aimed at threatening any country. According to a report by the New York Times, Israel staged a military maneuver in early June to prepare for a unilateral air strike on Iran's nuclear sites.

McCain will strike Iran Susan Davis 7/10/08 (Presidential Race Reporter, Wall Street Journal, “McCain Calls for Sanctions on Iran”, http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2008/07/10/mccain-calls-for-sanctions-oniran/) Expected Republican nominee John McCain today called for “meaningful and impactful” sanctions against Iran following a series of missile tests Wednesday and Thursday. (Read today’s Wall Street Journal story HERE.) McCain told reporters the act poses a great threat to the region’s security and called it “an act that indicates that the Iranians have failed to understand that the situation requires that they stop this kind of activity.” The Arizona senator called for tougher sanctions through the U.N. Security Council, financial and otherwise, to “put pressure on the Iranians and make them understand that we need to have peace in the region and not continuing escalating of tensions which is a direct result of this activity.” McCain said the move underscores the need for the U.S. to work with its allies to create an operational missile defense system “to prevent the possibility of an attack on other nations in the region as well.” He also reiterated his skepticism that Iran has suspended its nuclear weapons program, which was reported in the U.S. National Intelligence Estimate in December 2007. “I’ve said that because the International Atomic Energy Agency has said that, and all objective observers have said exactly the same thing,” he said, “I think everybody knows that evidence that has accumulated since indicates, including evidence presented by the IAEA indicated that they are continuing their nuclear weapons development.”

McCain will use military strikes against Iran Steve Inskeep 1/23/06 (NPR, “McCain on Iran: Military Option is ‘Last Option’”) This is MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm Steve Inskeep. RENEE MONTAGNE, host: And I'm Renee Montagne. Western nations and Israel are deciding what to do next about Iran. Europeans say they've reached an impasse in talks over Iran's nuclear program. That doesn't mean diplomacy is over. A top U.S. diplomat says there are still steps that can be taken short of a military strike. And Senator John McCain told Fox News he hopes that works. Senator JOHN MCCAIN (Republican, Arizona): We cannot take the military option off the table but we have to make it very clear it's the last option. There's only one thing worse than the United States exercising military option and that is Iran having nuclear weapons. They already have the missiles to put them on. MONTAGNE: Senator John McCain.

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McCain will strike McCain will use force against Iran Tim Harper 7/10/08 (TheStar.com, “Iran’s war games test candidates”, http://www.thestar.com/News/USElection/article/457631) WASHINGTON–Iran may have been attempting to rattle its neighbours and deliver a message to its adversaries, but it also tossed a metaphorical missile into the middle of the U.S. election campaign yesterday. Both Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain talked tough on the Iranian threat after its test of nine ballistic missiles, but each accused the other of proposing the wrong path to deter Tehran's pursuit of a nuclear weapon. Neither dared even hint at the possibility of military action. Iran launched the nine missiles from an undisclosed desert location yesterday, including a Shahab-3 with a 1,930-kilometre range, putting all of Israel as well as U.S. and British warships in the Persian Gulf within reach. The tests also showed Tehran could possibly reach Canadian and allied interests in Afghanistan and potentially Pakistan, Egypt, Greece, Turkey, India and the Arabian Peninsula with the Shahab-3, Farsi for "shooting star,"a version of which was first tested in 2004. "The aim of these war games is to show we are ready to defend the integrity of the Iranian nation," Hossein Salami, a commander of the Revolutionary Guards, said on Iranian television. "Hundreds and maybe thousands of missiles are ready to be fired at specified targets." The tests came one day after Iran threatened Israel and the United States and the new show of bellicosity ratcheted up international tension and pushed the two men campaigning for the U.S. presidency off their domestic economic messages this week. Both called for tough economic sanctions against Iran, but McCain tried to exploit what his campaign believes is an Obama weakness, his lack of experience on international relations and national security. McCain said Iran remains a threat to neighbours in the region, said there is mounting evidence it is seeking nuclear weapons and said Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad continues to call for the destruction of Israel. The presumptive Republican nominee said European allies are ready to join the imposition of "significant and meaningful" sanctions against the Tehran regime. But he dismissed Obama's claim that this most recent provocative act represents a failure of U.S. diplomacy. "There has been intense negotiations and diplomacy and there continues to be a role for it," McCain said. "But history shows us that when nations are embarked on paths that can jeopardize the security of the region and the world, then other actions besides diplomacy have to be contemplated and taken. "Lines of communication are fine. Action is what's necessary." Obama called Iran "a grave threat" and also called for tightened economic sanctions – in concert with the start of direct diplomacy. He said Iran is the greatest threat in the region faced by Americans in a generation. "The United States has to gather up others in the region as well as internationally to apply pressure on Iran," Obama said on ABC's Good Morning America. "But it's very difficult for us to do so when we haven't shown a willingness to engage in the sort of direct negotiations with Iran that would give them carrots and sticks for a change in behaviour." The missile tests came hours after a report showing that U.S. exports to Iran mushroomed under George W. Bush despite the U.S. president's often tough talk and refusal to remove any option from the table in dealing with Iran. The Associated Press reported that the value of U.S. exports to Iran has jumped from $8 million to $150 million since Bush has been in office. The exports included everything from cigarettes and bull semen to corn and brassieres. When asked to respond to the report – before news of the missile tests – McCain again revealed a curious penchant for levity in dealing with the Iranian threat. At a campaign stop Tuesday night, the Arizona senator said the cigarette exports might be "a way of killing them," before receiving a nudge from wife Cindy, according to reports from the scene. "I meant that as a joke," he quickly said. During the nomination race, McCain told critics to "lighten up" after he was criticized for joking about the old song, "Bomb, Bomb, Bomb, Bomb, Bomb Iran," which he sang to the tune of the Beach Boys classic "Barbara Ann." The White House responded quickly, saying the tests would further isolate Iran and U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said they underlined the need for European missile defence against an Iranian strike. But U.S. Defence Secretary Robert Gates said he did not believe the "signalling" from Iran brought either side closer to confrontation and Israel largely played down the tests. U.S. Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns also briefed a congressional committee on Iran yesterday, saying "the international community faces a bigger challenge than the Iranian nuclear issue or the problem posed by Iran's behaviour." But he also told legislators Iran was "not 10 feet tall." "It often substitutes assertiveness and self-aggrandizing pronouncements for enduring power," Burns said, "promoting the illusion of Iran as a real counterweight to the United States or to the institutions of global order, especially the United Nations and the International Atomic Energy Agency."

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McCain won’t strike McCain is taking a less neoconservative stance towards Iran and foreign policy in general Michael Shear 3/27/08 (Washington Post staff writer, “McCain outlines foreign policy; In Speech He vows collaborative approach”, lexis) Sen. John McCain on Wednesday promised a collaborative foreign policy that would seek the input of allies abroad and would contrast sharply with the go-it-alone approach of the Bush administration. McCain (Ariz.) also refused to give ground on Iraq to his Democratic rivals, declaring that the continued U.S. presence there is a "moral responsibility" and that a "reckless" withdrawal would be an "unconscionable act of betrayal, a stain on our character as a great nation." In his first extensive policy speech since securing the delegates needed to win the Republican presidential nomination, McCain delivered an impassioned argument that achieving democracy in Iraq is necessary for a peaceful world. "Those who argue that our goals in Iraq are unachievable are wrong, just as they were wrong a year ago when they declared the war already lost in Iraq," he said, without naming Democratic candidates Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama. "Those who claim we should withdraw from Iraq in order to fight al-Qaeda more effectively elsewhere are making a dangerous mistake." But even as McCain offered a defense of President Bush 's current war policy, he outlined a sharp critique of the administration's dealings with foreign allies. In a speech to the World Affairs Council in Los Angeles, McCain called himself a "realistic idealist" and outlined a worldview mirroring that of some Bush administration critics, who say the first task of the next president must be to repair relations around the world. "Today we are not alone," McCain said. "Our great power does not mean we can do whatever we want whenever we want, nor should we assume we have all the wisdom and knowledge necessary to succeed." The speech drew a quick response from Obama spokesman Bill Burton. He castigated McCain for being "determined to carry out four more years of George Bush 's failed policies, including an open-ended war in Iraq that has cost us thousands of lives and billions of dollars while making us less safe." In a statement, Clinton said: "While there is much to praise in Senator McCain 's speech, he and I continue to have a fundamental disagreement on Iraq." Clinton said that McCain, like Bush, opposes "a swift and responsible withdrawal from Iraq" and wants to "keep us tied to another country's civil war." Despite McCain's support for the Iraq war, he said the United States should take a different approach to future conflicts. In the speech, McCain renewed his call for a "global compact -- a League of Democracies" that would unite the world's free countries against tyranny, disease and environmental destruction. As he did in Europe last week, he played down unilateral action and stressed cooperation on global warming, torture of prisoners and trade. "We need to listen -- we need to listen -- to the views and respect the collective will of our democratic allies," McCain said. "When we believe international action is necessary, whether military, economic or diplomatic, we will try to persuade our friends that we are right. But we, in return, must be willing to be persuaded by them." Bush's foreign policy approach has moderated significantly in his second term, with greater outreach to European allies and a willingness to strike deals with countries such as North Korea. In essence, McCain suggested he would embrace Bush's policies on terrorism, Iraq and Afghanistan while extending his willingness to meet allies halfway. At the same time, McCain indicated he would sharply break with Bush's efforts to accommodate Russia, saying he would push to eject it from the Group of Eight club of industrial powers. Part of the opening of McCain's speech echoed the opening of an opinion piece he wrote in the Wall Street Journal in 2001 in support of the administration's anti-terrorism efforts. In both instances, the lengthy passage says that in war "the lives of a nation's finest patriots are sacrificed" and "commerce is disrupted, economies are damaged," among other nearly identical lines. McCain is often portrayed in the news media as a global John Wayne who would tread on the world stage with a Navy veteran's swagger and talk tough toward unfriendly governments in Iran and North Korea. But his record on foreign policy during two decades in the Senate is more nuanced. A skeptic about foreign interventions when he arrived in Congress in 1983, McCain later became a vocal advocate for unilateral U.S. action in Kosovo and the Middle East. In 1983, in opposition to President Ronald Reagan and others in his party, McCain argued for a withdrawal of U.S. troops from Lebanon. But in 1999, he supported the use of ground troops to stop "ethnic cleansing" in Kosovo. And his full-throated backing of the Iraq war in 2002 is well known. McCain's rhetoric as he courted Republican voters in primaries was often laced with incendiary language. On Iran, he hinted at an eagerness to take military action, saying the only thing worse would be a "nuclear-armed Iran." But since becoming the presumptive Republican nominee, McCain has rarely used the language of the neoconservatives in Washington who pushed Bush to adopt a policy of preemptive strikes against foreign enemies. Instead, McCain has sounded more like the foreign policy "realists" who advised Bush's father, President George H.W. Bush.

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Obama will strike Obama will use force against Iran Dave Newbart 3/3/07 (Staff writer Chicago Sun-Times, “Obama: Iran threatens all of us”, http://www.suntimes.com/news/politics/281249,CST-NWS-OBAMA03.article) Sen. Barack Obama said Friday the use of military force should not be taken off the table when dealing with Iran, which he called "a threat to all of us." Speaking before a pro-Israel crowd at a downtown hotel, Obama also repeated his call for a phased pullout of U.S. troops from Iraq and strongly backed a strong U.S. relationship with Israel. Earlier in the day, the Republican National Committee took aim at Obama, issuing a research memo aimed at highlighting the Illinois freshman senator's lack of experience on foreign affairs. That the gloves-are-off memo was even generated at this time is a testament to Obama's growing strength in the Democratic primary field. Obama campaign spokesman Dan Pfeiffer dismissed the Republican memo as an "example of the type of politics Barack Obama is hoping to change." He said Obama has spoken out against the war for years. Iranian leader 'reckless' While he was being attacked in Washington, Obama was in friendly territory in Chicago as he appeared at a forum attended by 800 members of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, an influential pro-Israel lobby. He received a standing ovation from the crowd and a hug from one of the group's leaders. Obama said global leaders must do whatever it takes to stop Iran from enriching uranium and acquiring nuclear weapons. He called Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad "reckless, irresponsible and inattentive" to the day-to-day needs of the Iranian people. The Iranian "regime is a threat to all of us," Obama said. While Obama wouldn't rule out force, he said the United States should engage in "aggressive diplomacy combined with tough sanctions" to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear threat. Visited Israel last year Again taking aim at the Bush administration and the war in Iraq, he said the war had actually strengthened Iran's influence in the region. He noted the war had spurned "anti-U.S. and further anti-Israel propaganda." Obama told of a trip he took to Israel in January 2006, visiting a village that resembled a suburb in the United States. He said he was deeply moved by a visit to a home hit by a rocket launched by Hezbollah. "Our job is to never forget that the threat of violence is real," he said. Obama's appearance was seen as a move to court Jewish donors, although the event wasn't a fund-raiser. He did pose for photos with AIPAC members at a private reception before the speech. Although the event was billed as a "forum," he took no questions from the audience or media and left immediately after his half-hour speech. Even though many in the crowd endorsed his remarks, some said they are waiting to hear more from him in the coming months to better gauge his position on Israel and other foreign-policy questions. "He is an unknown," said Diane Dubey, an AIPAC member from Lincolnwood. Others said Obama, who largely read from prepared remarks, seemed slightly less passionate about the topic than presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton, who spoke at AIPAC's national convention last year. Both Clinton and Obama will be at the convention March 11 in Washington. "He speaks beautifully, but we don't find a lot of emotion in what he says," said Mark Sherman of Northbrook.

Obama will use military strikes against Iran Gazette 1/10/08 (“Nothing new about Obama”, http://www.lexisnexis.com/us/lnacademic/results/docview/docview.do? docLinkInd=true&risb=21_T4190893368&format=GNBFI&sort=RELEVANCE&startDocNo=1 &resultsUrlKey=29_T4190893372&cisb=22_T4190893371&treeMax=true&treeWidth=0&csi= 8355&docNo=2) L. Ian MacDonald makes the mistake of following the image-over-issues interpretation of politics that has effectively laid waste to democracy in the United States, and made candidates into products for publicrelations experts to market. MacDonald offers only a few tidbits to support his effusive praise of Obama as "new and different" and an abstract promoter of change. A closer analysis shows that even though Obama was indeed against the Iraq war "from the beginning," he has also stated with regards to Iran that "all options are on the table," which presumably includes a pre-emptive nuclear war or "surgical" missile strikes on "soft targets." This position is far to the right of the majority of the U.S. public and world opinion, which is firmly opposed to any military action against Iran.

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111 Politics Generic Revamped!

DDI 2008 SS Lab

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Obama won’t strike Obama won’t strike Iran – only sanctions will make Iran stop its nuclear program The Guardian 11/3/07 (“Iran: Stopping nuclear ambitions”, lexis) Bombing Iran would be a disaster. Even if bombs busted Iran's nuclear bunkers, they would still miss their target. A military strike on the uranium-enrichment centrifuges would hasten an Iranian weapons programme, not delay it. A pre-emptive strike would turn a covert programme into an overt one, this time with the full backing of a wounded nation. Iran would leave the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT), spelling the end of visits by international nuclear inspectors. Iran has already violated the NPT by failing to declare experiments with nuclear materials, but its formal departure from the regulatory regime would leave it free to pursue its nuclear programme unfettered by inspection. And Iran would have 154,000 US targets in Iraq to fire back at. But letting Iran pursue its nuclear ambitions would be no less cataclysmic. The arrival of the Iranian bomb would set off an arms race among the Sunni states in the Gulf unparalleled in the history of nuclear proliferation. The absence of Arab reaction to the Israeli bombing of a suspected nuclear facility under construction in the Syrian desert was a telling sign of the fear spreading in the region. Even assuming Tehran would not pass fissile material to its proxies, Hizbullah and Hamas, the mere possession of a nuclear capability would give an unstable populist regime untold military and diplomatic clout. International negotiations are logjammed. A grand bargain offered four years ago, whereby Iran stops uranium enrichment in return for uranium for its fuel cycle, generous aid packages and a full return to the international stage, is still on the table. Iran has refused to comply with two previous rounds of UN sanctions and the US, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany were struggling yesterday in London to come up with a third round. The threat of military action does not give the diplomats more force. It muddies their efforts by dividing world opinion and allowing Iran to believe that it can stall indefinitely. If the military option can not be used, it must be removed from the table. What the Iranian regime fears is a unified international response, because only then would it face a genuine choice between the bomb and penury. Russia and China would have no choice but to support tougher economic sanctions, and Germany and Italy might even stop their export credit guarantees. The Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama said he would personally negotiate with the regime if it forgoes pursuit of nuclear weapons. The desire to solve this issue needs that sort of commitment, if the west is not to find itself igniting another fire in the Middle East that it can not put out.

Obama won’t strike Iran NPR 8/13/07 (“Obama: Iran requires direct diplomacy”, http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=15251928) Sen. Barack Obama says that as president, he would use direct diplomacy to constrain Iran's role in Iraq, encouraging Iran to cooperate with the United States through non-military means. In an interview with NPR's Andrea Seabook from a campaign stop in Iowa, Obama said that he'd use whatever military force is necessary to protect U.S. citizens, but that "the military option is not the only option in the toolbox." "I think Iran understands what military threats we pose. You know, they're not surprised that we could strike them, and strike them hard," Obama said. "What we haven't suggested in any way is what advantages they would have in acting more responsibly in the region. That's been the missing ingredient." The Illinois Democrat's comments follow a week of sparring over Iran with his main rival Sen. Hillary Clinton, who has a commanding lead in the polls. On Thursday, Clinton said she'd meet with Iranian leaders "without preconditions" — a position she criticized Obama for taking earlier in the summer. Obama also questioned Clinton's judgment in voting for last month's Kyl-Lieberman amendment, which identified the Iranian Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organization. Obama said the amendment included language that empowers the president to attack Iran."This is a lesson that I think Sen. Clinton and others should have learned: that you can't give this president a blank check and then act surprised when he cashes it," Obama said.

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Obama won’t strike Obama won’t strike Iran – he’s already opposed a resolution to go to war with Iran Donald Lambro 2/11/08 (The Washington Times, “Iraq aside, Democrats mum on foreign policy”, lexis) Last year, though, Mrs. Clinton came under fire from antiwar activists when she voted for a bipartisan Senate resolution condemning the Iranian Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organization that was responsible for roadside bombings and other attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq. Antiwar critics saw the vote as an attempt by the Bush administration to prepare to go to war against Iran unless it abandoned its ambitions to develop nuclear weapons. Mr. Obama opposed the resolution but missed the vote because he was campaigning. Many of Mr. Obama 's foreign policy advisers are also from the Clinton administration, including former National Security Adviser Anthony Lake, Susan E. Rice, an assistant secretary of state during Mr. Clinton's second term, and former Navy Secretary Richard Danzig. Also on his team are Jimmy Carter's national security adviser, Zbigniew Brezezinski, and former National Security Agency counterterrorism specialist Richard Clarke. A key foreign policy clash that developed during debates between Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama arose when he called for a change in dealing with rogue nations, saying he would hold unconditional talks with leaders of Iran, North Korea and Cuba. Mrs. Clinton called his proposal "irresponsible and, frankly, naive." Mr. Obama shot back, charging that her approach was outdated and represented a continuation of the Bush-Cheney policies. Mr. Obama 's foreign policy emphasizes personal diplomacy, economic development and humanitarian aid, and he rejects the pre-emptive policies of the Bush administration that led to the war in Iraq. "For most of our history, our crises have come from using force when we shouldn't, not by failing to use force," he told the New York Times. "The United States is trapped by the Bush-Cheney approach to diplomacy that refuses to talk to leaders we don't like. Not talking doesn't make us look tough; it makes us look arrogant," he says on his campaign Web site. But Mr. O'Hanlon thinks Mr. Obama 's eagerness for one-on-one meetings with leaders of rogue nations "would cheapen the value of a presidential summits." "You don't want a president using his time by being lied to by foreign leaders. Hillary would be much more pragmatic. She suggested midlevel talks with Iran. Obama would look weak, and Hillary would not look weak," he said.

Obama will not strike Iran FOXNews.com, 7- 9, 2008 “MCCAIN, OBAMA STAKE OUT DIFFERENCES ON IRANIAN MISSILE TESTS” http://elections.foxnews.com/2008/07/09/obama-says-iranian-missile-tests-prove-need-for-diplomacy/ “I would want to talk to the national security team to find out whether this indicates any new capabilities on Iran’s part. At this point, the reports aren’t clear. It’s still early,” Obama told CBS’ “Early Show.” “But I think what this underscores is the need for us to create a kind of policy that is putting the burden on Iran to change behavior. And, frankly, we just have not been able to do that over the last several years. Partly because we’re not engaged in direct diplomacy,” he said. His campaign released a statement saying: “These missile tests demonstrate once again that we need to change our policy to deal aggressively with the threat posed by the Iranian regime. “Now is the time to work with our friends and allies, and to pursue direct and aggressive diplomacy with the Iranian regime backed by tougher unilateral and multilateral sanctions. It’s time to offer the Iranians a clear choice between increased costs for continuing their troubling behavior, and concrete incentives that would come if they change course.” McCain told reporters in South Park, Pa., that the reported tests prove Iran is a threat to the surrounding region. “Channels of communication have been open and will remain open, but the time has now come for effective sanctions on Iran,” he said. “Diplomacy plays a key role … but history shows us when nations embark on paths that can jeopardize the security of the region and the world then other action besides diplomacy has to be contemplated and taken, and that’s why meaningful and impactful sanctions are called for at this time.” McCain said there is “continuing, mounting evidence that Iran is pursuing the acquisition of nuclear weapons,” a statement that appears at odds with a December U.S. intelligence report that concluded the country’s nuclear weapons program was halted in the fall of 2003.

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Obama win  Bush strike on Iran Bush will strike Iran if he sees that Obama will probably win Turkish Daily News 6/ 13, 2008 Friday “BUSH MAY HIT IRAN IF OBAMA WINS PRESIDENCY, US HAWK SAYS” |lexs| U.S. President George W. Bush may strike Iran's nuclear facilities before his successor takes office early next year, if presumed Democratic nominee Barack Obama wins the presidential election on Nov. 4, a leading right-wing analyst has said In an article published in USA Today on Wednesday, Daniel Pipes, director of the Middle East Forum think tank, also called on the Bush administration to step up preparations for potential military action on Iran Pipes is known as a prominent member of the neo-conservative movement of hardliners on Middle Eastern matters. His remarks were so far the strongest call-to-arms against Iran even among this group Currently on a tour of Western European allies, Bush Wednesday said he preferred a diplomatic solution to the conflict with Iran, but that "all options are on the table." The United States accuses Iran of seeking to obtain nuclear weapons. Tehran denies this, saying its nuclear program is peaceful and aimed at energy production "Only by convincing Tehran that it will never be allowed to have nuclear weapons can Washington persuade it to terminate its program, avoiding the need for a military campaign. This can yet be attained, but it requires a basic shift in U.S. policy," Pipes said "First, the Bush administration must prepare for a possible attack on Iran's nuclear infrastructure and, second, signal this publicly. And Israeli leaders should do likewise, as some have done already. Third, the administration must weather the inevitable tsunami of criticism," he said Opposite approaches: Pipes also urged Washington to encourage the governments most opposed to such an attack, including the European Union, Russia and China, to lean on Tehran to end its nuclear program "Should this approach succeed, the crisis is resolved. Should it not, the U.S. presidential election will loom large," he said Pipes contrasted the Iran positions of Obama and John McCain, the presumed Republican nominee, who has said "there's only one thing worse than the United States exercising a military option, and that is a nuclear-armed Iran." He said Obama had a much softer position, calling for "tough-minded diplomacy" and "stronger sanctions." If McCain is elected the next U.S. president, Bush would likely leave the Iran decision to him, Pipes suggested "But Obama 's intention to continue with current failed policies suggests that, if he wins, and despite the tradition of outgoing presidents not undertaking major initiatives, Bush might initiate military action against Iran," he said

IF OBAMA WINS, BUSH WILL STRIKE (Daniel Pipes, Director of the Middle East Forum and Taube distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University., June 11, 2008, USA Today, “Prepare to attack [Iran]”, http://www.danielpipes.org/article/5585, [Ian Miller]) Should it not, the U.S. presidential election in November will loom large. "There's only one thing worse than the United States exercising a military option," John McCain has said. "That is a nuclear-armed Iran." In contrast, Barack Obama has called for "tough-minded diplomacy," "stronger [economic] sanctions," and "alternative sources of energy" – basically, a call for more of the same. If George W. Bush's term ends with a McCain victory, Bush will likely punt, allowing McCain to decide on the next steps. But Obama's intention to continue with current failed policies suggests that, if he wins, and despite the tradition of outgoing presidents not undertaking major initiatives in their final weeks, Bush might initiate military action against Iran.

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Obama win  Israel strike on Iran IF OBAMA WINS, ISRAEL WILL STRIKE (Yitzhak Benhorin, Ynet News, 06.24.08, Bolton: Israel will strike Iran if Obama is elected, http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3559502,00.html, [Ian Miller]) WASHINGTON - Former US Ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton, said on Tuesday that he believes Israel will stage a raid against Iran's nuclear facilities if Democratic nominee Senator Barack Obama wins the upcoming presidential elections. Bolton said the IAF would likely strike in the interim term between election day (November 4th) and the inauguration (January 20th 2009) – while George W. Bush is still in office. "I think if they are to do anything, the most likely period is after our elections and before the inauguration of the next President," Bolton said in an interview with FOX News. "I don’t think they will do anything before our election because they don’t want to affect it. And they’d have to make a judgment whether to go during the remainder of President Bush’s term in office or wait for his successor In a related interview with the British 'Daily Telegraph,' Bolton said he believed the Arab world would be "pleased" by an Israeli strike. Their reaction, he told the paper "will be positive privately. I think there'll be public denunciations but no action." Bolton believes that Israel may consider postponing the attack if Senator John McCain emerges as the victor in the race, and said apprehension of Obama's foreign policy in Jerusalem would likely be the motivating factor behind an early strike.

Obama victory spurs Israel to strike Iran which leads to Middle East war, arms races, terrorism, and oil crises Michael Burleigh 7/10/08 (“Yes, he's a monster who may go nuclear. But a military strike against Iran would be a catastrophe”, Daily Mail (London), lexis) THE Islamic Republic of Iran test-fired nine missiles yesterday in what was an audacious show of military bravado, to prove that the country is ready to retaliate for any Western attack over its disputed nuclear projects. These manoeuvres followed recent exercises by Israeli fighter jets and submarines which had, indeed, fuelled speculation that Israel and the U.S. might be planning a joint attack on Iran's nuclear facilities. But could we really be on the verge of a strike on Iran? If we are, how could it be achieved? And, more importantly, how seriously should we take Iran's reaction? The first thing to say is that, while Israeli determination to deal with Iran's nuclear threat is growing by the day, George W Bush actually seems to have cooled to the idea of striking Iran ever since an U.S. national intelligence estimate argued earlier this year that the country was some way off developing nuclear weapons. Yet Israeli intelligence sources believe that, in a worst case scenario, Iran could have nuclear weapons in a year. And they are not prepared to wait to see if President Ahmadinejad fulfils his threat to 'wipe Israel off the map'. Holocaust Having experienced one Holocaust within living memory, the Israelis are not going to idly watch preparations for another. The truth is that a joint attack is unlikely. But that still leaves the option of Israel going it alone, with the blessing of the Americans, who would allow their planes to fly over Iraq and put U.S. intelligence and equipment at their disposal. As to timing, John Bolton, the hawkish former U.S. ambassador to the UN and friend of Israel, has indicated that such an attack would depend on the results of the forthcoming U.S. presidential elections. If Barack Obama who favours talks with the Iranian leadership to resolve this issue wins in early November, Israel may be tempted to strike in the window of opportunity between victory and Obama would then have to manage the diplomatic fall-out. In the less likely scenario of a Republican win, the attack might be postponed, to see whether a belligerent John McCain might go where Bush is reluctant to. Only one thing is certain: any attack would have seismic repercussions and, terrifyingly, would involve the first use in more than 60 years of tactical nuclear weapons. The targets? Iran has three main nuclear facilities which are hundreds of miles apart. They are a Russianbuilt-and-staffed light water facility at Bushehr; a major underground uranium plant at Natanz; and two water facilities at Arak to convert uranium dioxide into weapons grade plutonium. Because some of these facilities are in reinforced underground bunkers, it is highly likely that Israel will use bombs to drill holes through the concrete, before dropping tactical 'mini-nukes'. Since these secondary explosions would happen underground, Israeli experts claim there is no danger of radioactive fallout.

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Obama win  Israel strike on Iran Continued – no text removed… The political fall-out, however, would be vast and not just because of the Russian reaction if some of their technicians are inadvertently killed at Bushehr. The Iranians have threatened dire consequences if the Israelis attack. They will retaliate with long-range ballistic missiles, thought to be more accurate than the Scud missiles Saddam Hussein launched during the first Gulf War. They are also likely to retaliate against any neighbouring state that allows Israel to fly through their airspace towards Iran, including Turkey and Iraq. And since Iran views Israel and the U.S. as a single evil, they may risk attacking U.S. forces stationed in Iraq or the nearby Gulf states. This would suck the U.S. directly into the conflict and result in a huge retaliation. Ground forces may be fully occupied in the Iraq surge, but you must never forget the enormous firepower of the U.S. air force and navy. Missiles The Iranians have also threatened to cut off oil supplies in the region if it is bombed, by unleashing Chinese Silkworm missiles against tanker traffic in the Straits of Hormuz, the world's most vital oil lifeline. Industry experts calculate this would instantly send the price of oil soaring to 300 dollars a barrel. The same experts predict there would be fuel riots across the U.S. and in Britain. As the major Shiite power in the region, Iran would incite quiescent militias in Iraq to intensify operations against their U.S. and British occupiers. We have already seen the deadly consequences of Iranian-supplied explosive devices in Iraq: they are more than capable of sending in trained military personnel to increase the carnage. As the world's major statesponsor of terrorism, Iran could encourage Hamas and Hezbollah to attack Israel, which would struggle to fight off both. No one in western intelligence really knows whether Iran has succeeded in installing 'black ops' teams in Europe or further afield that could mount terrorist attacks on civilian targets in the U.S. and allied countries, but it is certainly likely. The Israelis like to point to their successful June 1981 raid on a French-built nuclear reactor at Osirak, south of Baghdad, as proof that such acts of military audacity are effective. But, in fact, the lessons of history are otherwise. Former Iraqi officials have testified that immediately after Osirak, Saddam Hussein increased spending on his quest for a bomb from 400 million dollars to ten billion dollars, while ensuring that future efforts would be concealed and dispersed throughout Iraq. Enraged Since it is unlikely that Israel has the airforce capacity to do more than disable Iran's nuclear programme, you can safely predict that an enraged Islamic regime will redouble its efforts to acquire a nuclear weapon. This in turn would spark a Middle Eastern arms race as Arab Sunni states seek to acquire nuclear weapons of their own. In fact, Iran's neighbouring states would secretly welcome attacks, as it would give them the excuse to acquire their own bombs. Worse than this, U.S. covert attempts to undermine the ghastly regime of the mullahs in Iran would be nullified as outraged citizens rallied round a government that many of them currently fear or despise. Western leaders continue to talk about stiffening sanctions to bring the Iranians to their senses before it is too late. But Israel no longer has any faith in U.S. and European inspired sanctions. Unless sanctions are seen to bite pretty quickly, the clock will continue ticking towards actions that will trigger an altogether bigger war in the Middle East at a time when the West is struggling in Afghan-istan and Iraq. Quite simply, the effects of a strike on Iran would be catastrophic.

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Israel strike on Iran bad Israel strike on Iran would destabilize the Middle East AP 7/2/08 (“Joint Chiefs Head Wary of Iran Strike”, http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/07/02/national/main4227809.shtml? source=RSSattr=U.S._4227809) (CBS/ AP) An Israeli strike on Iranian nuclear facilities would be a high-risk move that could destabilize the Middle East, the Pentagon's top military officer said Wednesday. At a Defense Department press conference, Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, refused to say what Israeli leaders told him during meetings last week about any intentions to strike Iran. But asked whether he was concerned Israel would strike before the end of the year, he said: "This is a very unstable part of the world and I don't need it to be more unstable." The U.S. military is severely strained already by wars on two fronts - the nearly seven-yearold campaign in Afghanistan and more than five years in Iraq. "Opening up a third front right now would be extremely stressful on us," Mullen said. Meanwhile, Iran's oil minister warned Wednesday that an attack on Iran would provoke a fierce response. Tehran "is not going to be quiet," if attacked, Nozari told reporters. It's "going to react fiercely, and nobody can imagine what would be the reaction of Iran," Gholam Hossein Nozari said at the World Petroleum Congress in Madrid. The Bush administration and other world leaders allege Iran is seeking to produce nuclear weapons and Iran says its nuclear program is aimed only at generating electricity. "I believe they're still on a path to get nuclear weapons and I think that's something that needs to be deterred," Mullen said, adding that it should be done through diplomatic, financial and economic actions by the U.S. and other nations. But, he added, "I think that just about every move in that part of the world is a high-risk move." In a press conference earlier in the day, President Bush also was asked about increasing speculation that Israel will launch a military strike, saying that all options are on the table but that military action would not be his first choice. "I have made it very clear to all parties that the first option ought to be solve this problem diplomatically," Mr. Bush said. "And the best way to solve it diplomatically is for the United States to work with other nations to send a focused message - and that is, you will be isolated, and you will have economic hardship, if you continue to enrich" uranium for a bomb.

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Iran Strikes Bad Iran strikes would escalate into a broader Middle East conflagration Michel Chossudovsky, Center for Research on Globalization, 1/16/07 “Editorial Note – Iran: Pieces in Place for Escalation” http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=4483 [Mills] The following text by Colonel Sam Gardiner (USAF, Retired) confirms our worst fears. The US is in an advanced state of readiness to wage war on Iran. To reverse the tide requires a massive campaign of networking and outreach to inform people across the land, nationally and internationally, in neighborhoods, workplaces, parishes, schools, universities, municipalities, on the dangers of a US sponsored war, which contemplates the use of nuclear weapons. The message should be loud and clear: It is not Iran which is a threat to global security but the United States of America and Israel. Even without the use of nukes, the proposed aerial bombardments could result in escalation, ultimately leading us into a broader war in the Middle East. Debate and discussion must also take place within the Military and Intelligence community, particularly with regard to the use of tactical nuclear weapons, within the corridors of the US Congress, in municipalities and at all levels of government. Ultimately, the legitimacy of the political and military actors in high office must be challenged. The corporate media also bears a heavy responsibility for the cover-up of US sponsored war crimes. It must also be forcefully challenged for its biased coverage of the Middle East war. What is needed is to break the conspiracy of silence, expose the media lies and distortions, confront the criminal nature of the US Administration and of those governments which support it, its war agenda as well as its so-called "Homeland Security agenda" which has already defined the contours of a police State. The World is at the crossroads of the most serious crisis in modern history. The US has embarked on a military adventure, "a long war", which threatens the future of humanity. It is essential to bring the US war project to the forefront of political debate, particularly in North America and Western Europe. Political and military leaders who are opposed to the war must take a firm stance, from within their respective institutions. Citizens must take a stance individually and collectively against war.

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Iran Strikes bad Iran Strikes Bad- Destabilize the Middle East Jonathan Karl 7/2/08 (“Pentagon Top Brass: Don’t Attack Iran”, ABC News, http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/Vote2008/Story?id=5294698&page=1) Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen, who was in Israel over the weekend, issued a strong warning today about the dangers of a military attack on Iran. At a Pentagon press conference, Mullen was asked, "How concerned are you ... that Israel may undertake a unilateral strike against Iran by the end of the year?" "My strong preference, here, is to handle all of this diplomatically with the other powers of governments, ours and many others, as opposed to any kind of strike occurring," he answered. "This is a very unstable part of the world. And I don't need it to be more unstable." Mullen refused to talk specifically about what was said in his talks with the Israelis, but he made it clear wants to avoid military confrontation. "I've been pretty clear before that from the United States' perspective, the United States' military perspective in particular, that opening up a third front right now would be extremely stressful on us," he said. "That doesn't mean we don't have capacity or reserve. But that would really be very challenging and also the consequences of that sometimes are very difficult to predict." Mullen said there needs to be better "dialogue" on the Iranian nuclear issue. Asked what he meant, Mullen responded, "When I talk about dialogue -- actually, I would say very broadly across the entirety of our government and their government. "But, specifically, that would be -need to be led, obviously, politically and diplomatically," he said. "And if it then resulted in military-tomilitary dialogue, I think that part of it certainly could add to a better understanding of each other. "We haven't had much of a dialogue with the Iranians for a long time," Mullen said. "It takes two people to want to have a dialogue, not just the desire on one part." Mullen's views here seem to be at odds with the Bush administration's policy, which is that there will be no direct dialogue between the United States and Iran on the nuclear issue unless Iran agrees to suspend its nuclear program.

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Iran strikes bad Strikes on Iran would complicate US interests in the Middle East, spur terrorism, hurt progress in Iraq, kill the global economy, and spike oil prices Paul Kelly 7/2/08 (Editor, The Australian, “All must lean on Iran”) There is, however, no denying that the US and Iran are on a collision trajectory. Former US diplomat Nicholas Burns, who was number three at the State Department under Bush, told The Australian: ``I think for President Bush and for the next president, Iran is the most serious foreign policy challenge because the consequences of an altercation with Iran are incalculable for our interests and for the fate of the larger Middle East. We have been right to keep the military option on the table but I do not believe there is an inevitability about war with Iran.'' The arguments against hostilities by either the US or Israel are far greater than recognised. First, any strike will prejudice the pivotal US strategic goals in Iraq and Afghanistan. It would expose 150,000 US forces in Iraq to Iranian retaliation. It would threaten progress in Iraq and vastly complicate US force withdrawal. It would trigger Iranian terrorist activity across the region and provoke Shi'ite militia group Hezbollah into strikes. It would represent a complete refusal to absorb the lesson from the 2003 invasion of Iraq: that resort to massive military action unleashes forces beyond the control of the US. Second, the global economic consequences would be grave. Iranian retaliation would see the world oil price skyrocket from its present high level. Commander-in-chief of Iran's revolutionary guards, Mohammad Ali Jafari, has warned that Iran ``will definitely act to impose controls on the Persian Gulf and Strait of Hormuz''. This will take inflation and recession threats to new peaks in the industrialised world. The resentment towards Bush would be even greater. Third, the Bush administration would implode politically. There is little grasp in Australia of the dramatic power shifts within the administration with VicePresident Dick Cheney's influence on the wane and the diplomatic option in the ascendancy under Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defence Secretary Robert Gates.

Iran Strikes fail- diplomatic engagement not military force is the only way to solve Iran’s nuclear problems in the long term Alexander T. Lennon & Camille Eiss 04 (Reshaping Rogue States: Preemption, Regime Change, and U.S. Policy, MIT Press, pg. 246-247) Because the exact status of Iran’s nuclear program is unknown, the time available to attempt to resolve this thorny issue diplomatically is uncertain as well. External pressure is undoubtedly a necessary element of such a strategy, but it is unlikely to be sufficient in the long term even if it is successful in buying some time in the short term. A complementary effort is needed to influence nuclear politics within Iran by generating a real debate among the Iranian public. This type of political transparency would end Iranian radical hard-liners’ monopoly on information and debunk the putative energy rationale for the nuclear program. Moreover, informed discussion would help Iranians distinguish between the development of nuclear technology and that of nuclear weapons, that is, between programs that are legal and accompanied by assurances and inspections and those that are used to cover up illicit activities. Such a debate could similarly subject to hard scrutiny the important strategic motivations for a weapons option, which remain either unstated or mentioned obliquely because the regime denies violating its NPT obligations in the first place. Formidable political impediments exist, but in the quasi-democracy of contemporary Iran, the nuclear issue could become contested turf – a process that could potentially lead to a positive long-term change in the country’s strategic culture and thus help curtail nuclear proliferation in Iran. Government hard-liners have long determined the security policies of the Islamic Republic. The particular experience of Iran – revolution, war, sanctions, and estrangement from international society – has created a shared sense of embattlement in a hostile environment, leaving little scope for debate. In addition, foreign and security policies historically have not been at the forefront of the reformists’ concerns. This situation has changed in recent years; as the costs of the hard-liners’ choices in security policy have mounted, affecting Iran’s development prospects, so have public scrutiny of such security policies as well as the inclination to question their rationale. The particular character of the Iranian proliferation challenge and the country’s dynamic domestic politics present an opportunity for the United States and its allies to pursue a comprehensive strategy that promotes the transformation of Iran’s internal debate in tandem with external efforts to induce or compel Iranian compliance with nonproliferation norms.

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Iran strikes bad – A2: preventative Iran will retaliate by targeting US troops in the Middle East, escalating into full conflict. Phyllis Bennis, Fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies 4/19/06 “Iran: The Day After” http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0419-23.htm [Mills] But what if the Bush administration orders it anyway? What if they DO carry out just such a strike, nuclear or otherwise? Then what? What happens the day after? Practically no one is talking about that. And that makes this whole threat even more dangerous. It's as if the Bush administration believes that the day after they bomb Iran, everything will be over, except maybe for the happy campers in the streets of Tehran cheering and clamoring for the U.S. to bomb some more to help them change their regime. Maybe they really do believe that. We have to assume there are plenty of Iranian versions of Ahmad Chalabi around Washington, exiles eager to return to power on the backs of U.S. tanks, urging the White House on. But there's no reason we should believe them. Given the history of lies and deceit that underpinned the Bush administration's invasion and occupation of Iraq, we have no excuse for buying their lies once again. Fool me once…fool me twice, after all. Let's look at reality, instead of lies, distortions and weasel-words. If the U.S. attacks Iran with nuclear or "conventional" bombs - it is virtually certain that Iranian retaliation will be swift and lethal. Iran's surrounding neighborhood is, as the military jargon puts it, "target-rich." Iran's military strategists will have a wide choice. A direct attack on U.S. troops in Iraq or elsewhere in the region (Oman and Qatar are both possibilities) is only the first option. Iran's military is certainly no match for the Pentagon, but serious retaliation doesn't require that; Tehran has plenty of conventional capacity to target those troop concentrations. How about Israel? Tel Aviv has been making bellicose threats towards Iran even before the Bush administration took up the crusade, and Israel's 1981 destruction of Iraq's French-built nuclear power plant at Osirak still looms large in Middle Eastern memories. Iran's missiles can certainly reach Israeli cities. And given President Bush's statements that Iran represents a threat to Israel, and that the U.S. will do whatever is needed to "protect our ally," it is certainly possible that Iran's retaliation will target Israel, regardless of whether it is ultimately U.S. or Israeli bombers that drop their lethal payload. Another possibility would be an attack through proxies, particularly in Iraq. Iraqi Shi'a and others, outraged by the expansion of Washington's war to Iran, could well push already unstable parts of the country over the edge. Southern Iraq could collapse into chaos and violence. (Conversely, the widely-discussed claim that Iran might retaliate against the U.S. by "turning loose" Hezbollah to commit rampant terror attacks around the world appears to be grounded less in facts than in febrile Washington imaginations. Such a scenario assumes that Hezbollah, a decades-old anti-occupation movement in Lebanon created to resist Israel's 1982 invasion, is nothing more than a cat's-paw of the Iranian regime that Tehran can deploy at will. It denies the reality of Hezbollah's independent, popular legitimacy, including its powerful representation in the Lebanese parliament, and the fact that despite long-standing Iranian support, Hezbollah's strategic imperatives are driven by Lebanese, not Iranian, realities.)

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Iran strikes bad – A2: wouldn’t escalate Any retaliation by Iran would force the US to engage with more nuclear weapons. Phyllis Bennis, Fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies 4/19/06 “Iran: The Day After” http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0419-23.htm [Mills] And what about the oil weapon? Iran certainly has the capacity to shut the strategic, but potentially vulnerable, Strait of Hormuz, through which a huge proportion of Middle Eastern oil flows to the rest of the world. What if the Iranian navy scuttled an oil tanker in the Strait, blocking oil traffic? What if it was a U.S. tanker? Do we really think the Bush administration - which so far has steadfastly refused even to hint at the possibility that Iran might respond with anything other than cheers and flowers to a U.S. bombing campaign would respond to Tehran's military retaliation politely, saying "oh of course we anticipated an Iranian strikeback, it's just tit-for-tat and now it's over"? Or do we think they will be true to form and move towards powerful retribution against Iran, possibly including the invasion by U.S. ground troops that we're being told today is not even being considered? Some military analysts indicate Iran's troops these days are training primarily in defensive guerrilla-war strategies, seemingly aimed at overcoming a future invasion. That shouldn't surprise us. Iran, like the rest of the world, has watched the Bush administration's disparate treatment of the various "Axis of Evil" countries. It has escaped no one's notice – certainly not Iran's – that the U.S. invaded Iraq, a country that had no viable nuclear program, while quietly ignoring North Korea, understood to have at least the technical capacity to produce, and perhaps already having, an existing nuclear weapon. We can assume that other countries around the world have learned the same dangerous and tragic lesson – that Non-Proliferation Treaty or not, if you get on the wrong side of Washington only a nuclear capacity might protect you from a possible U.S. invasion.

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Iran strikes bad – prolif A US nuclear strike would undermine the NPT, encouraging widespread proliferation Phyllis Bennis, Fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies 4/19/06 “Iran: The Day After” http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0419-23.htm [Mills] For all sides, talk is crucial. Nuclear weapons - in anyone's hands - are a nightmare that should be abolished once and for all, as the now-fading Non-Proliferation Treaty anticipated so many years ago. Certainly Iran should abjure any search for nuclear weapons - but that's not going to happen alone. What we need - what we ALL need - is a weapons of mass destruction-free zone throughout the Middle East. So not only no nukes for Iran, but let's be sure Israel signs the NPT and places its unacknowledged but highly provocative Dimona arsenal of 200-400 high-density nuclear bombs under international supervision, and then allows the inspectors to destroy them. Let's be sure no country in the Middle East is running a chemical- or biologicalweapons program - the poor countries' nuclear weapons substitute of choice and an unfortunate inevitability as long as Israel has a nuclear monopoly in the region. And it’s way past time for the U.S. to make good on its own NPT obligations to move towards full and complete nuclear disarmament. As long as Washington laughs off that obligation, and officially rejects it, it is hard to imagine why any other countries should take seriously a U.S. demand that take nuclear weapons off their agenda. Ironically enough the U.S. is already on record supporting just such a WMD-free zone in the Middle East. Article 14 of UN Security Resolution 687, that ended the 1991 Gulf War and imposed crippling sanctions on Iraq, states that disarming Iraq should be viewed as part of "establishing in the Middle East a zone free of all weapons of mass destruction and the missiles to deliver them." The language was written by the U.S. It's time we held Washington accountable to that pledge. Let's talk to Iran.

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Iran strikes good Iran’s instability makes strikes the only to prevent nuclear weapons struggles, terrorism, and oil crises Rick Santorum 7/17/08 (The Philadelphia Inquirer, “The Elephant in the Room: Obama is right to talk tough on a nuclear-armed Iran”, http://www.philly.com/inquirer/opinion/25548464.html) Over the past weeks much has been made of Barack Obama's hard right turn toward the center of the political spectrum. There's been no greater about-face than his embrace of the Bush Doctrine on the next likely foreign policy crisis - Iran. The Bush Doctrine refers to the strategy of preemptive warfare that President Bush set forth in 2002. It's the idea that the United States will not wait for menacing enemies to attack us; we will attack preemptively in certain cases. But how, you might ask, can the candidate of MoveOn.org and the antiwar-forever crowd be aligned with Bush on preemptive strikes against Iran? Here's how: Last month, Obama declared, "I will do everything in my power to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, everything in my power to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon - everything." When a would-be commander in chief says "everything" three times in one sentence - and says so publicly - he is not just talking about continued diplomacy and sanctions. He's saying that he has not taken the military option off the table. With that statement, Obama, the definitive antiwar candidate, ended any serious debate over preemption in the post-9/11 world. And none too soon. International Atomic Energy Administration director Mohamed ElBaradei said last month that if Iran expelled the United Nations' nuclear watchdog agency, Iran would need six months to produce a nuclear weapon. Couple that with last week's test firing of missiles capable of delivering that weapon to Israel, and it is no wonder you have seen a rash of stories about the Israelis training for strikes against Iran. Everyone hopes, of course, that the United States and the West might persuade Iran to give up its nuclear ambitions with measures short of military action. But things aren't looking too promising. Either way, the fundamental issue remains: Preemption or containment - is a nucleararmed Iran acceptable if economic sanctions and diplomatic pressures fail? Obama's primary-season supporters would argue that a pre-emptive strike poses far greater danger than a nuclear Iran. Iran, the argument runs, can be "kept in a box," as happened with the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Here are a few problems with that argument: Iran's ruling mullahs and their bombastic, hand-picked president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, are not the Politburo and Nikita Khrushchev. For starters, Soviet leaders had absolute control over their weapons and launch codes. Given the leadership struggle among Iran's military, mullahs and political leadership, control of that nation's nuclear arms would be subject to ongoing internal power plays. This would increase the chance of an "unplanned" launch as well as a weapon falling into the hands of Islamic terrorists. We trusted the Soviets to act rationally and respond rationally to our actions. History proved we were right to do so. Given the radical nature of the Ahmadinejad's regime, his promise to "wipe Israel off the map" and his nation's close theological and military ties to terrorist organizations, we cannot expect the same from the Iranians. Today's nuclear chess game would have three or more nuclear powers, not just two, playing at the same time and exponentially increasing complexity and uncertainty. On top of that the game is being played in a region where brinkmanship and deception are standard operating procedures. Most important, Soviet leaders were avowed atheists; all that mattered to them was this life. Death and annihilation were not attractive options. Thus, the Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) doctrine made sense. Iran's leaders believe all that matters is the next life. Killing, or being killed by, infidels in defense of Islam is the surest way to get you there with a posse of virgins at your disposal. Thankfully, Bush, Obama and John McCain have all promised to use every means necessary to keep Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. But if we fail to deliver on this promise, what Middle East ally would then trust us to protect them? The result - more nuclear nations. And if you think oil prices are high today, think about the power that a nuclear Iran would have to use oil as a weapon to drive the price to $250 a barrel or more. I have heard from many sources that our allies, including our Arab allies, ask us one question and one question only today: When are we going to give Israel the green light? Given McCain and Obama's comments to date, it appears that when that moment comes - and come I fear it will - both presidential nominees will stand behind President Bush and our allies. Or will they?

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Strikes inevitable Impact’s inevitable – Bush’s already approved Isreali strikes. Huffington Post 7/13/2008, Bush Supports Israeli Plan For Strike On Iran: Report, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/07/13/bush-supports-israeli-pla_n_112367.html Last month Seymour Hersh of the New Yorker reported that the Bush Administration has stepped up covert operations inside Iran. Now the Times of London, citing information from a senior Pentagon official, says that Bush backs an Israeli plan for a strike on that country's nuclear facilities: President George W Bush has told the Israeli government that he may be prepared to approve a future military strike on Iranian nuclear facilities if negotiations with Tehran break down, according to a senior Pentagon official. Despite the opposition of his own generals and widespread scepticism that America is ready to risk the military, political and economic consequences of an airborne strike on Iran, the president has given an "amber light" to an Israeli plan to attack Iran's main nuclear sites with long-range bombing sorties, the official told The Sunday Times. "Amber means get on with your preparations, stand by for immediate attack and tell us when you're ready," the official said. But the Israelis have also been told that they can expect no help from American forces and will not be able to use US military bases in Iraq for logistical support. Nor is it certain that Bush's amber light would ever turn to green without irrefutable evidence of lethal Iranian hostility. Tehran's test launches of medium-range ballistic missiles last week were seen in Washington as provocative and poorly judged, but both the Pentagon and the CIA concluded that they did not represent an immediate threat of attack against Israeli or US targets. "It's really all down to the Israelis," the Pentagon official added. "This administration will not attack Iran. This has already been decided. But the president is really preoccupied with the nuclear threat against Israel and I know he doesn't believe that anything but force will deter Iran."

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***IRAQ

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Obama withdrawal bad Obama’s withrawal would allow for al-Qaida to resurface, and lead to more terrorism Rich Lowry, King Features Syndicate Columnist, 17 July 2008 Indiana Gazette“RICH LOWRY: Barack Obama's anti-factual Iraq war” http://online.indianagazette.com/index.php? option=com_content&task=view&id=32815&Itemid=126 At some point, Democrats decided that facts didn't matter anymore in Iraq. And they nominated just the man to reflect the party's new anti-factual consensus on the war, a Barack Obama who has fixedly ignored changing conditions on the ground. It's gotten harder as the success of the surge has become undeniable, but - despite some wobbles - Obama is sticking to his plan for a 16-month timeline for withdrawal from Iraq. He musters dishonesty, evasion and straw-grasping to try to create a patina of respectability around a scandalously unserious position. Obama spokesmen now say everyone knew that President Bush's troop surge would create more security. This is blatantly false. Obama said in early 2007 that nothing in the surge plan would "make a significant dent in the sectarian violence," and the new strategy would "not prove to be one that changes the dynamics significantly." He referred to the surge derisively as "baby-sit(ting) a civil war." Now that the civil war has all but ended, he wants to claim retroactive clairvoyance. In a New York Times op-ed laying out his position, Obama credits the heroism of our troops and new tactics with bringing down the violence. Our troops have always been heroic; what made the difference was the surge strategy that Obama lacked the military judgment - or political courage - to support.In his op-ed, Obama states that "the same factors that led me to oppose the surge still hold true," citing the strain on the military, the deterioration in Afghanistan and the fiscal drain. All of those are important, but pale compared with the achievement in Iraq - beating back alQaida and Iranian-backed militias, and restoring a semblance of order to a country on the verge of a collapse from which only our enemies could have benefited. Politically, Obama has to notionally support defeating alQaida in Iraq, so even after he's executed his 16-month withdrawal, he says there will be a "residual force" of American troops to take on "remnants of al-Qaida." How can he be so sure there will only be "remnants"? If there are, it will be because the surge Obama opposed has pushed al-Qaida to the brink. The more precipitously we withdraw our troops, the more likely al-Qaida is to mount a comeback. Obama treats as a vindication a recent statement by Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki calling for a timeline for withdrawal of U.S. forces. But Maliki, playing to his domestic political audience, can't be taken at face value. Neither Maliki nor anyone around him talks of an unconditional 16-month timeline for withdrawal as being remotely plausible. His defense minister says Iraqis will be ready to handle internal security on their own in 2012 and external security by 2020. The Iraqis most enthusiastic about Obama's plan surely are al-Qaida members, Sadrists, Iranian agents and sectarian killers of every stripe. The prospect of an American president suddenly letting up on them has to be the best cause for hope they've had in months. Obama's withdrawal would immediately embolden every malign actor in Iraq, and increase their sway in Iraqi politics. In his op-ed, Obama sticks to the badly dated contention that Iraqis "have not reached the political accommodation that was the stated purpose of the surge." In fact, roughly 15 of 18 political benchmarks have been met by the Iraqis - progress Obama threatens to reverse. Obama loves to say that we have to withdraw from Iraq "responsibly." There's nothing responsible about his plan. According to U.S. commanders on the ground, it may not even be logistically possible. Does Obama even care? He says that when he's elected he'd give the military a new mission - to end the war. Conditions in Iraq, let alone winning, are marginalia. There are two possible interpretations - either Obama is dangerously sincere, or he's a cynical operator playing duplicitous politics with matters of war and peace. Watch this space.

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Obama withdrawal bad Obama’s plan to withdrawal will lead to chaos in Iraq SABRINA TAVERNISE and RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr., staff writers, July 17, 2008 New York Times“In Iraq, Mixed Feelings About Obama and His Troop Proposal” http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/17/world/middleeast/17voices.html? bl&ex=1216526400&en=4bebfb6f9f18891c&ei=5087%0A Everyone in Iraq likes him,” said the general, Nassir al-Hiti. “I like him. He’s young. Very active. We would be very happy if he was elected president.” But mention Mr. Obama’s plan for withdrawing American soldiers, and the general stiffens. “Very difficult,” he said, shaking his head. “Any army would love to work without any help, but let me be honest: for now, we don’t have that ability.” Thus in a few brisk sentences, the general summed up the conflicting emotions about Mr. Obama in Iraq, the place outside America with perhaps the most riding on its relationship with him. There was, as Mr. Obama prepared to visit here, excitement over a man who is the anti-Bush in almost every way: a Democrat who opposed a war that many Iraqis feel devastated their nation. And many in the political elite recognize that Mr. Obama shares their hope for a more rapid withdrawal of American forces from Iraq. But his support for troop withdrawal cuts both ways, reflecting a deep internal quandary in Iraq: for many middle-class Iraqis, affection for Mr. Obama is tempered by worry that his proposal could lead to chaos in a nation already devastated by war. Many Iraqis also acknowledge that security gains in recent months were achieved partly by the buildup of American troops, which Mr. Obama opposed and his presumptive Republican opponent, Senator John McCain, supported. “In no way do I favor the occupation of my country,” said Abu Ibrahim, a Western-educated businessman in Baghdad, “but there is a moral obligation on the Americans at this point.”

Obama’s withdrawal policy would lead to civil war and attacks on Israel Hilary Krieger, Staff Writer, Jun 2, 2008 Jerusalem Post “McCain: Iraq troop pullout bad for Israel” http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1212041458247&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull McCain also criticized Obama by name for his support of troop withdrawals from Iraq, arguing that would jeopardize Israel's security and lead to civil war and genocide. To applause, McCain declared, "We must not let this happen." Sevugan countered that McCain "promises to continue a war in Iraq that has emboldened Iran and strengthened its hand." MK Ephraim Sneh warned the AIPAC audience that a year from now, Iran would be on the verge of completing a nuclear weapon - and that Israel was preparing to face that challenge alone. "There will be a government in Israel which will not allow it to happen," he declared, and added, "Our assumption is that we may face the problem alone." Sneh continued, "if we are alone, we will have to act alone." He did not specify what action Israel was contemplating, though there has been speculation as to whether Israel is planning a military attack.

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Obama withdrawal bad Obama’s plan to withdraw troops from Iraw would destroy all security in Iraq and cause a power vacuum MARTHA RADDATZ, staff writer, July 11, 2008, ABC News “Obama's Iraq Withdrawal Plan May Prove Difficult” http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/Vote2008/story?id=5351864&page=1 Whatever nuance Barack Obama is now adding to his Iraq withdrawal strategy, the core plan on his Web site is as plain as day: Obama would "immediately begin to remove our troops from Iraq. He will remove one to two combat brigades each month, and have all of our combat brigades out of Iraq within 16 months." It is a plan that, no doubt, helped Obama get his party's nomination, but one that may prove difficult if he is elected president. Sustainable Security Military personnel in Iraq are following the presidential race closely, especially when it comes to Iraq. The soldiers and commanders we spoke to will not engage in political conversation or talk about any particular candidate, but they had some strong opinions about the military mission which they are trying to accomplish, and the dramatic security gains they have made in the past few months. We spent a day with Maj. Gen. Jeffery Hammond in Sadr City. He is the commander of the 4th Infantry Division, which is responsible for Baghdad. Hammond will likely be one of the commanders who briefs Barack Obama when he visits Iraq. "We still have a ways to go. Number one, we're working on security and it's very encouraging, that's true, but what we're really trying to achieve here is sustainable security on Iraqi terms. So, I think my first response to that would be let's look at the conditions. "Instead of any time-based approach to any decision for withdrawal, it's got to be conditions-based, with the starting point being an intelligence analysis of what might be here today, and what might lie ahead in the future. I still think we still have work that remains to be done before I can really answer that question," Hammond said when asked how he would feel about an order to start drawing down two combat brigades a month. Asked if he considered it dangerous to pull out if the withdrawal is not based on "conditions," Hammond said, "It's very dangerous. I'll speak for the coalition forces, men and women of character and moral courage; we have a mission, and it's not until the mission is done that I can look my leader in the eye and say, 'Sir, Ma'am, mission accomplished,' and I think it is dangerous to leave anything a little early." That phrase, "sustainable security," is something you hear a lot in Iraq. Lt. Gen. Lloyd Austin, who is the operational commander of all U.S. forces in Iraq, says he has seen things improve significantly here. As for Obama's stated plan to bring home the troops within 16 months, Austin said, "I'd have to see the entire plan. I'd have to understand the strategic objectives of the leadership, and based on those strategic objectives, come up with operational objectives. It's very difficult to comment on one way or the other, whether one plan would work or one plan wouldn't work. Right now, we are helping the Iraqis achieve sustainable security, and helping them to increase the capability of the Iraqi security forces, and we are making great progress along those lines." On the streets of Baghdad, where a suicide bomber had struck just days before, Capt. Josh West told us he wants to finish the mission, and that any further drawdown has to be based on conditions on the ground. "If we pull out of here too early, it's going to establish a vacuum of power that violent criminal groups will be able to fill once we leave," West said. Capt. Jeremy Ussery, a West Point graduate on his third deployment, pointed to his heavy body armor as we walked in the 120-degree heat, saying, "The same people keep coming back because we want to see Iraq succeed, that's what we want. I don't want my kids, that hopefully will join the military, my notional children, to have to come back to Iraq 30 years from now and wear this." But Ussery added, "You can't put a timetable on it -- it's events-based."

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Withdrawal bad Withdrawal of military in Iraq would result in disaster Niall Ferguson, Professor of History Harvard College, May 24, 2005 NEW YORK TIMES, http://www.wcfia.harvard.edu/node/3138 For history strongly suggests that a hasty American withdrawal from Iraq would be a disaster. "If we let go of the insurgency," said another of the officers quoted anonymously last week, "then this country could fail and go back into civil war and chaos." As many of the war's opponents seem to have forgotten, civil war and chaos tend to break out when American military interventions have been aborted. Think not only of Vietnam and Cambodia, but also of Lebanon in 1983 and Haiti in 1996. To talk glibly of "finding a way out of Iraq," as if it were just a matter of hailing a cab and heading for the Baghdad airport, is to underestimate the danger of a bloody internecine conflict among Kurds, Sunni Arabs and Shiites. Instead of throwing up our hands in an irresponsible fit of despair, we need to learn not just from past disasters but also from historical victories over insurgencies. Indeed, of all the attempts in the past century by irregular indigenous forces to expel regular foreign forces, around a third have failed.

Sudden withdrawal would cause ethnic cleansing in the Middle East Niall Ferguson, Professor of History Harvard College, May 24, 2005 NEW YORK TIMES, http://www.wcfia.harvard.edu/node/3138 No one should wish for an overhasty American withdrawal from Iraq. It would be the prelude to a bloodbath of ethnic cleansing and sectarian violence, with inevitable spillovers into and interventions from neighboring countries. Rather, it is time to acknowledge just how thinly stretched American forces in Iraq are and to address the problem: whether by finding new allies (send Condoleezza Rice to New Delhi?); radically expanding the accelerated citizenship program for immigrants who join the army; or lowering the (historically high) educational requirements demanded by military recruiters.

Withdrawal leads to civil war in Iraq Jim Lobe, Washington Bureau Chief, September 26, 2005 INTER PRESS SERVICE NEWS AGENCY http://www.ipsnews.net/print.asp?idnews=30428 Barring a major U.S. intervention to ensure that Sunni interests are addressed, according to the report, "Unmaking Iraq: A Constitutional Process Gone Awry", "Iraq is likely to slide toward full-scale civil war and the break-up of the country." Similarly, no one outside the administration doubts the under-reported judgment made here just last week by visiting Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal. "Iraq is a very dangerous situation and a very threatening situation," he said. "The impression is (that it is) gradually going toward disintegration. There seems to be no dynamic now that is pulling the country together." "All the dynamics there are pushing the (Iraqi) people away from each other," he said, adding that, if current trends persist, "It will draw the countries of the region into the conflict..." This view was shared by members of a high-powered panel of Iraq and Iran specialists at the quasi-governmental U.S. Institute for Peace earlier this month. Amid these gloomy, not to say apocalyptic, warnings, a public debate over U.S. withdrawal -- and specifically whether the U.S. military presence is making all-out war more or less likely -- has intensified outside the administration. The mainstream position still sees the U.S. forces as a bulwark that is preventing, or at least braking, the trend toward war. According to Ferguson, who was a war-booster, the current situation, as bad as it is, is just "a little local difficulty" compared to the alternative of all-out civil war and its regionalisation.

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Withdrawal bad Iraq withdrawal would end all progress made towards democracy and Iraq would fall into civil war RON CLAIBORNE, staff writer, March 26, 2008 ABC News“McCain Asserts Iraq Withdrawal Could Mean Civil War” http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/Vote2008/story?id=4528489&page=1 GOP presidential hopeful John McCain on Wednesday cast America's commitment to Iraq as a "moral responsibility" to avert a genocidal civil war that could ensue if U.S. troops are withdrawn too soon. In a major address in California on foreign policy, the presumptive Republican nominee said, "It would be an unconscionable act of betrayal, a stain on our character as a great nation, if we were to walk away from the Iraqi people and consign them to the horrendous violence, ethnic cleansing and possibly genocide that would follow a reckless, irresponsible and premature withdrawal." McCain Sees Progress in Iraq. Speaking to the Los Angeles World Affairs Council, McCain, who has supported the war from the beginning, pointed to what he said were signs of progress: a decrease in violence and civilian and military deaths, Iraqis returning to work, markets open, and oil revenues increasing. He also said there have signs of political reconciliation at the local level, but he acknowledges, "political progress at the national level has been far too slow. … but there is progress." McCain spent two days in Iraq on a congressional visit one-and-a-half weeks ago. He has previously said that to be elected president, he will need to convince American voters that whatever they think of the wisdom of having gone to war, the U.S. has a vital interest in keeping troops there long enough to quash the threat posed by Al Qaeda. The Challenge in November In his speech, he said he believes it is still possible for Iraq to become a stable democracy and it is in the geo-political interests of the United States to see that Iraq and Afghanistan attain that goal. "Those who claim we should withdraw from Iraq in order to fight Al Qaeda more effectively elsewhere are making a dangerous mistake," he warned. "Whether they were there before is immaterial. Al Qaeda is in Iraq now. If we withdraw prematurely, al Qaeda will survive [and] proclaim victory … Civil war in Iraq could easily descend into genocide, and destabilize the entire region as neighboring powers come to the aid of their favored factions. I believe a reckless and premature withdrawal would be a terrible defeat for our security interests and our values."

Pulling out of Iraq would make America appear weak and undercut the Iraqi government James A. Phillips, Research Fellow in Middle Eastern Studies in the Douglas and Sarah Allison Center for Foreign Policy Studies, June 23, 2005 The Heritage Foundation “Firm and Patient Realism Needed in Iraq” http://www.heritage.org/Research/Iraq/wm770.cfm Devised according to considerations in Washington rather than the situation on the ground in Iraq, a pullout would send a dangerous signal of weakness and fecklessness to our allies and enemies in Iraq and elsewhere. Iraqi government forces would be demoralized and could begin to hedge their bets by making deals with, or even defecting to, the insurgency. Insurgent groups would be emboldened to redouble their efforts against Americans to strengthen their claim to a military victory and attract more recruits. Many Iraqis who have been sitting on the fence, particularly in Sunni Arab areas, would have little choice but to support the insurgents in order to insure themselves against reprisal. A sudden American exit also would undercut efforts to increase international support for the Iraqi government, just when it appears to be gaining momentum. Yesterday, an international conference in Brussels, attended by more than 70 countries, yielded new pledges of political and economic support for the transitional Iraqi government formed after the elections in January. Another conference aimed at mobilizing additional foreign aid for Iraq is scheduled for July. It would be tragic if America cuts and runs from Iraq just as the European Union and other countries belatedly show some willingness to step up their efforts to support Iraq’s embryonic democracy.

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Withdrawal bad American pullout collapses the Iraqi government and military Reuel Marc Gerecht, resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, 01/15/2007, The Weekly Standard Volume 012, Issue 17, “The Consequences of Failure in Iraq” http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/013/147ltxge.asp What would be the consequences of an American withdrawal from Iraq? Trying to wrap one's mind around the ramifications of a failed Iraq--of an enormous, quite possibly genocidal, Sunni-Shiite clash exploding around American convoys fleeing south--is daunting. In part, this is why few have spent much time talking about what might happen to Iraq, the region, and the United States if the government in Baghdad and its army collapsed into Sunni and Shiite militias waging a battle to the death. Among its many omissions, the Iraq Study Group's stillborn report lacked any sustained description of the probable and possible consequences of a shattered Iraq. Before embarking on such an inquiry, a few remarks are in order about American attitudes and about the continuing reasons for hope in Iraq. Americans, for whom foreign policy has always been loaded with moral imperatives and ethical restraints, don't like staring into a bloody moral abyss that we largely dug. The growing bipartisan endeavor to blame the mess in Iraq on the Iraqis is, among other things, a human reaction to screen out all ugly incoming data. For most of Washington, if not the country, Iraq is already Vietnam--no possibility of success, thousands of wasted lives, a grim conviction that it would be best to let the ungrateful, pitiless foreigners take their country back. As the pro-war New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman wrote recently: "Adding more troops makes sense only if it's to buy more time for positive trends that have already begun to appear on the horizon. I don't see them. In other words, if one can't envision victory--a political solution where Sunni and Shiite Arabs in Iraq live peacefully with each other--then trying to forestall the ghastly consequences of an American flight from Iraq isn't necessary. If we don't have a workable definition of "success," then we don't have a moral obligation to prevent a catastrophe, even one that is largely our fault. The morality of this reasoning is precarious: Should we never try to stop massive slaughters, or try to stop them only when we didn't provoke them, or try to stop them only when we can't get hurt in the effort? Seeing positive trends is difficult when physical security in Baghdad has been declining, primarily because then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his generals John Abizaid and George Casey didn't see this elementary duty of an occupying power as their mission.

American presence in Iraq prevents civil war between Sunnis and Shiites Reuel Marc Gerecht, resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, 01/15/2007, The Weekly Standard Volume 012, Issue 17, “The Consequences of Failure in Iraq” http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/013/147ltxge.asp The miracle in Iraq is that the Iraqi government, feeble and sectarian as it is, hasn't given up trying to play by the rules and hasn't forsaken completely its imperfect constitution. The presence and power of Americans is undoubtedly the primary reason the worst hasn't happened. But only the blind, deaf, dumb, or politically malicious cannot see that the Iraqis themselves, especially the Shia, are still trying desperately to avoid the abyss. Having seen, then, that there is still sufficient political hope on the Iraqi horizon, let us return to the matter of what will likely happen in Mesopotamia and the Middle East if the United States departs. Certainly the most damning consequence of failure in Iraq is the likelihood that an American withdrawal would provoke a take-no-prisoners civil war between the Sunni and Shiite Arabs, which could easily reach genocidal intensity. The historical parallel to have in mind is the battle between subcontinent Hindus and Muslims that came with the independence of India. Although of differing faiths, the pre-1947 Hindus and Muslims were often indistinguishable culturally, linguistically, and physically. Yet they "ethnically cleansed" their respective new nations, India and Pakistan, with exuberance. Somewhere between 500,000 and one million Muslims and Hindus perished, tens of thousands of women were raped, and more than ten million people were forced to flee their homes. This level of barbarism, scaled down to Iraq's population, could quickly happen in Mesopotamia, long before American forces could withdraw from the country. (And it's worth recalling that few British officials anticipated the communal ferocity that came with the end of the Raj.)

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Withdrawal bad Withdrawal from Iraq causes a collapse of the entire Middle East Reuel Marc Gerecht, resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, 01/15/2007, The Weekly Standard Volume 012, Issue 17, “The Consequences of Failure in Iraq” http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/013/147ltxge.asp If we leave Iraq any time soon, the battle for Baghdad will probably lead to a conflagration that consumes all of Arab Iraq, and quite possibly Kurdistan, too. Once the Shia become both badly bloodied and victorious, raw nationalist and religious passions will grow. A horrific fight with the Sunni Arabs will inevitably draw in support from the ferociously anti-Shiite Sunni religious establishments in Jordan and Saudi Arabia, and on the Shiite side from Iran. It will probably destroy most of central Iraq and whet the appetite of Shiite Arab warlords, who will by then dominate their community, for a conflict with the Kurds. If the Americans stabilize Arab Iraq, which means occupying the Sunni triangle, this won't happen. A strong, aggressive American military presence in Iraq can probably halt the radicalization of the Shiite community. Imagine an Iraq modeled on the Lebanese Hezbollah and Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps. The worst elements in the Iranian regime are heavily concentrated in the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps and the Ministry of Intelligence, the two organizations most active inside Iraq. The Lebanese Hezbollah is also present giving tutorials. These forces need increasing strife to prosper. Imagine Iraqi Shiites, battle-hardened in a vicious war with Iraq's Arab Sunnis, spiritually and operationally linking up with a revitalized and aggressive clerical dictatorship in Iran. Imagine the Iraqi Sunni Islamic militants, driven from Iraq, joining up with groups like al Qaeda, living to die killing Americans. Imagine the Hashemite monarchy of Jordan overwhelmed with hundreds of thousands of Iraqi Sunni Arab refugees. The Hashemites have been lucky and clever since World War II. They've escaped extinction several times. Does anyone want to take bets that the monarchy can survive the implantation of an army of militant, angry Iraqi Sunni Arabs? For those who believe that the Israeli-Palestinian peace process is the epicenter of the Middle East, the mass migration of Iraq's Sunni Arabs into Jordan will bury what small chances remain that the Israelis and Palestinians will find an accommodation. With Jordan in trouble, overflowing with viciously anti-American and anti-Israeli Iraqis, peaceful Palestinian evolution on the West Bank of the Jordan river is about as likely as the discovery of the Holy Grail. The repercussions throughout the Middle East of the Sunni-Shiite clash in Iraq are potentially so large it's difficult to digest. Sunni Arabs in Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia will certainly view a hard-won and bloody Shiite triumph in Iraq as an enormous Iranian victory. The Egyptians or the Saudis or both will go for their own nukes. What little chance remains for the Americans and the Europeans to corral peacefully the clerical regime's nuclear-weapons aspirations will end with a Shiite-Sunni death struggle in Mesopotamia, which the Shia will inevitably win. The Israelis, who are increasingly likely to strike preemptively the major Iranian nuclear sites before the end of George Bush's presidency, will feel even more threatened, especially when the Iranian regime underscores its struggle against the Zionist enemy as a means of compensating for its support to the bloody Shiite conquest in Iraq. With America in full retreat from Iraq, the clerical regime, which has often viewed terrorism as a tool of statecraft, could well revert to the mentality and tactics that produced the bombing of Khobar Towers in 1996. If the Americans are retreating, hit them. That would not be just a radical Shiite view; it was the learned estimation of Osama bin Laden and his kind before 9/11. It's questionable to argue that the war in Iraq has advanced the radical Sunni holy war against the United States. There should be no question, however, that an American defeat in Mesopotamia would be the greatest psychological triumph ever for anti-American jihadists. Al Qaeda and its militant Iraqi allies could dominate western Iraq for years--it could take awhile for the Shiites to drive them out. How in the world could the United States destroy these devils when it no longer had forces on the ground in Anbar? Air power? Would we helicopter Special Forces from aircraft carriers in the Persian Gulf into a distant war zone when our intelligence information on this desert region was--as it would surely be--somewhere between poor and nonexistent? Images of Desert One in 1980 come to mind. Neither Jordan nor Kuwait may be eager to lend its airfields for American operations that intend to kill Sunnis who are killing Shiites.

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Withdrawal bad Iraq pullout leads to genocide and civil war Hilary Leila Krieger; 6-3-08; “McCain: Iraq troop pullout bad for Israel” The Jerusalem Post http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1212041458247&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull Presumptive Republican nominee Sen. John McCain used his time at the podium at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee on Monday to launch a withering attack on Democratic rival Barack Obama's Iran policy. A presidential summit with Iranian leaders, which McCain implied that Obama supports, would produce an "earful of anti-Semitic rants" from the Holocaust-denying Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, as well as harm to Iranian dissidents and the strengthening of hardliners. McCain, who called for tough sanctions against Iran, earned his most enthusiastic ovation for another statement referencing the Holocaust: "When we join in saying 'never again,' this is not a wish, a request, or a plea to the enemies of Israel. It is a promise that the United States and Israel will honor, against any enemy who cares to test us." He also received rousing applause for his lambasting of the idea of that the US isn't dealing effectively with Iran because it isn't meeting with its leaders. "The idea that they now seek nuclear weapons because we refuse to engage in presidential-level talks is a serious misreading of history," McCain said to rousing applause. "We hear talk of a meeting with the Iranian leadership offered up as if it were some sudden inspiration, a bold new idea that somehow nobody has ever though of before," he said, recalling several overtures recent US leaders had made to Iran with little to show for it. Obama will address the AIPAC Policy Conference on Wednesday morning, when he hopes that Tuesday's final Democratic primaries, in South Dakota and Montana, will have given him a definitive edge in securing the party nomination over Hillary Clinton, who is also scheduled to speak to AIPAC then. In the past, Obama has expressed a willingness to meet with Iran's leaders without preconditions in an effort to use diplomacy to stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, a position McCain has used to try to portray his competitor as naive and inexperienced. But the Obama campaign quickly pushed back against the attack, arguing that McCain has inflexibly pursued policies that endanger America and Israel. "John McCain stubbornly insists on continuing a dangerous and failed foreign policy that has clearly made the United States and Israel less secure," Obama spokesman Hari Sevugan said. "He promises sanctions that the Bush administration has been unable to persuade the (United Nations) Security Council to deliver." In his AIPAC speech, McCain called for tough sanctions, outside the UN if necessary, particularly against the Central Bank of Iran, and restrict Iran's import of refined petroleum products. McCain also criticized Obama by name for his support of troop withdrawals from Iraq, arguing that would jeopardize Israel's security and lead to civil war and genocide. To applause, McCain declared, "We must not let this happen." Sevugan countered that McCain "promises to continue a war in Iraq that has emboldened Iran and strengthened its hand." MK Ephraim Sneh warned the AIPAC audience that a year from now, Iran would be on the verge of completing a nuclear weapon - and that Israel was preparing to face that challenge alone. "There will be a government in Israel which will not allow it to happen," he declared, and added, "Our assumption is that we may face the problem alone." Sneh continued, "if we are alone, we will have to act alone." He did not specify what action Israel was contemplating, though there has been speculation as to whether Israel is planning a military attack. Iraq was the focus on some controversy at last year's AIPAC conference, when some members of the audience booed Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the US House of Representatives, when she spoke about the problems created by the war in Iraq. This year, before McCain took the podium to open the three-day conference, Bernice Manocherian, the immediate past president of AIPAC, urged members of the audience to be on their best behavior. Addressing the more than 7,000 conference participants, including 1,200 students from 363 colleges, she told them, "We will treat all of the speakers with respect and dignity, remembering that they are all our friends." Prime Minister Ehud Olmert will be speaking at the conference, and could come under criticism for his efforts to engage the Palestinians and Syrians. Opposition leader Binyamin Netanyahu (Likud), who was in town to attend the conference, spoke to both Democratic contenders. When Obama informed Netanyahu that he was considering visiting Israel this summer, Netanyahu told him he should visit Sderot.

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Withdrawal bad US withdrawal from Iraq lead to much more international terrorism CNN June 22, 2006; “Cheney: Iraq pullout 'worst possible thing we could do'” http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/06/22/cheney/index.html "The worst possible thing we could do is what the Democrats are suggesting," Cheney told CNN's John King in an interview at the vice president's residence. Some Democrats have urged an immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq. Others have pushed for a phased troop withdrawal. (Watch Dick Cheney explain that withdrawal "in effect validates the terrorists' strategy" -- 3:29) The Senate voted 86-13 on Thursday against a proposal offered by Democratic Sens. John Kerry of Massachusetts and Russ Feingold of Wisconsin that would have required all U.S. troops be withdrawn from Iraq by July 2007. (Full story) The Senate also rejected a proposal by Sen. Carl Levin by a vote of 60-39 that would have required a drawdown to begin by the end of the year but not set a timetable for a complete withdrawal. Neither an immediate nor phased withdrawal would confer any protection on the United States, Cheney said. "If we pull out, they'll follow us," he said of terrorists. "It doesn't matter where we go. This is a global conflict. We've seen them attack in London and Madrid and Casablanca and Istanbul and Mombasa and East Africa. They've been, on a global basis, involved in this conflict. (Read the full interview transcript) "And it will continue -- whether we complete the job or not in Iraq -- only it'll get worse. Iraq will become a safe haven for terrorists. They'll use it in order to launch attacks against our friends and allies in that part of the world." Cheney said a pullout would signal the United States would not stand its ground in the war on terror. "No matter how you carve it -you can call it anything you want -- but basically, it is packing it in, going home, persuading and convincing and validating the theory that the Americans don't have the stomach for this fight."

Withdrawal leads to Middle East collapse Nancy A. Youssef, staff writer, August 12, 2007 McClatchy Newspapers “Iraq pullout could create chaos” http://www.mcclatchydc.com/227/story/18861.html WASHINGTON — U.S. troops could withdraw from Iraq within months, but if Iraq's government remains politically deadlocked, it probably would collapse and the nation would descend into chaos, a war game organized by the U.S. Army concluded earlier this month. The war gamers, following a scenario created by their Army hosts, determined that U.S. troops would secure the exit route to Kuwait through largely Shiite Muslim southern Iraq and face little fighting as they drove their equipment out. Any attacks, the panel judged, would be "harassment attacks," likely by a few Sunni members of al Qaida in Iraq who wanted to attack American troops one last time. "Why would they stop us? They have been telling us to leave," said one participant who requested anonymity to speak freely about the war game. Once U.S. troops left, however, the chaos in Iraq would escalate. Shiite militias would drive Baghdad's Sunni population into Iraq's western Anbar province, which is almost exclusively Sunni, the war gamers concluded. There would be a power struggle within Anbar among tribes backed by outside Sunni Arab states, including Saudi Arabia and Syria. Rival Shiite factions would fight one another to control much of the rest of the country, and Iran presumably would back one side, although the gamers couldn't assess how overt Iranian interference would be. Turkey would consider entering Iraq from the north to thwart the Kurds, who desire independence and claim some of Turkey as part of their homeland. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki's government would be unable to control the country. Indeed, the gamers concluded, his government could collapse unless Iran threw its support behind it. "The mess we would leave behind would be awful," the participant said. "The ethnic cleansing is happening now. Once we're gone, absent a political solution that would allow the Iraqi Army to go into action, all of that will be accelerated."

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Withdrawal bad Leaving Iraq will cause civil war, death, and nuclear proliferation The Scotsman, 10-24-06 Hence the temptation for America and Britain to cut and run from Iraq is growing stronger. But consider the negative consequences. Iraq would descend into outright, bloody civil war and most likely split into three ethnic zones - Kurdish, Shia and Sunni. We would bear a heavy moral responsibility for that tragedy, even if the shortterm, pragmatic result was that the public in Britain and America breathed a sigh of relief. But that would not be the end of the matter. A divided Iraq is a weak Iraq. The bellicose Iranian regime would spread its influence into the oil-rich Shia part of Iraq, further threatening the West's direct interests. As a defensive measure, Saudi Arabia would turn the Sunni shards of Iraq into its own protectorate and doubtless give thought to acquiring its own nuclear umbrella. Meanwhile, the idea of Turkey accepting an independent Kurdistan is risible. In other words, the true result of quitting Iraq early would be to increase economic and political instability in the area, culminating in yet more terrorism and religious strife. One solution is to set a timetable for withdrawal, which might placate the voters. But such timetables have a nasty habit of encouraging the insurgents while weakening the morale of allied troops. The reality is that we have created the current mess in Iraq and we cannot walk away from it without making things even worse. Iraq pullout is dangerous – it will allow terrorists to gain oil reserve access and use Iraq as a base Damien McElroy, Telegraph UK, 10-26-06, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1532455/Iraq-would-be-terrorists%27-launch-pad-if-we-left,-says-Bush.html

President George W Bush defended his war in Iraq yesterday, saying the country would be used as a staging ground for attacks on America if Islamic radicals drove out foreign troops. In a surprise press conference at the White House, Mr Bush was unusually candid in admitting mistakes during the campaign but passionate in his determination to defeat the insurgency. George W Bush. 'The only way we lose in Iraq is if we leave before the job is done' He raised the spectre of terrorist masterminds setting up training camps in Iraq, as in Afghanistan under the Taliban, saying: "If we do not defeat the terrorists or extremists in Iraq, they will gain access to vast oil reserves and use Iraq as a base to overthrow moderate governments across the broader Middle East. They will launch new attacks on America from this new safe haven." Washington has been awash with speculation that America's war plan is undergoing a serious revision in response to spiralling violence, which has seen 93 US troops killed this month. In the last days of the US mid-term election campaigns, Mr Bush is under pressure to reduce the American death toll by scaling back on offensive operations and setting a timetable for departure. "I know many Americans are not satisfied with the situation in Iraq, I'm not satisfied either," Mr Bush said. "But we cannot allow our dissatisfaction to turn into disillusionment about our purpose." He clarified his position, refusing to draw back in the face of setbacks, and criticized the solutions proposed by his opponents – not just Democrats, but senior Republicans. "The only way we lose in Iraq is if we leave before the job is done," he said. "This notion about fixed timetable of withdrawal means defeat." Addressing the human cost of the war, Mr Bush said he was convinced that the sacrifices were necessary to secure the homeland. He said: "If I did not think our mission in Iraq was vital to America's security, I would bring our troops home tomorrow. I met too many wives and husbands who have lost their partners in life, too many children who won't ever see their mom and dad again." Harry Reid, the Democrats' Senate leader, said the president had lost control of his Iraq policy. "One day it's stay the course, next day it's change the course," he said. "It is increasingly clear this administration does not know what to do." America's top officials in Iraq announced a revamped strategy on Tuesday, giving the Iraqi government and security forces up to 18 months to become self-sustaining. To back up the process, the US military would adapt a more flexible approach and its diplomats would redouble attempts to forge agreement between warring religious sects. America is demanding an improved performance by the fledging Iraqi government, led by Nouri al-Maliki. Mr Bush said: "We'll push him, but not to the point where he can't achieve the objective." Mr Bush took responsibility for early misjudgments by the American government. "We overestimated the capability of the civil service in Iraq to continue to provide essential services," he said. "We did not expect the Iraqi army to melt away in the way that it did." In response to a question asking if Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary, should be fired to take responsibility for failures in Iraq, Mr Bush replied: "I'm satisfied of how he's done all his jobs."

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Withdrawal good American withdrawal and diplomacy would stabilize Iraq Edward Luttwak, Senior Fellow, Center for Strategic and International Studies, January/February 2005, Council on Foreign Relations “Iraq: The Logic of Disengagement” http://www.comw.org/pda/fulltext/0512luttwak.pdf Given allthat has happened in Iraq to date, the best strategy for the United States is disengagement. This would call for the careful planning and scheduling of the withdrawal of U.S. forces from much of the country —while making due provisions for sharp punitive strikes against any attempt to harass the withdrawing forces. But it would primarily require an intense diplomatic effort, to prepare and conduct parallel negotiations with several parties inside Iraq and out. All have much to lose or gain depending on exactly how the U.S. withdrawal is carried out, and this would give Washington a great deal of leverage that could be used to advance U.S. interests. The United States cannot threaten to unleash anarchy in Iraq in order to obtain concessions from others, nor can it make transparently conflicting promises about the country’s future to different parties. But once it has declared its firm commitment to withdraw—or perhaps, given the widespread conviction that the United States entered Iraq to exploit its resources, once visible physical preparations for an evacuation have begun—the calculus of other parties will change. In a reversal of the usual sequence, the U.S. hand will be strengthened by withdrawal, and Washington may well be able to lay the groundwork for a reasonably stable Iraq. Nevertheless, if key Iraqi factions or Iraq’s neighbors are too shortsighted or blinded by resentment to cooperate in their own best interests, the withdrawal should still proceed, with the United States making such favorable or unfavorable arrangements for each party as will most enhance the future credibility of U.S. diplomacy. The United States has now abridged its vastly ambitious project of creating a veritable Iraqi democracy to pursue the much more realistic aim of conducting some sort of general election. In the meantime, however, it has persisted in futile combat against factions that should be confronting one another instead. A strategy of disengagement would require bold, risk-taking statecraft of a high order, and much diplomatic competence in its execution. But it would be soundly based on the most fundamental of realities: geography that alone ensures all other parties are far more expose. States making such favorable or unfavorable arrangements for each party as will most enhance the future credibility of U.S. diplomacy. The United States has now abridged its vastly ambitious project of creating a veritable Iraqi democracy to pursue the much more realistic aim of conducting some sort of general election. In the meantime, however, it has persisted in futile combat against factions that should be confronting one another instead. A strategy of disengagement would require bold, risk-taking statecraft of a high order, and much diplomatic competence in its execution. But it would be soundly based on the most fundamental of realities: geography that alone ensures all other parties are far more exposed to the dangers of an anarchical Iraq than is the United States itself Iraq: The Logic of Disengagement

Iraqis oppose US occupation MOHAMMAD KHATAMI, Former Iranian president, JANUARY 16, 2007 Washington Post, Unjust Iraq Occupation Has Led to Dangerous 'Fire' in Region http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/mohammad_khatami/2007/01/in_view_of_escalating_public.html In view of escalating public protests against the current war-mongering policies of the United States in the Middle East, especially in Iraq, and the sternly unequivocal position adopted by the U.S. Congress against continued occupation of Iraq, it was natural to expect the mitigation of crises and a move to secure the longterm interests of the US in this critical region. There is no doubt that toppling the despotic and tyrannical regime of Saddam has brought contentment to the people of Iraq and in the region at large. That regime had massacred thousands of noble Iraqis, foisted two devastating wars onto our region, and left behind a long record of criminal behavior marked with its deployment of weapons of mass destruction and engagement in chemical warfare. Not least, Iran, which had withstood harshest of atrocities in the hands of the despotic and predatory regime of Saddam, found satisfaction in witnessing its downfall. Nevertheless, it is undeniable that the US occupation of Iraq has intensified crises by turning Iraq into a hotbed of tension, violence and destruction. First and foremost this has cost the Iraqis, and then the American people, who are held to shoulder the conflict's heavy burden.

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Withdrawal good Withdrawal from Iraq would allow for better US military effectiveness and redeployment Steven N. Simon senior fellow for Middle Eastern Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, FEBRUARY 2007 COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS “After the Surge :The Case for U.S. Military Disengagement from Iraq” In practical terms, that means carrying out the disengagement in coordination with the Iraqi government and, as necessary, armed groups outside of it and that U.S. forces in the queue for redeployment are put to good use. A further step would be to convene a group of UN Security Council members, Japan and Canada, and states bordering Iraq, including Syria and Iran, to participate in a regional stabilization project. Its purpose would be to encourage Iraq’s neighbors to pursue their common interest in a unified, stable Iraq in mutually reinforcing ways. The intention to withdraw should be declared as the results of the surge become clear. A coordinated declaration of this kind would not entail setting a certain date on which the last American soldier would depart Iraq. Since there exists a remote possibility that the situation on the ground might change radically during the drawdown period, the United States could qualify its declared intention to leave on a specific timetable with appropriate caveats. If, for example, there were a dramatic increase in intercommunal violence leading to a flood of refugees, U.S. forces might be needed to set up camps, administer aid, and provide security for the refugees. Alternatively, if the current surge strategy works, political compromises are made, ethnic cleansing operations cease, militias are brought under the government’s control, a multiconfessional army including a meaningful number of Sunni officers is created, and the United States is asked to remain to battle a lingering insurgency, it might behoove Washington to suspend the drawdown. A twelve-to-eighteen-month time frame for disengagement, to commence once the results of the surge have become apparent, would leave the United States with the flexibility to respond to such changes. The surge results should be clear well within six months. Nevertheless, the departure timetable would not hinge on specific benchmarks, since the Iraqi government is probably incapable of curbing militias and accommodating Sunni concerns; nor is it likely to generate an effective, multiconfessional army in the foreseeable future. The U.S. drawdown should not be hostage to Iraqi performance. Iraq withdrawal is the best option Daily Telegraph, 10-23-06 The debate over our role in Iraq is now centred on one simple question: how soon? How soon will Britain and America withdraw, and what kind of country will they leave behind? No one thinks we should stay forever; very few that we should pull out tomorrow. The choice is whether we stay for a matter of months or a matter of years and in making it, we will to a large extent determine Iraq's future. The question might be simple, but it has deeply divided the public and politicians in both the Allied nations and Iraq itself. Many in the West adopt a position based upon their attitude towards the initial invasion. This is unfortunate. Others see the issue in terms of its price to us in money, prestige and lives. This is indeed a vital issue - but if our presence in Iraq will improve its people's lives, we should still square our shoulders and accept the cost. No, the key question, as we have argued over the past year, and as Gen Sir Richard Dannatt has recently reiterated, is whether our presence is doing more harm than good to the Iraqis themselves. The current plan is not working, as all, including the Bush administration, recognise. Various alternatives are being mooted: partition; a federation offering local areas greater autonomy; withdrawing troops to bases in neighbouring countries; dialogue with the moderate militias; dialogue with Syria and Iran; flooding Iraq with troops to kill off as many insurgents as possible before a hasty exit. These courses all come with grievous drawbacks. But consider this: we have had three years to train Iraq's security forces, yet British troops face a humiliating return to Amarah, capital of Maysan province, because our surrogates have been unable to keep order since we left in August. Will three more years make the Iraqis an effective, impartial fighting force? Perhaps - but in that time anti-British feeling will swell, and our troops will become the targets, and their presence the cause, of yet more violence. How has it come to this? Decisions made in London and especially Washington are in large part to blame. In failing, for example, to plan adequately for an Iraq after Saddam, the Bush administration was indeed, in the words of State Department official Alberto Fernandez, showing "arrogance and stupidity''. A new approach, however, will probably be adopted only once America's midterm elections are safely out of the way. That approach will draw on the recommendations of James Baker's Iraq Study Group, which is looking, Mr Baker has said, for solutions somewhere between "cut and run'' and "stay the course''. Few would disagree. The time has come to move towards a phased evacuation and our Prime Minister should use his considerable leverage in Washington to advocate such a course. Using our forces to create a stable democracy in Iraq is no longer a tenable goal; removing them expeditiously is the best option both for us and for the people of Iraq.

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Withdrawal good The Iraqi Prime Minister is calling for US withdrawal Post- Tribune July 15, 2008 “Iraq leader pushing for U.S. withdrawal” http://www.posttrib.com/news/opinion/1056186,edit.article Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has demanded the United States offer a time line for withdrawal of U.S. forces from his country. Thus far, the current administration's response is one of mumbled promises about negotiating a memorandum of understanding and other such nonsense. With its lack of response, it seems the Bush administration wants the next president to clean up his mess. There's the additional problem that the neocons have long seen a time line of any kind as tacit surrender. They don't seem to understand that al-Maliki is serious. He and the vast majority of the Iraqi Congress agree the next step forward for the country is the dignity of autonomy. So now, a majority of two countries, engaged in battle, wish to end the entanglement. The leader of one country and his people ask the invading army to leave. The countrymen of the conquering army -- who love their troops but hate the war -- also wish to leave. In logical times, this would call for a celebration. But a presidential election season is not such a time. One presidential candidate, Democrat Barack Obama, already has offered his time line.

Iraq favors US withdrawal Ahmed Rasheed and Mohammed Abbas, staff writers, Jul 8, 2008 Reuters “Iraq insists on U.S. withdrawal timetable” http://www.reuters.com/article/wtMostRead/idUSL0353522920080708 BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraq will not accept any security agreement with the United States unless it includes dates for the withdrawal of foreign forces, the government's national security adviser said on Tuesday. But the government's spokesman said any timetable would depend on security conditions on the ground. Their differences underscore the debate in Baghdad over a deal with Washington that will provide a legal basis for U.S. troops to remain when a U.N. mandate expires at the end of the year. But Washington played down calls from Baghdad for a firm withdrawal deadline, saying both sought greater Iraqi security. U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said on Tuesday he expected to pull more U.S. troops from Iraq and stressed any decision to withdraw would be based on the ability of Iraqi troops to take responsibility for security and combat. On Monday, Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki suggested for the first time that a timetable be set for the departure of U.S. forces under the deal being negotiated, which he called a memorandum of understanding.

Iraq wants the US troops to withdraw, so they can secure the country themselves AFP Jul 8, 2008 “McCain, Obama at odds over Iraqi withdrawal demand” http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5gGr7Op4wYx4MhEzzTfuUkr-KGYSg WASHINGTON (AFP) — Iraq's hardening demand for a pullout deadline for US troops on Tuesday sent shockwaves through the White House campaign, putting Republican hopeful John McCain on the defensive. McCain, who says it is too early to leave Iraq, said US pull-backs must be dictated by security conditions, after Democrat Barack Obama said the Iraqi government now shared his desire for a timetable for withdrawals. Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said on Monday that Iraq was seeking such an arrangement in talks with Washington on the future US force structure in the country. Iraq hardened its position on Tuesday, saying it would reject any security pact with Washington unless it set a date for the pullout of US-led foreign soldiers -- a condition turned down by President George W. Bush. But McCain, who has made staunch support for the US troop "surge" escalation strategy a centerpiece of his campaign, said that recent security gains should not be put at risk by an artificial timetable. "The Iraqis have made it very clear, including the meetings I had with the president and foreign minister of Iraq, that it is based on conditions on the ground," McCain said in an interview with MSNBC. "I have always said we will come home with honor and with victory and not through a set timetable," he said, adding that Iraqis would act in their national interest and the United States would act in its own interests. "We will withdraw, but ... the victory we have achieved so far is fragile and (the redeployment) has to be dictated by events and on the ground," McCain said, mirroring the Pentagon's line on the issue. The Obama campaign responded by bringing up a comment by McCain from 2004, when he said that if a sovereign Iraqi government asked American forces to quit Iraq, "it's obvious we would have to leave." "The American people need a strategy for succeeding in Iraq, not just a strategy for staying," said Obama foreign policy advisor Susan Rice. "John McCain's stubborn refusal to adjust to events on the ground just shows that he has no plan to end this war," she said.Obama and McCain have been waging a fierce political battle over their plans for US policy in Iraq, an issue that looks set to dominate the presidency of whichever of them emerges triumphant from November's election.

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Obama withdrawal good – other objectives Obama would remove all troops from Iraq within 16 months, which would allow redeployment in other areas Perry Bacon Jr.,July 14, 2008, Washington Post “Obama Reaffirms Iraq Withdrawal Plan, Sparking a Fresh Round of McCain Camp Criticism” http://blog.washingtonpost.com/thetrail/2008/07/14/obama_reaffirms_iraq_withdrawa.html Barack Obama is strongly reaffirming his stance on pulling combat troops out of Iraq in his first 16 months in office, if elected president, emboldened by the Iraqi government saying last week it supports a timetable for U.S. forces to leave."The call by Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki for a timetable for the removal of American troops from Iraq presents an enormous opportunity," Obama wrote today in a New York Times oped. "We should seize this moment to begin the phased redeployment of combat troops that I have long advocated, and that is needed for long-term success in Iraq and the security interests of the United States." Maliki's comments have left Obama increasing focused on the withdrawal part of his Iraq strategy, instead of the troops he would leave there to maintain stability, which he had emphasized in the last few weeks as the general election has started. Obama still has not said how large of a force he would leave in Iraq, as ten of thousands of the forces in Iraq are not "combat troops" and could remain in the country even if Obama removed all combat forces. But his emphasis on withdrawal is likely to quiet critics who said he appeared to be changing his position on getting troops out of Iraq. "My core position, which is that we need a timetable for withdraw ... is now a position that is held by the Iraqi government itself," he told reporters on his campaign plane Saturday night. "...John McCain and George Bush both said that if Iraq as a sovereign government stated that it was time for us to start withdrawing our troops they would respect the wishes of that sovereign government."

Obama’s withdrawal is key to our effectiveness in more important areas Andrew Ward and Stephen Fidler, July 15 2008 Financial Times, “Obama restates troop withdrawal pledge” http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/9d45d48a-5296-11dd-9ba7-000077b07658.html Barack Obama on Tuesday renewed his case for ending the war in Iraq and focusing attention on Afghanistan before a trip to the countries and amid an intensifying debate with John McCain, his Republican rival, over the “war on terror”. The presumptive Democratic presidential candidate said he remained committed to withdrawing all combat troops from Iraq within 16 months of taking office, arguing that recent security gains had failed to repair the damage caused to US interests by the war. Mr Obama has faced mounting pressure from Mr McCain to acknowledge the success of the US “surge” strategy in reducing violence and to modify his plans to end the war. But the Illinois senator on Tuesday said the gains of recent months should not be allowed to obscure the heavy costs of US involvement in Iraq. “This war distracts us from every threat that we face and so many opportunities we could seize,” he said, citing the need for a greater focus on Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran and issues such as nuclear proliferation and energy security. “By any measure, our single-minded and open-ended focus on Iraq is not a sound strategy for keeping America safe.” Mr Obama’s consistent opposition to the war in Iraq was one of his strongest assets in his Democratic primary battle with Hillary Clinton, who voted to authorise the 2003 invasion. But he has come under fierce attack from Mr McCain for committing to retreat from Iraq.

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Obama withdrawal good – other objectives Obama’s plan for pullout would save billions of dollars and stop al-Qaida effectively United Press International July 3, 2008, “Obama: Troop safety key to Iraq pullout” http://www.upi.com/Top_News/2008/07/03/Obama_Troop_safety_key_to_Iraq_pullout/UPI-69211215125404/ FARGO, N.D., July 3 (UPI) -- Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., rejected claims Thursday that he has changed his position on withdrawing U.S. combat troops from Iraq. Reacting to media reports -- including a report Thursday in The Washington Post (NYSE:WPO) -- suggesting he had backtracked on a promise to withdraw combat troops within 16 months of taking office, Obama told reporters in Fargo, N.D., what he is saying now is no different from what he said on the subject during the Democratic primary campaign. "I have always said, and again you can take a look at the language, that as commander in chief I would always reserve the right to do what's best in America's national interests," Obama said in the second of two news conferences in Fargo Thursday. "And if it turned out, for example, that we had to in certain months slow the pace because of the safety of American troops in terms of getting combat troops out, of course we would take that into account." Obama said he intends to withdraw combat troops in 16 months "at a pace of one to two brigades per month." Maintaining a long-term occupation in Iraq would be a "strategic error," Obama said, because conditions are worsening in Afghanistan, al-Qaida has regrouped in Iraq and the Iraq war is costing $10 billion to $12 billion each month "that we desperately need here at home."

Obama’s Iraq pullout is key to securing important terrorist areas AFP Jul 16, 2008 “Obama to direct US firepower at Al-Qaeda, not Iraq” http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5jpGCbPMizTHKhaPVe-2hEBGstpYA WASHINGTON (AFP) — White House hopeful Barack Obama promised to switch the "single-minded" US focus on Iraq to Al-Qaeda havens in tribal Pakistan, as he laid out a sweeping new blueprint for US foreign policy. But his Republican rival John McCain snapped back, "I know how to win wars," as the debate hit new levels of intensity Tuesday ahead of Obama's crucial audition for the job of US commander-in-chief in the Middle East and Europe next week. Obama renewed his vow to get most US combat troops out of Iraq within 16 months of taking office, promised to strike at Al-Qaeda in Pakistan if Islamabad would not, to secure loose nuclear weapons and battle climate change. Iraq is not going to be a perfect place, and we don't have unlimited resources to try to make it one," Obama said in the speech in Washington. "I will give our military a new mission on my first day in office: ending this war," Obama said. After more than five years at war in Iraq, more than 4,000 US troop deaths, and with tens of thousands of Iraqis killed, Obama said it was time to refocus US policy on the region which spawned the September 11 attacks in 2001. "As should have been apparent to President (George W.) Bush and Senator McCain -- the central front in the war on terror is not Iraq, and it never was," Obama said in his speech. "Al-Qaeda has an expanding base in Pakistan that is probably no farther from their old Afghan sanctuary than a train ride from Washington to Philadelphia," Obama said in excerpts released by his campaign. "We cannot tolerate a terrorist sanctuary, and as president I won't," he said. "We must make it clear that if Pakistan cannot or will not act, we will take out high-level terrorist targets like (Osama) bin Laden if we have them in our sights." McCain rejected Obama's argument, saying he had been "wrong" to originally oppose the US "surge" escalation strategy, would squander its gains with a troop withdrawal and was guilty of "bluster" over Pakistan. Today we know Senator Obama was wrong. The surge has succeeded and because of its success, the next president will inherit a situation in Iraq in which America's enemies are on the run," McCain said in Albuquerque, New Mexico. "Senator Obama will tell you we can't win in Afghanistan without losing in Iraq," McCain said, though he added that the "status quo" in Afghanistan was not acceptable.

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Obama will pull out Obama will pull out of Iraq Domenico Mantanaro – NBC political researcher; 7-17-08; “Biden Wasn’t Always Defending Obama…” MSNBC, http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/07/17/1204594.aspx While Joe Biden is defending Obama over the Illinois senator's lack of subcommittee hearings on the issue of Afghanistan, opponents of Obama's candidacy have reminded us of some unflattering things the then-Biden campaign said on this topic. On Aug. 1, 2007, when Obama unveiled his counterterrorism agenda, the Biden camp fired off a snarky email congratulating him for his "Johnny-come-lately position" on Afghanistan, noting that during two Foreign Relations Committee hearings on Afghanistan and other subjects, Obama didn't ask questions about the Taliban, Al Qaeda, or Afghanistan. (We also wrote on it here.) “We find it a little disingenuous that Sen. Obama is hailing this as a new bold initiative when he has neglected to join his colleagues in the Senate when the opportunities have been there to redirect our forces into Afghanistan” Biden campaign manager Luis Navarro said at the time. “It’s good to see Sen. Obama has finally arrived at the right position, but this can hardly be considered bold leadership.” Ouch. Biden's office passed along this response: "I doubt many people would be surprised to find out that Senator Biden and Obama ran against each other last year," Biden spokeswoman Elizabeth Alexander wrote First Read. "Unlike Senator McCain, Senator Obama understands that the responsibility of the next president goes beyond being commander-in-chief for Iraq -- he has to be commander-in-chief for America's security in the world. That's why he supports re-centering our foreign policy and beginning a responsible redeployment of American combat forces from Iraq."

Obama wishes to withdraw troops from Iraq The Associated Press, Jul 3, 2008 “Obama's past comments on Iraq troop withdrawal” http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gi1c_oiFG-GQ6EkgZvONpV2zErlwD91MLBMG4 Barack Obama's policy for bringing U.S. troops home from Iraq as stated on his Web site: "Obama will immediately begin to remove our troops from Iraq. He will remove one to two combat brigades each month, and have all of our combat brigades out of Iraq within 16 months. Obama will make it clear that we will not build any permanent bases in Iraq. He will keep some troops in Iraq to protect our embassy and diplomats; if al Qaeda attempts to build a base within Iraq, he will keep troops in Iraq or elsewhere in the region to carry out targeted strikes on al Qaeda."

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McCain won’t pull out McCain will remain in Iraq if he becomes President Doug Bandow, July 11, 2008 Antiwar.com“Exit Iraq, and Leave No Bases Behind” http://www.antiwar.com/bandow/?articleid=13118 President George W. Bush, the neoconservative war lobby, and Sen. John McCain all have one overriding goal for U.S. policy towards Iraq: a permanent occupation. Of course, they all prefer that the American regency be peaceful, but Sen. McCain captured the mood when he called for U.S. troops to garrison Iraq for 100 or 1000 or even 10,000 years. The timing of their homecoming just is "not too important." Such a policy would be in America's interest only if the U.S. would benefit from years of war and potential war in the Middle East. For those who believe in perpetual social engineering abroad – coercively remaking the globe in America's image – the answer is obviously yes. The only failure of Washington's Iraq policy so far has been to invade too few countries, bomb too few targets, and kill too few people. For the rest of us the answer is obviously no. Surprising as it might seem to would-be empire-builders, people the world over prefer to run their own affairs. You'd think Americans would understand. After all, a couple centuries ago a few disgruntled colonists kicked the British, representing the world's greatest and most enlightened colonial power, out of the 13 middle-North American colonies.

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Obama won’t pull out Obama won’t withdraw – political cost. George Friedman Founder of Stratfor, 2-5-2008, “Foreign Policy and the President’s Irrelevance,” L/N Any president who simply withdrew forces from Iraq without a political settlement would find himself or herself in an enormously difficult position. Indeed, such a president would find himself or herself in a politically untenable position. The consequences of a withdrawal are as substantial as the consequences of remaining. The decline in violence and the emergence of some semblance of a political process tilts the politics of decision-making toward a phased withdrawal based on improvements on the ground and away from a phased withdrawal based on the premise that the situation on the ground will not improve. Therefore, even assuming Obama wins the nomination and the presidency, the likelihood of a rapid, unilateral withdrawal is minimal. The political cost of the consequences would be too high, and he wouldn't be able to afford it.

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***MIDDLE EAST

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Obama key to Mideast peace Democrat win is key to lasting peace in the Middle East Shadi Hamid, founding member and associate at The Project on Middle East Democracy, The American Prospect, August 24, 2006, http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewWeb&articleId=11919 Arab-Israeli Peace. In the short run, a Democratic administration would actively push for a comprehensive peace through hands-on diplomacy. We already have a model for this -- the last years of the Clinton administration. In the long run, democratization in the Arab world will encourage citizens to shift their focus from regional concerns to local and domestic ones. If the United States facilitates peaceful democratic transitions in the region, we will have much-needed economic and political leverage with those parties that come to power. Such leverage can be wielded to pressure the emerging Arab governments to, first, reconcile themselves to Israel’s existence, then, later, to forge diplomatic ties with Israel. Ultimately, a lasting peace between Israel and the Arab world can come only through negotiated agreements that enjoy the consent of the electorate (unlike the current paper-thin peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan). Iraq. Thanks to the Bush administration, Iraq has become the war on terrorism’s front line. We cannot simply wash our hands of the responsibility that is now ours. Rather than “staying the course,” however, we must change course, and decisively so. A Democratic president in 2008 must make a new case to the world, that we made a mistake in invading Iraq the way we did, that we betrayed our ideals in the dungeons of Abu Ghraib, but that the cause of Iraqi democracy remains a just one that deserves -- rather, demands -- the international community’s participation.

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McCain  Mideast peace McCain’s pro-peace deal – would pursue solution. USA Today, 3/20/2008, McCain backs Israeli reprisals in Gaza, http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/200803-19-mccain-israel_N.htm McCain did not meet with Abbas during his two-day visit, but said he spoke to the Palestinian leader by telephone. McCain said the Palestinian leader is committed to reaching a peace deal with Israel, though he questioned whether a target of an agreement this year is realistic. "I hope that he can deliver. I think he is sincere," McCain said. "I think the Palestinian people desire peace. I believe they deserve peace, and I think President Abbas is capable of conducting those negotiations." Discussing the U.S. role, McCain said there has to be "an environment of reconciliation between parties," but that "there also has to be an outside party that is willing to bring the parties to the table and facilitate that process." He said a peace agreement is a key U.S. interest. McCain would push the peace process. Marc Perelman, forward magazine, 2/13/2008, McCain Touts Stance on Israel, http://www.forward.com/articles/12695/ On Israel, however, McCain has been uncharacteristically conventional. He offers unqualified support, expressed in years of public statements. He has the endorsement of pro-Israel icon Joseph Lieberman, the independent senator from Connecticut, and of former New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani, the favorite among Jewish Republicans until he quit the race last month. Along with using his national security credentials to gain advantage over his putative Democratic opponent, McCain touts his support for Israel as a way to soothe the restive Republican right. Conservatives have attacked the Arizona senator bitterly for his positions on same-sex marriage, taxes, immigration and campaign-financing. Hence the lengths to which McCain has gone to quash any notion that he might ask Israel to make concessions. Nearly two years ago, a Ha’aretz reporter wrote that he had asked McCain if resolving the Israeli-Palestinian issue would require movement toward the 1967 armistice lines with minor territorial modifications, and McCain had nodded in the affirmative. The senator had added that if elected president, he would ask both sides to make sacrifices and would send “the smartest guy I know” to the Middle East. That person could be the elder George Bush’s national security adviser, Brent Scowcroft, or his secretary of state, James Baker, “though I know that you in Israel don’t like Baker.”

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Obama = anti-Israel Obama’s anti-Israel – empirics and policy advisors. Ed Lasky, American Thinker staff, 1/16/2008, Barack Obama and Israel, http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/01/barack_obama_and_israel.html One seemingly consistent theme running throughout Barack Obama's career is his comfort with aligning himself with people who are anti-Israel advocates. This ease around Israel animus has taken various forms. As Obama has continued his political ascent, he has moved up the prestige scale in terms of his associates. Early on in his career he chose a church headed by a former Black Muslim who is a harsh anti-Israel advocate and who may be seen as tinged with anti-Semitism. This church is a member of a denomination whose governing body has taken a series of anti-Israel actions. As his political fortunes and ambition climbed, he found support from George Soros, multibillionaire promoter of groups that have been consistently harsh and biased critics of the American-Israel relationship. Obama's soothing and inspiring oratory sometimes vanishes when he talks of the Middle East. Indeed, his off-the-cuff remarks have been uniformly taken by supporters of Israel as signs that the inner Obama does not truly support Israel despite what his canned speeches and essays may contain. Now that Obama has become a leading Presidential candidate, he has assembled a body of foreign policy advisers who signal that a President Obama would likely have an approach towards Israel radically at odds with those of previous Presidents (both Republican and Democrat). A group of experts collected by the Israeli liberal newspaper Haaretz deemed him to be the candidate likely to be least supportive of Israel. He is the candidate most favored by the Arab-American community. Obama would disarm Israel – ensures terrorism and mass casualties. Ed Lasky, American Thinker staff, 1/16/2008, Barack Obama and Israel, http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/01/barack_obama_and_israel.html Unilateral nuclear disarmament for Israel Obama has also called for the abolition of all nuclear weapons in the world and said that America, by not openly leading a campaign to end nuclear weapons is "giving countries like Iran and North Korea an excuse." This is naïve beyond belief and is identical to arguments made in the Arab world that justify their pursuit of nuclear weapons because Israel has nuclear weapons. We all know how such a program would operate in the real world: Western, open nations such as Israel would be stripped of the capability of nuclear weapons; dictatorships, such as Iran, would continue to operate their secret programs. Israel's nuclear arsenal has helped offset the strategic peril that comes from being surrounded by much larger nations openly declaring their goal of its destruction. Obama's call would unilaterally work to disarm Israel. Pressuring Israel Obama has also blamed that "our neglect of the Middle East Peace Process has spurred despair and fueled terrorism" implicitly blaming Israel for terrorism and a sign that a President Obama would pressure Israel. Obama seems to ignore the roles that schools play in the Middle East in the teaching of hatred; the roles of mosques and Imams in stoking terrorism; the glorification of violence and martyrdom in the media; the role of jihad in the Koran. He also was the only Democratic Presidential aspirant to sign a Senate Resolution that would ban the use of cluster bombs. These are the types of weapons used by Israel to counter massed attacks by Hezbollah, and are vitally important to her security; Hezbollah also used the same type of weapons. Does anyone think Hezbollah will refrain from using these weapons? How about suicide bombers who rely on similar types of "ordinance' to inflict mass casualties among civilians? Once again, high-minded rhetoric conceals an agenda of unilateral disarmament of the Jewish state.

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Obama  two state solution Obama will push for a two-state solution David Espo; 7-18-08; “Obama's Europe, Middle East Trip Marks First High-Profile Step Onto World Stage” The Huffington Post, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/07/18/obamas-europemiddle-east_n_113533.html At home, Obama has struggled to consolidate his support among Jewish voters wary of his commitment to Israel. And while Obama is expected to meet with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Ohlmert, Palestinian officials have announced he will visit the West Bank. McCain did not meet with Palestinians in his most recent visit to the Middle East in March. "We welcome this meeting," Saeb Erekat, a Palestinian negotiator, said recently. He added that if Obama is elected "we hope he will stay the course between Israel and the Palestinians in reaching peace and a two-state solution." Bush is trying to broker a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians before leaving office in January. Obama stirred controversy in June with a speech before the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in which he endorsed a two-state Israel-Palestine settlement, yet said Jerusalem should remain both the capital of the Jewish nation and undivided. Palestinian leaders quickly rejected the statement. "...We will not accept a Palestinian state without having Jerusalem as the capital of a Palestinian state," said Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, and the next day, Obama backpedaled. "Well, obviously, it's going to be up to the parties to negotiate a range of these issues. And Jerusalem will be part of those negotiations," he said in a CNN interview. He added that "as a practical matter, it would be very difficult to execute" a division of the city.

And McCain is against a two-state solution Michele Kelemen – npr correspondent; 7-15-08; “McCain, Obama Off Two Paths On Mideast Policy” National Public Radio, http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=92472717 As to McCain's position on Israel, Scheunemann offered a carefully worded statement that moved little beyond current U.S. policy. "Sen. McCain has said that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel, that it is undivided today, that we should move our embassy there," Scheunemann said. "And if a democratic government of Israel chooses to accept an alteration of that status, he's certainly not going to second-guess a democratic government of Israel." The U.S. embassy is currently in Tel Aviv, and though Congress voted to move it to Jerusalem, both Presidents Bush and Clinton have avoided the move so as not to anger Palestinians, who want east Jerusalem as the capital of their future state. President Bush had been hoping the two sides could agree on the contours of a Palestinian state by the time he leaves office, but that goal now looks unlikely. Obama, meanwhile, has criticized the Bush administration for staying on the sidelines too long. "I won't wait until the waning days of my presidency," Obama said. "I will take an active role and make a personal commitment to do all I can to advance the cause of peace from the start of my administration."

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Obama  two state solution Obama would create a Palestinian state immediately. Aaron Klein, worldnetdaily, 7/6/2008, Obama will immediately birth Palestinian state, http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=68973 JERUSALEM – The Palestinian Authority is hoping Sen. Barack Obama wins the presidential election in November and expects the Illinois Democrat to immediately set out to create a Palestinian state once he takes office, a top PA official said. amir Abdullah "We would like to see Obama elected. If he is elected, an agreement about the foundation of a Palestinian state (would be) reached," PA Planning Minister Samir Abdullah told reporters in Tokyo this weekend. Abdullah, who is the former head of the Palestinian Communist Party, said the PA expects Obama to win in November. He said once Obama takes office, "he will immediately study the Palestinian cause and will try to push it forward." "Obama promised he will not wait until the last period of his office to relaunch negotiations ... he will begin doing this since his first day in office unlike President Bush, who waited until his last period of power." Abdullah's remarks were published yesterday in the Firas Press Network, a Palestinian news website identified with PA President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah organization. Kurtzer appointment proves – he’ll force Israeli concessions for a two-state solution. Aaron Klein, worldnetdaily, 7/6/2008, Obama will immediately birth Palestinian state, http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=68973 Kurtzer, a former U.S. ambassador to Israel, has been identified by Israeli leaders, including prime ministers, as biased against Israel and is notorious for urging extreme concessions from the Jewish state. He was appointed as a primary Obama adviser on the Middle East earlier this year. Obama's appointment of Kurtzer raised eyebrows among the pro-Israel Jewish community. "We oppose the appointment of Kurtzer because of his long, documented record of hostility to and severe pressure upon Israel," said Zionist Organization of America National Chairman Morton Klein. Kurtzer has been blasted by mainstream Jewish organizations, including the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. He has angered Israeli leaders many times for pushing Israel into what they described as extreme concessions to the Palestinians. "With Jews like Kurtzer, it is impossible to build a healthy relationship between Israel and the United States," Benjamin Nentanyahu was quoted saying in 2001 by Israel's Haaretz newspaper. Former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir said Kurtzer "frequently pressured Israel to make one-sided concessions to the Arabs; he constantly blamed Israel for the absence of Mideast peace, and paid little or no attention to the fact that the Palestinians were carrying out terrorist attacks and openly calling for the destruction of Israel." Morris Amitay, former executive director of the America-Israel Public Affairs Committee, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in 2001: "Kurtzer ... will use his Jewishness as a protective cover for his anti-Israel views." The ZOA points out how Israel's leading daily, Yediot Ahronot, editorialized on Kurtzer's negative influence against Israel: "Possibly more than any other U.S. State Department official, Kurtzer has been instrumental in promoting the goals of the Palestinians and in raising their afflictions to the center of the U.S. policymakers' agenda," the paper stated.

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McCain = pro-Israel McCain supports Israel – will pursue Hamas and Hezbollah. Jim Teeple, 3/19/2008, McCain Committed to Mideast Peace Process John McCain received a warm welcome in Israel. Many Israelis support his tough stand against Iran's nuclear-enrichment program, and he has a long record in the U.S. Congress of support for the state of Israel. McCain, who is all but certain to be the Republican Party's candidate for the presidency this year, met with Israel's prime minister, foreign minister and defense minister who gave him a personal tour of the southern Israeli city of Sderot, which has been battered by rockets fired by Palestinian militants from the nearby Gaza Strip. McCain strongly criticized Hamas militants who control Gaza, saying they are dedicated to destroying everything Israel and the West believe in. He says his talks with Israeli leaders focused on Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, and on the threat to Israel from Hamas and Hezbollah. "The state of negotiations, particularly the continued Hezbollah presence in southern Lebanon, Hamas etc. So we look forward to discussing these issues, and we look forward to affirming as literally every visitor to this country has, our deep and abiding relationship and commitment to the state of Israel," said McCain. The Arizona Senator was accompanied by his close Senate colleagues, Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. The three senators say their trip was for fact-finding, but their visit to Israel will likely help John McCain with Jewish voters in the United States, and with Christian evangelicals, many of whom are strong supporters of Israel. While he met with Israel's leaders, Senator McCain did not travel to the West Bank to meet with moderate Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, saying instead he and Mr. Abbas spoke by telephone. McCain said he told Mr. Abbas he strongly supports his efforts to reach a peace agreement with Israel, saying if elected President he will make such an agreement a top priority of his administration.

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No difference on Israel/Palestine Both sides will be the same on Israel and Palestine Nicola Nasser, Pakistan Observer, November 23, 2006, http://archive.pakobserver.net/200611/23/Articles04.asp Meanwhile Bush is turning to his father’s men to help him clean his mess in foreign policy: Robert Gates, former president George Bush’s CIA director and James Baker, his father’s friend and Secretary of State, the architects of Iraq containment policy and Madrid-Oslo Israeli-aborted peace processes of 1991 and 1993. Dennis Ross — who was a Middle East envoy for the elder Bush and successfully dragged Palestinian-Israeli years-long negotiation into its current deadlocked situation – said: “It is pretty clear the neoconservative agenda on regime change and democracy promotion will take a back seat to stability and less pressure on regimes to open up their political systems,” he said, to the relief of Arab governments. However a fullfledged Democratic victory in 2008 will not hold a lot of promise or hope for Arabs; since the creation of Israel 59 years ago created with it the Arab-Israeli conflict the US foreign policy vis-à-vis this conflict as far as peacemaking is concerned has been one of either inaction or action to put in motion this or that form of a “peace process” with the aim of managing the conflict and not resolving it, mostly to trick Arabs into appeasement following this or that of their defeats, catastrophes or setbacks at the hands of the unshakable US-Israeli strategic alliance. This strategic alliance has pre-empted and will continue to pre-empt all American well-meaning proposals for a Two-State solution, which nonetheless made their way into United Nations legitimacy by the Security Council resolution 1515. It was responsible for the demise of the peace process sponsored by Bill Clinton’ and his Democratic administration and now it has proved mainly responsible for the demise of Bush and his Republican Two-State “vision.” With Nancy Pelosi as the wouldbe Speaker of the Congress, “Jewish activists and officials are confident that the US Congress will remain strongly pro-Israel …I’ve heard her say numerous times that the single greatest achievement of the 20th century was the founding of the modern State of Israel,” Amy Friedkin, a former president of AIPAC, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA). Pelosi has reiterated on record that the key issue in the Middle East is Israel’s survival, not its occupation. In the entire mid-term campaign, the Democrats have not offered one specific plan to address foreign policy grievances, neither in Iraq nor in the Arab-Israeli conflict.The political horizon of Bush’s two-state vision has eroded now into an eclipsing hope that is rapidly slipping into oblivion with no “Democratic alternative,” thus relieving the Palestinians of more peace illusions but leaving Israel with the upper hand in the occupied territories, or more accurately the only hand there given the absence of outside influence to offset Israel’s crushing military superiority because of the stalled peace process and the Palestinian “no negotiations-no resistance” moment of inaction.

No practical difference on Israel John Hinderaker, fellow of the Claremont Institute, August 16, 2006, http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/015026.php A liberal Democrat administration would also be more likely to adopt a neutral position between Israel and the terrorists, to look to the U.N. for guidance on issues relating to Israel, to exert heavy pressure on Israel to compromise with the terrorists, and so on. Again, though, I think the practical difference may not be as great as one might think, given the anti-Israel sentiment that is so often expressed on the left. In the recent conflict with Hezbollah, there was strikingly little partisan division over the President's support for Israel. No doubt an antiwar administration would have made public statements less supportive of Israel, and would have started sooner to pressure Israel to agree to a cease fire. The Bush administration gave Israel four weeks to fight; a Feingold administration would have exerted pressure sooner. But, again, there are still enough proIsrael Democrats that the difference may not be as great as one would expect from reading Democratic Underground or the Daily Kos.

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Both sides avoid Mideast war Neither side would fight a war in the Middle East John Hinderaker, fellow of the Claremont Institute, August 16, 2006, http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/015026.php As a practical matter, I question how much the Democrats' apparent tilt to the left will matter in policy terms. It's true, in principle, that a hard liberal like Feingold will be less inclined to use American military force in post-Iraq situations than a more conservative Democrat, or a Republican. But the reality is that no administration that takes office in 2009, Republican or Democrat, will have any appetite for another ground war in the Middle East. For the foreseeable future, that isn't going to happen, no matter who inhabits the White House.

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***NMD + SPACE WEAPONS

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McCain key to NMD McCain will implement National Missile Defenses John Isaacs, July 01, 2008 News Blaze “McCain vs. Obama on National Security” http://newsblaze.com/story/20080701161430tsop.nb/topstory.html In 2001, the Bush administration withdrew from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty and since then has moved swiftly to deploy national missile defense interceptors in Alaska and California. The latest fiscal budget request for 2009 is $12.3 billion for all forms of missile defense. McCain has declared that he "strongly supports the development and deployment of theater and national missile defenses." His votes in the Senate back up that claim: he opposed all three amendments to cut the program in 2004. In a 2001 speech to the Munich Conference on Security Policy, he advocated abandoning the ABM Treaty. Obama has been critical of the Bush missile defense plans: "The Bush Administration has in the past exaggerated missile defense capabilities and rushed deployments for political purposes." Obama voted for an amendment offered by Sen. Carl Levin in 2005 (the last major vote on missile defense) while McCain missed the vote. Obama has not indicated plans for missile defense upon assuming the presidency. Missile defense site in Europe: McCain has also been clear in his support for a third missile defense site in Europe that is bitterly opposed by Russia. Congress cut a portion of the funding for the program in 2007 in advance of approval from the two Central European countries. In an October 2007 debate, McCain said: "I don't care what [President Vladimir Putin's] objections are to it." He has also described the system as a "hedge against potential threats" from Russia and China.

McCain plans on setting up missile defenses Chad Groening, staff writer, 7/16/2008, OneNewsNow, “McCain and Obama: Polar opposites on Iran” http://onenewsnow.com/Security/Default.aspx?id=178080 National defense expert and senior Army strategist Robert Maginnis says there's clearly a difference in approaches when it comes to how the two presidential candidates want to deal with the Iranian threat. When Iran recently test-fired some missiles to demonstrate its nuclear capability to the world, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama said the tests highlight the need for direct diplomacy as well as tough threats of economic sanctions and strong incentives to persuade Tehran to change its behavior. Lt. Colonel Robert Maginnis (USA-Ret.) does not believe Obama's idea of diplomacy will work. "The idea that we can talk our way out of Iran trying to follow through on what it has promised, I think is naïve," Maginnis contends. On the other hand, Republican presidential candidate John McCain said the tests demonstrate a need for an effective missile defense, including missile defense in Europe that the U.S. is planning in the Czech Republic and Poland. Maginnis concurs. "I do believe we need to have a robust ballistic missile defense capability such as the Bush administration has pushed for [and] that Mr. McCain has supported," he adds.But Maginnis says, at the same time, the U.S. must let Iran know that it will take military action if there is evidence that Iran is proceeding with its nuclear weapons program.

McCain calls for Missile Defenses FOXNews.com, 7- 9, 2008 “MCCAIN, OBAMA STAKE OUT DIFFERENCES ON IRANIAN MISSILE TESTS” http://elections.foxnews.com/2008/07/09/obama-says-iranian-missile-tests-prove-need-for-diplomacy/ In a statement, McCain said: “Iran’s most recent missile tests demonstrate again the dangers it poses to its neighbors and to the wider region, especially Israel. Ballistic missile testing coupled with Iran’s continued refusal to cease its nuclear activities should unite the international community in efforts to counter Iran’s dangerous ambitions.” McCain also raised the issue of a U.S. missile defense system that is under development in Europe, and which on Tuesday was the subject of a military threat by Russia. Russia said it would have to take military action if an agreement over the system were ratified between the Czech Republic and the United States. “Iran’s missile tests also demonstrate the need for effective missile defense now and in the future, and this includes missile defense in Europe as is planned with the Czech Republic and Poland,” McCain said. McCain also took aim at Obama, whom he criticizes for his plans to open direct diplomacy with Iran. “Working with our European and regional allies is the best way to meet the threat posed by Iran, not unilateral concessions that undermine multilateral diplomacy,” McCain said.

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Obama will cut NMD Obama will cut NMD funding David Krieger, president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation and a councilor of the World Future Council. 710-08 Media for Freedom, “COMPARING THE POSITIONS OF SENATORS OBAMA AND MCCAIN ON NUCLEAR WEAPONS POLICY” http://www.mediaforfreedom.com/ReadArticle.asp?ArticleID=10451 An important issue affecting the US ability to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons is the tension created between the US and Russia over US implementation of missile defenses, particularly in Eastern Europe. The US missile defense program has been viewed as a threat by Russia since the US unilaterally abrogated the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2002. The Russians have viewed US missile defenses as threatening their deterrent capability despite US assurances to the contrary, and if this issue is not resolved it could be a deal breaker for further progress on nuclear disarmament. An important step in clearing the path with Russia for major reductions in nuclear weapons would be for the US to reverse course on deployment of missile defenses and open negotiations with the Russians to reinstate the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. Senator Obama has said, “I will cut investments in unproven missile defense systems.” Senator McCain voted Yes on deploying National Missile Defense in 1999, and more recently stated, “The first thing I would do is make sure that we have a missile defense system in place in Czechoslovakia (sic) and Poland, and I don’t care what his [Putin’s] objections are to it.”

Obama will cut Missile Defenses and Future Combat Systems Mark Alexander, staff writer 7-11-08 Patriot Post “Obama, the national security neophyte” http://archive.patriotpost.us/pub/08-28_Digest/ In regard to Obama’s plan for overall military preparedness, it just gets worse. “I will cut investments in unproven missile defense systems.” This year, both our sea-based SM-3 and ground-based midcourse defense system missiles proved to be successful. The U.S. Bureau of Arms Control concluded in May, “The ballistic missile danger to the US, its forces deployed abroad, and allies and friends is real and growing.” (See Obama’s pledge to abolish missile defense). “I will not weaponize space.” Memo to Senator Obama: Our current policy is not to weaponize space. “I will slow our development of future combat systems...” The average service age of our frontline fighter aircraft is 23 years. The Army’s Future Combat Systems is the first full-spectrum modernization effort since the 1960s. Of course, the Marines, who are still using some hardware from long-ago wars, have always improvised, adapted and overcome. “I will set a goal of a world without nuclear weapons... I will seek a global ban on the production of fissile material and I will negotiate with Russia to take our ICBMs off hair-trigger alert and to achieve deep cuts in our nuclear arsenals.” Well, I’m all for no nuclear weapons. However, until the other guys are willing to give up their 4,162 nukes, we had best maintain a deterrence strategy, and since most nuclear weapon components have a shelf life, we must continue to update our weapons for them to be functional. And what’s this nonsense about U.S. nuclear forces being on “hair-trigger alert”? Apparently, Candidate Obama has been watching reruns of “Dr. Strangelove.”

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Obama will cut NMD Obama will end missile defense deployments in Europe Merv, PrairiePundit 6/ 9, 2008 Monday 10:30 AM EST “Democrats oppose defense against Iran missiles” | Lexis Jun. 9, 2008 (Prairie Pundit delivered by Newstex) -- Peter Huessy: The next American president will face the continued threat from Iranian ballistic missiles and their associated nuclear program. However, the election of Barack Obama would destroy a chance for the United States and Europe to be protected from such threats, This would undermine future associated diplomacy undertaken to change the course of Iranian behavior in the Middle East and beyond. Consider: Mr. Obama has called for the elimination of billions in missile defense spending. His Senate colleague, New York Democrat Charles Schumer, has called for the U.S. to stop deploying interceptors in Europe in return for Russian support of economic sanctions against Iran, An Obama adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, has actively pushed the Polish government, in whose country the interceptors would be deployed, to stonewall any deployment during the remaining months of the Bush administration. European missile defense opponents, including past Clinton administration officials, have negotiated with Greenpeace on how to stop these deployments. Whether economic sanctions would bring down the Iranian mullahs is unclear. And while Mr. Schumer says we could pay Russia $3 billion a year to make up for its loss of Iranian trade, who else would line up for such bribes? He assumes that China will join the effort as well - but without mention of what price tag that entails. Yet even if such a deal is plausible, in the meantime, Iranian ballistic missiles, already modernized and deployed, would continue to threaten U.S. interests. Why give up these defenses?...The irony of Schumer's position is that he claims the missiles would be ineffective, but can't really explain why the Russians fear them so much. He seems to think he can get Russia to accept a bribe in return for doing away with an item causing irrational fear. I suspect the Russians have been paying closer attention to the success of the defense system than has Sen. Schumer. Democrats have always had an irrational opposition to missile defense and this idea is further confirmation of just how irrational they are.

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Obama will cut NMD and space weapons Obama will cut missile defense, will not weaponize space, and won’t fund future combat systems. This could be devastating for our protection Charles R. Smith, staff writer, June 10, 2008 NewsMax “Obama's Defense Plan Leaves Us Vulnerable” http://www.newsmax.com/smith/barack_obama/2008/06/10/103236.html Sen. Barack Obama has made very little effort to supply the voters with any idea of his real policies. To date most of his speeches concentrate on the smoke and mirrors of feelings but little, if any, substance. There is one area that Obama has made his intentions very clear; U.S. national defense. The senator, like his liberal colleagues, stands ready to cut our national security to dangerous levels. During a policy speech on national defense, Obama declared the real enemy to America is not North Korea, Moscow, Beijing, Tehran or bin Laden. According to Obama, the U.S. military is the evil that must be destroyed. “I will cut tens of billions of dollars in wasteful spending. I will cut investments in unproven missile defense systems. I will not weaponize space. I will slow our development of future combat systems,” stated Obama. The implications here are standard fare for left-wing zealots who hate anything military. For example, Obama pledged to cut the national missile defense, calling it “unproven. Ironically, the only way to prove such a defense in combat is to have someone shoot missiles at the U.S. homeland. Of course, without a missile defense, we will be helpless at any such onslaught. Still, the USS Lake Erie just racked up another in a long series of successful intercepts, proving the U.S. Navy anti-missile systems not only work but work well in simulated combat situations. The Lake Erie scored two direct hits against two missiles fired and destroyed another missile from a moving launch vehicle. Obama feels that such a defense is unnecessary. Meanwhile, both North Korea and Iran are quickly progressing toward missiles capable of reaching America, Moscow is deploying its latest lethal ICBM, the Topol-M, and China is investing in massive missiles capable of reaching the U.S. homeland.

Obama’s pledge to not weaponize space threatens our defense Charles R. Smith, staff writer, June 10, 2008 NewsMax “Obama's Defense Plan Leaves Us Vulnerable” http://www.newsmax.com/smith/barack_obama/2008/06/10/103236.html Then there is Obama’s commitment to cut defense in space, pledging to not “weaponize” space. This pledge comes long after the cow has left the barn, or in this case, after China has shot down an orbiting satellite. The Chinese anti-satellite test sprayed hundreds of thousands of pieces of debris into near orbit, adding to the dangers of space travel. The Chinese test also proved that the PRC has already weaponized space, thus any pledge by Obama to not take defensive measures is just a way of leaving the communists in the high ground, threatening our satellites with instant destruction. In addition, Obama’s pledge to slow weapon systems is just as short-sighted as the rest of his declarations. The fact is that slowing weapons deployment raises their costs astronomically — not to mention the fact that we may already need these new weapons.

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Space Weapons Bad Space Weapons leads to an accidental nuclear war Thomas Graham, Jr. 12-8-08 “A Pearl Harbor in Outer Space? Space Weapons and the Risk of Accidental Nuclear War” http://www.counterpunch.org/graham12082005.html Both the United States and Russia rely on space-based systems to provide early warning of a nuclear attack. If deployed, however, U.S. space-based missile defense interceptors could eliminate the Russian early warning satellites quickly and without warning. So, just the existence of U.S. space weapons could make Russia's strategic trigger fingers itchy. The potential protection space-based defenses might offer the United States is swamped therefore by their potential cost: a failure of or false signal from a component of the Russian early warning system could lead to a disastrous reaction and accidental nuclear war. There is no conceivable missile defense, space-based or not, that would offer protection in the event that the Russian nuclear arsenal was launched at the United States. Nor are the Russians or other countries likely to stand still and watch the United States construct space-based defenses. These states are likely to respond by developing advanced anti-satellite weapon systems.[1] These weapons, in turn, would endanger U.S. early warning systems, impair valuable U.S. weapons intelligence efforts, and increase the jitteriness of U.S. officials.

Space defenses are ineffective and are seen as a threat, leading to nuclear war THOMAS GRAHAM, Jr. 12-8-08 “A Pearl Harbor in Outer Space? Space Weapons and the Risk of Accidental Nuclear War” http://www.counterpunch.org/graham12082005.html The Russian early warning system is in serious disrepair. This system consists of older radar systems nearing the end of their operational life and just three functioning satellites, although the Russian military has plans to deploy more. The United States has 15 such satellites. Ten years ago, on January 25, 1995, this aging early warning network picked up a rocket launch from Norway. The Russian military could not determine the nature of the missile or its destination. Fearing that it might be a submarine-launched missile aimed at Moscow with the purpose of decapitating the Russian command and control structure, the Russian military alerted President Boris Yeltsin, his defense minister, and the chief of the general staff. They immediately opened an emergency teleconference to determine whether they needed to order Russia's strategic forces to launch a counterattack. The rocket that had been launched was actually an atmospheric sounding rocket conducting scientific observations of the aurora borealis. Norway had notified Russia of this launch several weeks earlier, but the message had not reached the relevant sections of the military. In little more than two minutes before the deadline to order nuclear retaliation, the Russians realized their mistake and stood down their strategic forces. Thus, 10 years ago, when the declining Russian early warning system was stronger than today, it read this single small missile test launch as a U.S. nuclear missile attack on Russia. The alarm went up the Russian chain of command all the way to the top. The briefcase containing the nuclear missile launch codes was brought to Yeltsin as he was told of the attack. Fortunately, Yeltsin and the Russian leadership made the correct decision that day and directed the Russian strategic nuclear forces to stand down. Obviously, nothing should be done in any way further to diminish the reliability of the space-based components of U.S. and Russian ballistic missile early warning systems. A decline in confidence in such early warning systems caused by the deployment of weapons in space would enhance the risk of an accidental nuclear weapons attack. Yet, as part of its plans for missile defense, the Pentagon is calling for the development of a test bed for space-based interceptors as well as examining a number of other exotic space weapons. In an interview published in Arms Control Today, Lt. Gen. Henry Obering, director of the Missile Defense Agency, touted what he said was "a very modest and moderate test-bed approach to launch some experiments." Obering said the Pentagon would only deploy a handful of interceptors: "We are talking about onesies, twosies in terms of experimentation."[2] Despite Obering's claims, however, establishing a test bed for missile defense in space, as opposed to current preliminary research, would be a long step toward space weaponization. Once space-based

missile defenses are tested, they are likely to be deployed, and in significant numbers, no matter if the tests are successful.To see the path that a space test bed is likely to follow, one need only look at the present ground-based program: the Pentagon claims there is little true difference between a test bed and an operational deployment. Moreover, in space the deployment could be more dramatic. Although the current ground-based configuration envisions a few dozen interceptors, continuous space coverage over a few countries of concern would likely require a very large number of interceptors because a particular interceptor will be above a particular target for only a few minutes a day. Today's missile defenses provide very little real protection as the United States currently faces no realistic threat of deliberate attack by nuclear-armed long-range missiles. But space weapons could actually be detrimental to U.S. national security. They would increase the perceived vulnerability of early warning systems to attack and cause Russia and perhaps other countries such as China to pursue potentially destabilizing countermeasures, such as advanced anti-satellite weapons.

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No Space Weapons Obama and McCain will not Weaponize space Ken Fireman and Gopal Ratnam, staff writer, June 30, 2008, Bloomberg, “Boeing, Lockheed May Lose as Obama, McCain Reject Big Weapons” http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news? pid=20601087&sid=adXiGrYSU5PA&refer=home Goldman Sachs Group Inc. warned its clients last month that Barack Obama would be ``a negative for defense stocks'' if he became president, because he will cut weapons programs that generate the companies' biggest profits. Boeing Co., Lockheed Martin Corp. and other military contractors may not fare any better under John McCain. While the two presidential candidates are hammering each other over their differences on Iraq, they share a skepticism over big Pentagon programs such as Lockheed Martin's F-22 fighter and the Army's $159 billion Future Combat Systems, a modernization plan jointly managed by Boeing and SAIC Inc. ``When you get beyond the issue of the war in Iraq, Senator McCain and Senator Obama sound remarkably similar on many defense issues,'' says Loren Thompson, a defense analyst at the Lexington Institute in Arlington, Virginia. Both have signaled they will increase overall defense spending. Still, they say the military should invest in technologies best-suited to fighting the unconventional wars of the post-Sept. 11 world -- and rethink those designed for the Cold War. Thompson says that will likely lead them to favor building more cargo and tanker planes and developing the Littoral Combat Ship, a new Navy vessel designed for coastal operations. That may help contractors offset some possible losses from larger programs such as the Future Combat Systems. Chicago- based Boeing builds the C-17 transport aircraft and is seeking an additional $3.9 billion order. Bethesda, Maryland-based Lockheed Martin, which is building the Air Force's C-130 cargo plane, has a $4 billion contract for 60 aircraft. Lockheed and Falls Church, Virginia-based General Dynamics Corp. are competing to build the littoral ship. Comprehensive Review Both McCain and Obama say they will order a comprehensive review of weapons spending early in their presidency.McCain has cited the F-22 as one example of the cost overruns and delivery delays that he says have plagued the acquisition process. In a speech last year in Oklahoma, he said the U.S. ``must be willing to pull the plug before sinking more dollars into weapons that do not provide what our warriors need.'' The next administration must decide whether to support building more F-22s beyond the 183 already approved, at a cost of at least $175 million per aircraft. Any president who seeks to curtail weapons-spending programs will likely face resistance from Pentagon officials and lawmakers who favor the systems and could marshal support in Congress to preserve them.

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Missile Defense Good Missile Defenses are key to protecting against numerous attacks INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY 11/7/2007 “Missile Defense Before It's Too Late” http://www.investors.com/editorial/editorialcontent.asp? secid=1501&status=article&id=279331529327444&secure=770 Is it possible that Democrats are still skeptical that a missile shield will actually work? If so, evidence that it will has reached the point that it can no longer be denied. Or is their lack of support simply due to a reflexive opposition to the military and toward symbols of what they perceive to be projections of U.S. power? Either way, their actions could leave us vulnerable to nuclear attack from a rogue nation such as Iran (see editorial at left) or North Korea, which is supposedly backing down on its nuclear weapons program but will remain a threat as long as its communist regime stays in place. The risk doesn't end, however, with those two legs of the Axis of Evil, both of which are on the State Department's list of terrorist states. Nuclear-armed Pakistan is now an ally, yet it could become an enemy depending on how its internal turmoil is resolved. Both al-Qaida and the Taliban have powerful bases in the region. What if the Musharraf government one day falls and one of those terrorist groups suddenly has the keys to a nuclear arsenal? It's just as plausible that the threat could come from any of the Mideast nations that want to keep up with Iran's nuclear program. With Egypt making its announcement last week, there are now 13 countries in the region that have in the last year said they want nuclear power. They can claim, as Iran has, that they want it merely for energy. But the step from nuclear power to nuclear weapons is not that far. Given the volatility of the region, it would be wise to make sure that all precautions — and that includes a missile defense — are taken. Even Russia, with its extensive nuclear weaponry, could be a threat. President Vladimir Putin has raised objections to America's allying with former Soviet satellites to place U.S. missile defense components in their countries. This, warns Putin in language reminiscent of the Cold War, will turn Europe into a "powder keg." For his part, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has declared: "The arms race is starting again." Are congressional Democrats prepared to leave us only partly protected in a world where nuclear arms might soon begin to spread like a Southern California wildfire? Some have looked at the Democrats' actions and said, emphatically, yes. "Their aim," Heritage Foundation defense analyst Baker Spring said earlier this year, "is to force the U.S. to adopt a position that prohibits it from developing — much less deploying — missile defense interceptors in space under any circumstance and for all time." Since they hold the majority in Congress and might also take the White House next year, Democrats owe the nation more forward thinking on matters of national security. Missile defense is not a mere political issue to be used to score points. It's at the core of a real life-and-death struggle.

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Missile Defense Good Missile defense is key to avoid nuclear miscalculation and war in Europe and the Middle East. Space & Missile Defense Report 4/21, 2008 Monday “Missile Defense Prevents War” L/N Missile Defense Makes War Less Likely, Rather Than Precipitating Conflict: General Another Minuteman Overhaul May Be Needed U.S. moves to form a multi-layered ballistic missile defense (BMD) shield help to avert conflict, much as the vast U.S. arsenal of nuclear weapons dissuades any who otherwise would attack American targets, a general said. His comments counter statements of Russian leaders, who allege that U.S. plans to emplace a Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD) system in Europe are an offensive threat aimed at Russian intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs). Maj. Gen. Roger W. Burg, commander of the 20th Air Force at Warren Air

Force Base, Wyo., made his comments during a breakfast seminar of the National Defense University Foundation at the Capitol Hill Club in Washington. Burg said he sees the American array of ICBMs tipped with nuclear weapons as a force for peace, because no one would dare attack the United States and elicit a devastating nuclear retaliation. Similarly, he said U.S. development of a ballistic missile defense shield should deter enemies from attacking the United States, its allies or interests, and perhaps make enemies back away entirely from developing weapons of mass destruction. On another point, Burg said the current fleet of Minuteman ICBMs is about 80 percent through a recapitalization plan to improve their capabilities, but warned that Congress will have to fund a further refurbishment of the ICBM fleet if the Minuteman is to be pushed from its 2020 design life limit to 2030. Separately, a similar view on missile defense as a facilitator of peace came from the Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance (MDAA). According to MDAA, the creation of a U.S. missile defense shield provides any president of the United States with an option other that mutual assured destruction attacks, if an enemy launches a missile attack on American targets. Missile defense systems can avert nuclear war, according to the MDAA. "With the continued movement of Iran in its role in Iraq as well as its doubling of centrifuges for enrichment of uranium which was displayed last week in Washington D.C. and Tehran, our nation has limited options, of which military action is one," according to MDAA. Some have said that the United States should strike Iranian nuclear production targets, annihilating them before the missiles-wielding Middle Eastern nation gains the power to use nuclear blackmail against other Middle Eastern nations, European countries or the United States. "We believe that the advent of deployed missile defense systems on the borders and beyond Iran will give our nation another option that it currently does not have, so that we can prevent future conflict and protect our men and women of the armed forces," according to MDAA. That referred to those plans for a GMD defense shield based in the Czech Republic (radar) and Poland (interceptors in silos). "Most important is the international mandate and cooperative efforts being done today that was reflected by the NATO endorsement of 26 nations for missile defense to protect, deter and dissuade the threat from Iran," MDAA asserted. Russia had pressured NATO in vain, demanding that it not endorse the U.S. GMD plan. But now, with the United States on the verge of gaining Czech and Polish permission to base the GMD system there, Russia has turned more conciliatory. "It is also very significant that the country that was most opposed to missile defense has made a change on its position, as Russia is now working with the United States on a strategic framework on missile defense," the MDAA observed.

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***SOFT POWER/GENERAL FOREIGN POLICY

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McCain key to global survival **Democratic win kills everyone (economy, heg, energy prices, terrorism, civil war, open border, Canada, space, hygiene)

Town Hall, 1-23-07, http://commonsenseviews.townhall.com/ The Republican Party better remove the gloves and play as dirty as they possibly can without breaking the rules. The 2008 election is a do or die election for America. Whether this country has another Civil War or Revolution depends on the outcome of 2008. If the democrats win the presidency and retain Congress we will have no other choice other than forcefully removing the Communists from power, or seceding from the Union. This nation will no longer be America, "land of the free and home of the brave" should the democrats control both the Executive and Legislative branches of government. The Judicial Branch won't be far behind. If the Democrats win in 2008 every worst case scenario you can think of will be realized: 1.Taxes will increase and inflation will go up creating a recession. 2.We will lose several constitutional rights of free speech and our freedom to bear arms will be attacked. 3.Regulation of Internet content will be put into effect. 4.The Military will be slashed and our defenses will become weak. 5.Our enemies and criminals will be given more rights than law abiding citizens. 6.Energy prices will rise and dependance on the Middle East will increase because of new environmental regulations on domestic production. 7.Unemployment will rise and productivity will fade. 8.Terrorists attacks both at home and abroad will increase dramatically. 9.Racial tensions will rise as new preferences create more divisions. 10.Christianity will be driven underground with new Hate Legislation protecting homosexuals and other sexual deviants becomes common. 11.Property rights will be lost to a slew of environmental regulations and protections. 12.New laws will be passed making it harder for political rivals to have a chance of winning. 13. A new open border policy will allow unlimited immigration into the US from Mexico. 14. etc... America will be nothing more than a massive Canada with an open door policy and no Military or means of National Defense. In a Democrat America the nation will no longer be the world leader in the areas of importance that makes us the greatest nation on earth; science, weaponry, defensive capability, technology, safety, computers, outer space, health, hygiene, medicine, production, productivity, competition, engineering, economy, standard of living and most everything else that matters. Of course we aren't always the leader in all areas at the same time but overall no other nation even comes close to our success.

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Obama key to soft power/relations Electing Obama is the single greatest act for restoring U.S. soft power Joseph Nye – is a professor at Harvard, received a Ph.D. in political science from Harvard; 6-1208; “Barack Obama and Soft Power” Huffington Post http://www.huffingtonpost.com/josephnye/barack-obama-and-soft-pow_b_106717.html?page=2 I have spent the past month lecturing in Oxford and traveling in Europe where Barack Obama could be elected in a landslide. I suspect that this fascination with Obama is true in many parts of the world. In fact, as I have said before, it is difficult to think of any single act that would do more to restore America's soft power than the election of Obama to the presidency. Soft power is the ability to obtain the outcomes one wants through attraction rather than using the carrots and sticks of payment or coercion. As I describe in my new book The Powers to Lead, in individuals soft power rests on the skills of emotional intelligence, vision, and communication that Obama possesses in abundance. In nations, it rests upon culture (where it is attractive to others), values (when they are applied without hypocrisy), and policies (when they are inclusive and seen as legitimate in the eyes of others.) Polls show that American soft power has declined quite dramatically in much of the world over the past eight years. Some say this is structural, and resentment is the price we pay for being the biggest kid on the block. But it matters greatly whether the big kid is seen as a friend or a bully. In much of the world we have been seen as a bully as a result of the Bush Administration policies. Unfortunately, a President Obama will inherit a number of policy problems such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran and North Korea where hard power plays a large role. If he drops the ball on any of these issues, they will devour his political capital. At the same time, he will have to be careful not to let this inherited legacy of problems define his presidency. Some time between November 4 and January 20, he will need to indicate a new tone in foreign policy which shows that we will once again export hope rather than fear. This could take several forms: announcement of an intent to close Guantanamo; dropping the term "global war on terror;" creation of a special bipartisan group to formulate a new policy on climate change; a "listening trip" to Asia, and so forth. Electing Obama will greatly help restore America's soft power as a nation that can recreate itself, but the election alone will not be sufficient. It is not too soon to start thinking about symbols and policies for the days immediately after the election.

Obama victory is key to international peace and a strong US Sheldon Schorer, counsel to Democrats Aborad, Israel, Jerusalem Post, 3-1-07, http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1171894552490&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull The 2008 election will give American voters in Israel an opportunity to rectify the harmful legacy of the two Bush administrations by electing a Democrat to the presidency. The Republican candidates pride themselves on their identification with President George W. Bush and his policies. Only a Democrat can bring about change and lead the United States and Israel out of the current quagmire and into a position of greater peace and security. The centerpiece of Bush's foreign policy, his war on terror, has been a disastrous failure. America has not lessened the threat of international terrorism, which has grown. American weakness - symbolized by troops mired in Afghanistan and Iraq - and the consequent loss of international political clout have had a devastating effect on Israel's security, making it less secure today than it was during the Bill Clinton era. In addition to emboldening Hizbullah and Hamas, America has failed to dissuade Iran from pursuing an aggressive program of nuclear weapons development. Both leading Democratic contenders, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, are strong friends of Israel, who understand its needs and who support Israel's efforts to achieve peace and security. A new Democratic president will continue the party's long tradition of support for Israel. Hillary Clinton's concern and support for Israel's needs are well-known, and she has demonstrated this support in the Senate time and again. Although his views are lesser known, Senator Barack Obama has also shown strong understanding for Israel. In a June 2004 speech, Obama summarized the Democratic position: "Our first and immutable commitment must be to the security of Israel, our only true ally in the Middle East and the only democracy. The administration's failure to be consistently involved in helping Israel achieve peace with the Palestinians has been both wrong for our friendship with Israel, as well as badly damaging to our standing in the Arab world." More recently, Obama said, "My view is that the United States's special relationship with Israel obligates us to be helpful to them in the search for credible partners with whom they can make peace, while also supporting Israel in defending itself against enemies sworn to its destruction." The Bush era of cowboy diplomacy, which has been marked by instability and insecurity, will soon come to an end. A Democratic victory will reverse this trend and will result in increased stability and security for both the United States and Israel.

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Obama key to solve isolationism Obama victory is key to prevent inevitable long-term isolationism Robert Kagan, senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and transatlantic fellow at the German Marshall Fund, May 28, 2006, http://www.carnegieendowment.org/publications/index.cfm? fa=view&id=18386&prog=zgp&proj=zusr Could the United States be better off with a Democrat in the White House in 2009? Here are a couple of reasons the answer might be yes, even if you're not a Democrat. The Democrats need to take ownership of American foreign policy again, for their sake as well as the country's. Long stretches in opposition sometimes drive parties toward defeatism, utopianism, isolationism or permutations of all three. What starts off as legitimate attacks on the inevitable errors of the party in power can veer off into a wholesale rejection of the opposition party's own foreign policy principles. Republicans in the 1990s, after supporting an expansive internationalism under Ronald Reagan and the first George Bush, drifted toward quasi-isolationism against the Clinton administration's quasi-internationalism. During Woodrow Wilson's two terms, the internationalist party of Theodore Roosevelt began transforming itself into the isolationist party of William Borah. During the Nixon-Ford years, the party of John F. Kennedy became the party of George McGovern. Eight years of Bill Clinton brought the Democrats mostly out of their post-Vietnam trauma and revived liberal interventionism. But the George W. Bush years have driven many back. Buffeted between the administration's failures and their party's left-wing critics, the Clintonites either disavowed what they once believed or kept their heads down. Lately they're starting to show signs of life and could still take the reins again if the right Democrat won in 2008. That wouldn't be such a bad thing. No one can claim any more that the old Clinton foreign policy team is less competent than the Republicans who succeeded it. But what happens to these Democrats if their standard-bearer loses in 2008?

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No difference on soft power McCain and Obama will increase soft power Gabor Steingart – reporter stationed in Washington D.C.; “From Superpower to Softpower” Speigel Online International, http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,555807,00.html Cool pragmatism is also returning to America. Barack Obama may be calling his rival "John McBush," hoping to stigmatize him as the current president's political heir. And McCain may accuse Obama of being naïve for wanting to negotiate unconditionally with Iran, Cuba and North Korea. Nevertheless, the similarities are already beginning to emerge from the fog of electioneering. Both candidates support international cooperation. Both see the use of force as the last and not the first instrument of foreign policy. Obama sees himself as the proponent of a new foreign policy that would emphasize America's status as a role model, favoring the carrot over the stick. And John McCain, as much as he is courting conservative Republicans in the run-up to the party's convention, is no neoconservative. Unlike Bush, McCain opposes torture in CIA prisons, wants to close the US detainee camp at Guantanamo Bay, and supported talks with Hamas, not exactly a peace-loving group, after its 2006 election victory in the Gaza Strip. For the first time, McCain has even suggested that he would support withdrawing US troops from Iraq, but not until 2013. When it comes to Iran policy, McCain not only supports the European governments' talks with Tehran, but also favors contacts between the United States and the Iranian government, though not at the presidential level. If there is one encouraging signal coming from Washington in the turbulent days of the election campaign, it is this: the zeitgeist has shifted. America wants to cooperate with the rest of the world again instead of imposing its will on other countries. Even Bush is clearly no longer the man he presents himself to be. Without any presidential fanfare, lowerlevel talks are underway with the government of Bush's archrival in Tehran. The pistol has returned to its holster.

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No difference on foreign policy No change in foreign policy no matter who wins Washington Post, 2-29-08 As you might have heard, the big theme of the 2008 election thus far is change. But when it comes to foreign policy, the Democratic Party's eager, galvanized base may wind up getting a whole lot less change than they'd hoped for if their party takes the White House. Sweeping oratory aside, a President Barack Obama or a President Hillary Rodham Clinton -- let alone a President John McCain -- might chart a course in the world that's surprisingly similar to that of George W. Bush in his second term. Consider a panel of (mostly Democratic) foreign policy thinkers that was held last summer at the centrist Center for a New American Security. Peter D. Feaver, who was then just leaving a post on Bush's National Security Council staff, asked several leading Democrats if they could identify any policies laid out by President Bush that the next administration would continue "more or less the same way" -- and he got plenty of takers. Princeton University political scientist Anne-Marie Slaughter mentioned Bush's support of democracy around the world and his doubling of foreign aid. Kurt Campbell, a Pentagon official in the Clinton administration, cited the Bush team's efforts to protect the U.S. homeland from terrorist attacks and the strengthening of alliances with countries such as Japan and India. James B. Steinberg, a deputy national security adviser during President Bill Clinton's second term, said he was impressed with Bush's efforts to work with Democrats on trade. The panel's moderator was Richard Danzig, a former secretary of the Navy who has become a top adviser to Obama and is often mentioned as a contender for secretary of defense or national security adviser. Even while describing himself as "fiercely critical"of first-term Bush decisions, Danzig praised the administration's strategy of using sanctions and diplomatic pressure to dissuade Iran from going after the bomb. "That path may fail," Danzig pointed out. "But the administration, I think, has basically followed the right course in efforts in this regard, even if they have had very limited success up until now." Of course, Democrats still love to beat up on Bush for his failures around the world. But the comments of Danzig and his co-panelists, made before the rhetoric of the presidential campaign turned white-hot, suggest that something subtler is going on in the real world of hard foreign policy choices. The next president will inherit a turbulent, intractable world that sharply constrains the room for creative new U.S. initiatives, according to many foreign policy experts of varying ideological persuasions. Despite the sharp campaign jousting, it's not hard to imagine the next president -- even a Democrat -- pursuing basically the same set of policies as Bush has in recent years on such big subjects as North Korea's nuclear program, Arab-Israeli peace talks, development and conflict in Africa, Russia's increasing belligerence and China's integration into the world. "The truth is, a combination of realities . . . make a certain degree of continuity more likely than not," Campbell told me. Philip Zelikow, a University of Virginia professor who served for two years as counselor to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, echoed that thought. Obama and Clinton's "critique in general of the administration, aside from Iraq, is we are going to be more competent and collegial," he said. "They don't really debate many of the underlying premises of the administration's current policies." Even on Iraq and Iran, where the Democrats have promised dramatic new departures, the next president seems likely to wind up grappling with the same set of unpalatable choices that Bush and his advisers have struggled with in recent years. As the veteran former State Department Middle East adviser Aaron David Miller puts it, it will take a while to "dig out" from what Bush has wrought in the broader Middle East.

Both sides would effectively have the same foreign policy John Hinderaker, fellow of the Claremont Institute, August 16, 2006, http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/015026.php Lest there be any misunderstanding, I am not saying that there would be no important foreign policy differences between, say, a Feingold administration and a McCain, Allen or Giuliani administration. There would be. But I think the practical reality is that events in Iraq have constrained what a conservative administration can do, while the overriding need to forestall terrorist attacks constrains what a liberal administration can do. As a result, the gap in practice between the two alternatives would be, I think, much narrower than one might expect from the rhetorical gulf that separates the parties.

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170 Politics Generic Revamped!

No difference on foreign policy Both sides would have the same foreign policy Kemal Koprulu, Founder and Chairman of the ARI movement, a leading Turkish think tank, June 9, 2005, http://memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page=archives&Area=sd&ID=SP91905 Question:"Do you think that America's foreign policy, known as the Bush Doctrine, will be permanent for this region? Koprulu: "It is certain it will be permanent in the Middle East. Even if there is a Democratic president in 2008 or a heavily Democratic Congress, the foreign policies will not change suddenly. Only their approach might change. Bush also changed his approach and is trying to act more multilaterally. For example, he has come to agreements with the European countries on Syria, with Russia and even with Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia, and he has been successful to a point. On Iran they are acting together with Europe, but the diplomatic initiatives there don't seem very successful so far. "In conclusion, yes, they'll stay in the Middle East. There have been indications to this effect. When Paul Wolfowitz came to Turkey in July 2003, he said he wanted to cooperate with Turkey not only on Iraq, but in the whole region. Then the expectation was that this process would last five or even fifteen years. In Turkey many people thought that these people would only enter Baghdad, end Saddam's rule, and go back to their homes. It's not like that. The U.S. will probably stay in the Middle East for 25 years, but of course as things are, not together with Turkey. They are looking for new partners."

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171 Politics Generic Revamped!

A2: McCain is a secret realist No chance that McCain will pursue a moderate foreign policy – his dabbling with realists has no translated to policy shifts John Judis, visiting fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, The New Republic, 7-30-08, http://tnr.com/story_print.html?id=220a2dab-3d4b-45e4-9355-b03d44b6b844 Two years ago, I wrote a profile arguing that there were reasons to believe that McCain was more pragmatic than his support for the Iraq debacle suggested ("Neo-McCain," October 16, 2006). In the interviews I conducted with him in 2006, he repeatedly distanced himself from neoconservatism, reminding me that he talked regularly to realists like Brent Scowcroft. I thought there was a good chance that there was a peacemaker lurking beneath McCain's warrior exterior--that a President McCain might be able use his hawkish reputation to, say, bring Iraq's warring parties together or to lure Iran to the bargaining table. I wasn't the only one. Since McCain secured the Republican nomination, I've heard echoes of my ambivalence from foreign policy experts, including some who plan to vote for Obama. "McCain has Nixon-goes-to-China credentials," one told me. But, based on McCain's actions over the last two years and conversations I've had with those close to him, I have concluded that this is wishful thinking. McCain continues to rely on the same neoconservative advisers; he still thinks U.S. foreign policy should focus on transforming rogue states and autocracies into democracies that live under the shadow of American power; and he no longer tells credulous reporters that he consults Scowcroft. That is not to say McCain's views are static. He has, for example, rethought the tactics of the Iraq war. But he continues to believe that Baghdad can become "a strong stable democratic ally" and "a strong ally against an aggressive and radical Iran" (this despite Iraq's pro-Iranian Shia majority). McCain may no longer believe that the United States can single-handedly overthrow undemocratic governments, but he now wants to change enemy regimes via a "League of Democracies" that would pointedly exclude states like Russia. Indeed, McCain, known in the Senate for his quickness to anger, has displayed a growing tendency to personalize foreign policy, seemingly basing his approach to Moscow on his hostility toward Vladimir Putin. If John McCain's foreign policy is changing, it is only becoming more combustible, not less.

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Obama doesn’t solve soft power/EU Democrat win won’t affect soft power or alliances Robert Kagan, senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and transatlantic fellow at the German Marshall Fund, May 28, 2006, http://www.carnegieendowment.org/publications/index.cfm? fa=view&id=18386&prog=zgp&proj=zusr The case for electing a Democrat is not only to save the party's soul, though that's a worthy task, but to pull the country together to face the difficult times ahead. The last time the Democrats were in office, the world seemed a comparatively manageable place. They have not yet had to deal with the post-Sept. 11 world. Since the only post-Sept. 11 foreign policy Americans know is Bush's, many believe -- especially many Democrats -- that if only Bush weren't president, the world would be manageable again. Allies could be easily summoned for the struggle against al-Qaeda or to bring pressure on Iran or to replace American troops in Iraq. Threats could be addressed without force, through skillful diplomacy and soft power. Maybe some of the threats would disappear. This is fantasy. The next president, whether Democrat or Republican, may work better with allies and may be more clever in negotiating with adversaries. But the realities of the world are what they are, and the imperatives of U.S. foreign policy are what they are. The diffuse threats of the postCold War world simply don't unite and energize our European allies as the Soviet Union did, and even a dedicated "multilateralist" won't be able to get them to spend more money on defense or stop buying oil from Iran. A smarter negotiating strategy toward Iran might or might not make a difference in stopping its weapons program. Soft power will go only so far in dealing with problems such as North Korea and Sudan. In fact, the options open to any new administration are never as broad as its supporters imagine, which is why, historically, there is more continuity than discontinuity in American foreign policy. If the Democrats did take office in 2009, their approach to the post-Sept. 11 world would be marginally different but not stunningly different from Bush's. And they would have to sell that not stunningly different set of policies to their own constituents.

A Democratic win wouldn’t solve soft power Andrei Markovits, professor of comparative politics and German studies at the University of Michigan, Chronicle Review, 1-19-07, http://chronicle.com/temp/reprint.php?id=5cm8m89n8bpb099csz9qn8p6z7nzj8xp Negative sentiments and views have been driven not only — or even primarily — by what the United States does, but rather by an animus against what Europeans have believed that America is. While the politics, style, and discourse of the Bush terms — and of President Bush as a person — have undoubtedly exacerbated antiAmerican sentiment among Europeans and fostered a heretofore unmatched degree of unity between elite and mass opinion in Europe, they are not anti-Americanism's cause. Indeed, a change to a center-left administration in Washington, led by a Democratic president, would not bring about its abatement, let alone its disappearance.

A Democrat wouldn’t solve EU relations Pieter Dorsman, May 7, 2005, http://www.peaktalk.com/archives/001283.php Dutch blogger Sered argues that the protests are anti-Bush rather than anti-American and that they are fed by the negative attitudes prevalent in Dutch media with regards to the current president. While I agree with the media argument, we should be aware that the world has changed since the free wheeling 1990s and that even a Democratic president would put US interests first and should therefore not expect automatic European media support. Hillary Clinton, to name one, has moved to the center of US politcs and supported Bush on Iraq and in a number of other areas, she even produced a pro-life speech not that long ago. In doing that she has moved to the right of most of conservative Europe, hardly a ticket to demonstration-free visits to the old continent.

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No difference on WOT A Democrat would be the same in the war on terror John Hinderaker, fellow of the Claremont Institute, August 16, 2006, http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/015026.php In terms of the broader war against terror, I think the danger posed by a liberal Democrat like Feingold may also be overstated. Once a Democratic President actually takes power, his number one priority will be preventing terrorist attacks on American soil, for the best of all possible reasons: self-interest. The anti-terror tools pioneered by the Bush administration will be used with equal vigor, I think, by any Democrat, no matter how liberal, who may follow. Anyone who thinks, for example, that a Democratic President would stop eavesdropping on international conversations among terrorists, and thereby risk being blamed for another September 11, is seriously misguided. Actually, I would expect a Democratic administration to be less scrupulous than the Bush administration has been in respecting civil liberties. Democrats, more than Republicans, tend to believe that their being in power is an a priori good so desirable that it justifies bending the rules where necessary, and they know that, unlike Republicans, they will not be criticized in the press for trying to keep Americans safe.

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174 Politics Generic Revamped!

Obama key to CTBT Obama is key to pass CTBT – McCain won’t to ensure India Deal passage. Indo-Asian News Service 6/ 11, 2008 Wednesday 2:48 PM EST “Obama or McCain, how will nuclear deal fare? Report from Indo-Asian News Service brought to you by HT Syndication.” | LEXIS New Delhi, June 11 -- With Barack Obama winning the Democratic presidential nomination, there are anxieties among the government and strategic circles here that if the nuclear deal is not concluded this year, it will have a tougher time in the event of a Democratic dispensation in Washington. "If the nuclear deal does not go through during the term of the George Bush administration, it will not survive in its present form," Lalit Mansingh, former foreign secretary and a former ambassador of India to the US, told IANS. "If it's a Democrat, it is almost certain they will have a rethink on 123 (bilateral India-US nuclear agreement) and make sure it's compatible with their stricter non-proliferation norms," said Mansingh who served as New Delhi's envoy to Washington during 2001-2004. "Democrats are trying to revive the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). Unlike the last time when they failed in 1999, if they manage to get CTBT passed in Congress there is no way India can hold out as a lone ranger," he stressed. "However, if Senator John McCain of the Republican Party winds, the deal will sail through," he said. "With Republicans we are sure about the nuclear deal. But with Democrats we have to wait and watch," a top official, privy to India-US nuclear negotiations, said, indicating the unease in the government about the fate of the deal under the next US administration. The July 18, 2005, nuclear deal is currently stalled by strong political opposition to it, including from the Indian government's Communist allies. India has yet to clinch a safeguards agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and win a waiver from the Nuclear Suppliers Group by July this year so that the 123 agreement can be ratified by the US Congress before it heads for its summer recess in August. With the clock ticking away, the chances of India wrapping up its nuclear deal with the US are looking increasingly remote. K. Subrahmanyam, a strategic expert who is often consulted by the government, finds such anxieties misplaced. "Obama voted for the deal. He will not create problems. There will be mischief from the so-called nuclear ayatollahs, but they are now more sober," he said. If India manages to win NSG waiver, there will be enormous pressure on the next US administration to complete the deal as they would not like Russia and France walking away with nuclear business, Subrahmanyam told IANS. Moreover, if Hillary Clinton is going to be the Democrat vice-presidential candidate, Mansingh points out, it will be a "dream ticket" for India. Obama would push CTBT – full costs. Ernie Regehr 12-14, 2007, “Democratic stick handling and Nuclear Disarmament” http://www.igloo.org/disarmingconflict/democrat Clinton pledges to pursue bi-partisan support for the CTBT and regards its ratification as an early priority. She also promises to maintain the testing moratorium in the meantime and charges that the Bush Administration’s policy on RRW and its refusal to ratify the CTBT have undermined US security. Obama also promises to make CTBT ratification a priority. In the meantime he says the US should pay its full share of the costs of the CTBT Organization, which is not now the case.

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175 Politics Generic Revamped!

***RUSSIA

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176 Politics Generic Revamped!

McCain  new Cold War McCain will instigate a new Cold War with Russia John Judis, visiting fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, The New Republic, 7-30-08, http://tnr.com/story_print.html?id=220a2dab-3d4b-45e4-9355-b03d44b6b844 The problem with this analogy and with McCain's division of the world more broadly is that it imposes a dynamic on world politics that simply doesn't exist. While obviously there are democracies and autocracies, there is little evidence that the one is engaged with the other in a worldwide struggle over what form of government is best, as the United States and the Soviet Union were during the cold war. The Chinese are not trying to impose communism on Germany, for example; nor is Germany trying to export parliamentary democracy to China. Countries still go to war, of course, but they most often do so for non- ideological reasons: territory, regional hegemony, access to natural resources, and so on. Existing alliances often cut across different forms of government, as in the U.S. alliance with Saudi Arabia and Egypt. Because this struggle does not exist, McCain's solution to it--his League of Democracies--would not advance American interests. As Thomas Carothers of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace has argued, the organization would be ill-equipped to address major problems like global warming, trade protection, nuclear proliferation, and resource scarcity, because solving those problems requires cooperation between democracies and autocracies. Even when such cooperation isn't needed, a League is unlikely to be useful: The democracies themselves can't even agree on when to promote democracy. South Africa has refused to intervene in Zimbabwe; Europe won't clamp down on Russia; and, whatever their election-year bluster, a succession of American presidents has been reluctant to ruffle China's feathers. But the greatest problem with McCain's division of the world is that it threatens to become a self-fulfilling prophecy. McCain isn't advocating a new cold war, but, if he initiated a global struggle against autocracy by founding a League of Democracies, the resulting split would roughly reproduce the cold war confrontation between West and East. By building a new organization that excludes Russia and China, the United States would create gratuitous tensions with these countries. Even without such provocation, U.S. and European relations with Russia have been growing more fractious since 2002, and McCain's approach threatens to exacerbate them in particular.

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McCain kills US/Russian relations McCain will drive a stake in US/Russian relations John Judis, visiting fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, The New Republic, 7-30-08, http://tnr.com/story_print.html?id=220a2dab-3d4b-45e4-9355-b03d44b6b844 But McCain's response has been to throw down the gauntlet. He has called Putin's complaints about the United States "childish." When Putin criticized the Bush administration in 2007 for following a "unipolar model" of foreign policy--a criticism that many Democrats shared--McCain accused Putin of trying to start a new cold war. While the Bush administration has insisted that the anti-missile batteries it hopes to place in Eastern Europe are meant to defend against Iranian missiles, McCain says they are needed as "a hedge against potential threats" from Russia and China. That's incredibly provocative-- tantamount to defining NATO again as an anti-Russian alliance. McCain continues to support the 1974 Jackson-Vanik Act's trade restrictions on Russian exports long after Soviet restrictions on Jewish emigration--the original basis for the sanction--were lifted. By doing that, he is singling out Russia from among the many pseudo-democracies or autocracies that enjoy trading relations with the United States. And, in his Los Angeles speech, McCain inserted into Kagan's draft a proposal to kick Russia out of the Group of Eight. To promote democracy, he proposed "ensuring that the G-8 becomes again a club of leading market democracies: it should include Brazil and India but exclude Russia." Dmitri Trenin, the deputy director of the Carnegie Moscow Center, describes McCain as "an echo of the cold war" and says that "Russians see him as a guy from the past." In his recent book, Getting Russia Right, Trenin lays out what would happen if McCain got his way with the G8. "Russia's foreign policy would turn overtly anti-American, and Moscow would feel the need to found or join a rival club." Highlighting the absurdity of McCain's provocation, his proposal can't possibly work. The G-8 operates by consensus, and other members are opposed.

McCain victory kills US/Russian relations Russian Press Digest, 1- 31-07 Question: How do you think American-Russian relations will develop if a Democrat wins the presidential election in 2008? Mark Medish: No one can predict that at this stage. Everything will be decided by developments in Russia and the United States. Question: But what kind of administration would Russia find it easier to deal with after 2008 - Democrat or Republican? Mark Medish: If Republican John McCain wins the election, the United States would have a president who has expressed his "personal" deep concern about Russia's slide into authoritarianism. McCain has criticized Moscow far more harshly than any potential Democrat candidate. I get the impression that Russia would find it far more difficult to deal with the Republicans if they win the election in 2008.

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2008 key to Russian relations The Next President Must Secure Russian Relations LA Times, 7-9-08, http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/sunday/commentary/la-oe-albright92008jul09,0,1514385.story The next U.S. president will have no choice but to seek Russia's cooperation on a range of vital issues even while managing the differences that are sure to arise. We will have a far better chance of succeeding if our disagreements on matters of substance -- the future of NATO, for example -- are not aggravated unnecessarily by questions of symbolism and protocol. We cannot expect help from a government we are attempting to blackball, nor would it be in our interest to push Russia further in the direction of an alliance of autocracies with such countries as China and Iran.

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179 Politics Generic Revamped!

***CUBA

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180 Politics Generic Revamped!

Obama will lift embargo Obama would weaken the embargo – discourages reforms. Cindy Saine, voa staff writer, 5/20/2008, McCain Criticizes Obama's Cuba Policy, http://www.voanews.com/english/2008-05-20-voa50.cfm "Now Senator Obama has shifted positions and says he only favors easing the embargo, not lifting it," he said. "He also wants to sit down unconditionally for a presidential meeting with Raul Castro… an unconditional meeting with Raul Castro. These steps would send the worst possible signal to Cuba's dictators: there is no need to undertake fundamental reforms, they can simply wait for a unilateral change in U.S. policy." Obama would ease the embargo – lift Bush restrictions. Laura Wides-Munoz, AP staff, 8/21/2007, Obama Calls for Easing Cuba Embargo, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/20/AR2007082002016.html MIAMI -- Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is leaping into the long-running Cuba debate by calling for the U.S. to ease restrictions for Cuban-Americans who want to visit the island or send money home. Obama's campaign said Monday that, if elected, the Illinois senator would lift restrictions imposed by the Bush administration and allow Cuban-Americans to visit their relatives more frequently, as well as ease limits on the amount of money they can send to their families. "Senator Obama feels that the Bush administration has made a humanitarian and a strategic blunder," spokeswoman Jen Psaki said in an e-mail. "His concern is that this has had a profoundly negative impact on the Cuban people, making them more dependent on the Castro regime, thus isolating them from the transformative message carried by Cuban-Americans." Obama would weaken the embargo and engage diplomats. Council on Foreign Relations, 7/17/2008, The Candidates on Cuba Policy, http://www.cfr.org/publication/14758/ Barack Obama Sen. Obama (D-IL) has broken with the status quo on U.S. policy toward Cuba, calling for travel and remittance restrictions on Cuban-Americans to be lifted. "There are no better ambassadors for freedom than Cuban Americans,"Obama said in a May 2008 speech in Miami, explaining why he would "immediately allow unlimited family travel and remittances to the island." In February 2008, Obama called Fidel Castro's resignation "the end of a dark era in Cuba's history," and called for a democratic transition there. He urged the "prompt release of all political prisoners" in Cuba, and said the United States should prepare to "begin taking steps to normalize relations and to ease the embargo of the last five decades." Still, in May 2008 Obama said he would not lift the embargo until the Cuban government takes steps to "democratize the island." In an August 2007 op-ed in the Miami Herald, Obama also said he would engage in bilateral talks with Cuba to send the message that the United States is willing to normalize relations with Cuba upon evidence of a democratic opening. Obama has also said under his administration, the United States would hold a "series of meetings with low-level diplomats," (McClatchy) and that over time Obama himself would be "willing to meet and talk very directly about what we expect from the Cuban regime."

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Obama will lift embargo No lifting of the embargo without a Democratic victory in 2008 AFX.COM, November 7, 2006 Perez Roque said that a spotlight will shine on the U.S. government's 'cruel' policies on Wednesday at the U.N. vote. 'On one side, there's the empire, militarily and economically powerful but void of any noble ideas,' he said of the United States. 'On that side will be the government that violates international laws ... and believes in pre-emptive war. 'On the other side will be Cuba and the countries that support Cuba, those of us who believe in a multilateral world ... and all people's right to peace.' Democrats and free-trade Republicans in the U.S. Congress also have pushed for easing the sanctions, but they have yet to make headway against an administration determined to keep up the pressure. Perez Roque said a victory by Democrats in Tuesday's U.S. elections could help, but doesn't envision major change regarding Cuba until Americans choose a new leader in 2008.

The new president is key to get the embargo lifted Mark Drajem, 1-26-07, http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news? pid=20601070&sid=aqSR8RPvtsxk&refer=home Charles Rangel (news, bio, voting record), the chairman of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, is betting that with Cuban leader Fidel Castro in failing health and Democrats in control of Congress, lawmakers will scale back trade and travel embargoes on the communist island. Rangel, a New York Democrat, introduced a measure Jan. 24 to end the U.S. ban on travel to Cuba. He and others say they will offer measures to relax limits on sending money to Cuba and payment restrictions on the sale of farm goods. ``Being in the majority, I think we can be successful this year,'' Rangel said in an interview. Speaker Nancy Pelosi (news, bio, voting record) of California, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (news, bio, voting record) of Maryland, and all but one of the new House committee chairmen voted in the past for easing the embargo, according to the U.S.-Cuba Trade Association. An end to the almost 50-year-old trade barriers may open a $1 billion-a-year export market for U.S. goods and revive Havana as an attraction for U.S. tourists about 100 miles off the Florida coast. President George W. Bush opposes lifting the embargo. Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez says Cuba first must free political prisoners and allow free enterprise and opposition political parties. Because of the embargo companies such as San Antonio-based Valero Energy Corp. can't refine oil from Cuban offshore oil tracts. Wayzata, Minnesota-based Cargill Inc. currently faces restrictions on grain sales and Pernod Ricard SA can't sell its Havana Club rum in the U.S. Both sides are girding for battle, increasing campaign contributions, hiring lobbyists and accompanying lawmakers on visits to the island. Backers of change say they are trying to lay the groundwork for ending the embargo in 2009, after Bush leaves office and Castro, 80, likely will be out of power.

The Democrats would open up ties with Cuba Evan Moore, Cybercast News service, 7-26-07, http://www.cnsnews.com/news/viewstory.asp? Page=/Politics/archive/200707/POL20070726b.html As president, Barack Obama would "not wait until [Cuban dictator Fidel Castro] dies" before establishing diplomatic relations with Havana, according to a Democratic lawmaker acting as a surrogate for the Illinois senator in a panel discussion on Tuesday. The comment came a day after Obama said -- during a debate sponsored by CNN and YouTube -- that he would be willing to talk to the leaders of undemocratic and hostile regimes without preconditions during his first year in office. Obama called that fact that the Bush administration had not done so "a disgrace." Tuesday's event, hosted by the Center for U.S. Global Engagement, featured surrogates from the two parties standing in for the 2008 presidential hopefuls in two consecutive panels. In a Democratic panel moderated by George Mason University professor Frank Sesno, formerly of CNN, the campaign surrogates emphasized the use of diplomacy and soft-power engagement with foreign nations.

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McCain won’t lift embargo McCain would continue the embargo. Cindy Saine, voa staff writer, 5/20/2008, McCain Criticizes Obama's Cuba Policy, http://www.voanews.com/english/2008-05-20-voa50.cfm Republican presidential candidate John McCain has attacked Democratic frontrunner Barack Obama on his Cuba policy. Speaking to a friendly Cuban-American audience in Miami, Senator McCain vowed to maintain a strict U.S. economic embargo on Cuba until the communist government grants basic liberties to its people, releases political prisoners and holds internationally monitored elections. VOA Correspondent Cindy Saine reports from Washington. McCain’s pro-embargo – empirically supports sanctions. Council on Foreign Relations, 7/17/2008, The Candidates on Cuba Policy, http://www.cfr.org/publication/14758/ John McCain If elected, Sen. McCain (R-AZ) will "not passively await the day when the Cuban people enjoy the blessings of freedom and democracy," he said in a May 2008 speech. He says the United States must provide "material assistance and moral support" to Cubans who oppose the Castro regime. Sen. McCain (R-AZ) has typically voted in support of sanctions on Cuba. In 1992, he cosponsored the Cuban Democracy Act. In February 2008, McCain said he welcomed Castro's resignation, and said the United States should continue to press for the release of all Cuban political prisoners and for the legalization of "all political parties, labor unions and free media." He also said the United States should urge Cuba to "schedule internationally monitored elections." In May 2008, McCain said he believes the embargo should remain in place until those "basic elements of democratic society are met." He has also said he would "increase Radio and TV Marti and other means to communicate directly with the Cuban people."

McCain will keep the embargo Keith Porter – reporter for About.com; 4/3/08; “Will Castro Face U.S. President #11?” http://usforeignpolicy.about.com/od/americas/a/2008cuba.htm Senator John McCain (R-AZ) would also maintain the embargo. He views Cuba as a national security threat, and even said he "will not passively await the long-overdue demise of the Castro dictatorship," according to this New York Times blog post. McCain predicts, "Cuba is destined to become an important ally in advancing democracy in our hemisphere."

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Obama won’t lift embargo Obama would continue the economic embargo. Matthew Borghese - AHN Editor, 5/23/2008, Obama Promises To Maintain Cuban Embargo, http://www.allheadlinenews.com/articles/7011045005 Miami, FL (AHN) - Attending a celebration held by the influential Cuban American National Foundation in Miami, Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) promised to continue the economic embargo against the Castro regime until political and social freedoms are brought to Havana. Directly addressing a crucial issue to Cuban-American immigrants in Florida, Obama said strongly; "I will maintain the embargo. It provides us with the leverage to present the regime with a clear choice: if you take significant steps toward democracy, beginning with the freeing of all political prisoners, we will take steps to begin normalizing relations. That's the way to bring about real change in Cuba - through strong, smart and principled diplomacy."

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184 Politics Generic Revamped!

***SPACE

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185 Politics Generic Revamped!

Obama kills space – funding **A Democrat would kill space exploration to spite Bush – only funding the shuttle Thomson Dialog NewsEdge, 3-9-07, http://www.tmcnet.com/usubmit/2007/03/09/2404370.htm But certainly the new Congress -- contrary to my earlier speculations -- is unwilling after all to take an axe and give the same forty whacks to the Shuttle/ISS budget that it has done to Bush's follow up manned space program, although many outside observers think on balance Bush's VSE is more justifiable and cost-effective than the almost useless Station is at this point. The real political factor is simply that a very large number of Congressional Democrats as well as Republicans loyally voted

funds for Shuttle and Station over the last two decades -- including President Clinton's two terms -- and, in the classic tradition of politicians everywhere, they are unwilling to publicly admit that they were mistaken in doing so. By contrast, the VSE is Bush's personal creation, is just now beginning -- and so is a natural target for politicians of the other party.

Obama would cut NASA funding, delaying our ability to colonize space. Lunar News Network, blog dedicated to news about the US space program and colonization , 6/6/08 “Obama To Cut NASA Funding?” http://www.lunarnewsnetwork.com/2008/06/obama-to-cut-na.html [Mills] Now that Obama is the presumptive Democratic nominee for President, we should take another look at his stand on the U.S. space program. As this Wired News report (Obama Pits Human Space Exploration Against Education) makes clear, his plans include delaying NASA programs and diverting funds to pay for education initiatives: Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama released a new $18 billion education plan (PDF) yesterday that he proposes to pay for by delaying the NASA Constellation program (to return humans to the moon) five years. [...] Obama's proposal to slip NASA's Constellation program to pay for education puts education and space in direct competition for tax dollars. Space Exploration historically has not competed with education for federal dollars because most educational programs are funded at the state level. The Department of Education and NASA are also traditionally in separate funding bills going through Congress and thus are not competing for the funds within a given appropriation bill. Given that that Space Shuttle is retiring in 2010 and there is already a four year gap before the Ares I vehicle will be ready to launch crews to Space Station, a five year delay of the Constellation program would leave the United States government without its own human launch capability for nearly ten years. It's clear that Obama would deprioritize the space program in favor of other funding priorities and that this would delay or possibly cancel the effort to return to the Moon and go on to Mars. I'd really like to get behind the Obama campaign, but his lack of support for something I consider of great national importance is a real concern. What can be done? We need to tell Obama that we want his technology policies to include support for the ambitious and forward looking plan to return to the Moon and go on to Mars. First, go here and use his forum to make your voice heard, and then attend his town-hall meetings and ask about his support for NASA and the Moon, Mars & Beyond Vision, and call his campaign headquarters in your city and state and ask about his position. I really hope that his position will change as the presidential campaign continues and the space community has a chance to lobby his campaign and make their voices heard.

Obama would kill space exploration – backlash against Bush Eric Berger, Houston Chronicle, 2-28-07, http://blogs.chron.com/sciguy/archives/2007/02/who_really_thin.html A similar chain of events unfolded in 1989, when President George H.W. Bush proposed an ambitious trip to Mars, only to have it scuttled by budgetary concerns. The large projects sound great, but they require long-term funding commitments, which are hard to come by in Washington. The current President has less than two years left in office. The next President will face war bills, increasing entitlement costs and who knows what else -- I have to believe returning to the moon will carry a low priority. Especially so if Bush is succeeded by a Democrat, someone who probably won't be been keen on continuing a major program begun by Bush.

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Obama kills space – funding Democratic cuts to space funding would doom space exploration Dave Weldon, US Representative from Florida, press release from his office, January 31, 2007, http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=21772 In a fiscal year 2007 budget released today, the new Democrat majority proposed sweeping cuts to NASA's budget that could jeopardized the future of space exploration. U.S. Rep. Dave Weldon, M.D. (R-FL), who represents many workers from NASA and Kennedy Space Center, called the cuts draconian, saying the Democrat leadership is using NASA and our nation's space program as a piggy bank for other liberal spending priorities. "The raid on NASA's budget has begun in earnest. The cuts announced today by House Democrat leaders, if approved by Congress, would be nearly $400 million less than NASA's current budget," said Weldon. "Clearly, the new Democrat leadership in the House isn't interested in space

exploration. Their omnibus proposal lists hundreds of new increases, including a $1.3 billion increase‹over 40% for a Global AIDS fund, all at the expense of NASA." Much of the proposed cuts would come from NASA's Exploration budget, which includes funding for the new Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV), the future replacement for the current shuttle fleet. According to Weldon, these particular cuts would jeopardize thousands of jobs in Florida, Alabama, and Texas. Weldon today led a bi-partisan group of colleagues, including Reps. Ralph Hall (D-TX), and Tom Feeney (R-FL), in offering two amendments to the bill that would restore NASA's funding.

Democratic control destroys space exploration Space Daily, February 5, 2007, http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Big_Budgets_Make_For_Big_Debates_In_Washington_999.html The new Democrat-controlled FY 2007 budget responds to its funding crisis in a way that was generally predicted -it hacks away wholesale at President Bush new manned space program, including its eventual lunar initiative. And while this is program is almost entirely the doing of Bush and the Republicans, making it an obvious target for the newly controlling party, a fair number of Democrats from space-industry states did support it, and no one was sure how big the cuts would be. Now we know. President Bush had originally asked for $3.978 billion for "Exploration Systems" (the group name for the new program, including both its early Earth-orbiting Crew Exploration Vehicle, the "Ares 1" launch vehicle, and the program's later expansion to the Moon). The 109th Congress never even got so far as to hold the final joint conference at which the differences in the NASA budgets desired by the House and Senate would be resolved -- but the two chambers did pass their separate NASA budgets. The House removed $160 million from Bush's request, and the Senate only $43 million. But the new 110th Congress' budget removes fully $576 million from Bush's request, trimming it to only $3.402 billion. It's clear that, for as

long as the Democrats remain in control of Congress (let alone the White House) they will continue to shrink Bush's original plans and possibly eliminating the manned lunar program altogether, and limiting the CEV to a low-cost Earth-orbiting version of the Apollo command ship.

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Obama kills space – research Obama will cut NASA funding, killing the research base for space technology for decades Loretta Hidalgo Whitesides, 11/21/07 Wired Science News “Obama Pits Human Space Exploration Against Education” http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2007/11/obama-pits-huma.html [Mills] Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama released a new $18 billion education plan yesterday that he proposes to pay for by delaying the NASA Constellation program (to return humans to the moon) five years. "We're not going to have the engineers and the scientists to continue space exploration if we don't have kids who are able to read, write and compute," Obama said. Space Exploration is becoming more of an issue in the 2008 presidential election. Hillary Clinton released her civil space policy on the 50th anniversary of Sputnik last month, promising to speed development of next generation crew exploration vehicles. Her release says: Hillary is committed to a space exploration program that involves robust human spaceflight to complete the Space Station and later human missions, expanded robotic spaceflight probes of our solar system leading to future human exploration, and enhanced space science activities. She will speed development, testing, and deployment of next-generation launch and crew exploration vehicles to replace the aging Space Shuttle. Obama's proposal to slip NASA's Constellation program to pay for education puts education and space in direct competition for tax dollars. Space Exploration historically has not competed with education for federal dollars because most educational programs are funded at the state level. The Department of Education and NASA are also traditionally in separate funding bills going through Congress and thus are not competing for the funds within a given appropriation bill. Given that that Space Shuttle is retiring in 2010 and there is already a four year gap before the Ares I vehicle will be ready to launch crews to Space Station, a five year delay of the Constellation program would leave the United States government without its own human launch capability for nearly ten years. Such a delay would result is a loss of capability as the workforce with the knowledge to build spacecraft will not be around when you want to hire them in 2020 and there will be few to train any students coming out of the education pipeline. Hillary did specifically acknowledge this national concern in her policy, stating: And in pursuing next-generation programs, Hillary will capitalize on the expertise of the current Shuttle program workforce and will not allow a repeat of the “brain drain” that occurred between the Apollo and shuttle missions. According to a 2004 press release from Congress, there are three times as many scientists and engineers at NASA who are over 60 years old then are under 30 years old. It is unclear either group would be around 13 years from now to restart the program. Most of the veteran spacecraft builders will be retired by 2020. The youngest person to walk on the moon, Harrison Schmidt, will be 85 and the first man to walk on the moon, Neil Armstrong, will be 90.

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Obama kills space – shuttle crash Democratic win kills the space program permanently from a shuttle crash Daniel Handlin, Space Review, September 19, 2005, http://www.thespacereview.com/article/458/2 It is a reality of life that as Presidential administrations change, so do NASA’s priorities, leaders, and goals. Currently, it appears that the VSE will receive funding and will benefit from NASA leadership that supports its goals at least through the end of the Bush administration in 2009. But what happens beyond then? How do we ensure that the VSE survives the change in administrations? Whether the next President is a Republican or a Democrat, it cannot simply be assumed that the VSE will remain a priority under their administration. None of the major expected candidates for president in 2008 have demonstrated strong support for the VSE. (See “2009: a space vision”, The Space Review, July 11, 2005) On the other hand, few have spoken explicitly against it. To be frank, it is simply not on the radar of most national politicians. However, it is a possibility that the next President may see the VSE as a place to save a few million dollars by canceling it. So what can be done by NASA and by Mike Griffin to give the VSE enough momentum so that it can’t be ended on a shortsighted presidential or congressional whim? One possible answer is to retire the shuttle early. The case for phased retirement Realistically, it seems very unlikely that any new President would try to keep the shuttle flying as America’s only manned space vehicle indefinitely, especially with the continuing foam problems so publicly highlighted on STS-114, and the new problem of the short-to-medium term loss of the use Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans, where the shuttle’s external tanks are built. However, there has been support shown among Democrats for keeping the shuttle flying until the CEV is online, even if a costly recertification is required. The longer the shuttle flies, the greater the potential for another accident, which could very well mean the end of the US manned space program for the foreseeable future. There are two steps that can be taken to ensure that the shuttle is retired and that there is a manned vehicle to replace it once it retires, to at least carry out the first goals of the VSE. First, the development of the CEV needs to be accelerated, which has been done already as described above. Secondly, the shuttle needs to have a firm retirement date. September 30, 2010—the last day of fiscal year 2010—has been set as the official date, but this is after the end of the Bush administration, and the 2009 administration could conceivably change or do away with this date.

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McCain  space exploration McCain victory is key to space exploration Chris Carberry, Political Director of The Mars Society, July 11, 2005, http://www.thespacereview.com/article/408/1 In a little over 31⁄2 years, the United States will have a new president. What will this mean for The Vision for Space Exploration? Of course, we won’t know the answer to this question until the time comes. However, we certainly can examine some of the variables that will come in to play over the next three years that might impact the Vision’s future after the end of the current administration. The first obvious step is to look at the people who are currently being promoted as possible presidential candidates for the 2008 election. Would-be Presidents Looking at the field of possible candidates, it is hard to determine where many of them stand on space issues. Two people frequently mentioned as candidates in 2008 are Senators Hillary Clinton (D-NY) and John McCain (R-AZ). Hillary Clinton does not have much of a history with regard to the space program. While it is true that the Clintons were the only First Couple to be present at a space shuttle launch (the John Glenn launch), President Bill Clinton’s terms in office were accompanied by declining NASA budgets and a perceived lack of vision for the future of the space program. This certainly does not mean that the same trend would prevail during a Hillary Clinton presidency, however. Since becoming a senator, she has certainly shown that she is no political clone of her husband. Whether this will translate into a strong support for Moon, Mars, and beyond is unknown. To date she has voted favorably on key legislation: she voted for the fiscal year 2005 NASA budget, which was one of the first major hurdles for the Vision. Senator John McCain has always been a supporter of space exploration and until recently had influence on NASA as chairman of the Senate Commerce, Science & Transportation Committee. Although he did show some skepticism following President Bush’s announcement in January 2004, by August he stated, “I think it is not only visionary, but doable.” (McCarthy, John. “McCain Speech Packs in Crowd” Florida Today, August 5, 2004). This would be consistent with the reaction that members of The Mars Society received when they approached him during the 2000 presidential campaign: he seemed enthusiastic about the concept of humans to Mars. Some familiar faces from the 2004 election have hinted that they might be throwing their hats in the ring. Senator John Kerry recently ran with an uninspiring space platform that seemed to be an attempt to shift NASA back to the unfocused days of the 1990s. Would an additional four years focus Kerry’s message? Democratic Chairman Howard Dean actually expressed support for the concept for a human mission to Mars. In an online interview for the Washington Post and Concord Monitor he stated, “We should aggressively begin a program to have manned flights to Mars. This of course assumes that we can change Presidents so we can have a balanced budget again.” Does his support of the program depend on a balanced budget? If so, it would probably be a long time before we leave LEO in a Dean administration. The rest of the people mentioned are relatively unknown quantities with regard to the space program. Condoleezza Rice, Rudolph Giuliani, and Senator Joseph Biden have not had a lot to say on the topic. However, recent history does favor the Republicans. Obviously, it was a Republican president who initiated the new vision, and back in 2000, the Republican platform called for “exploration of Mars and the rest of the solar system”. Presidents George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan also strongly supported NASA (although it was a Republican, Richard Nixon, that cancelled the Apollo program). In contrast, the two most recent Democratic presidents (Presidents Carter and Clinton) were not strong supporters of NASA, particularly ambitious human exploration programs. Regardless of whether the next president is a Democrat or a Republican, none of the most likely candidates have been outspoken supporters for the Vision.

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McCain  space exploration Only McCain would fund space exploration Bad Astronomy and Universe Today, November 8, 2006, http://www.bautforum.com/showthread.php? t=49107 Both Republicans and Democrats have done some good things for space and they have done bad things for NASA over the years. Beyond 2008 I'm not sure many will support GW's manned mission to the Moon and Mars, McCain and Dean are two guys who support Mars exploration but I'm not sure there are any others who would fully support the VSE. We should also try keep this subject on only the 'space-states'. The Republican Schwarzenegger is back, and Arnold he's flying his usual phrases "I love doing sequels. This without any doubt is my favourite.". Schwarzenegger was re-elected to gubernatorial office and I think overall he has been good for space California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has talked with former NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe and visited the mission control room with Gore at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory when the Mars Rovers landed.

McCain plans to fund NASA space exploration Washington Post 6/5/08 “McCain Wants a Man on Mars” http://blog.washingtonpost.com/thetrail/2008/06/05/mccain_wants_a_man_on_mars.html [Mills] Sen. John McCain told Florida newspaper editors today that he thought it would be exciting to send a man to Mars. He did not specify whether that man should be Sen. Barack Obama. McCain said in response to a question from the editor of Florida Today, published on the state's Space Coast, that he was worried about future funding of the space shuttle program and that he would be willing as president to be a champion for NASA. "Yes, I'd be willing to spend more taxpayers dollars,'' McCain said, adding he thought Americans respond to setting goals for specific projects. McCain said ever since reading Ray Bradbury's Martian Chronicles, "I'm intrigued by a man on Mars. I think it would excite the imagination of the American people ... Americans would be very willing to do that.'' McCain is in the midst of a three-day visit to the Sunshine State, which he told the Florida Society of Newspaper Editors will be "one of the key states" in November. He added that he had just watched the HBO film Recount, which he said he was sure brought back fond memories of the state's cliffhanger 2000 presidential results. But McCain's past votes on issues important to the state have caused some problems for him here. Rick Hirsch, a Miami Herald editor, noted that McCain is scheduled to tour the Everglades Friday afternoon, but asked why he had voted against an Everglades protection plan that had been "seven years in the making'' and was supported by Republican Gov. Charlie Crist and the state's entire congressional delegation. McCain interrupted Hirsch to ask whether the plan was part of an omnibus spending bill, and when the editor replied that it had, McCain said: "You just answered your own question.'' McCain then apologized profusely for not letting Hirsch finish his question. The senator said he would support any standalone legislation to protect the Everglades but said he was proud to oppose omnibus bills that he said lead to out of control federal spending. McCain seemed relaxed and comfortable in the "town hall'' format he favors, repeating for them his mantra that the three most important issues in the general election battle will be "reform, prosperity and peace.'' He also noted the enormous transition in the newspaper industry, and expressed his sympathy. "I'm glad I don't have some of your challenges," he said, before adding he was sure the editors would meet them.

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Obama  space – changes the framework Obama is key to space – only he will pursue radical reform Bill White, 3-5-08, http://spaceobama.blogspot.com/2008/03/counterintuitive-obama-and-americas.html Conventional wisdom asserts that Barack Obama would be the worst Presidential choice for space activists. Many people point to Obama lacking a record of supporting space exploration and to a number of recent skeptical comments about NASA and space funding. For those satisfied with the status quo - such as the current progress and projected pace of the ESAS architecture adopted by NASA - perhaps this is true. On the other hand, many space activists desire to shatter paradigms such as "NASA equals American spaceflight and American spaceflight equals NASA" and many of us believe that a measure of creative destruction may be needed before we can build a robust and sustainable American presence in space. To achieve these objectives, a skeptical President who insists on asking tough questions about "Why" we have a space program and how can we make it coherent may be exactly what is needed, even if that President demonstrated little prior interest in space policy. Recently, Barack Obama offered this comment on NASA p0licy during a Cleveland TV interview: The only thing I want to say is that I want to do a thorough review because some of these programs may not be moving in the right direction and I want to make sure that NASA spending is a little more coherent than it has been over the last several years. He also said this to the Houston Chronicle (published on February 15, 2008): Obama agreed that NASA, which employs thousands of Houston-area voters who work at or with the Johnson Space Center, should be a tool for inspiring the nation. But, he said, the next president needs to have "a practical sense of what investments deliver the most scientific and technological spinoffs — and not just assume that human space exploration, actually sending bodies into space, is always the best investment." Humans have continuously inhabited the International Space Station since November 2, 2000 but have we gotten sufficient value from that effort? Should we continue to spend billions of dollars in taxpayer money if we are not to venture beyond low Earth orbit? Is ESAS the right architecture (in terms of politics and budgets as well as engineering) to support efforts to return to the Moon and thereafter go to Mars? Does ESAS sufficiently implement ideas to generate economic return from human activities on the Moon? Should a "science only" and "Mars forward" focus be the leading driver of American human spaceflight? John McCain and Hillary Clinton appear unwilling to even ask such questions and they appear committed to staying the course chosen by George W. Bush and his chosen NASA Administrator, Michael Griffin. Therefore, even if Barack Obama has not offered compelling answers (yet) to these questions, a willingness to ask challenging questions and demand compelling answers from others will offer space enthusiasts an opportunity for genuine change.

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Obama  space – satellite tech Obama’s support of satellite-based space technology will drive the industry – solves innovation. Andrew Coen, reporter for Investment News, 7/14/08 “Space industry expected to take off” http://www.investmentnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article? AID=/20080714/REG/181993584/1035/TECHNOLOGY [Mills] Despite a slowing economy and some potential future funding obstacles, the space industry has nowhere to go but up, participants at a recent space industry conference said. Revenue from commercial satellites could take off in the very near future, according to Thomas W. Watts, managing director and senior research analyst for telecom at Cowen and Co. LLC of New York. He was one of the industry experts who addressed the Space Business Forum conference in New York on June 18. The conference, sponsored by the Space Foundation, focused on the future of the space sector and was designed for an audience of financial advisers, Wall Street analysts, investment bankers and high-risk insurers. Satellite service companies such as Greenwood Village, Colo.-based DirecTV Group Inc. and New York-based Sirius Satellite Radio Inc. are viewed by a growing number of investors as mainstream media companies, Mr. Watts told attendees. "There is a lot of interest in this area," he said. "Investors are waiting to see the takeoff." Last year, global revenue from commercial- and defense-related space ventures grew 11% to $251 billion, according to the Space Foundation. About 69% of the space industry's 2007 growth came from commercial activity. The war on terrorism will drive revenue in space technology's military sector, said David Blain, president and chief investment officer of D.L. Blain & Co. LLC Private Wealth Management, based in New Bern, N.C. He is a graduate of the United States Military Academy in West Point, N.Y., and received a Bronze Star medal for serving in the Gulf War. Mr. Blain's private wealth management firm, which has $75 million in assets under management, has a stake in the White Oak Guggenheim Aerospace and Defense Fund, which is co-managed by the White Oak Group Inc. of Atlanta and Chicago-based Guggenheim Capital LLC, and has experience with satellite investments. "We see a lot of growth in that area," Mr. Blain said of space technology investments To keep advisers and investors up to date on the space sector's performance, the Space Foundation, a non-profit advocacy group based in Colorado Springs, Colo., created the Space Foundation index, which tracks the performance of 31 publicly traded companies that derive a significant portion of their revenue from space-related assets and activities. The index has grown 14% since its inception three years ago. That is a better track record than the Standard & Poor's 500 stock index and in line with Nasdaq Composite Index growth during that same time period. Last year the index grew 8.4% compared with 3.5% for the S&P 500, while the Nasdaq Composite fared slightly better with a 9.8% gain. The index started trending down at the end of 2007 and the beginning of this year, as the mortgage crisis took its toll, but rebounded in the second quarter, according to Space Foundation officials. Despite some aerospace industry concern that funding may be significantly reduced if or when the war in Iraq ends in a few years, defense spending is still expected to remain high because national security concerns have become a bipartisan issue, said Mark Oderman, managing director at Cambridge, Mass.-based CSP Associates Inc., who also participated at the conference. Rob Stallard, division director at Macquarie Capital Securities of Sydney, Australia, added that support from lawmakers, including presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill.,

for increased broadband services will buoy space sector revenue, especially for satellite companies.

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McCain kills space – NASA funding McCain would freeze NASA’s budget Political Action for Space, space current events/activism blog, 7/8/08 “McCain Plans to Freeze NASA’s Budget” http://actionforspace.blogspot.com/2008/04/mccain-plans-to-freeze-nasabudget.html [Mills] John McCain has announced a plan to freeze NASA's budget, along with all other discretionary spending, at 2009 levels for 2010. According to the Vision for Space Exploration laid out by Bush and approved by Congress, including a vocally supportive McCain, NASA's budget had been slated to be 18.5 Billion in 2010. President Bush himself has asked for 17.6 Billion in 2009 (which is .5 billion less than less than the VSE called for at 2009 levels). If this happens, it will have a cumulative 1.5 billion dollar hit to what NASA has planned for over only 2 years. To put this in perspective, NASA only allocates 3.2 billion to constellation in 2010, with the rest of their budget spread over Earth science, planetary science, the Space Station and Shuttle programs, astrophysics, aeronautics, and other programs. Where will they get the money from to pick up the shortfall? Robotic Exploration? Will they delay the manned program? Will they neglect to put up necessary replacement weather satellites? Will they cut short missions for spacecraft already performing in space (Mars Rovers, Cassini, or Mars Odessey?) This is not a question of priorities at NASA. This is a question of negligence in Washington. Over 1 Billion is spent in Iraq each week and we are starving the very agency that has given us the ability to fight wars, perform modern operations, communicate globally, etc. Even if you don't think that NASA gets high marks for efficiency, commissioning them to build new ships to go to the Moon and Mars and then systematically giving them less than what was proposed is a recipe for problems regardless of NASA's execution of the plan.

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2008 key to space Cuts from the next president are the single most important question for the survival of the space program Daniel Handlin, Space Review, September 19, 2005, http://www.thespacereview.com/article/458 Because the funding for the VSE has already been clearly defined as coming from the existing shuttle and station budgets after their respective phaseouts in 2010 and 2016, the key challenge for NASA is not so much to find lots of new funding as to simply sustain the Presidential and Congressional mandate needed to undertake it. The biggest hurdle in the eventual implementation of the VSE is the danger that the 2009 or 2013 Presidential administration could issue a directive, formally or informally, essentially saying, “stay in LEO”. On the other hand, Congress could also deny further exploration funding. However, currently there is an administration friendly to the plan, with a Congress willing to give it bipartisan support, and, perhaps most importantly, highly skilled NASA leadership at the very highest level in the form of Administrator Griffin. It is unlikely that the VSE will ever enjoy a better time than now in terms of political support and funding prospects. The time between now and the end of the Bush administration in 2009 is also the period that will see the definition of the plan and the design of the CEV to carry it out. Therefore, the question must be asked: What is the best way to ensure irreversibility of the VSE, now, while major action can be taken without political opposition? Before answering this question, it is worthwhile to examine the changes made to the VSE implementation plan under the tenure of Mike Griffin.

The new president is the key internal link to the future of space exploration Jeff Foust, editor and publisher, The Space Review, December 4, 2006, http://www.thespacereview.com/article/759/1 While exploration architectures and international cooperation are important to the long-term success of the Vision for Space Exploration, the biggest challenge the program faces may well be maintaining domestic political support for the effort. The Vision has survived for nearly three years in what has principally been a static political environment, under the same president and with the same party in control of Congress. The VSE will thus get its first significant challenge next year, when Democrats take control of the House and Senate, although given the bipartisan support the Vision has enjoyed in Congress to date few expect the 110th Congress to make major changes in the overall program. A bigger political challenge, though, lies two years down the road, when a new president is sworn into office. Depending on the status of the VSE (including how closely it is hewing to current budgets and schedules) and the new president’s interest in the program and NASA in general, he or she could take the program in a very different direction, or kill it in any recognizable form. Anticipating this change in administrations, one group of experts is studying an alternative to NASA’s current plan that would do away with lunar exploration entirely.

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2008 key to space The space exploration vision is on track, but failure in elections destroys the program Jeff Foust, editor and publisher, The Space Review, January 15, 2007, http://www.thespacereview.com/article/785/1 On January 14th, 2007, the third anniversary of President George W. Bush’s speech at NASA Headquarters where he announced plans for a human return to the Moon and later missions to Mars, the Vision for Space Exploration (more often called “the Vision” rather than by its acronym, VSE), was still very much alive. The Vision has, so far, avoided the pitfalls that doomed SEI, including continued (if not public) backing from the White House, competent administration of the effort by NASA, and bipartisan support in Congress. Three years after the announcement, NASA appears to be making steady progress on the near-term goals of the Vision, including completing assembly of the International Space Station and retiring the shuttle by the end of the decade, and beginning development of a new generation of spacecraft and launch vehicles to carry out future missions to the Moon and elsewhere. Looked at from that perspective, the Vision appears to be in good shape, having avoided the “infant mortality” problems that could befall it: no small feat, given NASA’s record with SEI and the skepticism in many quarters after the Vision’s announcement three years ago. It’s tempting to think, then, that the worst problems are behind the Vision, and the program will continue to gain momentum in the years to come, making it effectively unstoppable. However, while the Vision has avoided the problems that could have resulted in its early demise, one can argue that the next two years are the most critical for the Vision and its long-term future. A variety of issues that have emerged as the plan has evolved from the broad brushstrokes of a presidential address to concrete programs and contracts, combined with the presidential election cycle, suggest that how NASA and the Vision’s supporters—in the White House, Congress, industry, and elsewhere—perform over the next two years may make all the difference regarding whether the Vision will survive in 2009 and beyond.

The Democratic Congress won’t kill space exploration, but a new president could Jeff Foust, editor and publisher, The Space Review, January 15, 2007, http://www.thespacereview.com/article/785/1 When the Democrats regained control of Congress in the November elections, some wondered if this would result in a change in direction for NASA. In the near term, that appears to be unlikely. The Vision has had bipartisan support in Congress over the last three years, including overwhelming passage of a NASA authorization bill in 2005 that explicitly endorsed the Vision. The new Democratic leaders of key committees may take a fresh look at NASA and the Vision, but Congress doesn’t seem likely to press for wholesale changes in the Vision. Even if it wanted to, there are simply too many other higher political priorities at the moment to warrant giving NASA much attention. The real challenge facing the Vision won’t come for two more years. When the Vision marks its fifth anniversary on January 14th, 2009, the country will be on the threshold of inaugurating a new president. Will he (or she) inherit a program that has made steady progress over the previous two years, getting past the current budget problems and building up support among the public? Or will he or she find an effort that has gained a reputation for raiding the coffers of other agency programs to fund vehicles whose development is experiencing problems and delays?

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VSE key to survival **The VSE is key to human survival Paul Spudis, Principal Investigator in the Planetary Geology Program of the NASA Office of Space Science, Solar System Exploration Division and Senior Professional Staff, Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, August 4, 2004, http://www.spudislunarresources.com/Opinion_Editorial/The%20Space%20Program%20and %20the%20Meaning%20of%20Life.htm The race to the Moon did more than prove American technical skill and the power of a free society. The real lesson and gift from Apollo was a wholly unexpected glimpse into our future. From both the chemical and physical evidence of impact (which we learned from the record of the lunar rocks) and the fossil record, we discovered that large body collisions had occurred in our past and will occur again in our future. Such catastrophes resulted in the widespread destruction of life, in some cases instantaneously eliminating more than 90% of all living species. In short, we discovered that ultimately, life on Earth is doomed. Our new understanding of impact as a fundamental geological force, leaves us only with the question of when, not if, the next large collision will occur. And ‘when’ is something we cannot predict. Human civilization is cumulative. Our culture provides positive and beautiful things through music, art and knowledge – it embodies the wisdom of all who have gone before us. With that wisdom, we have rejected the evil doctrines of slavery, Nazism and communism. People live longer, happier and more productive lives as time goes on. So one must ask, are we here for a reason and if so, to what purpose? Before passing the torch to their children, humans feel the need to create something of long-term value – something that will exist long after their time here on Earth. Be it a garden or a cure for cancer, we want to leave this world a little bit better than we found it. Will the prospect of our extinction harden our resolve to survive, or will it hasten the decay of our culture? Without an escape hatch, our children will lose focus - lose sight of goals and grand visions. The President’s Vision for Space directs us to extend human reach by developing new capabilities in space travel. Returning to the Moon will facilitate that goal. There we will gain technical ability and learn how to use the abundant energy and material resources waiting on other worlds. With the knowledge of how to “live off the land” in space, we can move out into the universe – populating one world after another. We must not die out here on Earth. Our values, culture and ability to leave this planet set us apart as a species. We have looked into the past and have seen the future of our world. Life here on Earth is destined for extinction. By venturing forth beyond Earth, we can ensure our survival. To extend and preserve humanity and human achievement, we must advance new capabilities in space travel. The President has asked for $1 Billion (about 0.0004 of the Federal budget) spread over the next four years, to begin this journey. As we acquire capability with resources derived from the Moon and elsewhere, we will create a spacefaring infrastructure.

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A2: VSE not key to exploration The VSE is key to colonization – it’s the only firm commitment Taylor Dinerman, editor and publisher of SpaceEquity.com, October 25, 2004, http://www.thespacereview.com/article/253/1 The details of the Vision for Space Exploration may be less important than the fact that the US now has space exploration as a major national goal. The implication here is that we will someday reach the Moon and Mars and that we will not stop with simple exploration. The technology needed to build bases on the Moon and Mars could also be used to build sustainable permanent colonies on these bodies. Once built, such colonies will be the first steps towards our species expansion into the solar system.

Going to the moon is a necessary first step to space exploration Paul Spudis, Principal Investigator in the Planetary Geology Program of the NASA Office of Space Science, Solar System Exploration Division and Senior Professional Staff, Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Washington Post, December 27, 2005 Living on the moon will expand the sphere of human and robotic activity in space beyond low-Earth orbit. To become a multiplanet species, we must master the skills of extracting local resources, build our capability to journey and explore in hostile regions, and create new reservoirs of human culture and experience. That long journey begins on the moon -- the staging ground, supply station and classroom for our voyage into the universe.

Going to the moon is key to building support for broader space objectives Paul Spudis, Principal Investigator in the Planetary Geology Program of the NASA Office of Space Science, Solar System Exploration Division and Senior Professional Staff, Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Testimony to the Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics of the House Committee on Science, April 1, 2004, http://www.spudislunarresources.com/Opinion_Editorial/Spudis%20House%20testimony%20April %202004%20FINAL.htm By learning space survival skills close to home, we create new opportunities for exploration, utilization, and wealth creation. Space will no longer be a hostile place that we tentatively visit for short periods; it becomes instead a permanent part of our world. Achieving routine freedom of cislunar space makes America more secure (by enabling larger, cheaper, and routinely maintainable assets in orbit) and more prosperous (by opening an economically limitless new frontier.) As a nation, we rely on a variety of government assets in cislunar space, from weather satellites to GPS systems to a wide variety of reconnaissance satellites. In addition, commercial spacecraft continue to make up a multi-billion dollar market, providing telephone, Internet, radio and video services. America has invested billions of dollars in this infrastructure. Yet at the moment, we have no way to service, repair, refurbish or protect any of these spacecraft. They are vulnerable with no bulwark against severe damage or permanent loss. It is an extraordinary investment in design and fabrication to make these assets as reliable as possible. When we lose a satellite, it must be replaced and this process takes years. We cannot now access these spacecraft because it is not feasible to maintain a humantended servicing capability in Earth orbit – the costs of launching orbital transfer vehicles and propellant would be excessive (it costs around $10,000 to launch one pound to low Earth orbit). By creating the ability to refuel in orbit, using propellant derived from the Moon, we would revolutionize our national space infrastructure. Satellites would be repaired, rather than written off. Assets would be protected rather than abandoned. Very large satellite complexes could be built and serviced over long periods, creating new capabilities and expanding bandwidth (the new commodity of the information society) for a wide variety of purposes. And along the way, we will create new opportunities and make ever greater discoveries. Thus, a return to the Moon with the purpose of learning to mine and use its resources creates a new paradigm for space operations. Space becomes a part of America’s industrial world, not an exotic environment for arcane studies. Such a mission ties our space program to its original roots in making us more secure and more prosperous. But it also enables a broader series of scientific and exploratory opportunities. If we can create a spacefaring infrastructure that can routinely access cislunar space, we have a system that can take us to the planets.

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VSE key to whole space program VSE failure kills the whole space program Paul Dietz, Department of Computer Science, University of Rochester, “To Infinity and Beyond,” May 19, 2005, http://www.spacepolitics.com/2005/05/16/to-infinity-and-beyond/ I am objecting to a program that appears to be at risk of choosing its goals inappropriately. Choice of goals is very important, since the program will optimize to achieve the stated goals, not the unstated goals you wished it had. Thus the analogy to Apollo. The program was optimized to reach the moon before 1970, not to create anything economical or sustainable. As a result, it didn’t do the latter, and the house of cards collapsed when the stated goal was achieved. If you support a big government space program, this should worry you. VSE is NASA’s last best hope. If they screw this up like they screwed up shuttle and ISS, I don’t see them continuing to exist.

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Space exploration key to heg *A strong space program is key to heg Marc Kaufman, science writer, Washington Post, December 4, 2006 In Griffin's big-picture view, the stakes in space are high -- which helps explain why he is so driven about return to manned lunar exploration and beyond. Not only are there major national security issues involved -the country relies on space-based defense like no other nation -- but the NASA administrator said the United States can remain a preeminent civilization only if it continues to explore space aggressively. If the United States pulls back, Griffin said, others will speed ahead. Russia and China have sent astronauts into low-Earth orbit, and India, Japan and the Europeans all have the technical ability to do the same now -- and far more in the future. International cooperation has been ingrained into the government's thinking about space, but the United States and others remain committed to manufacturing their own rockets and space capsules and will be looking for international cooperation only once they are on the moon or Mars or some asteroids in between. "I absolutely believe that America became a great power in the world, leapfrogging other great powers of the time, because of its mastery of the air," Griffin said. "In the 21st century and beyond, our society and nation, if we wish to remain in the first rank, must add to our existing capacities . . . to remain preeminent in the arts and sciences of space flight.

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VSE key to space leadership (heg) GOP victory is key to space leadership – colonization is inevitable, it’s just a question of who leads Taylor Dinerman, editor and publisher of SpaceEquity.com, October 25, 2004, http://www.thespacereview.com/article/253/1 I strongly believe that, one way or another, humanity is eventually going to populate the habitable bits of the solar system. This will happen no matter who wins the US election on November 2nd. What the election may decide, however, is when and how this movement off the Earth will take place, and who will lead it. Will Americans lead the way? Will the next humans to land on the Moon’s surface be Americans, or not? Bush’s Vision for Space Exploration leaves room for international partners, but the leadership will be firmly in American hands. After all, the US will be paying at least three-quarters of the total bill. Equally important, the vision of exploration and expansion is almost uniquely an American one. When Bush evokes Lewis and Clark as a model, he also implies that his vision will lead to the opening of the space frontier, just as the Corps of Discovery’s voyage opened up the West to the pioneers. John Kerry’s sensibility is mostly against the human exploration of the solar system. His votes on space exploration have been, almost consistently, negative. His hostility towards the space shuttle and the International Space Station are just one indicator of how he feels about the whole idea of human exploration and colonization of the solar system. His record on space issues tracks closely with that of the senior Senator from Massachusetts, Ted Kennedy, who may be America’s single most anti-space politician since Bill Proxmire.

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A2: VSE  unilateralism The Bush space program furthers multilateral cooperation Marc Kaufman, science writer, Washington Post, December 4, 2006 You clearly have strong feelings about the Bush space program, and you are far from alone. Many in the astronomy and cosmology worlds are very unhappy about the moon/Mars mission because they fear it will strip them of funds for pure science in the future, whatever NASA may be saying now. But there are also critics who fear American unilateralism in space will lead to inevitable and destruction competition. As it stands now, the NASA plan is to build a new space capsule and rocket system on its own, and then to bring other nations into the picture when there are projects to be done. With this, they point to the space station as a model of sorts, though one that obviously has had its problems (it's many years late and way over budget.) For what it's worth, Griffin points to international cooperation on Antarctica as proof that American-led exploration can flower into multi-national exploration.

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A2: VSE bad for science Moon exploration is key to science Leonard David, Senior Space Writer, May 16, 2006, http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/060516_science_tuesday.html If NASA’s lunar strategy flourishes, the Moon could well be dotted with science instruments and facilities fulfilling various tasks. An extended human presence on the Moon will enable astronauts to develop new technologies and harness the Moon’s available resources. Doing so would allow human venturing beyond the Moon, starting with Mars. In looking up at the Moon, however, it seems peculiar to view that crater-pocked, airless world as serving up advice on life elsewhere, even right here on Earth. But the Moon is an important natural laboratory for key aspects of the astrobiological exploration of the accessible Universe. That’s the view of James Garvin, Chief Scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. "The Moon represents the only ‘accessible’ natural laboratory for hypervelocity impact cratering from which essential paradigms can be developed in support of astrobiological objectives," Garvin recently reported at a yearly gathering of astrobiologists. The lunar cratering record and distribution can be used as a quantifiable "chronometer", Garvin noted, with which to better understand the "impact of impact" on the astrobiological evolution of Earth and potentially Mars. Dehydrated neighbor "With all of the astrobiology focus on ‘follow the water’, our dehydrated neighbor is easy to ignore," said Lynn Rothschild, Director, Astrobiology Strategic Analysis and Support Office at NASA’s Ames Research Center. "However, it has been clear to me for several years that the Moon has had a profound influence on life on Earth. In fact, I think we could make a strong case that humans would not be here without our large, stabilizing Moon," she said. Rothschild told SPACE.com that serious lunar exploration could greatly enhance astrobiology. "It has the best record of impacts and radiation regime on early Earth - a record that has been obliterated here," Rothschild said. "It could provide a way station for the study of life elsewhere, should it be found." Furthermore, as for a key question of astrobiology -- what is the future of life on Earth and beyond – "the Moon looms large in these calculations," Rothschild said. "Lunar exploration greatly enriches science of the Earth and beyond…and without the science driver, lunar exploration in the near-term becomes a re-plant of the flag."

Going to the moon is key to science Paul Spudis, Principal Investigator in the Planetary Geology Program of the NASA Office of Space Science, Solar System Exploration Division and Senior Professional Staff, Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Washington Post, December 27, 2005 The moon is a scientific laboratory of extraordinary facility, richness and benefit. The history of our corner of the solar system for the past 4 billion years is preserved and readable in the ancient dust of the lunar surface. This record is lost on the dynamic and ever-changing surface of Earth. Other planets do not record the same events affecting Earth and the moon, including impacts, space particles and the detailed history of our sun. The recovery of this record will let us better understand the impact hazard in the Earth-moon system as well as unravel the processes and evolution of our sun, the major driver of climate and life on Earth. The moon is a stable platform to observe the universe. Its far side is the only known place in the solar system permanently shielded from Earth's radio noise. That allows observation of the sky at radio wavelengths never before seen. Every time we open a new spectral window on the universe, we find unexpected and astounding phenomena; there is no reason to expect anything different from the opening of new windows on the universe from the surface of the moon.

Going to the moon is key to academic and technological competitiveness Paul Spudis, Principal Investigator in the Planetary Geology Program of the NASA Office of Space Science, Solar System Exploration Division and Senior Professional Staff, Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Washington Post, December 27, 2005 The moon is close in space (only three days away) yet a separate world filled with mysteries, landscapes and treasures. By embracing the inspiring and difficult task of living and working there, we can learn how to explore a planetary surface and how the combined efforts of both humans and machines can enable new levels of productive exploration. In 21st-century America, our existence depends on an educated, technically literate workforce, motivated and schooled in complex scientific disciplines. Tackling the challenges of creating a functioning society off-planet will require not only the best technical knowledge we can muster but also the best imaginations. One cannot develop a creative imagination, the renewable resource of a vibrant society, without confronting and surmounting unknowns and challenges on new frontiers.

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Both sides kill space exploration Neither side would fund space exploration Daniel Handlin, Space Review, September 19, 2005, http://www.thespacereview.com/article/458/2 It is a reality of life that as Presidential administrations change, so do NASA’s priorities, leaders, and goals. Currently, it appears that the VSE will receive funding and will benefit from NASA leadership that supports its goals at least through the end of the Bush administration in 2009. But what happens beyond then? How do we ensure that the VSE survives the change in administrations? Whether the next President is a Republican or a Democrat, it cannot simply be assumed that the VSE will remain a priority under their administration. None of the major expected candidates for president in 2008 have demonstrated strong support for the VSE. (See “2009: a space vision”, The Space Review, July 11, 2005) On the other hand, few have spoken explicitly against it. To be frank, it is simply not on the radar of most national politicians. However, it is a possibility that the next President may see the VSE as a place to save a few million dollars by canceling it. So what can be done by NASA and by Mike Griffin to give the VSE enough momentum so that it can’t be ended on a shortsighted presidential or congressional whim? One possible answer is to retire the shuttle early.

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***COURT

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McCain  super conservative court MCCAIN WOULD DELIVER THE SUPREME COURT TO THE FAR RIGHT FOR A GENERATION (Doug Kendall, Founder and President of Constitutional Accountability Center, February 17, 2008, “Fearing the McCain Supreme Court”, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/doug-kendall/fearing-the-mccain-suprem_b_87101.html? view=print, [Ian Miller]) A close look at John McCain's Senate voting record on judicial confirmations makes it painfully clear that progressives need to ignore the rantings of the Ann Coulter crowd and believe John McCain when he says he will listen to Sam Brownback and appoint judges like Samuel Alito and Antonin Scalia. On judges, McCain's no moderate: if given the chance, he will appoint justices that move an already conservative Supreme Court sharply to the right. Indeed, one looks in vain for a judge who is too ideologically conservative for McCain: he voted to confirm Robert Bork, Clarence Thomas and, unless I've missed something, every other Republican judicial nominee voted on in his 22 years in the Senate. Even more tellingly, as part of his negotiation in 2005 of what has been dubbed the "Gang of 14 Deal" (more on this later), McCain pushed, hard, for the confirmation of both William Pryor and Janice Rogers Brown, the two hardest-edged conservatives appointed to the federal bench by President George W. Bush. Pryor famously said of Bush v. Gore: "I'm probably the only one who wanted it 5-4. I wanted Governor Bush to have a full appreciation of the judiciary and judicial selection so we can have no more appointments like Justice Souter." As the Washington Post editorialized in a piece called "Unfit to Judge," that statement indicates such a nakedly political view of judging that it alone should have been disqualifying for a lifetime position on the federal bench. Brown's views were even more outlandish. In speeches given to the Federalist Society and the Institute for Justice, Brown railed against judicial opinions in the 1930's upholding the New Deal as "the triumph of our own socialist revolution." Brown, almost alone among lawyers, openly yearned for a return of the so-called "Lochner-era" in which a conservative court routinely struck down labor, health and safety laws in the early 20th century. In the words of Robert Bork (no liberal he), Lochner is an "abomination" that "lives in the law as the symbol, indeed the quintessence of judicial usurpation of power." No one in the Senate is more responsible for Brown's confirmation to a lifetime seat on the all-important DC Circuit Court of Appeals than John McCain, a fact he touts on the campaign trail. McCain was also more than willing to rough-up President Clinton's judicial nominees. McCain missed many important votes on Clinton nominees in 1999 and 2000 while campaigning for the White House. But he was present in 1994 and was among just 12 Senators to support a filibuster of Judge Lee Sarokin, a nominee to the Third Circuit Court of Appeals who was rated unamimously "well qualified" by the ABA (the highest possible rating). McCain's decision to side with the likes of Jesse Helms and Strom Thurmond in this vote, and against Orrin Hatch and Trent Lott speaks volumes. Indeed his support for the Sarokin filibuster is probably why he joined the Gang of 14 Deal. This Deal preserved, in diluted form, the ability of Senators to filibuster judicial nominees. It was agreed to by 7 Democrats and 7 Republicans (including McCain) in 2005, preventing then-Republican Majority Leader Bill Frist from eliminating the filibuster via a rules trick Trent Lott dubbed the "nuclear option" (because of the meltdown it would have caused in the Senate). McCain's participation in the Gang of 14 Deal is often cited as evidence of McCain's moderation, or among the Coulters of the world, his willingness to capitulate to the left. The reality is that it is simply an example of John McCain being consistent: since he had supported past efforts to block Clinton nominees via the filibuster, he wasn't in a great position to argue that Democrats should be prevented from using this tool. Equally unconvincing is the argument by the talk radio crowd that, as part of the Gang of 14 deal, McCain threw other "fine nominees... under the bus." The two judges who were effectively denied confirmation by the Gang of 14 deal -- William Myers and Henry Said -had serious ethical issues. Myers, a former Interior Department Solicitor under Gale Norton, was affiliated with the Jack Abramoff crowd that McCain investigated for defrauding Native American tribes . Said had issues in his FBI folder. Even if it accurate to blame McCain for preventing these nominations from coming to a vote -- a dubious proposition -- it confirms only McCain's good-government streak. No one thinks John McCain would nominate ethically-challenged judges. But there is every reason to think that he will nominate ideological conservatives to the Supreme Court and lower federal courts. This is important because federal courts are already dominated by Republican appointees. Seven of the nine Justices, and a sizeable majority of lower federal court judges were appointed by Republican presidents. With the Courts' liberal/moderate judges on average 15 years older than the Court's conservatives, John McCain in the White House could easily deliver the Court to the right wing for a generation. The far right clearly understands this, which is why they have forced McCain to profess ever more stridently his devotion to their Supreme Court cause. As I've argued in more detail here, it's troubling that progressive and moderate voters seem to care so much less about this critical issue.

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McCain court overturn Roe A MCCAIN COURT WOULD OVERTURN ROE (Brent Budowsky, Served in senior Congressional Staff positions including Legislative Director to Representative Bill Alexander, June 13, 2008, “McCain Supreme Court: Nightmare for Women, Workers and Justice”, http://pundits.thehill.com/2008/06/13/mccain-supreme-court-nightmare-for-women-workers-and-justice/, [Ian Miller]) Want to overturn Roe v. Wade and begin a new political civil war over abortion? How about a Supreme Court that supports the George Bush approach of executive power similar to royal monarchs, with massive and illegal wiretapping thrown in, legalized by a McCain court? The Supreme Court is not only one branch of government, it is the branch that determines the powers of the other two branches. In the world of George Bush and John McCain, the executive branch is all-powerful with no meaningful checks and balances. With a Supreme Court that would fully support this radical and extreme notion of unlimited, pre-emptive executive power, the sins of George Bush are only the beginning of what a McCain court would make the law of the land. Bush and McCain almost always agree on the need for a supersecret superstate, justified by the politics of fear, employing tactics such as massive eavesdropping in violation of clear constitutional language and clear federal law. Bush and McCain almost always agree in opposition to legal protections for women and labor. In their economic and legal philosophy, Bush and McCain always agree on a Darwinian laissez-faire where the big boys rule, the average folks are unprotected, the powerful monopolize their power and the powerless become second-class citizens with third-class legal rights. The list goes on. Even on torture, McCain's latest position is torture-friendly. Even on Guantanamo, which McCain says he will close, his legal position is anti-constitutional. His verbal position depends on his need for extreme rightwing support and his level of political desperation at the time he speaks, on a given day. In the same way that McCain, like Bush, opposes a long list of programs important to women, McCain, like Bush, is hostile to Roe v. Wade, and McCain, like Bush, favors a Supreme Court that would turn justice in America backward a hundred years. McCain would create a bitterly divided nation even more than George Bush, which is almost impossible, but a McCain Supreme Court would do it. Imagine a Supreme Court with five, six or seven justices like Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito with new McCain justices being young and having the power to control the court for decades. This, folks, is deadly serious business, indeed. MCCAIN WILL PACK THE SUPREME COURT, CAUSING ROE V WADE TO BE OVERTURNED (David G. Savage, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer, May 19, 2008, “John McCain and Barack Obama: Two visions of the Supreme Court”, http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-scotus19-2008may19,0,4169081.story?page=1, [Ian Miller]) John McCain and Barack Obama, the two leading presidential candidates, have set out sharply contrasting views on the role of the Supreme Court and the kind of justices they would appoint. Sen. McCain (R-Ariz.), in a speech two weeks ago, echoed the views of conservatives who say "judicial activism" is the central problem facing the judiciary. He called it the "common and systematic abuse . . . by an elite group . . . we entrust with judicial power." On Thursday, he criticized the California Supreme Court for giving gays and lesbians the right to marry, saying he doesn't "believe judges should be making these decisions." Sen. Obama (D-Ill.) said he was most concerned about a conservative court that tilted to the side of "the powerful against the powerless," and to corporations and the government against individuals. "What's truly elitist is to appoint judges who will protect the powerful and leave ordinary Americans to fend for themselves," he said in response to McCain. During one campaign stop, Obama spoke admiringly of Chief Justice Earl Warren, the former California governor who led the court in the 1950s and '60s, when it struck down racial segregation and championed the cause of civil rights. Obama has also praised current Justices Stephen G. Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and David H. Souter. "I want people on the bench who have enough empathy, enough feeling, for what ordinary people are going through," Obama said. It is not just a theoretical policy debate. Whoever is elected in November will probably have the chance to appoint at least one justice in the next presidential term. The court's two most liberal justices are its oldest: John Paul Stevens turned 88 last month, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg is 75. McCain promised that, if elected, he would follow President Bush's model in choosing Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. That could establish a large conservative majority on the court for years. With conservatives in full control, the court would probably overturn Roe vs. Wade and the national right to have an abortion. The justices also could give religion a greater role in government and the schools, and block the move toward same-sex marriage. If elected, Obama would be hard-pressed to create a truly liberal court. But by replacing the aging liberal justices with liberals, he could preserve abortion rights and maintain a strict separation of church and state.

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McCain  war on drugs MCCAIN WOULD CONTINUE THE FAILED WAR ON DRUGS- MAKING PROBLEMS WORSE (Robert Creamer, Long-time political organizer and strategist and author of the recent book "Stand Up Straight: How Progressives Can Win", July 2, 2008, “Americans Can't Allow McCain to Continue Bush's Failed Policies in the "War on Drugs"”, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-creamer/americans-cant-allow-mcca_b_110388.html, [Ian Miller]) One of the reasons John McCain says he is touring Colombia and Mexico this week is to underscore the importance of the "War on Drugs." Just as McCain wants to continue Bush's failed policies in the "War on Terror," he wants to continue Bush's failed policies in the "War on Drugs" as well. Though the failures of the "War on Drugs" are more silent and insidious than his dramatic failures in the Middle East, the two have much in common. Both have involved an over-reliance on, and often reckless use of, military force to solve problems for which military power is not appropriate. And both result in massive diversions of attention and energy from the real source of a problem into "crusades" that actually made matters worse. Of course the central fallacy of the "War on Drugs" is that drug addiction is not essentially a military or law enforcement problem. It is a medical problem. Today America spends billions of dollars on enforcement, interdiction, eradication and the incarceration of those who sell and use drugs. Yet at the same time there are long waiting lists to get into serious drug rehab programs. We've known for years that by far the most cost effective way of cutting drug use is through treatment and education. A recent study by the Justice Policy Institute found that investments in drug treatment and education are 10 to 15 times more effective at cutting drug use than the same amount spent on law enforcement aimed at drugs. In the mid 1990's the RAND Corporation did a study that found that to get a onepercent reduction in cocaine use it would cost $2,062,000,000 in "Source-Country Control" -- eradication programs like those McCain went to Colombia to laud this week. The study found you could get the same reduction in cocaine use for only $155,000,000 spent on education and treatment.

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War on drugs bad – rainforests THE WAR ON DRUGS TOTALLY FAILS AND ENSURES RAINFOREST DEVASTATION (Robert Creamer, Long-time political organizer and strategist and author of the recent book "Stand Up Straight: How Progressives Can Win", July 2, 2008, “Americans Can't Allow McCain to Continue Bush's Failed Policies in the "War on Drugs"”, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-creamer/americans-cant-allow-mcca_b_110388.html, [Ian Miller]) Yet the federal "drug war budget" allocates five times more on enforcement than on treatment -- and that doesn't even count most of the military action in Colombia. In the early years of the Bush presidency I traveled to Colombia with my wife, Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky, and several other Members of Congress. We accompanied the Ambassador and some of her staff on a trip to Putumayo, the center of cocaine cultivation in Colombia, to meet with a large group of campesinos from the surrounding area. The night before we left Bogata for Putumayo, a delegation of Governors from southern Colombia met with us to beg the Members of Congress to stop the fumigation program that the United States was financing in an attempt to kill coca plants. That was not the Bush plan. On the way to the meeting I sat next to the embassy "fumigation czar." He explained that while fumigation activities had been restricted under Clinton, under Bush they were free to fumigate as much acreage as as they pleased. The stupidity of the fumigation policy became clear when we met with hundreds of local people who had assembled in a community center in Putumayo. We heard story after story of legitimate crops being killed by indiscriminate aerial fumigation. We talked to dozens of farmers who said they grew coca because it was the only way to make any money. We talked to many local people who told us that if the crops were fumigated, they would simply move further into the jungle and tear down more rainforest. The results are in. Last week a United Nations study revealed that coca cultivation in Colombia is at an all-time high. Last year alone, Colombian peasants devoted 27% more land to growing coca than last year. The study found that this occurred despite "record" USbacked eradication efforts. Cultivation had simply shifted to smaller, less productive spots in more remote areas. Coca farmers were "aggressively" tearing down rainforest to make way for crops and laboratories. In addition, production had shifted from Colombia to Bolivia, Ecuador and Peru. In other words, all those billions for Colombian drug eradication, that McCain would continue to spend, have meant nothing when it comes to reducing the consumption of drugs on the streets and in the high schools of America.

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War on drugs bad – prison THE WAR ON DRUGS JAILS HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS (Robert Creamer, Long-time political organizer and strategist and author of the recent book "Stand Up Straight: How Progressives Can Win", July 2, 2008, “Americans Can't Allow McCain to Continue Bush's Failed Policies in the "War on Drugs"”, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-creamer/americans-cant-allow-mcca_b_110388.html, [Ian Miller]) Of course the Bush-McCain strategy in the "War on Drugs" has many other victims. Quite apart from the millions of Americans who go without treatment, there are hundreds of thousands more who are locked up for their drug use. An example: fifty-two percent of those incarcerated in Illinois prisons for drug offenses are there for "possession." That's kind of like the Medieval practice of burning people at the stake because they were mentally ill and possessed by "demons". The massive mandatory minimum drug penalties of the "War on Drugs" don't simply send people to jail for a few months - but for huge chunks of their lives. I met a guy a few years ago who was doing his second round in prison for using drugs. Not selling....using. He said, "Hell...I've been a speed-freak since I was a hippy in the 60's." (He's now about 60). "After my first stint in prison, I was clean for a number of years," he said. "Then my mom died and I just couldn't handle the emotional pressure...so I started up again." He was ultimately arrested and convicted of "conspiracy." He had been in contact with, and bought drugs from, a guy who sold meth-that was his element in the conspiracy. No one accused him of selling drugs himself. He was just a user. He has never been accused of a violent crime as a result of his drug use. Doesn't matter. He got eight years in Federal Prison. What he needed was drug treatment. The price of these policies to our broader society has been breathtaking. The entire correctional system had about 550,000 inmates in 1985. Today, it has 2.6 million-- mostly because of mandatory minimums and major limitations on the use of parole at both the state and federal level. The cost of the system has gone from $9 billion a year in 1985 to $60 billion a year today. The prison system doesn't focus on rehabilitation or education, either. It basically warehouses inmates and in many cases makes them more inclined to commit real crimes. Today the recidivism rate is 67%. Two-thirds of inmates will return to prison after being released. As a result of these policies, one in three black men can expect to serve time in jail or prison at some point in his life, and at any given time one in nine African American men between 18 and 29 years of age is behind bars. Our "War on Drugs" is one of the main reasons why America puts a higher percentage of its population behind bars than any other society on earth. A shocking twenty-five percent of prisoners in the World are in the US, even though we have only 5% of the world's population. That is shameful for the land of the free. The bottom line is simple. America simply can't afford to allow McCain to continue Bush's "War on Drugs" for four more years.

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McCain  stem cell research MCCAIN WILL MAINTAIN SUPPORT FOR STEM CELL RESEARCH (CNN, Jan 23, 2008 “US McCain courts Catholic vote in Florida, no shift on embryonic stem cell research”, http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/new.php?n=11558, [Ian Miller]) In a conversation with Catholics in Florida and CNA this afternoon, McCain maintained his support for embryonic stem cell research while emphasizing his hope that it will become an academic issue given the latest scientific advances. When he was asked how he reconciled his otherwise solid pro-life voting record with his support for experimentation on “surplus” embryos, Sen. McCain called his decision to back the research “a very agonizing and tough decision”. He continued, saying, “All I can say to you is that I went back and forth, back and forth on it and I came in on one of the toughest decisions I’ve ever had, in favor of that research. And one reason being very frankly is those embryos will be either discarded or kept in permanent frozen status.” The senator, while standing firm on his decision added, “I understand how divisive this is among the pro-life community.” Referring to the recent break through in stem cell research which allows scientists to use skin cells to create stem cells, McCain said that, “I believe that skin stem cell research has every potential very soon of making that discussion academic…. Sam Brownback and others are very encouraged at this latest advance….” On the issue of appointments to the Supreme Court, McCain mentioned that Sam Brownback would play an advisory role in helping decide who he should nominate for the Supreme Court. As models of who he would select, John McCain pointed to Justices Samuel Alito and Antonin Scalia. Pro-life advocates see the choice of Supreme Court Justices as key to overturning the 1973 Roe vs. Wade decision, which legalized abortion. In another nod to pro-lifers, the senator from Arizona thanked prolifers for their dedication to the “rights of the born and unborn,” noting that January 22 was the anniversary of Roe vs. Wade.

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***EXECUTIVE POWER

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212 Politics Generic Revamped!

Obama key to limit executive power OBAMA IS THE ONLY WAY TO PRESERVE JUDICIAL INDEPDENCE TO CHECK UNLIMITED EXCECUTIVE POWER THAT THREATENS DEMOCRACY (David G. Savage, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer, May 19, 2008, “John McCain and Barack Obama: Two visions of the Supreme Court”, http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-scotus19-2008may19,0,4169081.story?page=1, [Ian Miller]) Harvard Law School professor Laurence H. Tribe, who is an advisor to Obama, said McCain's speech "relied on simplistic and misleading slogans about judicial activism." "Sen. Obama certainly doesn't share Sen. McCain's remarkable view that the greatest threat to American values and traditions comes from our independent federal judiciary," Tribe said. "On the contrary, Sen. Obama would find it crucial to preserve judicial independence in part to hold in check the excesses of unilateral executive power that have threatened our democracy under the Bush-Cheney administration." A MCCAIN COURT WOULD ALLOW UNCHECKED EXCEUTIVE POWER (Brent Budowsky, Served in senior Congressional Staff positions including Legislative Director to Representative Bill Alexander, June 13, 2008, “McCain Supreme Court: Nightmare for Women, Workers and Justice”, http://pundits.thehill.com/2008/06/13/mccain-supreme-court-nightmare-for-women-workers-and-justice/, [Ian Miller]) Want to overturn Roe v. Wade and begin a new political civil war over abortion? How about a Supreme Court that supports the George Bush approach of executive power similar to royal monarchs, with massive and illegal wiretapping thrown in, legalized by a McCain court? The Supreme Court is not only one branch of government, it is the branch that determines the powers of the other two branches. In the world of George Bush and John McCain, the executive branch is all-powerful with no meaningful checks and balances. With a Supreme Court that would fully support this radical and extreme notion of unlimited, pre-emptive executive power, the sins of George Bush are only the beginning of what a McCain court would make the law of the land. Bush and McCain almost always agree on the need for a supersecret superstate, justified by the politics of fear, employing tactics such as massive eavesdropping in violation of clear constitutional language and clear federal law. Bush and McCain almost always agree in opposition to legal protections for women and labor. In their economic and legal philosophy, Bush and McCain always agree on a Darwinian laissez-faire where the big boys rule, the average folks are unprotected, the powerful monopolize their power and the powerless become second-class citizens with third-class legal rights. The list goes on. Even on torture, McCain's latest position is torture-friendly. Even on Guantanamo, which McCain says he will close, his legal position is anti-constitutional. His verbal position depends on his need for extreme right-wing support and his level of political desperation at the time he speaks, on a given day. In the same way that McCain, like Bush, opposes a long list of programs important to women, McCain, like Bush, is hostile to Roe v. Wade, and McCain, like Bush, favors a Supreme Court that would turn justice in America backward a hundred years. McCain would create a bitterly divided nation even more than George Bush, which is almost impossible, but a McCain Supreme Court would do it. Imagine a Supreme Court with five, six or seven justices like Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito with new McCain justices being young and having the power to control the court for decades. This, folks, is deadly serious business, indeed.

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213 Politics Generic Revamped!

Obama key to limit executive power Obama victory causes the Court to restrict presidential power and end judicial deference Paul Starr, Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs, and Stuart Professor of Communications and Public Affairs, Princeton University, The American Prospect, February 2006, http://www.princeton.edu/~starr/articles/articles06/Starr-BushConstitution-3-06.htm The president claims an inherent power to imprison American citizens whom he has determined to be this country’s enemies without obtaining a warrant, letting them hear the charges against them, or following other safeguards against wrongful punishment guaranteed by the Bill of Rights. Under his administration, the government has engaged in inhumane treatment of prisoners that amounts to torture, and when Congress passed legislation to ban such treatment, he declared he would simply interpret the law his own way. Although the Constitution says treaties are the “supreme law of the land,” the president has abrogated them on his own. And, we now know, he ordered a secret program of electronic surveillance of Americans without court warrants. But there is something more dangerous than any of these specific abuses and usurpations, and that is the theory of inherent powers that Bush invokes to justify most of these actions and the possibility of its being effectively institutionalized by a meek Congress and, worst of all, by a deferential Supreme Court. My concern is analogous to the one that Justice Robert H. Jackson articulated when he dissented from the majority in Korematsu, the infamous Supreme Court decision in the midst of war (1944) upholding the constitutionality of the military order to intern Japanese Americans. A judicial construction sustaining the program, he wrote, “is a far more subtle blow to liberty than the promulgation of the order itself.” For by rationalizing the order, “the Court for all time has validated the principle of racial discrimination in criminal procedure and of transplanting American citizens. The principle then lies about like a loaded weapon ready for the hand of any authority that can bring forward a plausible claim of an urgent need.” The real danger today is the loaded weapon that Bush and his defenders are willing to put in the hands of all future presidents. Even members of his own party ought to be able to see that danger, and act to stop it. Americans have been slow to react to Bush’s actions because the great majority of them no more identify with the Arabs who are the chief targets of the “war on terrorism” than the majority in the 1940s identified with their fellow citizens of Japanese descent. But the principles that Bush is undermining protect us all. Our Constitution divides the president’s authority with Congress and the courts so as to create a system of mandatory consultations. That requirement does not make injustice and misuse of power impossible, but it makes them less likely. To survive, the system chiefly requires that if those in power cannot remember our traditions, they can at least imagine themselves out of power in the future. Not long ago, the Supreme Court could have been counted on to restore the checks that Bush has thrust aside. But the confirmation of the president’s two nominees to the Court may now tilt it in his direction. The common element in the background of the new justices is not merely their political conservatism, but their history of support for a broad construction of executive powers. The combined effect of a changed court and a putative state of perpetual war could radically distort our whole constitutional framework. An increasing number of congressional Republicans have recently expressed doubts about the legality of Bush’s surveillance program. The real battle, however, is about general principles applied across a wide range of policies. Of course, if the voters elect a Democratic president in 2008, perhaps even the Court’s new justices may discover constitutional reasons to limit the president’s inherent powers. I am not saying this is the only hope. But in a democracy, those who cannot imagine being out of power deserve another experience of being without it.

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Obama key to limit executive power PRES POWERS JUST GOT CHECKED BY A 5-4 MAJORITY IN THE SUPREME COURT- MCCAIN WOULD PACK THE COURT AND ENSURE UNCHECKED PRES POWERS (Michael Tomasky, Editor of Guardian America, Monday June 16, 2008, “The check to US executive power hangs in the balance”, http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/jun/16/barackobama.johnmccain, [Miller]) This says something depressing about America's agenda-setting media corporations and their stars. For when the historical assessments of the Bush administration are delivered, there's little doubt that, while the list of its crimes against democratic practice will be long and the competition for worst transgression stiff, its abuse of executive authority will occupy a special place. The men who founded the United States feared nothing more than an allpowerful executive that could, at its whim, define crimes against the state and detain those so accused without their even knowing of what exactly they were accused. The constitutional system of checks and balances and the bill of rights were written expressly to protect citizens from such an executive. Several wartime presidents have tested the limits of those instruments, and some more blatantly than George Bush. Franklin Roosevelt put Japanese-Americans in camps on mere suspicion that their nationality would render them loyal to the enemy combatant. But democracy is about trying over time to perfect the union, and so, after Richard Nixon's various crimes against the state, we thought we'd reached the consensus that executive power had to be carefully checked, and we took some steps to do so. But everyone didn't agree with that consensus. There were young men, some then working in the administration of Nixon's successor, Gerald Ford, who saw the post-Nixon reforms as usurpations of executive power. Two of these young swashbucklers were Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld. They had to bide their time, but, three decades and a major terrorist attack later, they saw their opportunity. They put into place precisely the policies that the founders had feared. They gave themselves the power to declare people, including citizens, "enemy combatants" and to hold them indefinitely without specific charges. Nearly 800 people so designated were sent to Guantánamo Bay. No one seemed to have the power to stop it. But someone did. Last week, the supreme court told the Bush administration, for the fourth time in as many years, that its practices were unconstitutional. The current decision, in a case captioned Boumediene v Bush, is a response to a response. After the third anti-Bush ruling, in 2006, the administration pushed a law through Congress that grudgingly respected Geneva convention rights for foreign "Gitmo" detainees, but denied them the right of habeas corpus. The law was challenged, and the supreme court, yet again, said to Bush: you are acting outside the constitution and you must stop. When we talk about the presidential election, we talk about race and age and Iraq and the economy and healthcare. When we speak of the supreme court at all, we refer chiefly to abortion rights. The president, of course, appoints the court's justices. There are nine. They leave the bench either voluntarily (retirement) or involuntarily (death). One is 88. Another is 75 and has been living with a colon cancer diagnosis for about a decade. A third is 72 in July, and a fourth is 70 in August. All the above, incidentally, are part of the wobbly majority that, by a 5-4 margin, ruled against Bush and for the constitution. The rightwing anti-constitutional minority is much younger (Chief Justice John Roberts, appointed by Bush, is just 53). You don't need to be an insurance actuary to see what I'm getting at. The next president, if he serves eight years, will almost certainly appoint one, two or maybe even three justices, who will play a large role in shaping an anti-terrorism policy that is both effective and legal. So what might our two candidates do? McCain used to be a constitutionalist. He used to say we should close Gitmo. Last week he said the court had just issued "one of the worst decisions in the history of this country". Considering that the supreme court spent most of the 19th century upholding slavery and segregation, that's saying something. He complains we'll see a flood of lawsuits, which is true, but that's the administration's fault for writing bad law. Barack Obama, who to put it mildly doesn't stand to gain politically from defending the rights of terrorism suspects, drew a sharp distinction with McCain: "That principle of habeas corpus, that a state can't just hold you for any reason without charging you and without giving you any kind of due process - that's the essence of who we are." Obama's apparent seriousness on these questions is supported by a statement he made in May on what he hoped to accomplish in his first 100 days. Without prompting, he included a pledge to "review every single executive order issued by George Bush and overturn those laws or executive decisions that I feel violate the constitution". I don't know how many votes this will net him. But I do know that, if he becomes president, the nation and the world will be grateful.

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215 Politics Generic Revamped!

McCain court  torture/Gitmo A MCCAIN COURT WOULD ALLOW UNCHECKED EXCEUTIVE POWER, OVERTURN ROE V. WADE, ALLOW TORTURE, AND ELIMINATE LEGAL PROTECTIONS FOR WOMEN AND LABOR (Brent Budowsky, Served in senior Congressional Staff positions including Legislative Director to Representative Bill Alexander, June 13, 2008, “McCain Supreme Court: Nightmare for Women, Workers and Justice”, http://pundits.thehill.com/2008/06/13/mccain-supreme-court-nightmare-for-women-workers-and-justice/, [Ian Miller]) Want to overturn Roe v. Wade and begin a new political civil war over abortion? How about a Supreme Court that supports the George Bush approach of executive power similar to royal monarchs, with massive and illegal wiretapping thrown in, legalized by a McCain court? The Supreme Court is not only one branch of government, it is the branch that determines the powers of the other two branches. In the world of George Bush and John McCain, the executive branch is all-powerful with no meaningful checks and balances. With a Supreme Court that would fully support this radical and extreme notion of unlimited, pre-emptive executive power, the sins of George Bush are only the beginning of what a McCain court would make the law of the land. Bush and McCain almost always agree on the need for a supersecret superstate, justified by the politics of fear, employing tactics such as massive eavesdropping in violation of clear constitutional language and clear federal law. Bush and McCain almost always agree in opposition to legal protections for women and labor. In their economic and legal philosophy, Bush and McCain always agree on a Darwinian laissez-faire where the big boys rule, the average folks are unprotected, the powerful monopolize their power and the powerless become second-class citizens with third-class legal rights. The list goes on. Even on torture, McCain's latest position is torture-friendly. Even on Guantanamo, which McCain says he will close, his legal position is anti-constitutional. His verbal position depends on his need for extreme right-wing support and his level of political desperation at the time he speaks, on a given day. In the same way that McCain, like Bush, opposes a long list of programs important to women, McCain, like Bush, is hostile to Roe v. Wade, and McCain, like Bush, favors a Supreme Court that would turn justice in America backward a hundred years. McCain would create a bitterly divided nation even more than George Bush, which is almost impossible, but a McCain Supreme Court would do it. Imagine a Supreme Court with five, six or seven justices like Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito with new McCain justices being young and having the power to control the court for decades. This, folks, is deadly serious business, indeed. MCCAIN SUPPORTS RULINGS TO UPHOLD TORTURE (Andy Worthington, Journalist and historian, based in London. He is the author of The Guantánamo Files, the first book to tell the stories of all the detainees in America’s illegal prison., June 19, 2008, “John McCain, Torture Puppet”, http://www.antiwar.com/orig/worthington.php?articleid=13015, [Ian Miller]) This is clearly no time for being mealy-mouthed. After nearly seven years of ruinous warmongering, economic meltdown, and the shredding of the U.S. Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the Geneva Conventions, and the UN Convention Against Torture, Sen. John McCain, who recently shelved his lifelong opposition to torture by voting against a bill banning the use of torture by the CIA, cemented his adherence to the bellicose policies of the Bush administration by declaring that last Thursday's Supreme Court ruling, granting constitutional habeas corpus rights to the prisoners at Guantánamo, was "one of the worst decisions in the history of this country." As conservative columnist George F. Will asked, pertinently, in a Washington Post column on Tuesday, "Does it rank with Dred Scott v. Sanford (1857), which concocted a constitutional right, unmentioned in the document, to own slaves and held that black people have no rights that white people are bound to respect? With Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), which affirmed the constitutionality of legally enforced racial segregation? With Korematsu v. United States (1944), which affirmed the wartime right to sweep American citizens of Japanese ancestry into concentration camps?" Beyond McCain's stunted historical memory, his outburst, which is clearly intended to portray Barack Obama as anything other than the rock-hard soldier stallion that McCain is in his imagination, flies in the face of the ever-growing evidence that the entire "War on Terror" imprisonment program has been both chronically brutal and irredeemably flawed, and that Barack Obama is correct to call the ruling "an important step toward reestablishing our credibility as a nation committed to the rule of law, and rejecting a false choice between fighting terrorism and respecting habeas corpus."

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216 Politics Generic Revamped!

McCain court  deference MCCAIN’S COURT WILL USE JUDICIAL DEFERENCE- THIS ENSURES DESTRUCTION OF LIBERTIES (Jeff Jacoby, Boston Globe, May 14, 2008, “McCain's Supreme wrongheadedness”, http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2008/05/14/mccains_supreme_wrongheadednes s/, [Ian Miller]) IN A SPEECH on the federal judiciary last week, John McCain sounded the familiar conservative call for judges who know their place. "My nominees," he promised, "will understand that there are clear limits to the scope of judicial power, and clear limits to the scope of federal power." The judiciary's moral authority depends on selfrestraint, said McCain, and "this authority quickly vanishes when a court presumes to make law instead of apply it." The senator emphasized the importance of judicial modesty and deference to the elected branches of government, lamenting that "federal judges today issue rulings and opinions on policy questions that should be decided democratically." He criticized Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton for not being concerned "when fundamental questions of social policy are preemptively decided by judges instead of by the people and their elected representatives." But is it really the proper function of the courts to simply rubber-stamp laws passed by Congress and state legislatures? Is a law presumed constitutional merely because elected officials enacted it? "If my fellow citizens want to go to Hell," declared Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, a staunch advocate of judicial restraint, "I will help them. It's my job." It was a clever remark - but a poor recipe for sustaining the Framers' system of checks and balances, or defending important liberty interests against political encroachment. Quite the contrary: Judicial deference to the political branches has led to some of the worst judicial decisions in American history. Think of Plessy v. Ferguson, the 1896 case upholding a Louisiana statute that mandated racial segregation in public accommodations. The Supreme Court certainly deferred to the elected lawmakers who wrote that statute. It also helped lock Jim Crow in place for the next 60 years. You don't have to go back to 1896 for examples of how liberty suffers when commendable judicial restraint deteriorates into unfortunate judicial passivism. In a lucid new book - "The Dirty Dozen: How Twelve Supreme Court Cases Radically Expanded Government and Eroded Freedom" - legal scholars Robert Levy and William Mellor offer a mournful litany of high-court blunders in the modern era. The cases involve subjects as diverse as campaign finance, gun control, and the right to pursue an occupation; each, the authors write, had a "destructive effect on law and public policy" - either by enlarging government powers beyond their constitutional bounds or by undermining individual liberties that the Constitution protects. As often as not, the court failed not by being too activist, but by not being activist enough: by allowing the legislative and executive branches to do as they wished, instead of compelling them to stay within constitutional constraints. The most notorious of the Dirty Dozen is Korematsu v. United States (1944), in which the court gave its sanction to the Roosevelt administration's World War II internment of 120,000 Japanese Americans, none of whom had been accused of disloyalty or sabotage. In Wickard v. Filburn (1942), the court upheld the government's power to impose quotas for wheat even on a small farmer who used what he grew right on his farm and sold none of it across state lines. The court should have struck the law down as a blatant violation of the Commerce Clause, which limits Congress to the regulation of interstate commerce - something Farmer Filburn clearly wasn't engaged in. Instead the court allowed it, throwing open the door to a vast expansion of federal control. Kelo v. New London (2005) allowed private homes to be seized by eminent domain and turned over to other private owners - not for "public use," as the Fifth Amendment requires, but merely because the new owners can be expected to generate more jobs or taxes than the owners who were dispossessed. Time and again the Supreme Court has abetted the aggrandizement of government power at the expense of freedom and (in the Ninth Amendment's words) the "rights . . . retained by the people." To be sure, liberal judicial activism untethered to constitutional limits has been a serious blight on the legal landscape. But judicial passivism has wrought grave harm too. If elected, Senator McCain says he will "restore the standards and spirit" the Framers intended for the judiciary. He can begin preparing for that task by reading "The Dirty Dozen."

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217 Politics Generic Revamped!

Executive power bad – war UNCHECKED PRES POWERS LEAD TO NUCLEAR WAR (Congressman Dennis Kucinich, D-Oh, March, 2002, http://www.downwinders.org/Kucinich_Peace_p.html, [Miller]) "Politics ought to stay out of fighting a war," the President has been quoted as saying on March 13th 2002. Yet Article 1, Section 8 of the United States Constitution explicitly requires that Congress take responsibility when it comes to declaring war. This President is very popular, according to the polls. But polls are not a substitute for democratic process. Attributing a negative connotation here to politics or dismissing constitutionally mandated congressional oversight belies reality: Spending $400 billion a year for defense is a political decision. Committing troops abroad is a political decision. War is a political decision. When men and women die on the battlefield that is the result of a political decision. The use of nuclear weapons, which can end the lives of millions, is a profound political decision. In a monarchy there need be no political decisions. In a democracy, all decisions are political, in that they derive from the consent of the governed. In a democracy, budgetary, military and national objectives must be subordinate to the political process. Before we celebrate an imperial presidency, let it be said that the lack of free and open political process, the lack of free and open political debate, and the lack of free and open political dissent can be fatal in a democracy. We have reached a moment in our country's history where it is urgent that people everywhere speak out as president of his or her own life, to protect the peace of the nation and world within and without. We should speak out and caution leaders who generate fear through talk of the endless war or the final conflict. We should appeal to our leaders to consider that their own bellicose thoughts, words and deeds are reshaping consciousness and can have an adverse effect on our nation. Because when one person thinks: fight! he or she finds a fight. One faction thinks: war! and starts a war. One nation thinks: nuclear! and approaches the abyss. And what of one nation which thinks peace, and seeks peace? Neither individuals nor nations exist in a vacuum, which is why we have a serious responsibility for each other in this world. It is also urgent that we find those places of war in our own lives, and begin healing the world through healing ourselves. Each of us is a citizen of a common planet, bound to a common destiny. So connected are we, that each of us has the power to be the eyes of the world, the voice of the world, the conscience of the world, or the end of the world. And as each one of us chooses, so becomes the world. Each of us is architect of this world. Our thoughts, the concepts. Our words, the designs. Our deeds, the bricks and mortar of our daily lives. Which is why we should always take care to regard the power of our thoughts and words, and the commands they send into action through time and space. Some of our leaders have been thinking and talking about nuclear war. Recently there has been much news about a planning document which describes how and when America might wage nuclear war. The Nuclear Posture Review recently released to the media by the government: 1. Assumes that the United States has the right to launch a preemptive nuclear strike. 2. Equates nuclear weapons with conventional weapons. 3. Attempts to minimize the consequences of the use of nuclear weapons. 4. Promotes nuclear response to a chemical or biological attack. Some dismiss this review as routine government planning. But it becomes ominous when taken in the context of a war on terrorism which keeps expanding its boundaries, rhetorically and literally. The President equates the "war on terrorism" with World War II. He expresses a desire to have the nuclear option "on the table." PRES POWERS LEAD TO WORLD WARS (HASTINGS INTERNATIONAL AND COMPARATIVE LAW REVIEW, Winter 2004, pp. 247-8., [Miller]) Diplomatic and other executive powers of the President, while falling short of declaring or waging war, can have a substantial likelihood of leading to war. One commentator has referred to the "ability of the President simply by his day-to-day conduct of our foreign relations to create situations from which escape except by the route of war is difficult or impossible." For example, President Wilson decided to rely on his own legal authority in ordering American merchant vessels to be equipped with guns, over the objections of Congress, and said later that he knew his action was "practically certain" to draw the United States into war. President Franklin Roosevelt took various actions, without congressional authorization, that were said to have pushed the nation toward World War II. On September 3, 1940, he made the famous "Fifty Destroyer Deal," a controversial exchange of fifty aging destroyers for a lease of British bases in the Western Atlantic. In April 1941, he sent troops to occupy Greenland, a Danish possession since 1814, under an agreement with the Danish Minister in Washington - Denmark itself having been invaded by Germany on April 9, 1940. Two months later he took the strategic country of Iceland under American protection at that country's request; he authorized the occupation of Dutch Guinea, and issued his famous "shoot-on-sight" order to the Navy.

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Executive power bad – unilateralism PRES POWERS CAUSE UNILATERALISM (Charles Pugsley Fincher, October 26, 2003, http://www.thadeusandweez.com/cam03/10.26.03..html, [Miller]) The United States Congress has gone missing. Before the rise of the "imperial presidency," Congress participated in America's foreign policy. Congress now leaves Americans without representative democracy in that crucial area. Historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. coined the phrase "imperial presidency" in his 1973 book The Imperial Presidency. "America's rise to global dominance and Cold War leadership, Schlesinger explained, had dangerously concentrated power in the presidency, transforming the Framers' energetic but constitutionally constrained chief executive into a sort of elected emperor with virtually unchecked authority in the international arena," writes Gene Healy in his essay "Arrogance of Power Reborn: The Imperial Presidency and Foreign Policy in the Clinton Years." Some date the imperial presidency as far back as Franklin Roosevelt. Others say it was most expressed by Richard Nixon. Regardless, George W. Bush has taken up the baton with his unilateral approach to foreign policy and the wrong-headed Bush Doctrine of preventive war. PRESIDENTIAL UNILATERALISM DESTROYS US LEADERSHIP (Ian Williams, “The end of isolationism,” September 18, 2003, http://opendemocracy.net/debates/article-3-981498.jsp, [Miller]) The US has been a military and economic superpower but a diplomatic pinhead for some time now; never more so than under this administration, whose practice has been almost the reverse of Theodore Roosevelt’s maxim of ‘speak softly and carry a big stick’. Above all, President Bush’s bold economic experiment of running a massive deficit, a war, an occupation and giving his friends tax cuts at the same time, is coming unstuck. The dollar has declined and foreigners - led by the Chinese government - who now buy 46% of US Treasury bonds, are the lifeline for the deficit and the dollar alike. It remains to be seen how prepared they will be to carry on financing a country explicitly bent on keeping them under its yoke. How to lose friends and not influence people In the aftermath of 11 September 2001, the United States commanded an immense degree of sympathy and support. It took a little less than a year to lose it all. The US has alienated many natural allies, and even its most consistent one, Britain, makes embarrassed excuses in private about trying to bridge the gap between the US and reality. In the context of pervasive American supremacism, one has to admire the more honest conservative critics of American foreign policy. For example, Charles Peña is quite right in his assessment of the Bush doctrine: “This strange fruit of Wilsonian idealism and neo-conservative ambition is triply misconceived: it will guarantee damaging over-extension of resources, fuel bitter resentment of the United States, and abandon homeland security to the chimera of global control. It is not empire that the US needs, but modesty.” US LEADERSHIP PREVENTS GLOBAL NUCLEAR WAR (Zalmay Khalilzad, US Ambassador to Afghanistan and Former Defense Analyst at RAND 1995, “Losing the Moment? The United States and the World After the Cold War,” Washington Quarterly, Spring, Lexis, [Miller]) Under the third option, the United States would seek to retain global leadership and to preclude the rise of a global rival or a return to multipolarity for the indefinite future. On balance, this is the best long-term guiding principle and vision. Such a vision is desirable not as an end in itself, but because a world in which the United States exercises leadership would have tremendous advantages. First, the global environment would be more open and more receptive to American values -- democracy, free markets, and the rule of law. Second, such a world would have a better chance of dealing cooperatively with the world's major problems, such as nuclear proliferation, threats of regional hegemony by renegade states, and low-level conflicts. Finally, U.S. leadership would help preclude the rise of another hostile global rival, enabling the United States and the world to avoid another global cold or hot war and all the attendant dangers, including a global nuclear exchange. U.S. leadership would therefore be more conducive to global stability than a bipolar or a multipolar balance of power system.

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Executive power bad – Bush Doctrine PRES POWERS CAUSE PREEMPTIVE STRIKES (David Gergen, US News and World Report, February 25, 2002, [Miller]) After terrorists struck on September 11, the world united behind the president's leadership. Now, however, as Bush threatens to knock off other regimes in dangerous countries like Iraq, Iran, and North Korea–and Secretary of State Colin Powell makes clear that the United States is prepared to act alone in Iraq, nations in Europe and elsewhere are sharply questioning the White House. Still aggrieved by earlier administration decisions on the environment and missile defense, they are asking: Do our opinions no longer count? If we oppose a war on Iraq, will the United States wage one anyway? James Madison came up with checks and balances in the U.S. Constitution, but do any exist in the international arena? Has the U.S. president become king of the world? Americans need to ponder the same question. In the past, a muscular exercise of presidential power has usually served the nation well. Historian David Herbert Donald points out that in the Civil War, it was Lincoln who often exceeded his constitutional boundaries to save the Union while Jefferson Davis resolutely stayed within the letter of a similar Confederate constitution–and lost. Should we take a similar view toward the unilateral exercise of world power by the United States today? A strong case can certainly be made. If we wait for European friends to agree upon tough policies, we could be waiting for Godot. As the sole superpower, does the United States not have a responsibility to take preventive action against terrorist regimes? Yet there is also a powerful case to be made that unless we try hard to act in concert with others, we will drive our friends into the arms of our enemies. Already there are signs that our public stances are causing deep alienation among high-ranking Saudis. If we unilaterally attack countries in their neighborhood, will they continue to ship us cheap oil? Or consider the CIA, now vitally dependent upon spies from other governments to provide firsthand intelligence on terrorists. Do we want that information flow to dry up? There are no formal restraints upon the exercise of presidential power overseas, but does prudence not suggest self-restraint? That unilateralism ought to be seen as a policy of last resort, not of first? PREEMPTION LEADS TO WAR WITH CHINA (Dan Plesch, senior research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, 9/13/2002, The Guardian, [Miller]) This is as self-contradictory as the first, and insidiously racist. Sustained by such principles, the architects of President Bush's policy hope to see it applied to Iran, North Korea and, ultimately, China. For those Republicans who pride themselves on having destroyed the Soviet Union and unified Germany, their duty now is to achieve the same success over Beijing's nuclear-armed communist dictatorship, which oppresses the Tibetans, runs its economy from a prison gulag and represses religious freedom. Friends look at me as if I have lost the plot when I say this. But John Bolton, Richard Perle, Condoleezza Rice, Frank Gaffney and Paul Wolfowitz have no problem with a pre-emptive political-military strategy towards an emerging China. Ambassador David Smith, who contributed to the influential National Institute for Public Policy report on nuclear strategy, explained that "the US has never accepted a deterrent relationship based on mutual assured destruction with China" and will act to prevent China gaining such a capability. CHINA WAR GOES NUCLEAR (Chalmers Johnson, author of Blowback, May 14, 2001, The Nation, [Miller]) China is another matter. No sane figure in the Pentagon wants a war with China, and all serious US militarists know that China’s minuscule nuclear capacity is not offensive but a deterrent against the overwhelming US power arrayed against it (twenty archaic Chinese warheads versus more than 7,000 US warheads). Taiwan, whose status constitutes the still incomplete last act of the Chinese civil war, remains the most dangerous place on earth. Much as the 1914 assassination of the Austrian crown prince in Sarajevo led to a war that no wanted, a misstep in Taiwan by any side could bring the United States and China into a conflict that neither wants. Such a war would bankrupt the United States, deeply divide Japan and probably end in a Chinese victory, given that China is the world’s most populous country and would be defending itself against a foreign aggressor. More seriously, it could easily escalate into a nuclear holocaust. However, given the nationalistic challenge to China’s sovereignty of any Taiwanese attempt to declare its independence formally, forward-deployed US forces on China’s borders have virtually no deterrent effect.

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Executive power bad – Constitution UNCHECKED PRES POWERS IN THE MCCAIN ADMINISTRATION DESTROYS THE CONSTITUTIONAL CHECKS AND BALANCES (David E. Kyvig, Distinguished Research Professor at Northern Illinois University and a writer for the History News Service, the author, most recently, of The Age of Impeachment: American Constitutional Culture since 1960., 6-1608, “How Presidential Power Became Untouchable”, [Miller]) The legacy of the past 40 years has, ironically and alarmingly, been a sense of presidential invulnerability in the conduct of national security policy. That legacy deeply compromises our constitutional system. Lessons drawn from Watergate, Iran-Contra, and the relatively easy Bush-Cheney avoidance of impeachment are discernible in John McCain's recent statements. The Republican candidate has concluded that Americans and their representatives will tolerate unrestrained presidential authority if it is justified by even shaky claims of national security necessity. McCain is already asserting presidential prerogatives that Richard Nixon at his boldest would not have claimed while seeking office. An expansive interpretation of presidential authority in matters of national security began to be quietly constructed, though not forthrightly asserted, during the Nixon administration. After the fact and under fire Nixon defended as legitimate presidential national security actions such as the secret bombing of Cambodia, the clandestine wiretapping of staff members suspected of leaking information to journalists and the break-in at the office of Daniel Ellsberg's therapist. In drawing articles of impeachment in 1974, the House Judiciary Committee could well have included these acts as constitutional offenses with which to charge Nixon, but decided against doing so. The committee concentrated its attention on the Watergate break-in itself and actions to cover it up. It left other overreaching presidential conduct, including attacks on Cambodia and warrantless wiretaps, uncondemned. For all the notice given Watergate, little has been said about the blueprint for it created for presidential conduct that Congress would tolerate. More than one subsequent president and now a presidential candidate have, however, paid heed. The Reagan administration learned from Watergate in carrying out its secretive Iran-Contra affair. Its arms transfers to Iran and use of the proceeds to supply the Nicaraguan Contras violated the 1976 Arms Export Control Act and the 1982 Boland Amendment. Nevertheless, when eventually exposed, this executive action was not punished with impeachment. The majority Democrats on the congressional investigating committee proved hesitant to act. Meanwhile, the Republican minority argued that the administration's conduct was proper and justified. The minority report's author, Wyoming Rep. Dick Cheney, continues to this day to claim unrestricted executive prerogatives in matters of national security. Non-response to calls for George W. Bush's impeachment have reinforced the Watergate and Iran-Contra demonstrations of the difficulty of thwarting an overreaching president. No wonder that John McCain, watching from his Senate seat since 1985 as impeachment efforts repeatedly failed, has now concluded that an extraordinary claim of presidential authority can be made with impunity and may well end up effectively unchallenged. McCain's campaign has boldly declared that the Republican presidential candidate believes the chief executive possesses constitutional power to order warrantless telephone taps and e-mail surveillance. McCain ignores the strictures of the Fourth Amendment against warrantless searches as well as a 1978 federal statute that requires FISA court approval and oversight of violations of personal privacy. An aide, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, quotes McCain as thinking that "neither the Administration nor the telecoms need apologize for actions that most people, except for the ACLU and the trial lawyers, understand were Constitutional and appropriate in the wake of the attacks on September 11, 2001." Before his prospect of holding executive authority himself had grown bright, McCain thought otherwise. Late last year the senator claimed that if he became the next commander in chief, he would consider himself required to obey a statute restricting what he did in national security matters, "no matter what the situation is." McCain, however, now appears ready to retreat from that simple test and embrace the more empowering standard of presidential authority allowed by recent impeachment history. The presidential power now claimed by McCain will be checked only if the electorate and the Congress together say, "Enough!" Assertions of unrestrained executive power in the name of national security can be discouraged only if they lead to impeachment and removal -- an unlikely prospect -- or if aspirants for high office who explicitly reject such claims are embraced at the polls. Voters can at the same time support candidates for Congress such as Kucinich who express willingness to use the tools given them to defend the Constitution against overreaching executive authority. Otherwise, recent history suggests, the people of the United States may pay a heavy price for tolerating erosion of the checks and balances wisely incorporated into their Constitution

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Executive power bad – Constitution RISKS OF CONSTITUTIONAL VIOLATIONS COME FIRST (Daryl Levinson, professor of law at University of Virginia, Spring 2000, UC Law Review, [Miller]) Extending a majority rule analysis of optimal deterrence to constitutional torts requires some explanation, for we do not usually think of violations of constitutional rights in terms of cost-benefit analysis and efficiency. Quite the opposite, constitutional rights are most commonly conceived as deontological side-constraints that trump even utility-maximizing government action. 69 Alternatively, constitutional rights might be understood as serving ruleutilitarian purposes. If the disutility to victims of constitutional violations often exceeds the social benefits derived from the rights-violating activity, or if rights violations create long-term costs that outweigh short-term social benefits, then constitutional rights can be justified as tending to maximize global utility, even though this requires local utility-decreasing steps. Both the deontological and rule-utilitarian descriptions imply that the optimal level of constitutional violations is zero; that is, society would be better off, by whatever measure, if constitutional rights were never violated.

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Executive power bad – A2: heg Presidential power doesn’t affect leadership – it varies based on individual presidents Ted Galen Carpenter, foreign policy analyst with Cato, May 16, 1986, http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa071.html It is important to understand that an unfettered presidency is not, to cold warriors, an end in itself but only a powerful means to pursue a policy of global interventionism. This fact is amply demonstrated by what happens when cold warriors confront the occasional executive initiative to reduce U.S. involvement in Third World affairs. During the early years of the Carter administration, for example, some of the most outspoken congressional proponents of executive prerogatives suddenly became converts to the doctrine of congressional activism. Opponents of the Panama Canal treaties undertaken at Carter's initiative attempted not only to block their ratification but their execution, by refusing to appropriate the necessary funds. Carter encountered similar harassment when he attempted to normalize relations with the People's Republic of China and to abro- gate America's mutual-defense treaty with Taiwan. Not only did congressmen who traditionally supported presidential foreign policy prerogatives seek to block that process through legislative action, they even filed a lawsuit in federal court.[42] A more current example of the preeminence accorded interventionist foreign policy is a recent article by Rep. Jack Kemp that excoriates congressional interference in foreign policy, especially when the legislative branch limits the president's options.[43] Yet Kemp asserts that Congress should act as a "skeptic and critic" with respect to arms-control proposals and that it should press for retaliation whenever possible Soviet violations of existing accords emerge. In other words, congressional activism is warranted if it furthers hard-line cold war objectives but is undesirable if it achieves the opposite. Given the present administration's views of America's role in world affairs, however, today's cold warriors have much to gain from allowing the president the dominant foreign policy role that he seeks.

Presidential control of foreign policy is empirically disastrous Rob Pastor, Professor of Political Science at Emory, The President, the Congress, the Making of Foreign Policy, 1994, p. 226 The executive-dominant model assumes that the optimum foreign policy is the product of a rational choice by the president and his advisers. But such rational choices led to Vietnam, the Bay of Pigs, the Chilean intervention, and Iran-contra, among others. Congress had little or no voice in these debacles, but it did have a compelling voice in the human rights policies, the Panama Canal treaties, and the Bipartisan Accord on Central America, among others —all of which served U.S. interests effectively.

Congress is a key bellweather of public support, which is crucial to the sustainability of foreign policy Ted Galen Carpenter, foreign policy analyst with Cato, May 16, 1986, http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa071.html Events have demonstrated that foreign policy initiatives-- particularly long-term initiatives--cannot succeed without public support. Because members of Congress represent local constituencies, they tend to be more sensitive to undercurrents and shifts in public opinion.[49] Congress is thus a political early-warning system cautioning that contemplated or ongoing executive actions lack popular backing. Proponents of unfettered presidential power contend that congressional sensitivity to public opinion is precisely why Congress should not become involved in foreign policy. They argue that the executive branch, possessing superior expertise and access to classified information, must sometimes pursue policies in conflict with the "whims" of public opinion. But this is arrogant elitism. Because the American people pay the price, both financially and not infrequently in lives, for foreign policy mistakes, they and their congressional representatives surely do have a role in determining policy. Moreover, such misadventures as the Bay of Pigs invasion and the Korean and Vietnam wars suggest that the much-touted wisdom and expertise of the executive branch are vastly overrated.

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Executive power good – nuclear war PRES POWERS PREVENT NUCLEAR ANNIHILATION (J.R. Paul, Professor, University of Connecticut School of Law, July 1998, “The Geopolitical Constitution: Executive Expediency and Executive Agreements”, 86 Calif. L. Rev. 671, Lexis, [Miller]) Whatever the complexity of causes that led to the Cold War - ideology, economics, power politics, Stalin's personality, Soviet intrigue, or American ineptitude - the tension of the bipolar order seemed real, immutable, and threatening to the U.S. public. <=136> n135 The broad consensus of U.S. leadership held that the immediacy of the nuclear threat, the need for covert operations and intelligence gathering, and the complexity of U.S. relations with both democracies and dictatorships made it impractical to engage in congressional debate and oversight of foreign policy-making. <=137> n136 The eighteenth-century Constitution did not permit a rapid response to twentiethcentury foreign aggression. The reality of transcontinental ballistic missiles collapsed the real time for decision-making to a matter of minutes. Faced with the apparent choice between the risk of nuclear annihilation or amending the constitutional process for policy-making, the preference for a powerful executive was clear. <=138> n137 Early in the Cold War one skeptic of executive power, C.C. Rossiter, acknowledged that the steady increase in executive power is unquestionably a cause for worry, but so, too, is the steady increase in the magnitude and complexity of the problems the president has been called upon by the American people to solve in their behalf. They still have more to fear from the ravages of depression, rebellion, and especially atomic war than they do from whatever decisive actions may issue from the White House in an attempt to put any such future crises to rout....It is not too much to say that the destiny of this nation in the Atomic Age will rest in the [*700] capacity of the Presidency as an institution of constitutional dictatorship.

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Executive power good – heg PRES POWERS ARE CRUCIAL TO US LEADERSHIP (Richard N. Haas, Director of National Security Programs for CFR, January 11, 1995 “Paradigm Lost,” Lexis, [Miller]) But no choice of ends and means will count for much if the United States is not able and willing to act in the world -- and do so consistently and reliably. The United States emerged from the Cold War as the world's only superpower. But it will not remain one for long unless it harnesses its power to purpose. What is needed is not a new doctrine to take the place of containment, but a leadership dedicated to forging a new consensus around an augmented realism and what we as a nation will do to achieve it. This will require sustained presidential involvement -- in making the case for liberal trade and necessary uses of force to the public, in approaching the Congress for adequate resources to support defense and aid programs, in cultivating political and military relations with key allies. The Republican triumph in the recent elections will make this more difficult for a Democratic president, but the president still enjoys important advantages in the conduct of foreign policy. The question is whether these advantages will be exploited. One hopes that they will, for U.S. leadership without presidential leadership is all but impossible. US LEADERSHIP PREVENTS GLOBAL NUCLEAR WAR (Zalmay Khalilzad, US Ambassador to Afghanistan and Former Defense Analyst at RAND 1995, “Losing the Moment? The United States and the World After the Cold War,” Washington Quarterly, Spring, Lexis, [Miller]) Under the third option, the United States would seek to retain global leadership and to preclude the rise of a global rival or a return to multipolarity for the indefinite future. On balance, this is the best long-term guiding principle and vision. Such a vision is desirable not as an end in itself, but because a world in which the United States exercises leadership would have tremendous advantages. First, the global environment would be more open and more receptive to American values -- democracy, free markets, and the rule of law. Second, such a world would have a better chance of dealing cooperatively with the world's major problems, such as nuclear proliferation, threats of regional hegemony by renegade states, and low-level conflicts. Finally, U.S. leadership would help preclude the rise of another hostile global rival, enabling the United States and the world to avoid another global cold or hot war and all the attendant dangers, including a global nuclear exchange. U.S. leadership would therefore be more conducive to global stability than a bipolar or a multipolar balance of power system.

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Executive power good – terrorism PRES POWERS PREVENT A NUCLEAR TERRORIST ATTACK (John Yoo, Professor of Law, University of California at Berkeley School of Law Stanford Law Review, Dec 2004, [Miller]) These developments in the international system may demand that the United States have the ability to use force earlier and more quickly than in the past. Use of force under international law, to be consistent with the United Nations Charter, must be justified by self-defense against an imminent attack (in those cases when not authorized by the Security Council). Elsewhere, I argue that the rise of WMD proliferation, rogue states, and terrorism ought to lead to a reformulation of self-defense away from temporal imminence and toward a calculation of expected harm of an attack. If we understand the use of force as a function of the magnitude of possible harm from an attack adjusted by the probability of such an attack, the United States might need to use force in situations when an attack is not temporally imminent, but nonetheless threatens massive casualties and remains probable. In order to forestall a WMD attack, or to take advantage of a window of opportunity to strike at a terrorist cell, the executive branch needs the flexibility to act quickly, possibly in situations where congressional consent cannot be obtained in time to act on the intelligence. By acting earlier, perhaps before WMD components have been fully assembled or before an al Qaeda operative has left for the United States, the executive branch might also be able to engage in a more limited, more precisely targeted, use of force. A NUCLEAR TERRORIST ATTACK CAUSES EXTINCTION (Mohamed Sid-Ahmed, Political Analyst for Al-Ahram Weekly, August 26, 2004, “Extinction!,” http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2004/705/op5.htm, [Miller]) What would be the consequences of a nuclear attack by terrorists? Even if it fails, it would further exacerbate the negative features of the new and frightening world in which we are now living. Societies would close in on themselves, police measures would be stepped up at the expense of human rights, tensions between civilisations and religions would rise and ethnic conflicts would proliferate. It would also speed up the arms race and develop the awareness that a different type of world order is imperative if humankind is to survive. But the still more critical scenario is if the attack succeeds. This could lead to a third world war, from which no one will emerge victorious. Unlike a conventional war which ends when one side triumphs over another, this war will be without winners and losers. When nuclear pollution infects the whole planet, we will all be losers.

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Executive power good – laundry list PRES POWERS PREVENT AIDS, DISEASE, ETHNIC CONFLICTS, AND SOLVE HEG, HUMAN RIGHTS, AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT (Bob Deans, 2K, Atlanta Journal and Constitution, 1-23, Lexis THE AMERICAN PRESIDENCY: White House power growing, [Miller]) Yet the U.S. presidency, long regarded as the most powerful institution in the world, arguably has assumed more authority and reach than at any time in its history. While no one can doubt the growing impact of the Internet, Silicon Valley and Wall Street on the daily lives of all Americans, only the president can rally truly global resources around American ideals to further the quest for equality and to combat the timeless ills of poverty and war. It is that unique ability to build and harness a worldwide consensus that is widening the circle of presidential power. ''The presidency will remain as important as it is or will become more important,'' predicted presidential scholar Michael Nelson, professor of political science at Rhodes College in Memphis, Tenn. The voice of all Americans The taproot of presidential power is the Constitution, which designates the chief executive, the only official elected in a national vote, as the sole representative of all the American people. That conferred authority reflects the state of the nation, and it would be hard to argue that any country in history has possessed the military, economic and political pre-eminence that this country now holds. And yet, the nation's greatest strength as a global power lies in its ability to build an international consensus around values and interests important to most Americans. On Clinton's watch, that ability has been almost constantly on display as he has patched together multinational responses to war in the Balkans, despotism in Haiti, economic crises in Mexico, Russia, Indonesia and South Korea, and natural disasters in Turkey and Venezuela. The institutions for putting together coalition-type action --- the United Nations, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the World Trade Organization among them --- are hardly tools of American policy. But the United States commands a dominant, in some cases decisive, position in each of those institutions. And it is the president, far more than Congress, who determines how the United States wants those institutions to be structured and to perform. ''Congress is a clunky institution of 535 people that can't negotiate as a unit with global corporations or entities,'' said Alan Ehrenhalt, editor of Governing magazine. “It’s the president who is capable of making deals with global institutions.” It is the president, indeed, who appoints envoys to those institutions, negotiates the treaties that bind them and delivers the public and private counsel that helps guide them, leaving the indelible imprint of American priorities on every major initiative they undertake. “That means, for example, that we can advance our interests in resolving ethnic conflicts, in helping address the problems of AIDS in Africa, of contributing to the world's economic development, of promoting human rights, '' said Emory University's Robert Pastor, editor of a new book, ''A Century's Journey,'' that elaborates on the theme.

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***TRADE

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Obama  China bashing Obama victory causes harsh tariffs on China Benjamin Scent, The Standard, November 6, 2006 Many political commentators expect Democrats to introduce more protectionist measures aimed at narrowing the trade deficit, strengthening the US dollar, and protecting jobs. Despite these discussions in political circles, economists at Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch agree that political events rarely influence the dollar. A Democratic win in both houses will

increase the likelihood of incremental tariffs on Chinese goods actually being implemented, says Phillips. He expects Democrats to eventually abandon their rhetoric about "catastrophic tariffs" on Chinese goods and eventually reach a compromise. According to Societe Generale US economist Stephen Gallagher, a strong Democratic win will be a stepping stone to a Democratic presidency in 2008. "If we had a Democratic Congress combined with a Democratic president in 2008, then things could look very different," he says. Obama’s bashing China now – continued losses ensure protectionism. Reuters 4/14/2008, Obama and Clinton vow to get tough with China http://www.reuters.com/articlePrint?articleId=USN1437268920080414 Obama, an Illinois senator, said as president he would threaten to limit Chinese access to the U.S. market as a bargaining tool to force Beijing to quit manipulating its currency. "What we need to do is just be better bargainers and say 'Look, here's the bottom line: You guys keep on manipulating your currency, we are going to start shutting off access to some of our markets,'" Obama told the Alliance for American Manufacturing forum in Pittsburgh. Clinton proposed a series of steps to strengthen U.S. trade enforcement and crack down on Chinese trade policies that she said were driving up the trade deficit. "When they violate trade rules they should be held accountable," said Clinton, a New York senator. "We have done so much over the last seven years to advantage China to our detriment." Obama and Clinton are contending for the Democratic nomination to face Republican John McCain in November's presidential election. Both Democrats have emphasized efforts to protect U.S. jobs ahead of their April 22 showdown in Pennsylvania, the next battleground in the race and a state hard-hit by the loss of manufacturing jobs. OBAMA: BUSH A 'PATSY' The two Democrats told the crowd of steelworkers and other industrial union members that Bush had failed to protect U.S. jobs. Obama said Bush, whose administration has opposed attempts by the U.S. Congress to pass legislation to force China to revalue its currency, was a tough-talking "patsy" on trade negotiations. "America and the world can benefit from trade with China. But trade with China will only be good for you if China itself plays by the rules and acts as a positive force for balanced world growth," said Obama, who drew a stronger ovation from the labor crowd than Clinton. Clinton said she would aggressively use World Trade Organization mechanisms to challenge unfair trading practices, take steps to crack down on piracy issues and move to provide relief to U.S. companies hurt by surges of Chinese imports. "We can't rely on the whims of the Bush administration to support U.S. manufacturers," she said. "That's why I'm calling for changing our laws to send China and other non-market economies a simple message: If you subsidize your exports and hurt our manufacturing, you'll pay the price," she said. Obama wants to punish China – McCain won’t take trade actions. John Feffer, 6/9/2008, China and the Elections http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-feffer/china-and-the-elections_b_106150.html To the extent that the candidates have mentioned China, it's in connection to trade. Obama has written of China as a competitor that has "manipulated its currency for years in order to gain an unfair advantage over the United States in trade." McCain's support of free trade has meant pulling his punches: "It sounds like a lot of fun to bash China and others, but free trade has been the engine of our economy. Free trade should be the continuing principle that guides this nation's economy." These references to the world's fastest growing economy have been largely in passing. Neither candidate has bothered to list China on their web pages as one of their defining issues. Although Iraq is the defining foreign policy issue so far in the presidential race, China will no doubt be smuggled into the election through this rather stark contrast between the Republicans and Democrats over trade. In their effort to woo the working class vote, both Obama and Clinton turned their back on earlier support for free trade agreements like NAFTA. To pick up all the working-class votes he needs in Ohio and elsewhere to defeat McCain, Obama will likely stress his differences with the Republican's gung-ho free trade position, and that will mean hitting China hard for the massive trade surplus it has generated with the United States. Not to be outdone in China-bashing, McCain will likely argue that China is a national security threat that requires more military spending.

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Obama  China bashing Obama will push China-bashing legislation – protectionist attitude and base failures. Jane Schulze, The Australian Media editor, 6/21/2008, Trade is Obama's weak spot http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23896173-26397,00.html But if he's unable to deliver that change quickly, John Micklethwait, editor of respected international magazine The Economist, believes Obama may blame China for some of the problems he faces, in the process inflaming tensions between the US and China. Like the magazine he edits, Micklethwait is an avowed supporter of free trade and for this reason he's concerned about Obama, who he fears is a strong protectionist. "Trade is something we are extremely wary about with Obama at the moment," he says. Micklethwait is also a supporter of globalisation, which he argues is producing the greatest economic boom in human history. "By the end of this decade, even allowing for the credit crunch, we'll have average GDP growth per head of population of 3 per cent a year around the world, so we are now living in the fastest decade of economic growth in human history," he says. Countries such as China have been beneficiaries of globalisation but their growth has spurred problems that Micklethwait expects may be used in the future by Obama to shore up his popularity at home. "I'm worried about globalisation at the moment because even though it's a great and powerful thing it has its problems," Micklethwait says. "Oil and food prices have risen because of the enormous demand unleashed by China and India, which means you get price bubbles and price imbalances emerging." That's also having a knock-on effect in the political world, and that's where he sees Obama unleashing a new anti-China rhetoric in the US. "It's a good thing China is getting richer and more powerful, but if it gets even more powerful you'll soon have a return to the power politics, with China bumping up against Japan and India ... and then you'll have the nationalisms coming in." Micklethwait argues China's people are annoyed by Western reports on problems with their Olympic torch relay. At the same time, he says, "US politics is spooked by China". "And the Beijing Olympics will be a big factor in that because the Chinese will probably win more gold medals than the US, precisely when they'll have the presidential election in full swing and the economy in the dumps," Micklethwait says. "Eight out of 10 Americans feel they are heading in the wrong direction, so this feeling that the (Chinese) dragon is breathing over their shoulder will spook them quite a lot." He says the US has been alarmed by China's arms build-up and environmental record, and US religious fundamentalists are concerned about what's happening to Christianity in China. Micklethwait says there's a good chance China will be the world's biggest Christian country by 2050, but the problem from the perspective of American fundamentalists is that in official churches no more than 25 people can gather at one time. "In China, if you have more than 25 people meeting, you get in trouble with the authorities. It just means there's another group of Americans that are worried about what's happening to Christianity in China. So China has America's attention in a way that other countries don't." He expects Obama to use that to his advantage, especially if he maintains his protectionist attitude. "There are lots of good things about Obama, but he is more frightening on that score (free trade) than (his Republican counterpart John) McCain," he says. "McCain defended free trade in Michigan and Ohio and said it even though he knew it was bad for those rust-belt areas. "But Obama is an interesting case. His advisers will say he's very pro-free trade but in the campaign he's been talking about renegotiating NAFTA (the North American Free Trade Agreement between the US, Canada and Mexico)." And while the Democrats under former US president Bill Clinton were supportive of free trade, Micklethwait says that has changed after many Democrats were elected to Congress in 2006 based on their strong support for protectionism. "They were picking up the support of a lot of blue-collar workers who wanted people to go out and defend their jobs," he says. And those Democrats are likely to support Obama if next year he needs to unfurl the protectionist banner to maintain popularity. "If Barack Obama is president, you could have a situation where there is not that much money as the budget is not in great shape, so he's probably unlikely to be able to carry out promises in areas like health care," Micklethwait says. "So he will have a very angry base and people will be saying: 'Why haven't things changed?' and the temptation to do some China bashing would be the most obvious thing to do."

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McCain key to Colombia FTA McCain supports – Obama opposes Erika Andersen, staff writer for human events, 7-4-08 (“Colombia Free Trade Agreement in Trouble” http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=27350) “The provisions in the Peru free trade agreement that passed the Congress late last year with very heavy bipartisan support -- I think it was 350 votes in the House,” said Padilla. “So, if it’s got identical provisions, I don’t understand why we wouldn’t also seek support for Colombia.”President Bush said Colombia’s President Uribe has expressed that “approving the free trade agreement is the best way for America to demonstrate our support for Colombia.” Bush noted that people are watching to see what America does here and by not passing the CFTA, America would “Not only abandon a brave ally; it would send a signal throughout the region that America cannot be counted on to support its friends.” Republican presidential candidate John McCain this week released an ad supporting the CFTA and bolstered his credentials by featuring the commercial with a Spanish translation. Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama does not support the agreement.

If McCain wins he will pass Colombia Michael Collier, COHA Research Associate, 6-27-08 (“FREE TRADE WITH COLOMBIA: MCCAIN'S MISGUIDED CAMPAIGN” states news service, pLn) In an interview with the Washington Post, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi made it clear that stalling a vote on ratification of the CTPA was designed to pressure the Bush Administration to provide further domestic economic stimulus provisions and worker benefits. With Bush unlikely to acquiesce, the prospects for Congress to pass the agreement rest on the outcome of the November elections, which presently do not appear favorable for Republicans. Meanwhile, Democratic nominee Barack Obama has openly declared his opposition to the CTPA, based on Colombia's track record with organized labor and paramilitary groups. Still, Obama's opposition to the CTPA is partially rooted in election year posturing, and his recent vote in favor of the U.S.-Peru free trade agreement indicates he is not opposed to free trade in principle. In the event of a November victory, it is unlikely he would ask Congress to ratify the CTPA in its current form. Alternatively, McCain is an outspoken proponent of the free trade deal, as he will reiterate in his forthcoming trip to Colombia. Since he has repeatedly insisted that maintaining free trade is a key part of his agenda, McCain would categorically pursue CTPA ratification if he wins the 2008 election.

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McCain key to free trade McCain pushing for free trade, Obama against Tom Baldwin; 7-2-08; “Republican John McCain fights for free trade deals” The Times Online http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/us_elections/article4251699.ece John McCain demonstrated the global reach of America’s presidential election last night by flying to Colombia where he will once more declare his support for the free-trade deals opposed by Barack Obama. The Republican nominee claims that Mr Obama’s promise to embrace the rest of the world is contradicted by his populist rhetoric pandering to US trade unions and Rust Belt voters who blame trade deals for the loss of industrial jobs. Opinion polls suggest that two thirds of US voters believe their economy has suffered from globalisation and, speaking before his visit to Latin America, which will also include a stop in Mexico, Mr McCain said that he had a “very tough” task in convincing the electorate that trade can help them. He cited the example of President Hoover, whose 1930 decision to sign sky-high tariff legislation into law had ensured “we went from a recession into one of the great depressions of our history”. Mr McCain added: “You gotta stand on principle. I believe in the principle of free trade.” Mr Obama, described by the McCain campaign as “the most protectionist candidate that the Democratic Party has ever fielded”, is planning his own international tour of Europe and the Middle East this summer. But he has opposed trade deals with Colombia and South Korea, while also pledging to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta) signed with Mexico and Canada during President Clinton’s Administration, which most economists believe made America and the world richer. As he headed into critical primaries in industrial states such as Ohio he sought to tie Hillary Clinton to Nafta by saying “entire cities have been devastated” by a deal signed by her husband that, he claimed, had destroyed one million jobs. When Austan Goolsbee — one of his advisers — was quoted in leaked documents saying that such comments were “more reflective” of political manoeuvring than policy, there were angry denials from Mr Obama’s campaign. He also recently supported a farm Bill that critics have described as a monument to protectionism. The World Trade Organisation is scrambling this month to make one last effort to complete the long-stalled Doha Round of talks, designed to boost international commerce by hundreds of billions of dollars, before President Bush leave office. In the weeks since clinching the Democratic nomination, however, Mr Obama has taken a much more nuanced stance on trade. Asked by Fortune magazine to clarify his remarks on Nafta, he replied: “I think that sometimes during campaigns the rhetoric gets overheated and amplified. Politicians are always guilty of that, and I don’t exempt myself.” Mr Obama no longer seeks, as he once did, to “use the hammer of potential optout” to renegotiate the deal but merely a dialogue for “figuring out how we can make this work for all people”. In a speech in the economically blighted Michigan last month he criticised those who want to “build a fortress around America”. His campaign now talks of relatively minor tweaks to Nafta to improve its environmental and labour standards that would make it more acceptable to US public opinion.

McCain supports free trade and offshore drilling, Obama doesn’t Mike Sunnucks; 3/5/08; “McCain emphasizes support for free trade, offshoring practices” Phoenix Business Journal http://www.bizjournals.com/phoenix/stories/2008/03/03/daily37.html U.S. Sen. John McCain of Arizona cinched the Republican presidential nomination Wednesday, stressing support for free trade and the free market as he heads into the general election. McCain spoke in Dallas on Wednesday after primary wins put him over the number of delegates needed for the GOP presidential nod. The senator stressed his support for free trade accord and making the U.S. marketplace competitive, taking aim at Democratic candidates Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton's skepticism of free trade and criticism of big corporations for moving jobs offshore. "I will leave it to my opponent to argue that we should abrogate trade treaties and pretend the global economy will go away," McCain said in his Dallas speech. Obama in particular has been critical of existing free trade pacts. Both he and Clinton criticize the practice of offshoring and worry about the growing gap between rich and poor. McCain criticized the Democrats for calling for anti-offshoring measures while not making it easier for businesses to operate within the U.S. He said lower taxes and less regulation are needed, and he prefers consumer and private sector policies to universal health plans backed by Obama and Clinton.

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McCain key to free trade McCain would push bilateral free trade – wants more American agreements. By Sean Mussenden, Media General News Service, 7/09/2008, On Free Trade, Big Differences Between McCain, Obama, http://www.mgwashington.com/index.php/news/article/on-free-trade-big-differencesbetween-mccain-obama/1322/ "There's a stark contrast between the two major presidential candidates on trade, probably the starkest we've seen in decades," said Dan Griswold, director of the Center for Trade Policy Studies at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank that supports free trade. "McCain is an unabashed free trader," he said. "Obama has a much more skeptical view about trade liberalization." In nearly three decades in Congress, McCain has supported every major trade deal, including the North American Free Trade Agreement, which dropped economic barriers with Mexico and Canada in 1994, and the Central American Free Trade Agreement in 2005. During trips to Mexico and Canada this summer, McCain reiterated his strong support for NAFTA in the face of calls from some Democrats and union leaders to renegotiate the deal. And on a swing through Colombia this month, McCain pressed for a new trade pact with that country that is currently stalled in Congress. As president, he said that he would like to see similar trade agreements cover all of North and South America. "Ninety-five percent of the world's consumers live outside the United States. Our future prosperity depends on opening more of these markets, not closing them," McCain said Monday at a town hall meeting in Denver. McCain will push free trade – it’s his core issue. Star Tribune, 7/14/2008, McCain touts free trade to Hispanic group, http://www.startribune.com/politics/national/president/25450979.html?location_refer=Politically %20Connected:highlightModules Republican presidential candidate John McCain, in one of his strongest endorsements of free trade, called himself "an unapologetic supporter of NAFTA," an agreement that many Americans feel has cost them jobs. "I reject the false virtues of economic isolationism," McCain told the National Council of La Raza, a major Hispanic organization. "Any confident, competent country and its government should embrace competition," he said. "It makes us stronger." Obama opposes bilateral deals – wants opt-outs. CBS, 6/20/2008, Obama's Balancing Act On Free Trade http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/06/20/politics/main4198107.shtml During the Democratic primary battle, Barack Obama repeatedly criticized the North American Free Trade Agreement as bad for America, noting that "we can't keep passing unfair trade deals like NAFTA that put special interests over workers' interests." There were political advantages for Obama (and then-rival Hillary Clinton) in railing against the agreement, which many in the labor movement - a key component of the Democratic base - blame for the loss of bluecollar jobs. But there may be something of a gap between the reality of Obama's position and the impression his words left. During the primary, Obama vowed to renegotiate NAFTA - and opt-out of the agreement if Canada and Mexico refused to join in doing so - but his plans, as they now stand, do not represent a significant overhaul of the agreement.

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McCain health care policy bad McCain Policy doesn’t solve New York Times, 7-11-08 Contrary to the assertion in your article, Senator John McCain's health plan is neither ''radical'' nor ''more fundamental than the universal coverage'' plan proposed by Senator Barack Obama. Granted, Mr. McCain's plan includes improvements to the current tax treatment of health benefits that would aid citizens who now buy insurance individually. But his proposal to expand state high-risk pools is not a panacea. It might benefit a relatively small percentage of Americans, whereas Senator Obama's plan would reach many more people and is more likely to address the key problems of access, cost and quality that plague our health care system. Unfortunately, Senator McCain's prescription for system reform is merely a Band-Aid when nothing less than major reconstructive surgery is required.

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Yes capital *Bush still has capital to win on a few key issues Ben Feller, Associated Press Writer, 7-8-08, http://www.localnewsleader.com/kindred/stories1/index.php? action=fullnews&id=17092 For an unpopular guy on his way out of his office, President Bush still has some juice. Bush got the anti-terrorism spying legislation largely on his terms. He also has won fight after fight to keep the Iraq war going without a timeline for withdrawal of U.S. troops. He vetoed a bill that would have banned waterboarding for terror suspects, then watched as Democrats failed to override him. Why the difference on security? So going against him can mean being labeled as soft on terrorism or unsupportive of the troops. In an election year, try going to the voters with that around your neck. The measure targets terrorists, though it has raised alarms about sweeping in innocent Americans. But opponents in Congress were hemmed in by time. Wiretapping orders approved last year would start expiring in August without congressional action. So Congress agreed on new surveillance rules. Including a provision Bush demanded: immunity for telecommunications companies that helped the U.S. spy on Americans. Democrats, historically, have a tougher job of winning over voters when it comes to protecting the country. It seems true again this year: Republican Sen. John McCain has better than a two-to-one edge over Obama on handling terrorism, according to an Associated Press-Yahoo News poll conducted last month. Right after returning from Japan on Wednesday, Bush held a Rose Garden event to praise the passage of the eavesdropping legislation. The good news was essentially there waiting for him, as the Senate had passed the bill earlier in the day. "Good timing," White House spokesman Tony Fratto said. Bush evoked the memory of Sept. 11, 2001, one of the worst times in the country‘s history. It was also a time when the nation was united behind Bush. To be sure, Bush has had a second term of big setbacks, even on security. The White House is grappling with how to do respond to a rebuff from the Supreme Court, which ruled that foreign terrorism suspects held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, can challenge their detention in U.S. civilian courts. Bush‘s own former spokesman, in a stunning book, said Bush favored propaganda over honesty in leading the nation into war in Iraq. Bush‘s approach to Congress, though, does not change. Nine times he has vetoed bills. Congress has had the muscle to override him only twice, and never on a matter of war or terrorism. Bush bashes Congress for inaction, then glosses over all the bitter words if a compromise with lawmakers emerges. He makes big promises. Sometimes he delivers, like staring down Congress on mandatory troop withdrawals from Iraq. Sometimes he doesn‘t, like overhauling immigration or Social Security. And sometimes, he just keeps talking of what he plans to get done, no matter how unlikely. Like a Middle East peace deal before he leaves office. The message: I‘m still in charge here. "Being a lame duck means you have less clout," Ornstein said. "But you‘re still the president of the United States."

Bush still has a chance – he’s down but not out John C. Bersia, who won a Pulitzer Prize in editorial writing for the Orlando Sentinel in 2000 is the special assistant to the president for global perspectives at the University of Central Florida, 6/21/08 http://www.onlineathens.com/stories/062108/opinion_20080621001.shtml Some critics have described President Bush's just-concluded swing through Europe as irrelevant, contending that the region essentially disregards him. Moreover, the critics continue, his visit bordered on delusional. After years of tension, how could Bush possibly have had the nerve to walk the streets of European capitals with such confidence and toss out bold, foreign-policy goals for the near future? Well, let us not too hastily jump to conclusions about the trip, the Bush administration's remaining possibilities and the president's legacy. For all the shortcomings of his time in office, Bush is neither irrelevant nor delusional. In fact, he might well have signaled the flowering of U.S.European relations, even though that will not happen on his watch. Whether the winner in November's presidential election is Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois, the presumptive Democratic candidate, or his Republican counterpart, Sen. John McCain of Arizona, America's ties with Europe are likely to improve. For that matter, so are U.S. connections with the rest of the world. In addition, the door has not yet closed on the Bush White House. In a halfyear's time, much could happen. A lame-duck president is not without capability. Consider, for example, Bush's promise to advance the cause of peace in the Middle East before he leaves office. Skeptics dismiss that idea as foolhardy, but former President Clinton had a similar objective during his last year as chief executive. Although his bid for an Israeli-Palestinian settlement eventually unraveled, Clinton came surprisingly close to success. The possibility also exists for Bush to face unexpected developments, which takes me back to his first campaign for president. At that time - including during a lengthy foreign-policy discussion shortly before he assumed the presidency - Bush held views on various global issues that appeared unchangeable.

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Yes capital – FISA proves Congress bowed down to bush - push on FISA meaning he has political capital left PAMELA HESS The Associated Press, 7/9/08, http://www.kansascity.com/811/story/697638.html Bowing to President Bush's demands, the Senate approved and sent the White House a bill Wednesday to overhaul bitterly disputed rules on secret government eavesdropping and shield telecommunications companies from lawsuits complaining they helped the U.S. spy on Americans The relatively one-sided vote, 69-28, came only after a lengthy and heated debate that pitted privacy and civil liberties concerns against the desire to prevent terrorist attacks. It ended almost a year of wrangling over surveillance rules and the president's warrantless wiretapping program that was initiated after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The House passed the same bill last month, and Bush said he would sign it soon. Opponents assailed the eavesdropping program, asserting that it imperiled citizens' rights of privacy from government intrusion. But Bush said the legislation protects those rights as well as Americans' security.

FISA proves that bush has some political capital left. Jennifer Loven associated press writer, 7/9/08 http://www.newsvine.com/_news/2008/07/09/1650349- bush bush-signs-new-rules-on-government-wiretapping President Bush signed a bill Thursday that overhauls rules about government eavesdropping and grants immunity to telecommunications companies that helped the U.S. spy on Americans in suspected terrorism cases. He called it "landmark legislation that is vital to the security of our people." Bush signed the measure in a Rose Garden ceremony a day after the Senate sent it to him, following nearly a year of debate in the Democratic-led Congress over surveillance rules and the warrantless wiretapping program Bush initiated after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. It was a battle that pitted privacy and civil liberties concerns against the desire to prevent terrorist attacks and Democrats' fears of being portrayed as weak when it comes to protecting the country. Its passage was a major victory for Bush, an unpopular lame-duck president who nevertheless has been able to prevail over Congress on most issues of national security and intelligence disputes. Bush said the 9/11 attack "changed our country forever" and taught the intelligence community that it must know who America's enemies are talking to and what they are saying. "In the aftermath of 9/11," Bush said, "few would have imagined that we would be standing here seven years later without another attack on American soil. The fact that the terrorists have failed to strike our shores again does not mean that our enemies have given up

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No capital Bush lacks political capital and support to do anything even if it’s a good thing Barry Smith, staff write op ed section JD news, 6-24-08, http://www.jdnews.com/opinion/president_57709___article.html/oil_energy.html) In fact, I'd love to see the day when I can put a solar cell on my car or we can convert household waste into energy efficiently, and we can tell the Saudis and big oil companies what they can do with their barrels of oil. But that day is not imminent. We need to do something to get more energy resources flowing in the meantime. My only complaint with his speech is that it came a few years later than it should. Better late than never, I guess. I'm not very optimistic that Congress will heed the president's call and allow for the drilling to begin. This is an election year, and the president doesn't have much of the political capital that he boasted about when he was re-elected four years ago left. Some might even say that the president is bankrupt when it comes to political capital. It's really a shame when a president gets near the end of his term and he can't persuade Congress to help out a nation filled with motorists that are hurting every time they pump gasoline into cars. The president will need a lot of help if he's to get Congress to pass anything this year. That help will have to come from a grassroots effort. It won't come from inside the District of Columbia.

Bush has nothing at all he is a complete lame duck and congress’ decision to not convene lame duck session shows the partisanship. The Hindu, 7-15-08, http://www.hindu.com/2008/07/15/stories/2008071559781000.htm WASHINGTON: The decision of the Manmohan Singh government to give a final push to the civil nuclear deal comes at a time when the calendar for the 110th U.S. Congress is almost over. There is a very small window for the lawmakers here to take a final look at the deal, once President George Bush submits his report to Capitol Hill. In three weeks from now, August 1 to be precise, the House of Representatives will go into a six-week recess ahead of the national conventions of the two main political parties, Democrats and Republicans. Thereafter, Congress is scheduled to re-assemble for a three-week period, September 8-26, the latter being the target date for adjournment. This means the lawmakers are scheduled to make an appearance on the Hill only in January 2009. That leaves the Bush Administration with an outside chance of getting the Democrats-controlled Congress to convene a lame duck session after the November elections. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada told journalists recently that he did not expect Congress to come back for such a session. Mr. Reid’s comments came in the light of questions whether Congress would be back after Election Day to pass leftover pending bills addressing issues of domestic concern. The House leadership led by Speaker Nancy Pelosi is reportedly not in favour of a lame duck session, either.

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No agenda – A2: lame duck session Nothing will pass – even in a lame duck session The Hindu, 7-15-08, http://www.hindu.com/2008/07/15/stories/2008071559781000.htm “If there is a lame duck session, it could consider the agreement,” Charles Stevenson of Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies told me. But, he said, “I would expect that only if there is overwhelming support and the matter could be disposed of quickly. The congressional leadership is not going to spend limited legislative time on a controversial foreign policy matter right after an election dominated by domestic policy concerns.” Professor Stevenson, who teaches Congress and Foreign Policy as a subject, added that Democratic Party leaders who expect to increase their majority in the elections have no incentive to reconvene the Houses, especially to try and pass measures (on domestic issues they care about) that President Bush can veto.

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Gridlock now Democrats are at a gridlock because they believe Obama will win the elections Laurie Kellman – Associated Press writer; 7-11-08; “Congress Mostly Going Through Motions For Now” http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gY2mr_SA3rb3a3IvSNUy4ja539QD91RMF2O2 WASHINGTON (AP) — Some fights of the 110th Congress have lost their oomph in the waning months before the November elections, with both parties content to run out the clock on messy matters like the war in Iraq, spending bills and various disputes with the White House. Democrats dropped any pretense of trying to address some of the stickiest issues when their Senate leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, told reporters Thursday that Congress will punt until next year its biggest job, setting most of the government's spending priorities. What's good enough for 2008 will suffice until a new president and a new Congress take office next year. "I would hope that before we would leave here this year that we would do a continuing resolution that would get us (through) until after Senator Obama becomes president," Reid said. Optimistic or realistic, his comments offer a glimpse of the delicate choice of items to be served up by party leaders coordinating Congress' schedule with the presidential campaigns of Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain. Thursday alone provided several examples of how Bush and Democratic congressional leaders are playing for time as it ticks toward the election. There would be no point, Reid suggested, in calling a lame-duck Congress back into session after Election Day to hash out the remaining spending bills only to send the finished products to a lame-duck president who is not shy of exercising his veto power. Republicans, predictably, voiced outrage, but they're the minority and have little power to set the agenda. They've still got access to microphones, however. They exercised this power repeatedly Thursday when they turned virtually every debate in the House to offshore oil drilling — a once-dead idea that has caught on with some voters paying $4-plus for a gallon of gasoline. Members of Congress have a list of accomplishments to counter charges of ineffectiveness. They sent most families economy-stimulating tax rebates of $600 to $1,200, boosted college aid to veterans, expanded farm subsidies, increased food stamps and put some restrictions on Bush's eavesdropping program in pursuit of terrorists. A couple of pocketbook issues are still alive: how to rescue hundreds of thousands of homeowners from foreclosure and doing something — anything — that might assuage voters angry about gasoline prices. Deals also are close on banning lead in toys and a $50 billion program to combat AIDS and other diseases overseas. In a broad sense, Republicans and Democrats are striving to do no more harm to their standing with voters at a time when only 23 percent of the public approves of how Congress is doing its job. It may be in neither party's interest, for example, to compromise on controversial judicial nominations. Also dead for the time being: Bush's tax cuts, immigration reform, fixing Social Security and revamping Bush's No Child Left Behind school program. Reid's comments were but one example on Thursday that the parties were engaged in non-engagement on some issues.

Congress is in gridlock The Frontrunner July 3, 2008 But the "events of that long day and night in 2002 fit a pattern for a man whose congressional career long has included a singular brand of combative bipartisanship. For more than a decade, on tobacco, health care, immigration, judicial nominees, creation of a commission to investigate the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks and more, McCain has championed high-profile legislation opposed by President Bush or others in his own party." His "record of accomplishment is mixed, yet he has made his willingness to cross the political aisle a central theme in his campaign for the White House in an era when voters are plainly tired of partisan gridlock in the nation's capital."

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No bipartisan cooperation now Democrats don’t want to work with Republicans now on energy issues R.A. Dillon, Newsminer. Com, 7-20-08, “ANWR debate continues in Wash 8ington,” http://newsminer.com/news/2008/jul/20/anwr-debate-continues-washington/ But Democrats appeared in no particular hurry to strike a bargain on drilling with their Republican counterparts to break the current logjam. Reid allowed senators a three-day weekend after spending most of Thursday trying to negotiate a deal with Republicans to allow a vote on the speculation bill without amendments. Republicans objected, saying there was plenty of public support for a vote on expanded drilling. Sen. George Voinovich, R-Ohio, called Democrats’ focus on speculation legislation a “smokescreen.” Excessive speculation may be part of the problem but it’s not a solution, Voinovich said. Republicans are pressing for kitchen-sink legislation combining increased energy conservation, efficiency and investment in renewable energy technology as well as more domestic development of oil and gas in federal areas now closed to drilling. “We need to have a full-court press — and that means everything,” Voinovich said. Reid now says debate on an energy bill won’t happen until Tuesday, setting up a busy calendar in the two weeks remaining before lawmakers head home for the extended August recess. Congressional aides said prospects for overcoming the partisan stalemate in the Senate before the break are slim. Sen. Jon Kyle, RAriz., said Republican leaders would meet with Reid at the beginning of the week to discuss how to proceed with the speculation bill. He’s hopeful Reid will agree to allow at least one or two GOP amendments.

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McCain Flip-Flop now McCain has flip-flopped on energy issues before and will do it again—not perceived as supporting alternatives R.A. Dillon, Newsminer. Com, 7-20-08, “ANWR debate continues in Wash 8ington,” http://newsminer.com/news/2008/jul/20/anwr-debate-continues-washington/ Murkowski believes McCain, who has already switched his position on offshore drilling, can be brought around to support limited development in the refuge. “I still believe there is an opportunity for McCain to do right on ANWR and I look forward to talking to him about it,” she said. Murkowski also voiced confidence that her fellow Senate Republicans would be on board if she and Stevens can get an amendment on ANWR to the floor.“Our leadership recognizes how important ANWR is for both myself and Sen. Stevens, but they also recognize how important it is to the nation,” she said. “We have not been shut down (on ANWR).”

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Subsidy Links Non Unique Link non unique—Voters perceive expansion of alternative energy subsidies now Nicholas Desa, Opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal, 6-25-08 http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121433780137600759.html?mod=googlenews_wsj8 Former Rep. Dick Armey, an architect of the '94 Contract, applauds Mr. Hensarling and the RSC for "fighting to restore the idea that good policy makes good politics, and that Republicans succeed when they stand for clear limited government principles." But it will be an uphill fight. Even Mr. McCain, who may be good on earmarks, has plans to vastly expand federal government through greenhouse regulation and alternative energy subsidies. GOP voters are still getting a confused message.

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AE costs capital – subsidy cuts Dems will push for oil and gas subsidy cuts to pay for alternatives – ensures GOP deadlock. Stephanie I. Cohen, marketwatch staff writer, 2/19/2008, Perking up the economy with energy tax breaks, Congress stalls on green tax credits again, http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/perking-up-economy-enerytax/story.aspx?guid=%7b6E4B70B7-B947-40A5-9E33-2035F30E3050%7d&print=true&dist=printMidSection [ND] Who's to blame Solar and wind seem to have become the ugly stepchild to biofuels and ethanol, which have been the recipient of sizeable, long-term federal subsidies over the past two years that are meant to ensure a market and profits for the industry for the next two decades. Democrats repeatedly tried to extend these tax breaks last year as Republicans did in the Energy Policy Act of 2005. These provisions were subsequently extended through December 2008 in the Tax Relief and Health Care Act of 2006. Democrats insist these provisions must be paid for by an alternative source of revenue or what is known as "pay-as-you-go" budget rules. The obvious pair up for Democrats: oil industry profits and the elimination of tax credits for the oil and natural gas industries. Democratic leaders have targeted a manufacturing deduction granted to the oil and gas industry in 2005 at a time when the oil industry is reporting record quarterly earnings and generates little sympathy among voters. "The American taxpayer should not be subsidizing oil and gas companies during times of record profits and record prices at the pump," said House Ways and Means Chairman Charles Rangel, D-N.Y. But this is also the most contentious path to passage of alternative energy incentives. Republicans have repeatedly warned Democrats that tying the fate of alternative energy tax breaks to the repeal of energy tax breaks for oil and natural gas developers ensures a deadlock. Democrats are engaging in a take-from-therich-give-to-the-poor approach, a strategy that harms the renewable energy sector the most, according to Christine Tezak, energy analyst and senior vice president of Stanford Group.

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AE unpopular – compromise/A2: Bipart Alternative energy costs capital – finding middle ground. UPI, United Press International, 7/9/2008, Senate pressured to find energy compromise, http://www.upi.com/Top_News/2008/07/09/Senate_pressured_to_find_energy_compromise/UPI45951215619569/ [ND] Congressional Republicans advocate more domestic oil and gas production, while many Democrats instead want to focus on alternative energy sources. Finding a middle ground between them will be a hard task, the newspaper said. Complicating matters for the Democrats is reluctance among Senate leaders to sign on to a compromise that might be at odds with policies being espoused by likely Democratic U.S. presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill. Obama is calling for higher mileage standards for U.S. autos and big investments in alternative energy.

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AE unpopular – A2: turns No turns – alternative energy’s divisive regardless of consensus. Stephanie I. Cohen, marketwatch staff writer, 2/19/2008, Perking up the economy with energy tax breaks, Congress stalls on green tax credits again, http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/perking-up-economyenery-tax/story.aspx?guid=%7b6E4B70B7-B947-40A5-9E332035F30E3050%7d&print=true&dist=printMidSection [ND] For years, lobbying groups have pleaded with Washington for long-term extensions of investment and production tax credits that benefit solar, fuel cells, wind, geothermal and biomass energy sources only to see the measures locked in a political drama that they say leaves alternative energy investors in a lurch. Groups like the Solar Energy Industries Association and American Wind Energy Association say U.S. jobs are at stake. Despite claims of support from both parties for increased funding for cleaner energy alternatives, Congress has repeatedly squeaked out one-year extensions for the incentives only when they are about to expire. The efforts to extend what most Americans seem to support -- increased incentives for alternative energy production -- has proven to be divisive despite a general consensus on the policy.

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AE unpopular – divisive Alternative energy’s divisive – controversial and expensive. By LINDSAY RENICK MAYER, the money-in-politics reporter for the Center for Responsive Politics, Big Oil, Big Influence, http://www.pbs.org/now/shows/347/oil-politics.html Battles on the Horizon With Democrats now in control of Congress, the oil and gas industry is finding that it's getting less for its money on Capitol Hill. Other industries with competing interests and far less cash to spread around, such as environmental groups and alternative energy producers, are now finding more support for their legislative goals. For example, the Clean Energy Act of 2007 seeks to repeal the 2004 and 2005 tax breaks to Big Oil and re-direct the money to renewable energy efforts. Because of the change in power, the oil industry faces the possibility of stricter oversight and fewer goodies from Congress. The industry "definitely has to be worried that there will be anti-oil legislation of all types, and also possibly regulations, depending on who takes over the White House," says David Victor, a law professor at Stanford University and a senior fellow on the Council for Foreign Relations. Victor was part of the council's task force on energy security. "I think [the new leadership] generally puts the issue on the agenda for legislative action. It puts it higher on the agenda. But it's not clear Congress will actually be able to do very much in terms of getting the votes for legislation, because energy policy in reality is very controversial and often very expensive," Victor said. "That's something that both parties have a difficult time dealing with."

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AE Unpopular—Expensive Alt energy unpopular—perceived as too expensive, not quick enough and inconsistent Julia A. Seymour, Business & Media Institute, 6-25-08, “Journalists ignore public support for offshore oil drilling and mislead with criticisms of dormant oil fields,” http://www.businessandmedia.org/articles/2008/20080625151619.aspx Torn from a procrastinator’s page-a-day calendar, one theme in media coverage of offshore drilling was that it would simply be too long before that supply became available. Another was that the price impact would be “insignificant.” Media using the gas price talking point are in sync with Obama’s presidential campaign. Obama opposes drilling and, according to the San Francisco Chronicle, “Obama also insists ending the drilling ban would have little effect on gas prices.” Citing the U.S. Energy Information Administration, the June 23 San Francisco Chronicle said it if the moratorium on offshore drilling were lifted, it would take “until 2017 before oil began to flow.” “The agency estimated that U.S. oil production would increase by 7 percent – about 200,000 barrels a day – by 2030, which it said would have an ‘insignificant’ impact on oil prices.” The June 19 New York Times made the same point. Even so, domestic supply isn’t the only factor affecting gas prices. As Yergin said, it could “send a psychological message to the world oil market.” And what’s the alternative – what does investing in alternative energy do for gas prices? According to Fortune magazine, it would mean costlier fossil fuels in the meantime. “[T]o encourage a transition toward alternatives, Obama favors legislation that would make fossil fuel more expensive. Doesn’t that mean more pain to come under an Obama presidency?” said the Fortune profile of Obama on June 23. “‘There is no doubt that in the short term, adapting to this new energy economy is going to carry some costs,’” replied Obama. Former Democratic presidential candidate and former energy secretary Bill Richardson also has been saying drilling would take too long, on CBS and in multiple CNN reports recently. “You can’t drill your way out of the problem. Now it’s offshore where it’s going to take years, 10 years to start getting some of the oil out of the ocean,” complained Richardson on “Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer” June 22. Presumptive Democratic nominee Sen. Barack Obama has also used this talking point. A report from the Interior Department cited by CNSNews.com on June 10 showed that there are about “139 billion barrels of undiscovered oil on U.S. territory, onshore and offshore combined, much of it restricted from extraction because of environmental regulations.” Cathy Landry of API said that the “10-year” argument is “silly.” “You can’t say that. It’s a silly argument. Ten years from now we’ll be even worse off that we are now if don’t do anything,” said Landry. “If we had opened the OCS [outer continental shelf] 10 years ago we wouldn’t be in this problem.” In addition to CNN, Gov. Richardson appeared on the June 18 “Early Show” on CBS. He bluntly expressed his opposition to offshore drilling – and the “10-year” argument – without opposition from another guest or co-host Harry Smith. “Another bad idea. It’s going to take 10 years to fully get that oil out of the ocean. It’s a fragile ecosystem,” said Richardson. “[T]his president, all he wants to do is drill, drill, drill. There’s very little on conservation, on fuel efficiency for vehicles. Just last week the Congress failed to pass a solar tax credit. Give more incentives to renewable energy.” “Early Show” co-host Harry Smith didn’t challenge Richardson’s position, consult any other expert, or point out that renewable energy will also be time-consuming and costly. According to the June 22 USA Today, “Many of the solutions lawmakers are proposing — from drilling in the Alaskan wilderness to boosting the use of renewable energy — would take years or even decades to have an impact.” “[D]eveloping alternative energy also takes time. The most ambitious proposal would require the nation to get 25% of its energy from renewable sources within 25 years,” said USA Today. And developing new technologies takes money in addition to time. According to the June 23 Denver Post, “Oil would need to hit $150 to $200 a barrel and stay there before private investment moves heavily into alternative fuels and transportation, said John Kilduff, energy analyst at MF Global in New York.”Creating alternatives to oil and gas isn’t as simple as flipping a switch or passing a mandate. Biofuels requirements for corn-based ethanol have already caused food inflation and global food riots. Another alternative energy being touted as the “answer” is cellulosic ethanol. But even the left-leaning environmental Web site Grist.org has said, “A quiet consensus seems to be forming among people you'd think would know the facts on the ground: cellulosic ethanol, touted as five years away from viability for decades now, may never be viable. ” (emphasis added by Grist) As for solar and other renewable sources like wind power that the media promote, Duke Energy spokesman Tom Shiel told BMI

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that both have serious disadvantages: the sources are inconsistent (the sun goes down and the wind stops blowing) and currently we don’t have the technology to store the power on a large scale.

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A2: Dems like AE – auto states Key democrats oppose energy legislation – regional auto lobbies ensure disagreement. By LINDSAY RENICK MAYER, the money-in-politics reporter for the Center for Responsive Politics, Big Oil, Big Influence, http://www.pbs.org/now/shows/347/oil-politics.html So far Congress has been slow to push through comprehensive energy legislation, in part because issues related to renewable energy standards and fuel efficiency standards differ by region, rather than political party, which means not all democrats are on board, says Frank O'Donnell, president of the environmental advocacy group Clean Air Watch. "Some of the southern-based coal burning power companies have killed or delayed efforts to set a renewable energy requirement for electric companies. Michigan Reps. and others influenced by the car industry have also managed to put off any kind of tougher requirements for fuel economy." O'Donnell says. "John Dingell is a democrat but doesn't see eye to eye with [Speaker of the House] Nancy Pelosi in some of these issues and so far you've seen somewhat of a stalemate." Dingell has consistently defended the auto industry, which is fighting against stricter fuel economy standards. These standards have not been changed since the 1980s. The auto industry is a major player in Dingell's home state of Michigan, which relies heavily on the industry for jobs and is the corporate home of General Motors, Ford and the domestic division of DaimlerChrysler. Among all members of Congress, Dingell has received the second most in contributions from the auto industry at $869,200, just behind Republican Spencer Abraham, a former Michigan senator. The industry has been one of Dingell's largest contributors during his career—second only to electric utilities. During former President Bill Clinton's administration, Congressional Democrats who supported more rigid standards missed a chance to pass such legislation, but they had to grapple with a Republican-controlled Congress largely unsympathetic to the idea. Congress just adjourned for the Thanksgiving break without voting on an energy bill that would, among other things, boost the fuel efficiency of the nation's vehicles. Speaker Pelosi had hoped but failed to bring the measure to a vote, largely because negotiations stalled over the fuel economy standards. The Changing Climate for Energy Policy As Congress wrestles with the comprehensive energy legislation, the oil and gas industry is not only fighting off repeals of its tax breaks, but is pushing again for increased domestic production of energy, specifically permission to drill in certain coastal areas that have been off limits. The companies are also trying to prevent democrats from prosecuting them for jacking up prices excessively and they publicly oppose the bill's mandated use of alternative fuels. The industry joined the fight for coal-to-liquid fuel, in which oil companies have investments, but the controversial provision to encourage creating diesel fuel from domestic coal has already been eliminated from both the house and senate's versions of the bill. The legislation is also meant to correct an error by the interior department during former President Bill Clinton's time in office that allowed many companies to drill in deep waters without paying royalties. [for more on the royalty issue, see NOW reports "The Royalty Treatment" and "Crude Awakening"] The best Big Oil can do right now is slow down the legislation, Wentworth of the Union of Concerned Scientists says. "The [legislation] is being held up because the oil and gas industry is concerned about closing loopholes for offshore drilling," he says. "They're fighting this tooth and nail. This is slowing down the clean energy solutions that the public wants."

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AE popular – public Alternative energy’s publicly popular – majority wants renewables. By LINDSAY RENICK MAYER, the money-in-politics reporter for the Center for Responsive Politics, Big Oil, Big Influence, http://www.pbs.org/now/shows/347/oil-politics.html With members of Congress paying special attention to Big Oil, the policy that elected representatives have developed does not reflect the interest of the public, which wants "affordable, reliable, clean sources of energy," Slocum says. A 2006 survey by the Pew Research Center found a majority of Americans across the political spectrum want an energy policy that emphasizes renewable and alternative sources of energy.

Public overwhelmingly believes that the U.S is too dependent on oil and wants government action for alt energy Dave DeFusco, 6-9-05, Yale University, http://opa.yale.edu/news/article.aspx?id=4259 New Haven, Conn. - A new Yale University research survey of 1,000 adults nationwide reveals that while Americans are deeply divided on many issues, they overwhelmingly believe that the United States is too dependent on imported oil. The survey shows a vast majority of t he public also wants to see government action to develop new "clean" energy sources, including solar and wind power as well as hydrogen cars. 92% of Americans say that they are worried about dependence on foreign oil 93% of Americans want government to develop new energy technologies and require auto industry to make cars and trucks that get better gas mileage The results underscore Americans' deep concerns about the country's current energy policies, particularly the nation's dependence on imported oil. Fully 92 percent say this dependence is a serious problem, while 68 percent say it is a "very serious" problem. Polls demonstrate overwhelming public support for government policies that support development of renewables like solar, wind, and ethanol AgriAgriculture Online 3-8-06, http://www.agriculture.com/ag/printableStory.jhtml;jsessionid=KS3ZHWOOWPCMTQ R5VQ?storyid=/templatedata/ag/story/data/1141846987064.xml&catref=ag1001 A new national public opinion survey demonstrates overwhelming public support for government polic ies and investments that will support development of renewable energy sources like solar, wind and ethanol. "This survey underscores a major shift in public opinion," says Read Smith, co-chair of the 25 x '25 Work Group, an organization that would like to see the US to get 25% of all energy from renewable resources by the year 2025. "Americans want to invest in renewable energy right here at home so that we are less dependent on countries in unfriendly and unstable parts of the world."Survey results were released today at the 25x'25 Agriculture and Forestry Renewable Energy Summit. Among the findings Ninety-eight percent of voters see a national goal of having 25% of our domestic energy needs met by renewable resources by the year 2025 as important for the country, and 74% feel that it is "very important." Ninety percent of voters believe this goal is achievable. Similar majorities support government action to encourage greater use of renewable energy: 88% favor financial incentives, and 92% support minimum government standards for the use of renewable energy by the private sector. Nearly all voters (98%) say the costs, such as the cost of research and development and the cost of building new renewable energy production facilities, would be worth it to move us toward the 25x'25 goal.Voters consider energy to be an important issue facing the country, rating it similarly with health care, terrorism and national security, and education, and ahead of taxes and the war in Iraq. Half (50%) of voters believe America is headed for an energy crisis in the future, and 35% believe the country already y is facing a crisis.Voters see many convincing arguments for a shift to renewable energy -- the need to reduce U.S. dependence on foreign oil, protection of the environment for future generations, the readiness of these technologies to contribute today, and the opportunities they present to create new jobs, especially in rural communities. The survey of 1,000 registered voters was conducted by Public Opinion Strategies of Alexandria, VA, for the Energy Future Coalition, a non-partisan public policy initiative. The Coalition sponsored the research for the 25x'25 Work Group. For an expanded summary of results, go to www.25x25.org.

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AE popular – Congress Alternative energy is popular with the democratic Congress – past legislation proves Gail Russell Chaddock – Staff writer of the Christian Science Monitor; 6-25-07; “In Congress, A Boost For Alternative Energy” http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0625/p03s02-uspo.html? page=1 Washington - \Congress is a big step closer to its goal of tipping national energy policy away from oil and gas development and toward alternative energy sources such as wind, geothermal, and biomass. With the Senate's passage of an energy bill June 21, action this week shifts to the House, where Democrats will be rolling out their own plan for America's energy future. Rifts within their ranks, however, are forcing House Democrats to postpone some tough issues until fall – a move that could complicate coming to terms with the Senate once an energy bill clears the House. At the heart of the House struggle over energy policy is a standoff between Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Rep. John Dingell (D) of Michigan, a powerful committee chairman with long-standing ties to the auto industry. Speaker Pelosi wants this year's energy bill to mark a clean break with energy policy of the past, when Republicans controlled the Congress and enacted financial breaks for oil and gas producers. Representative Dingell worries that new regulations could sink already-battered US automakers and cost more industry jobs.

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AE Bipart Alternative energy’s bipartisan – oil prices force interest in incentives. By LINDSAY RENICK MAYER, the money-in-politics reporter for the Center for Responsive Politics, Big Oil, Big Influence, http://www.pbs.org/now/shows/347/oil-politics.html The Democratic Congress has made clean energy legislation a priority because of rising gas prices and concerns about the nation's dependence on foreign oil sources, in addition to a scientific consensus that human activity is the root cause of today's global warming. Many Republicans, too, are on board and looking for solutions. "The single most important thing that's happened in the last five years is the price of oil has shot up," Stanford's David Victor says. "That run-up has changed the politics and incentives for people to take an interest in conservation, and that's completely bipartisan. There are people in the left wing and the right wing that say we need to do something about this problem." GOP is on alternative energy bandwagon – it’s bipartisan. The Colorado Springs Gazette, 12/7/2007, Our View, http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4191/is_20071207/ai_n21172265/print?tag=artBody;col1 [ND] Political colors Republicans roll out plan for environment In the world of political fashion, green is the color stylish politicians are wearing these days, and this has some in the GOP jumping on the bandwagon. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich has a new book out proposing a "contract with the planet" for conservatives. Political support for biofuel production quotas and alternative energy mandates is becoming bipartisan. Colorado Republicans last week got into the act, unveiling their own plan for balancing economic and environmental interests. It leans toward markets and away from mandates, which is a welcome alternative to the command-and-control approach preferred by Democrats. There's nothing here as dramatic (or Draconian) as what Democrats have to propose, but these are worthy proposals. "Republicans are committed to sound environmental policies that do not impose heavy- handed mandates on consumers and businesses," House Minority Leader Mark May said. Energy’s bipart – gas prices ensure compromise. UPI, United Press International, 7/9/2008, Senate pressured to find energy compromise, http://www.upi.com/Top_News/2008/07/09/Senate_pressured_to_find_energy_compromise/UPI-45951215619569/ [ND] WASHINGTON, July 9 (UPI) -- A group of U.S. senators says public anger about high gas prices is spurring them to push hard to find a bipartisan compromise on an energy bill soon. "This is the No. 1 issue on people's minds, very clearly," Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., told The New York Times (NYSE:NYT) in comments published Wednesday. Conrad was one of a bipartisan group of 10 senators meeting Tuesday to hammer out ideas on how to reach an energy plan compromise.

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AE Bipart Energy is bipart – only common ground on the agenda. Michael Abramowitz and Jonathan Weisman, Washington Post Staff Writers, 11/10/2006, Bush Meets With Pelosi; Both Vow Cooperation, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/09/AR2006110900953_pf.html [ND] Despite deep philosophical differences and sharp election-year rhetoric from both sides, the White House and congressional Democrats may share some interest in finding common ground on such issues as overhauling the immigration system, education and energy, according to lawmakers and administration officials. Democratic leaders seem anxious to show they can deliver as a governing party after years in opposition, while Bush is aware that his final two years will be bereft of any significant initiative unless he can work with the party he demonized on the campaign trail. Despite conciliatory rhetoric, there were flashes yesterday of the potential obstacles ahead. The White House once again asked the Senate to approve the nomination of controversial U.N. Ambassador John R. Bolton, who holds the post after a recess appointment, but Democrats -- and a key Republican -- quickly moved to block the action. In her interview with reporters, Pelosi said Democrats will act immediately to reinstate lapsed budget rules, which mandate that any new tax cuts or spending increases be paid for with equal spending cuts or tax hikes. That would all but shut the door on Bush's main economic priority, making his first-term tax cuts permanent. The new House and Senate leadership will also quickly challenge Bush on stem cell research, Pelosi said. Democrats expect to pass legislation early next year that would be almost identical to the only bill he has vetoed, a measure to expand federal funding of stem cells beyond the few lines already in existence. The addition of 29 Democratic seats in the House and six in the Senate is probably not enough to override a veto, Pelosi conceded, but Democrats hope to "build public support for a signature." But Pelosi and the House's No. 2 Democrat, Rep. Steny H. Hoyer (Md.), who also attended the White House lunch, indicated they came away from their meeting with a sense that they could work with Bush. In an apparent effort to demonstrate goodwill, Pelosi added that Democrats will take up the "innovation agenda" laid out by Bush nearly a year ago in his State of the Union address, and pass his proposals to increase funding for basic scientific research and alternative energy programs.

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Bipartisan support across all demographics for developing alternative energy Dave DeFusco, 6-9-05, Yale University, http://opa.yale.edu/news/article.aspx?id=4259 Across all regions of the country and every demographic group, there is broad support for a new emphasis on finding alternative energy sources. Building more solar power facilities is considered a "good idea" by 90 percent of the public; 87 percent support expanded wind farms; and 86 percent want increased funding for renewable energy research. According to Gus Speth, dean of the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies, "This poll underscores the fact that Americans want not only energy independence but also to find ways to break the linkage between energy use and environmental harm, from local air pollution to global warming." Results of the poll indicate that 93 percent of Americans say requiring the auto industry to make cars that get better gas mileage is a good idea. Just 6 percent say it is a bad idea. This sentiment varies little by political leaning, with 96 percent of Democrats and Independents and 86 percent of Republicans supporting the call for more fuel-efficient vehicles. These findings come on the heels of Congress' rejection of a proposal to require sport utility vehicles and minivans to become more fuel-efficient and achieve the same gasoline mileage as passenger cars. "This poll suggests that Washington is out of touch with the American people - Republicans, Democrats and Independents, young and old, men and women-even S.U.V. drivers-embrace investments in new energy technologies, including better gas mileage in vehicles," said Dan Esty, director of the Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy, which commissioned the survey. The survey also revealed broad support for action to improve air and water quality but growing discomfort with "environmentalists."

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AE Kills Bipart Alternative energy issues spark partisan battles R.A. Dillon, Newsminer. Com, 7-20-08, “ANWR debate continues in Wash 8ington,” http://newsminer.com/news/2008/jul/20/anwr-debate-continues-washington/ WASHINGTON — Sen. Lisa Murkowski joined her Republican colleagues last week in denouncing Democrats’ efforts to block proposals to allow oil and natural gas drilling in areas now off limits. The pitched partisan battle about what to do about soaring energy prices continues in both the Senate and the House as Republicans’ “all of the above” strategy shows signs of gaining ground with centrist Democrats but continues to be opposed by the Democratic Party’s leadership. Democrats have instead focused on legislation aimed at reducing market speculation and forcing energy companies to produce oil and gas from their existing leases. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., introduced legislation last week aimed at curbing what some see as “excessive” speculation in oil and gas futures markets. The bill would close a number of loopholes in current legislation and increase the authority of the market regulator to set limits on speculation in oil and gas derivative markets. Federal regulators believe at least 30 percent of the recent increase in the price of a barrel of oil is the result of excessive speculation, though some economists dispute that number. Republicans, however, showed little interest in letting the bill advance without an opportunity to add provisions that would increase domestic production. In a press conference Thursday, Murkowski and her GOP colleagues said the proposals offered so far by Democrats were insufficient to address the nation’s long-term energy needs. “I want to see more than market speculation,” Murkowski said. Murkowski said she supports efforts to address speculation — though she has concerns about potential unintended consequences from meddling with the markets — but she also wants to see new drilling. It’s an opinion shared by a growing number of Democrats from conservative states who are beginning to break ranks with their leadership to support Republican calls for increased domestic production.

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AE = Concession to Dems Pelosi wants alternative energy – plan’s a concession. Neil Modie, SPI reporter, 4/13/2007, Pelosi brings promise to Seattle to keep energy dollars at home, http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/311623_pelosi14.html [ND] "Washington state is ahead of Washington, D.C.," in alternative-energy policy, U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi declared Friday in Seattle as she vowed to push legislation through Congress to make the country more energy independent. At a news conference at the headquarters of Seattle Biodiesel, she assured local politicians and leaders of the city's emerging alternative-energy industry that the Democratic-controlled Congress recognizes the urgency of reducing carbon emissions and developing new, home-grown fuel sources, "and now we intend to get something done." Pelosi loves alternative energy – plan’s a concession. Trey Pollard, regular contributor to politickerky, 6/22/2008, Pelosi makes energy the cornerstone of visit with Yarmuth, http://www.politickerky.com/treypollard/926/pelosi-makes-energy-cornerstone-visit-yarmuth [ND] LOUISVILLE -- A Saturday afternoon closed-door meeting in Louisville between U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), U.S. Rep John Yarmuth (D-Louisville), officials from Ford Motor Company, the United Auto Workers, and state government officials touched on Ford's efforts to develop "gasolineindependent" technologies for new automobile designs. "What I think was impressive to me and the Speaker is that they are taking a very broad look at all the possible technological answers to our crisis," said Yarmuth of the meeting, during a brief press conference held at Ford's Louisville Assembly plant after the meeting. "This issue of reducing our dependence on foreign oil and addressing the climate crisis is a flagship issue of our speakership. For me this is an educational visit," said Pelosi. "I hope that what we get out of this today also is better public policy." "We can learn from experience that Ford has and recognize what they have done being in the lead in terms of having eco-friendly driving," she added. At Saturday's press conference on the floor of the Ford plant, Pelosi and Yarmuth were joined by UAW President Ron Gettelfinger - a former employee of the Louisville facility - and Bruce Andrews, Ford's Vice President for Government Affairs. The press event was staged next to a prototype of a Ford vehicle being developed with lithium-ion battery "plug-in" technology. Pelosi said this sort of technology was fundamental towards her goals for energy policy. "This is the issue of our generation: the issue of transportation innovation, reducing our dependence on foreign oil and keeping our environment safe and clean," said Pelosi. "One of the things we learned about today that is at the heart of the matter is the issue of battery technology. Lithium-ion batteries are the future, [so] how can we, as a matter of public policy, help encourage that development in the United States so that our cars can be in the lead and competitive internationally?"

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Dems Support Alt Energy Dems pushing for alternative energy now Democrats.org – official website of the democratic party; July 2008; Democratic Party Agenda – “Energy Independence” http://www.democrats.org/a/national/clean_environment/energy/ We will create a cleaner, greener and stronger America by reducing our dependence on foreign oil, eliminating billions in subsidies for oil and gas companies and use the savings to provide consumer relief and develop energy alternatives, and investing in energy independent technology. Energy independence puts America in the driver's seat to pursue affordable and efficient energy solutions that will benefit all Americans, improve America's security, reduce the burden on American families, and help clean our environment. American families should not have to pay the price for a failed national energy policy. They deserve an energy policy that creates a cleaner and stronger America that reduces our dependence on foreign oil and also creates new jobs for American workers. By clearing the pathways to innovation, investing in our workers and infrastructure, and providing American consumers with broader, more responsible choices, the Democratic plan will provide the tools to help move America forward, toward real energy security for the 21st century.

Democrats have empirically supported alternative energy legislation Associated Press; 6-22-07; “Senators Reach Agreement on fuel economy” http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19352490/ WASHINGTON - The Senate voted Thursday to require average fuel economy of 35 miles per gallon for new cars, pickup trucks and SUVs by 2020, raising efficiency standards that have not changed significantly for nearly two decades. The fuel economy measure was added to a broad energy bill without a roll call vote even as senators were holding a news conference announcing the compromise. Republicans earlier blocked Democratic efforts to raise oil taxes by $29 billion and use the money to promote renewable fuels and other clean energy programs. Democratic leaders hoped to complete the energy bill Thursday night, but senators close to the auto industry began an effort to derail the entire bill. “We will be continuing to oppose it,” said Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., “This is not over by any stretch.” The legislation for the first time would establish a single fuel economy standard applicable to not only cars, but also SUVs and pickups which currently have to meet less stringent requirement. Fuel efficiency requirements would vary for different classes of vehicles based on weight and size. But manufacturers would be required to meet an overall fleetwide average of 35 mpg. “It closes the SUV loophole,” declared Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., referring to current requirements that allow much less stringent fuel efficiency standards for SUVs and pickup trucks than for cars. “This is a victory for the American public.” The compromise, approved without floor debate, was crafted over several days behind closed doors with the aim of heading off attempts by senators sympathetic to the auto industry to press a less stringent proposal. President Bush, who was in Alabama visiting a nuclear power plant, said Congress must “be realistic” about the energy legislation. The White House opposes having Congress mandate a specific mileage number for auto fuel economy. Bush believes the Transportation Department should be given increased flexibility to set a standard. Automakers are currently required to meet an average of 27.5 mpg for cars and 22.2 mpg for SUVs and small trucks. The car standard has not changed since 1989, though the truck requirements have been increased slightly by the Bush administration. The measure tacked onto the energy bill would require a 35 mpg fleet average — including SUVs and pickup trucks — by 2020, and require that automakers make half of their vehicles capable of running on 85 percent ethanol fuel by 2015.

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AE – Dems Push Democrats push climate legislation – want a lankmark bill. Stephanie I. Cohen, marketwatch staff writer, 6/10/2008, Climate change debate gets wrapped up in gasoline prices, Opponents stir up concerns about the cost to average households, http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/climate-change-bill-gets-bogged/story.aspx?guid=8B41EF7E %2D34ED%2D4F2D%2D91CF%2D30090A1F434A [ND] Democrats say cost impacts would be minimal Supporters of the legislation -- overwhelmingly Democrat -- spent most of the debate defending the bill against these charges and urging lawmakers to jumpstart a national effort to address climate change. Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif, who authored the final draft of the bill and shepherded it through the Senate, acknowledged criticism regarding the timing of the debate. "There were a lot of voices saying why do this now? Why do we have to do this now?" the senator said. "Because it is, in fact, one of the greatest challenges of our generation and we have to respond with a landmark bill, it will take us a while. We have to get started." Supporters also said the impact of the bill on energy prices would be marginal compared to energy price hikes over the past eight years. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., responded that gasoline prices have increased 250% during the Bush presidency. Boxer estimated that gasoline prices would go up two cents a year over the next 20 years because of the legislation. Reid also promised consumers a kickback, saying they would see $800 billion in tax cuts to offset higher gasoline costs prompted by the climate legislation.

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Cap-and-Trade – Popular – Recycling Recycling with tax shifts solve popularity – it’s spun as a revenue source. Lee Lane, Executive Director of Americans for Equitable Climate Solutions, Climate Policy Center, 9/2003, Allowance Allocation Under a Carbon Cap-And-Trade Policy, http://www.cleanaircoolplanet.org/cpc/documents/2003_cap_and_trade_allowance.pdf [ND] Political implications The primary political advantage of tax shift is that it could link emission controls to a policy area where large-scale legislative initiatives are virtually inevitable. As government’s accounting horizon begins to include years in which the aging of the population will worsen federal current accounts deficits, fiscal problems will become increasingly difficult to ignore. Those legislators highly motivated by the climate issue may increase their political leverage by using emission controls as a revenue source, rather than by working in the traditional environmental policy channels, where inaction remains a politically viable option.

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Cap-and-Trade – Unpopular – Grandfathering Grandfathering creates a political food fight – interest groups would fight before AND after the plan. Peter Cramton and Suzi Kerr, Center for Clean Air Policy, 3/1998, TRADABLE CARBON ALLOWANCE AUCTIONS: HOW AND WHY TO AUCTION, http://www.ccap.org/pdf/aucpub.pdf [ND] A. Grandfathering If allowances were grandfathered, interest groups would fight bitterly for a share of annual rents. This fight would lead to direct costs during the design of the policy. Groups would invest in lawyers, government lobbying, and public relations campaigns. Government officials would spend enormous amounts of time preparing and analyzing options and in negotiations. This would lead to high administrative costs and probably considerable delays in implementation. Problems of this nature in the allocation of the telecommunications spectrum ultimately led to industry support for the recent FCC auctions. In addition, the enormous rents would mean that interest groups would continue to seek changes in the allocation over time. Firms might end up putting as much effort into rent capture as into finding efficient ways to reduce carbon usage. Investments might be delayed in the hope that high observed marginal costs would lead to more generous allowance allocations as compensation. The increased complexity of the program, which grandfathering would tend to create, might lead some groups to seek exemptions, or bonus allowances in particular circumstances. In the SO2 case the negotiation process was costly and lengthy and the ultimate allocation formula reflects many special interests and exemptions (Joskow and Schmalensee 1997). Additional allowances were allocated to reward behavior such as investment in scrubbers. Grandfathering debate uniquely pits lobbies against each other – perceptions raise skepticism from the non-energy sector. Peter Cramton and Suzi Kerr, Center for Clean Air Policy, 3/1998, TRADABLE CARBON ALLOWANCE AUCTIONS: HOW AND WHY TO AUCTION, http://www.ccap.org/pdf/aucpub.pdf [ND] In the case of carbon allowances, the energy industry is already beginning to lobby for some form of grandfathering. The more efficient and equitable outcome of auctions will only be achieved if it becomes clear how the true costs will be spread, and if other affected groups are mobilized to protect their interests. Carbon is different from previous environmental regulations because of its potential scale and the pervasiveness of energy use. The scale will make the distribution of rents more transparent. Powerful players in non-energy sectors may well find it worthwhile to engage in this debate. Transparency, however, can also have a down side for auctions. The auction price would be publicly visible, and large amounts of money would be transferred between the private and public sectors. This would affect perceptions of the distribution of costs. It might hinder the passing of the carbon regulation as a whole. It would raise opposition from those who were skeptical that the program would be revenue neutral, with tax cuts completely offsetting the auction revenue.

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Cap-and-Trade – Bipart Cap-and-trade has bipartisan support. Catherine Brahic, NewScientist staff writer, 2/15/08, Greening US likely to create huge carbon market, http://environment.newscientist.com/article/dn13325 [ND] Bi-partisan support Yet, in spite of federal resistance, a large number of senators, state leaders and business leaders have backed cap and trade in the US. Several initiatives have been created to implement emissions trading and a state and regional level, independently from the government. What is more, by December 2007, 11 of the 13 climate-change bills being discussed by Congress proposed cap-and-trade schemes. Given the bi-partisan momentum behind these bills, and their strong backing among White House candidates, analysts agree the US is very likely to see a cap-and-trade emissions market emerge in the next few years. According to Potter, such a market is likely to be in place by 2012. Milo Sjardin of New Energy Finance agrees. According to both companies, power companies will pass the higher cost of producing energy onto consumers. But businesses involved in bringing new "green" technologies to market will stand to gain from the new market.

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Ethanol – Unpopular – Lobbies Pushing ethanol costs capital – multiple lobbies against it. Stephanie I. Cohen, marketwatch staff writer, 5/28/2008, CAPITOL REPORT Senators begin to ponder an ethanol exit plan, L/N [ND] Fast forward less than one year later. Proponents and opponents of ethanol are waging a rough and rowdy war in Washington over whether biofuel has a future. Ethanol has always had opponents: anti-subsidy, fiscal conservatives; oil industry executives fearful of competition at the pump; wary environmentalists uncertain about the air and water implications of turning food into fuel. Today, however, ethanol opponents are getting louder. And Washington policymakers who overwhelmingly voted to boost the biofuel to national savior two years ago are listening more carefully to the case against biofuels. "The volume on the food-versus-fuel debate is getting louder by the day," said Bill Wicker, spokesman for the majority staff of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. Recently, the Grocery Manufacturers Association, representing more than 300 food and beverage companies, joined the ethanol backlash. GMA's members include Nestle, Sara Lee (SLE), Dean Foods (DF) , and Procter & Gamble (PG) -- all companies facing higher fuel bills to run their manufacturing plants and higher costs for the raw materials used to make their products. The group thinks ethanol is the culprit in rising prices for meat, milk, and eggs and sees a rollback of the ethanol mandate as salve for family food budgets. The group wants to "amplify" the links between the ethanol mandate and rising food prices as often as possible and use the media's heightened focus on these issues to pressure Washington to turn back the clock on ethanol, according to a memo written by the association.

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Fossil Fuel Tax – Popular – Dems Dems love fossil fuel taxes – it’s a concession. Mick Gregory, 20 years of major media experience having worked for The St. Petersburg Times, Times Mirror and Hearst, 1/18/2007, Nancy Pelosi Punishes U.S. Oil Companies and Rewards OPEC — Including (Chavez) Citgo Oil. Update: Citgo No Longer Gives SEC Reports, http://sadbastards.wordpress.com/2007/01/18/nancy-pelosi-punishes-us-oil-companies-and-rewards-hugochavezs-citgo-oil/ The Democrat-controlled House surged ahead without debate to roll back U.S. oil industry research incentives last Thursday in what left-wing supporters hailed as a new direction in energy policy toward more renewable fuels. Economists said the tax scheme would reduce domestic oil production and increase reliance on imports such as Citgo, the Venezuelan owned oil company. The energy legislation was the last of six “high-priority” issues that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, from San Francisco had pledged to push through during the first 100 hours of Democratic control. The bill passed by the new Democrat majority.

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Hydrogen – Bipart Hydrogen tech is bipart. Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele, TIME staff writers, 7/13/2003, Why U.S. Is Running Out of Gas, http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1101030721-464406,00.html [ND] Democrats joined euphoric Republicans in signing on to the proposal. "The supply of hydrogen is inexhaustible," Senator Byron Dorgan, North Dakota Democrat, told his colleagues. "Hydrogen is in water. You can take the energy from the wind and use the electricity in the process of electrolysis, separate the hydrogen from the oxygen and store the hydrogen and use it in vehicles. The fact is, hydrogen is ubiquitous. It is everywhere." Was this a rare instance of the two parties working together in Washington for the good of the country? Far from it. They've been doing this energy dance off and on for 30 years.

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Hydrogen Popular – Big Oil Big oil likes hydrogen Renee Schoof, McClatchy Newspapers, July 17, 2008, “Hydrogen cars could rule road by 2050, slash oil need, panel says”, http://www.mcclatchydc.com/homepage/story/44573.html, Accessed July 21, 2008 CM `"There needs to be durable, substantial and sustainable government help for this to happen, just like there is for ethanol," said Michael P. Ramage, who chaired the study panel. Ramage is a retired executive vice president of ExxonMobil Research and Engineering Co. who has a doctorate in chemical engineering. The study estimated the government would need to invest about $50 billion over the next 15 years to subsidize early, expensive hydrogen vehicles and hydrogen filling stations and about $5 billion for research and development. It noted that this compares with $160 billion for ethanol over the same 15-year period if current subsidies are extended. Fuel cell vehicles are powered through a chemical reaction between hydrogen and oxygen. Hydrogen vehicles would emit water and heat as exhaust. Ramage said fuel cell costs are "rapidly moving down," but obstacles remain. Advances would have to be made in the cost and durability of the fuel cell and vehicle, and in the long-term storage of hydrogen. In addition, filling stations would have to be rebuilt to offer hydrogen gas instead of liquid gasoline. ExxonMobil has invested in efforts to develop a system that would use diesel to create hydrogen in a vehicle, eliminating the need for hydrogen fueling stations. The company is working on hydrogen and other alternatives to oil and expects that with demand rising worldwide, "there will be a market out there for all energy products," said spokesman Alan Jeffers. The National Petrochemical and Refiners Association supports "the broadest mix of fuels possible to meet an ever-increasing demand, but we draw the line at federal mandates that would create winners and losers in the marketplace," said spokesman Bill Holbrook.

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Tax Breaks – Unpopular – GOP Republicans oppose tax breaks – fear oil and gas reductions. Stephanie I. Cohen, marketwatch staff writer, 2/19/2008, Perking up the economy with energy tax breaks, Congress stalls on green tax credits again, http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/perking-up-economyenery-tax/story.aspx?guid=%7b6E4B70B7-B947-40A5-9E332035F30E3050%7d&print=true&dist=printMidSection [ND] Republicans, many who say they support bolstering incentives for wind and solar, have nonetheless rejected recent Democratic proposals and backed the White House's position against curtailing tax breaks. They say they support extending the tax credits if they are disentangled from the manufacturing deduction. In August, the White House issued a statement saying the president will not sign legislation that "would lead to less domestic oil and gas production, higher energy costs, and higher taxes." "Repealing the manufacturing deduction for only the oil and gas industry is a targeted tax increase that puts U.S. industries at a disadvantage to their foreign competitors," the White House said in a policy statement released last summer when Democrats tried to advance the measures. The manufacturing tax deduction was passed in 2004 as part of the American Jobs Creation Act, and can be used by a number of industries including major oil and gas producers. Democrats argue that freezing this deduction won't affect production or gasoline prices in the immediate future.

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Regulations Unpopular Businesses adversely affected by environmental regulation are the most politically powerful – able to effectively organize Patrick Bernhagen, Department of Politics and International Relations - University of Aberdeen, 8/15/05. "Business Political Power: Economic Voting, Information Asymmetry, and Environmental Policy in 19 OECD Countries," http://convention2.allacademic.com/getfile.php?file=apsa05_proceeding/2005-1006/40383/apsa05_proceeding_40383.pdf Assuming, then, that businesses, on average, prefer less (or weaker) environmental protection over more (or stricter) regulation, we can ascertain the relevance of the three sources of business political power by adding them as variables to a standard model of environmental regulatory stringency. Starting with organized political ac- tion, neo-pluralist accounts of business' political influence claim that business often outperforms other groups (McFarland 1991, Vogel 1996). One advantage of business derives from the phenomenon identified by Olson (1965) that relatively small groups such as business can effectively organize politically. The relatively small number of group members combined with the concentration of benefits from collective action gives business much stronger incentives to organize for political action than larger, more diffuse groups, such as consumers or taxpayers, over whom both costs and bene- fits are more widely dispersed. In no policy area is this more evident than environ- mental protection, where the group of beneficiaries of strict regulation is large (all citizens!), while the group bearing the immediate costs of such regulation tends to be small and concentrated by comparison. Thus, business may have a systematic advan- tage over other groups in politics because business corporations and trade associations are 'institutional groups', who tend to be able to sustain a more permanent presence in the policymaking process and are less constrained by the need to seek membership approval (Salisbury 1984). I therefore hypothesize that the stringency of environmental regulation is negatively affected by the strength of business' political organization:

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RPS—Bipart Polls demonstrate bipartisan support for RPS—Ohio bill proves Jeff Coryell 10-15-07, “Poll: Overwhelming Public Support for Linchpin of Strickland Alternative Energy Plan,” http://blog.cleveland.com/wideopen/2007/10/poll_overwhelming_support_for.html The Columbus Dispatch reported Saturday on the results of an important poll of 600 Ohio registered voters commissioned by the non-profit group Environment Ohio: * About eight in 10 support setting a renewable energy standard, a finding that applies almost equally to Democrats and Republicans; * About three-quarters agreed that building new coal-fired or nuclear power plants "ought to be a last resort;" * About nine in 10 said their legislator's support of a renewable energy standard would be a positive in their vote decision; * More than 90 percent said they would be willing to pay more for green energy, with more than a third saying they would be willing to pay an extra $10 per month. Environment Ohio presented the findings to an Ohio Senate committee that is considering Gov. Ted Strickland's comprehensive electric energy bill, which includes a provision to require the state's utilities to generate twelve and a half percent of their power with wind turbines, solar panels, and other renewable technologies by 2020. Environment Ohio wants to raise that target to 20%. The group also presented a map from the U.S. Department of Energy showing that "at 300 feet above ground, the height of the latest and largest wind turbines, Ohio has enough sustained wind to create 66,000 megawatts of electricity - more than one and a half times the total production of all of the state's utilities at present." These poll findings are really quite astonishing. For a long time the conventional wisdom had been that voters like the idea of protecting the environment but they don't rank it highly among their pressing concerns. Perhaps that calculus is changing due to a growing appreciation of the link between energy

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Solar Popular Solar is popular—no longer bulky or unattractive NSTI 8-11-05, RenewableEnergyStocks.com Reports -- Renewable Energy Industry Sees Growing Public Support as Smart Energy Technology Becomes a Viable Option, http://www.nsti.org/press/PRshow.html?id=273 In the past, solar technology has had to overcome problems with their bulky and mainly unattractive appearance, which despite proven efficiencies faced adoption difficulties. While other factors have played a role in the rise of renewable energy, a significant driver to its success has come from the ability to integrate and blend technology into structures tastefully, with little interruption in the daily routine of the building's residents, owners and caretakers. Current technologies such as Building Integrated Photovoltaics, which incorporate photovoltaic material into the building itself i.e. walls, roof, and glass, have developed into products that are not only pleasing to the eye, but that also require very little in the way of maintenance costs or efforts as it increases energy production and efficiency. This lack of disruption and the encouraging aesthetic appeal provided through products within the BIPV umbrella, have driven the industry adoption levels forward.

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Nuc Power Unpopular—Dems Dems hate nuclear power Kevin Diaz, Star Tribune, 7-13, 2008, http://www.startribune.com/politics/national/president/25130389.html?page=3&c=y But Pawlenty's laundry list also includes a fresh look at the touchy subject of nuclear power -- the growth of which has been restricted in Minnesota -- and more offshore oil drilling, which has been met with skepticism among Democrats in Congress. He also is likely to anger environmentalists by suggesting that the federal government reconsider opening Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) to oil exploration, though his support is contingent on developing technologies that can do it safely. Among Democrats in the consensus-driven Governors Association, there is no dispute that the nation needs bold answers to its growing energy problems. But the oildrilling agenda popular with Republicans governors and lawmakers has emerged as a major sticking point in the development of a national energy policy. "No matter what we do, I don't think the supply on this planet will meet the demand, unless we reduce the demand," said Rendell, who is considered a possible running mate to Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois. To critics who say that new offshore oil leases and nuclear power sound like a departure from Pawlenty's year-old Clean Energy Future initiative, the governor says: "We need it all." Recent polls show increasing public support for both conservation and new energy development, and Pawlenty and other GOP governors say that traditional fossil fuels will continue to be indispensable.

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Subsidies Unpopular Energy subsidies unpopular Douglas F. Barnes and Jonathan Halpern, 2000 (No date given, derived from URL) wordbank.org, http://www.worldbank.org/html/fpd/esmap/energy_report2000/ch7.pdf Demand-side subsidies have better targeting properties and, in the case of subsidized connection costs, provide better incentives for efficient service delivery. Subsidies for connections financed by budgetary transfers provide better incentives to expand coverage than cross-subsidies or any of the supply-side subsidies, since this mechanism permits the provider to generate more revenue for each new connection extended to the target population. The downside of these sorts of demand-side subsidies is that they generally require an administrative and institutional superstructure to identify and verify target beneficiaries independent of the service provider. Doing this effectively often carries a high cost relative to the total subsidy program costs. Energy subsidies have become unpopular among policy advisers. But subsidies should not be rejected out of hand. Instead, they should be more carefully designed to maximize their impact on the poor. But even well designed subsidies are only one among many factors involved in successfully reaching poor populations with quality energy services. Others include setting up effective institutional structures for markets, dealing with the tendency of politicians to steer subsidy programs away from the poor to their constituencies, and developing pricing policies that permit businesses to recover costs for energy services.

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Ethanol Unpopular Ethanol opposed by republicans David Streitfeld, International Herald Tribune, 7-22-08, http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/07/22/business/ethanol.php O.K. Industries, an Arkansas chicken company upset about rising feed costs, said that this was the first year since the Great Depression that it could not afford to give its employees a wage increase. The EPA can either approve or deny the waiver request but otherwise has no leeway, an agency spokesman said. The deadline is Thursday but there is no penalty if the agency does not meet it. Ethanol is under siege from other quarters. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, Republican of Texas, has introduced legislation calling for a freeze of the mandate at the current level, saying it "is clearly causing unintended consequences on food prices." The measure is co-sponsored by 11 other Republican senators, including the presumptive Republican presidential candidate, John McCain. Fifty House Republicans are supporting a rollback of the ethanol mandates. The chairman of the Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke, testified last week that "it would be helpful" to remove a 51cent-a-gallon tariff on imported Brazilian ethanol. If less expensive Brazilian ethanol enters the United States market, domestic producers argue, the industry will suffer. In a new report this month, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development is highly critical of biofuels, saying that they are doing little to reduce greenhouse gas emissions or improve energy security and "will contribute to higher food prices over the medium term and to food insecurity for the most vulnerable populations in developing countries."

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***AGENDA ILs

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Political Capital Key Political capital determines the agenda – it’s the central force. Light 99 [Senior Fellow at the Center for Public Service,

Paul C., the President’s Agenda: Domestic Policy Choice from Kennedy to Clinton, 3rd Edition] p. 34 In chapter 2, I will consider just how capital affects the basic parameters of the domestic agenda. Though the internal resources are important contributors to timing and size, capital remains the critical factor. That conclusion will become essential in understanding the domestic agenda. Whatever the President’s personal expertise, character, or skills, capital is the most important resource. In the past, presidential scholars have focused on individual factors in discussing White House decisions, personality being the dominant factor. Yet, given low levels in presidential capital, even the most positive and most active executive could make little impact. A president can be skilled, charming, charismatic, a veritable legislative wizard, but if he does not have the basic

congressional strength, his domestic agenda will be severely restricted – capital affects both the number and the content of the President’s priorities. Thus, it is capital that determines whether the President will have the opportunity to offer a detailed domestic program, whether he will be restricted to a series of limited initiatives and vetoes. Capital sets the basic parameters of the agenda, determining the size of the agenda and guiding the criteria for choice. Regardless of the President’s personality, capital is the central force behind the domestic agenda. Capital is key – outweighs ideology, party support, or concessions. Light 99 [Senior Fellow at the Center for Public Service, Paul C.,

the President’s Agenda: Domestic Policy Choice from Kennedy to Clinton, 3rd Edition] p. 34 Call it push, pull, punch, juice, power, or clout – they all mean the same thing. The most basic and most important of all presidential resources is capital. Though the internal resources time, information, expertise, and energy all have an impact on the domestic agenda, the President is severely limited without capital. And capital is directly linked to the congressional parties. While there is little question that bargaining skills can affect both the composition and the success of the domestic agenda, without the necessary party support, no amount of expertise or charm can make a difference. Though bargaining is an important tool of presidential power, it does not take place in a neutral environment. Presidents bring certain advantages and disadvantages to the table.

Political capital is key to settling Congressional disputes over the agenda, ensuring passage Paul C LIGHT Senior Fellow at the Center for Public Service 99 (The President’s Agenda: Domestic Policy Choice from Kennedy to Clinton, 3rd Edition p.16) Presidential priorities also involve more conflict, both inside the administration and out. And the greater the conflict, the more time, information, expertise, and energy necessary to settle the disputes. “You’d be surprised how long it takes to iron out the differences,” a Johnson legislative assistant argued. “Compromise doesn’t usually happen overnight. It takes a hefty investment of presidential influence and effort.” Once again, welfare reform serves as an example. One highly placed Nixon observer maintained that “ the {Family Assistance} plan cold have been announced much sooner if there hadn’t been such a struggle. With Bruns and Moynihan at odds, we couldn’t move. When one would attack, the other would counterattack. Sure, the issue was intricate, but it could have been handled much faster without the in-fighting. As it was , there was a stalemate for thee months.”

Capital is key to the agenda Paul C LIGHT Senior Fellow at the Center for Public Service 99 (The President’s Agenda: Domestic Policy Choice from Kennedy to Clinton, 3rd Edition p. 155) Just what is the President’s must list, and why is it important? From the staff viewpoint, the must list constitutes a shortened version of the legislative agenda and contains the critical priorities, the items that are considered crucial to the presidential program. In 1961, for instance, Kennedy offered twenty-five specific requests for legislative action; there was, however, little hope that all twenty-five would pass. “We didn’t have enough capital,” one aide reflected. “There was no way we could get it all. Instead, we felt some pressure to tell Congress which items were most important, which ones had to pass, which ones the President felt he had to have. Even then, it didn’t make much difference – we didn’t get much anyway.” Aid to Education, Medicare, area redevelopment, manpower retraining and youth employment all became part of Kennedy’s must life, while agriculture, community-health facilities, saline-water conversion, food-surplus distribution and water-pollution control were given lesser status.

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PC Ensures Passage Political capital determines agenda success – Clinton scandals prove. Sammon 3 [Bill, 7/3/03, “Bush white House untouched by Scandal,” Washington Times] Political capital is a very finite commodity and you want to spent it strategically," said Matthew T. Felling of the Center for Media and Public Affairs. "Previous administrations have had to spend their political capital or have just had it deducted from their account through various scandals." For example, when the Clinton scandals reached critical mass beginning with the Monica Lewinsky affair and ending in the first impeachment of an elected president in U.S. history the president was politically paralyzed for more than a year, leaving his agenda largely unfulfilled.

High political capital makes legislation more likely – fear and cooperation. Lee 5 [The Rose Institute of State & Local Government – Claremont McKenna College – Presented at the Georgia Political Science Association 2005 Conference]’ No single alternative theory can entirely explain the use of veto threats under President Bush’s first term. For example, the president would not be able to invest political capital without having the opportunity of increased legislation created by the legislative cycle. It is more likely that a combination of these factors produced the data in the first Bush administration. During periods of high legislative activity, the Congress, divided during the 107th Congress, anticipated more credible veto threats due to high political capital. Congress constructed legislation that was favorable to the president, and the president invested his political capital by decreasing his veto threats and opposition to legislation. Congress creates legislation that is more favorable to the president, and the president supports Congress in order to invest his political capital. Ultimately, this means that Congress and the president are inadvertently working to create agreeable legislation during times of high political capital. Conversely, when political capital decreases, the president gradually increases his opposition language.

Presidential strength is key to agenda success in Congress – coordinates action. Fitts 96 Professor of Law, University of Pennsylvania Law School [Michael A., “THE PARADOX OF POWER IN THE MODERN STATE,” University of Pennsylvania Law Review, January, 144 U. Pa. L. Rev. 827] Finally, on an elite political level, the existence of a single powerful political actor serves a political coordination function. 60 A dispersed government with a decentralized political structure has a great deal of difficulty in reaching cooperative solutions on policy outcomes. Even if it does reach cooperative solutions, it has great difficulty in reaching optimal results. Today, there are simply too many groups in Washington and within the political elite to reach the necessary and optimal agreement easily. 61 A central and visible figure such as the president, who can take clear positions, can serve as a unique "focal point" for coordinating action. 62 With the ability to focus public attention and minimize information costs, 63 [*850] a president can also be highly effective in overcoming narrow but powerful sources of opposition and in facilitating communication (that is, coordination and cooperation) between groups and branches. 64 In technical terms, he might be viewed as the "least cost avoider." 65 The budget confrontation between Clinton and Congress is only the most recent example of the president's strategic abilities. 66 In this regard, it is not surprising that most studies have found that the president's popularity is an important factor in his ability to effectively negotiate with Congress. 67 For all of these reasons, many scholars, citizens, and politicians believe that the development of the rhetorical and centralized presidency is an "unqualified blessing." 68 A president who is visible should be better able and more likely to garner public support and should also have an incentive to marshall such support for programs that respond to public needs. His centralization and [*851] visibility afford him the power to be effective, but, at the same time, these qualities increase his democratic accountability. And even though a modern president is certainly not unitary in the strong sense of that word, the analogy presumes that future legal and structural evolution should move in that direction. 69Three different scholars of the presidency, writing in different traditions, have reached similar conclusions regarding the significance and advantages of stronger presidential power, especially as compared to legislative influence. Presidential scholar Terry Moehas described the influence of the modern president as follows: When it comes to building structures of control ... the battle between president and Congress is lopsided. The president is a unitary decision maker, he can take unilateral action in imposing his own structures, his individual interests are largely congruent with the institutional interests of the presidency, and he is dedicated to gaining control over government. Congress is hobbled by collective action problems, vulnerable to agenda manipulation by the president, and populated by individuals whose interests diverge substantially from those of the institution. The result is an asymmetry in the dynamic of institutional change, yielding an uneven but steady shift toward a more presidential system. 70

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Capital is finite Political capital is finite. Pika and Maltese 4 Prof and Acting Chair Dept of Pol Sci and Int’l Rels @ University of Delaware and Assoc. Prof @ University of Georgia, 2004, The Politics of the Presidency. the president’s most important resources is political capital, the reservoir of popular and congressional support with which presidents begin their terms. As they make controversial decisions, they “spend” some of this capital, a precious resource they can seldom replenish. Presidents must decide which proposals merit the expenditure of political capital and in what amounts. Reagan, for example, was willing to spend his capital heavily on Resources: Political Capital. One of

reducing the role of the federal government, cutting taxes, and reforming the income tax code, but not on antiabortion or school prayer amendments to the Constitution. Material resources determine which proposals for new programs can be advanced and emphasis to be placed on existing programs.

the

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Capital key – Issue Spillover Political Capital spills over between issues – 107th congress proves Andrew LEE 5 The Rose Institute of State & Local Government – Claremont McKenna College – Presented at the Georgia Political Science Association 2005 Conference [ “Invest or Spend?:Political capital and Statements of Administration Policy in the First Term of the George W. Bush Presidency,” http://a-s.clayton.edu/trachtenberg/2005%20Proceedings%20Lee.pdf] The idea of investing political capital also supports the notion that the chief executive specializes in foreign and defense policy. The president may increase his domestic capital by cooperating on domestic legislation and then spend it implementing foreign policies. In executing foreign policy, the president will not issue SAPs on his own foreign policy. For example, if the president signs a treaty, Congress may or may not ratify it, but there is no opportunity for veto. Therefore, the president’s use of foreign policy is a spend maneuver, whereas his domestic policy is an invest maneuver. The 107th Congress, during which the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq began, supports this theory. President Bush may have spent his political capital towards executing those wars and attempted to invest his capital by cooperating on domestic legislation.

Political Weakness spills over – Bush’s polls and Iraq prove AP, 6-9-07 (Tom Raum, Staff Writer, June 9 2007, “Stakes are high for Bush”, http://www.theeagle.com/stories/060907/nation_20070609010.php)

WASHINGTON - Derailment of President Bush's immigration overhaul plan could be the death knell for his second-term domestic legacy. With his bids to revamp Social Security, rewrite the tax code and extend expiring tax cuts apparently doomed, the White House sees the immigration bill as the last, best hope for a major domestic victory. Bush will try to get the measure back on track when he meets with Republican senators next week after returning from Europe. Many in his own party say the odds against him are daunting. The president's influence is diminished by his low approval ratings and the shadow cast by the war in Iraq. Though neither Bush nor Vice President Dick Cheney is on the ballot in November 2008, most members of Congress are. "People have strong feelings on this issue. I believe we can express our feelings, disagree on certain elements and still come together on a solution," Bush said Friday. "In the heat of the debate, critics and supporters can sometimes talk past each other. So I want to speak to members about some of the concerns I heard." Bush's comments were in his weekly radio address, which he taped Friday for broadcast Saturday. The White House put the text out early, underscoring the high-stakes nature of the issue for the president. Even if Bush and his congressional allies manage to salvage the legislation in the Senate, prospects remain bleak in the House, where opposition is strong among core Republican members. "You would have to guess, as of today, it's more likely not to happen than to happen," said veteran Republican consultant Charles Black, who is close to the White House. Black said Bush's efforts were complicated by the divisiveness of the immigration issue and the reluctance of Democrats who now run Congress to hand him a victory - even on an issue on which they agree. "I also think that Iraq used up so much of his political capital that it made it difficult to get things done on the Hill," said Black, now an adviser to Republican presidential hopeful Sen. John McCain, who backs the bill. The measure has stirred deep passions on both sides. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., put the bill - which he supports - aside Thursday after the Senate twice refused Democratic efforts to cut off debate. However, Reid and other supporters said they hoped to get back to it this year. The package promises a path of legalization for millions of undocumented workers in the United States while tightening borders and offering employers more temporary workers. James Thurber, director of the Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies at American University, said that the immigration bill "split both parties down the middle" and that its collapse shows "there is no central core of authority in Washington right now. It's not with the president. It's not with [House Speaker Nancy] Pelosi, it's not with Reid." All presidents lose influence as they near the end of their terms. "He's been a lame duck for some time now, as evidenced by the Republican opposition to this bill," said Stephen Wayne, a government professor at Georgetown University.

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Capital key – Issue Spillover Presidential Leadership spills over – capital is key to perception which insures success Bond & Fleisher, professor in Political Science - Texas A&M and Professor in Political Science. Fordham 1996 (Jon R. and Richard. "The President in Legislation" p.232) Perceptions of presidential leadership affect how members of Congress and other participants in the process feel about the president. Unskilled and unpopular presidents are perceived as failures even if their success rate is fairly typical. Such a president may score some significant victories, but his style so alienates the other players that even his supporters do not feel good about the victory. And when such a president suffers the inevitable defeat, the failure tends to be remembered because that is what participants' perceptions led them to expect.

Issues spill over to create more capital Paul C LIGHT Senior Fellow at the Center for Public Service 99 (The President’s Agenda: Domestic Policy Choice from Kennedy to Clinton, 3rd Edition p. 58) Initial legislative success has an impact on agenda size. If the president’s program is enacted quickly, there is a limited opportunity to replace the enacted requests, to fill the empty space. Once again, Johnson was able to take advantage of the opportunity to a far greater extent than any other recent executive. He was simply more successful in his early months. To a limit, the faster Johnson’s programs were passed, the faster the agenda could be replenished. As congressional calendars reopened, Johnson had the opportunity to move more legislation. This relationship was accentuated by the cycle of increasing effectiveness. Johnson’s staff was more prepared to send a second wave of proposals than were the staffs of most first-term Presidents. The Johnson domestic process was in full swing at the start of the Eighty-ninth Congress. As programs moved through the legislative process, Johnson’s staff was able to supply limited replacements.

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Capital key – Cooperation The President can use the power of the office to spin unpopular policies in his favor Michael Fitts 96, Professor of Law, University of Pennsylvania Law School [Michael A., “THE PARADOX OF POWER IN THE MODERN STATE,” University of Pennsylvania Law Review, January, 144 U. Pa. L. Rev. 827] Finally, and relatedly, the modern presidency has become more centralized and personalized through its public media role - that is, its "rhetorical functions." 40 Given changes in the press and the White House office, the president has become far more effective in setting the agenda for public debate, sometimes even dominating the public dialogue when he chooses. 41 Economists would probably attribute the president's ability to "transmit information" to the centralized organization of the presidency - an "economy of scale" in public debate. 42 At the same time, the president can establish [*844] a "focal point" around preferred public policies. 43 This proposition can also be stated somewhat differently. As an institution embodied in a single individual, the president has a unique ability to "tell" a simple story that is quite personal and understandable to the public. As a number of legal academics have shown, stories can be a powerful mode for capturing the essence of a person's situated perspective, improving public comprehension of particular facts, and synthesizing complex events into accessible language. 44 Complex institutions, such as Congress, have difficulty [*845] assembling and transmitting information as part of a coherent whole; they represent a diversity - some would say a babble - of voices and perspectives. In contrast, presidents have the capacity to project a coherent and empathetic message, especially if it is tied to their own life stories. In this sense, the skill of the president in telling a story about policy, while sometimes a source of pointed criticism for its necessary simplicity, 45 may greatly facilitate public understanding and acceptance of policy. 46

Declines in capital cause infighting and conflicts Paul LIGHT 99 Senior Fellow at the Center for Public Service [Paul C., the President’s Agenda: Domestic Policy Choice from Kennedy to Clinton, 3rd Edition] p. 185-186 Capital is critical in the emergence of political domination. As capital declines, there is a marked increase in domination. According to one OMB officer, “The President and staff are going to be much happier at the beginning of the term than at the end. There is an spirit de corps at the start that generally disappears by the end. It is simply impossible to maintain a high level of comraderie when tough choices have to be made.” Capital and the consistency of participants are primary pressures in the garbage-can system. Once again, as capital declines, conflict increases; as capital declines the opportunities for accommodation drop. When capital is coupled with low levels of staff consistency, organized anarchies may evolve.

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Capital can only help – no turns Political Capital can only help – increases make legislation more likely – not the other way around Andrew LEE 5 The Rose Institute of State & Local Government – Claremont McKenna College – Presented at the Georgia Political Science Association 2005 Conference [Andrew, “Invest or Spend?:Political capital and Statements of Administration Policy in the First Term of the George W. Bush Presidency,” http://a-s.clayton.edu/trachtenberg/2005%20Proceedings%20Lee.pdf] Congressional Anticipation The last alternative explanation proposes that Congress drafts favorable legislation in response to the president’s increase in political capital. In contrast to the investment explanation, where the president uses veto threats differently depending on his capital and the legislation stays constant, this theory suggests that Congress changes its actions. The president’s use of the veto is constant, but Congress changes its legislation depending on the president’s approval rating. In recent years, the majority leadership in the House has aggressively used its power to control the agenda. If a measure seems likely to divide the majority party or face a presidential veto, then it will probably not reach a House floor vote in the first place (Simendinger 2003). When the president’s approval ratings increase, the Congress anticipates a stronger veto threat. This anticipation creates favorable legislation rather than unfavorable legislation that will trigger a veto. Therefore, when the president’s political capital is at its highest, the presidential veto will be least likely. In the current 109th Congress, however, there were signs of strain between the White House and the House Republican Leadership, possibly caused by the president’s decrease in political capital (“Bush Vows Stem Cell Veto” 2005).

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Capital not key Political Capital is irrelevant – case studies prove. Jon R. Bond and Richard Fleisher, Professor in Political Science - Texas A&M & Professor in Political Science Fordham 1996 (Jon R. and Richard The President in Legislation) In sum, the evidence presented in this chapter provides little support for the theory that the president's perceived leadership, skills are associated with success on roll call votes in Congress. Presidents reputed as highly skilled do not win consistently more often than should be expected. Even the effects of the partisan balanced Congress, the president's popularity, and, the cycle of decreasing influence over the course of his term. Presidents reputed as unskilled do not win consistently less often relative to. Moreover, skilled presidents do not win significantly more often than unskilled presidents on either important votes or close votes, in which skills have the greatest potential to affect the outcome. Because of the difficulty of establishing a definitive test of the skills theory, some may argue that it is premature to reject this explanation of presidential success based on the tests reported in this chapter. It might be argued that these findings by themselves do not deny that leadership skill is an important component of presidential-congressional relations. Failure to find systematic effects in general does not necessarily refute the anecdotes and case studies demonstrating the importance of skills.

Capital does not guarantee agenda passage LEE 05 The Rose Institute of State & Local Government – Claremont McKenna College – Presented at the Georgia Political Science Association 2005 Conference [Andrew, “Invest or Spend?:Political capital and Statements of Administration Policy in the First Term of the George W. Bush Presidency,” http://as.clayton.edu/trachtenberg/2005%20Proceedings%20Lee.pdf] Political capital is not equal in all policy areas. Commenting on President Clinton’s term, President George W. Bush said, “I felt like he tried to spend capital on issues that he didn't have any capital on at first, like health care” (quoted in Suellentrop 2004). In spending political capital, the president diminishes his political strength by initiating or pushing a policy proposal with no intent on return. A president can spend capital for noble goals such as a balanced budget, the end of Saddam Hussein’s regime, or to veto legislation. The theory of political capital as it relates to SAPs is that presidents are more likely to spend political capital through a presidential veto because they have the power to do so. In times of increased political capital, the relative strength of SAP wording will also increase because the president has greater flexibility to take stands on particular issues. This analysis is a case study of the first Bush term’s adherence to this hypothesis.

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President Gets Blame Presidents get blame – visibility and public perceptions of mistakes. Michael A. Fitts 96 Professor of Law, University of Pennsylvania Law School “THE PARADOX OF POWER IN THE MODERN STATE,” University of Pennsylvania Law Review, January, 144 U. Pa. L. Rev. 827 A unitary visible president, I suggest, often finds himself in an analogous situation to the torts defendant facing stochastic error: he cannot possibly avoid legal or political mistake, at least as judged ex post. As noted above, the president is formally and informally responsible for a broad array of decisions for which he has little information - the list covers minor decisions involving environmental regulations all the way to document decisions on Whitewater. At the same time, the lack of information about these judgments often makes it difficult for the public to determine ex post whether or not the president was literally "negligent" - in a political sense - when he made a particular decision that led to a mistake. To frame the issue in torts terminology, it is difficult for the public to determine whether the president was following "the appropriate level of care," and whether the failure was simply a matter of inadvertence or reasonable time demands. The factual demands of assessing the president's position in these cases make such evaluations extraordinarily difficult. n175 Indeed, our inability to judge the balancing of multiple policy factors has led the courts to apply the committed-to-agency-discretion-by-law exception to analogous decisions on resource allocation by government officials. n176 Here, as in the presidential context, as the number of factors to be weighed in decisionmaking increases, the inability ex post to review the decisionmaking increases. This effect may be especially salient in the many factually complex areas of criminal and ethical liability, where the line between proper and improper behavior is inherently ambigu ous. n177 Although the examples in this context are necessarily [*879] charged politically, they are apparent on all sides. Were Carter, Reagan, Bush, or Clinton "negligent" when they failed to take preventive action in the various scandals that enveloped their presidencies or in the foreign policy crises, such as Iran, Lebanon, Iraq, and Bosnia, that occurred during their administrations? Often, all the public really knows ex post is that a mistake was made and that the president seems to be the most obvious person to assume responsibility. n178 Because the public cannot put itself in the position of the president facing all of these different time demands and issues, it frequently cannot say whether the mistake was unforeseeable ex ante.

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Popularity Key Popular acts don’t cost political capital – they boost it. Dane Roberts 4, Political Science, U of New Mexico, 11-9-04 “Democrats need sharp vision,” Daily Lobo, via University Wire, "Political capital" might be described as good will and a willingness to accommodate, if not support, a leader. His previous political capital came from Sept. 11, after which his approval ratings soared, and Congress gave him broad power, not the 2000 election in which he lost the popular vote. What does it mean to "spend" this capital? It means to use your popularity to push otherwise unlikely or unpopular initiatives. Bush certainly spent his little capital in his first term. Among other robust but not-quite-popular actions, his war on Iraq and extensions of budget-busting tax cuts resulted in a steady erosion of his approval ratings. This time around, according to the White House, there is broad support for Bush's agenda. The voters gave him a mandate. Why, then, will Bush have to spend his capital? If his policies are the will of the people, getting them

done will increase, not decrease, his political capital.

Meeting public expectations improves public support – ensures victories. SPITZER 93 Prof of Poli Sci, State University of New York [Robert J., President and Congress: Executive Hegemony at the Crossroads of American Government] An important empirical study of the relationship between the President’s public standing and presidential support in Congress concluded that the two are inextricably linked. Presidents who manage to satisfy public expectations are rewarded by high and stable public support. In turn, public support translates directly into success for the President in Congress. According to the data analysis of political scientists Charles Ostrom, Jr., and Dennis Simon, “the cumulative rate of roll-call victories [for the President in Congress] will decline by three points for every ten-point drop in [public] approval.” In turn, “Presidential effectiveness in the legislative arena is an important component in maintaining public support.” Naturally, many of the factors that influence the President’s standing are beyond direct control, such as the onset of a sharp economic downturn at the start of an administration. But Ostrom and Simon conclude that a shrewd President can influence public support and that the typical long-term decline in a President’s public standing is by no means inevitable.

Popularity insures agenda success – perception is key Richard A. BRODY, emeritus professor of political science at Stanford University, 1991, Assessing the President, p. 22 Rivers and Rose thus show us that Bond and Fleischer’s conclusion can lead to a misinterpretation of the role of public support in the politics of a president’s legislative program. A president’s rate of success in Congress may be indistinguishable when his public support is high or low, but these proportions may mask the fact that a greater number of the elements of his program are passed when a large share of the public responds with approval to his overall policy performance. Presidential poll ratings are important because they are thought to be important. They are thought to be important because political leaders look for indications of when it is safe or dangerous to oppose their policy interests or career ambitions to those of the president and because indications of political support – which in other political contexts might be preferred – are too limited in scope to be relied upon in this context.

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A2: Popularity Key Public Popularity doesn’t impact Bush’s agenda – he can still control the congressional agenda Galen, 6 / 1 / 07 (Rich, columnist and Republican strategist, What Democrats need to learn about power, Salon.com, Lexis) And the Clinton White House had a potent communications operation and the ear of the national press corps. Whatever those on the left may believe about the mainstream media, the Bush White House has neither a potent communications operation nor, in 2007, a huge reservoir of goodwill with the national press corps. Also, the Clinton White House was fighting to maintain the growth in a popular domestic program. The Bush White House is fighting to maintain funding for an unpopular foreign war. Nevertheless, the Democrats in the House have surrendered on Iraq. They were permitted to save face by tacking a minimum-wage increase onto the funding bill, and about half of the tens of billions of dollars of domestic add-ons they originally wanted, but there will be no timeline for withdrawal. Despite the bluster and bother of Pelosi and her allies on the left, they could not defeat Bush on Iraq funding. The issue is not the president's poll numbers, but his ability to control the national agenda. What disappointed Democrats should understand is that even a weakened White House, one that is no longer aggressively on message, is still a more powerful political force in the United States than the majority in the House, in the Senate, or both.

Presidential popularity doesn’t determine success in congress – evidence proves Bond and Fleisher, Professor in Political Science - Texas A&M & Professor in Political Science - Fordham 1996 (Jon R. and Richard The President in Legislation) The evidence presented in this book provides little support for the theory that the president's leadership skills and his popularity with the public are strongly associated with success on roll call votes in Congress. These findings do not deny that presidential leadership and popularity are important components of presidential-congressional relations. Failure to find systematic effects in general does not necessarily refute the anecdotes and case studies demonstrating the importance of the president. Although we have raised questions about the evidence in some of' the literature, certainly there are occasions when the president's standing with the public and what he does (or fair; to do) changes the outcome of a vote. Our analysis does suggest, however, that such cases are not representative of presidentialcongressional relations: in general, presidential variables have a very limited influence on the probability of success on the floor of Congress.

Popularity is not key – zero ev otherwise Bond& Fleisher, Professor in Political Science - Texas A&M & Professor in Political Science - Fordham 1996 (Jon R. and Richard The President in Legislation) Thus the findings are consistent and clear, the effects of the president's public approval on success in Congress are limited. Our analysis reveals that the president does not consistently win more votes nor does he consistently receive higher-level of support from the party factions when he popular than when he is unpopular. This findingholds, regardless of whether one, conceptualizes presidential approval as an interval level or a contextual variable. Similarly, presidential success on roll call votes is not affected by the change in the president's popularity over the previous six months. And contrary to the major findings of Edwards's research, we find no support for the proposition that partisan groups in congress are, more responsive to the President's popularity among their party identifiers. Moreover, this pattern of weak relationships is not substantially different in the House or, Senate,. for domestic or foreign policy issues, for, important or less important votes, or (with the exception of President Johnson) for different presidential administrations. These findings, of course, do not deny that or some individuals on some votes, the president's popularity with the public is a crucial-perhaps even a deciding-consideration. The weak relationships do suggest that, as an empirical generalization, the conclusion that presidential popularity is a major cause of legislative outcomes needs to be reconsidered.

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Winners Win Getting victories insures more victories – presidential studies prove COHEN 95 Prof of Political Science at Kansas [Jeffrey, American Journal of Political Science, 39(1), p. 68] By controlling the agenda, the president may secure success with Congress. He may be able to keep issues that he dislikes from the agenda, while advancing those that he favors. He can use the agenda-setting power strategically, promoting issues that Congress is likely to pass, demoting those that are more controversial. Such strategic behavior may foster an appearance of being a winner, and research suggests that winning in Congress boosts presidential popularity, which may feedback into legislative success (Brace and Hinckley 1992; Rivers and Rose 1985; Ostrom and Simon 1985). Manipulating the agenda for political advantage may help the presidential efforts with Congress. Bush proves winners will win. Fortier - Ornstein - American Enterprise Institute. 2003 (John C. & Norman J.) George W. Bush has followed the motto that “winners win.” When he was given accolades for his initial policy successes as governor, when he finally was elected to his first term as president (even in a controversial election), in the aftermath of 9/11, after his victory in the 2002 midterm elections, and after the initial successes of the Iraq War, Bush used these victories to press for more of his agenda. Whether it was a new school financing plan in Texas, tax cuts, or a Department of Homeland Security, Bush did not sit on his laurels. It was this theory of political capital that informed his plans for a second term. Two days after his reelection, Bush said: Let me put it to you this way: I earned capital in the campaign, political capital, and now I intend to spend it. It is my introduction style. That’s what happened in the—after the 2000 election, I earned some capital. I’ve earned capital in this election—and I’m going to spend it for what I told the people I’d spend it on, which is—you’ve heard the agenda: Social Security and tax reform, moving this economy forward, education, fighting and winning the war on terror. Bush’s understanding of his own political capital was astute. But it also relied on his always having been a somewhat popular governor or president. Before his 2004 reelection, Bush did not suffer the wild ups and downs that Clinton did throughout his governorship and presidency. When Bush’s popularity began to drop significantly in 2005, the theory of political capital, his grip on narrow Republican majorities, and the public’s perception of his strong leadership began to suffer.

Winners Win – political victories multiply – insiders prove. Ornstein, American Enterprise Institute 9/10/01 (Norman, Roll Call “Congress Inside Out”) The compromise accomplished two ends. First, it changed the agenda base of the issue. Patients' rights went from an issue where the only viable proposal was from Democrats (with GOP co-sponsors), which the President vowed to veto - to one where both Democrats and Bush are for patients' rights and merely differ on the details. Two, it gave the President a victory on the House floor when all the pundits predicted defeat a major momentum builder. In a system where a President has limited formal power, perception matters. The reputation for success - the belief by other political actors that even when he looks down, a president will find a way to pull out a victory - is the most valuable resource a chief executive can have. Conversely, the widespread belief that the Oval Office occupant is on the defensive, on the wane or without the ability to win under adversity can lead to disaster, as individual lawmakers calculate who will be on the winning side and negotiate accordingly. In simple terms, winners win and losers lose more often than not. The set of presidential victories on energy was significant in other ways. The energy bill that emerged on the House floor was put together hurriedly by House Republican leaders who wanted to get one Bush priority on the agenda and give him at least a partial victory. But up until the day before the debate and votes, nearly everyone, including GOP leaders, expected the President to be rebuffed on drilling in ANWR; most thought he would lose on CAFE standards for SUVs.

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Winners Lose Winners Lose – studies and polls prove BRACE & HINCKLEY 92 Professors of Political Science, Government, and Public Affairs at U. of Illinois [Paul & Barbara, Follow the Leader, p. 174-175] Further, activity often works against popular support. In idealized portraits, presidents use their popular mandate in vigorous support of programs, winning Congress and the public to their point of view. In reality, the choices are more complex and limited. In the first place, the size and success of the legislative agenda are heavily shaped by factors presidents cannot control. And, when presidents do try to rally the nation for legislative objectives, they risk a drop in the polls and a corresponding loss of success for their programs in Congress. Active position taking on votes in Congress and domestic travel (rallying the congressional members' own constituencies) hurt public support. Tradeoffs are necessary. when presidents take positions, helping their success in Congress, they lower their public approval. But approval helps congressional success. Every 10 percentage point gain in public approval yields a 7 percentage point gain in congressional success. Presidents thus face a delicate situation: in order to increase congressional success by bolstering approval - they must decrease the number of positions they take. As their positions decrease, their congressional success rate falls. Popular presidents thus find built-in limits, while their less popular peers confront the dilemma in which efforts to make headway in Congress set them further behind in the polls. The dilemma has no obvious solution, as presidents facing serious economic conditions know. With their polls at a low ebb, they can least afford bold new proposals; they can then be criticized as ineffectual and even less able to do their job. Since the polls fall with worsening economic conditions and rise with dramatic international events, presidents are most able to provide legislative leadership when the country needs it least and are least able to supply that leadership when domestic conditions demand it.

Winners Lose – the next vote is against the President – regardless of ideology or party support MANN 93 Director, Governmental Studies program, Brookings Institution. Co-Director, AEI-Brookings Renewing Congress Project. Former Aid to Reagan [Thomas, Beyond Gridlock: Prospects for Governance in the Clinton Years – and After. Editor James L. Sundquist] Most representatives and senators do not feel beholden to any president, let alone one who ran behind them in the last election. I am reminded of advice I received from former Senator Jacob Javits of New York in his last year of life, when I was perplexed and trying to figure out a vote that had just taken place in the Senate. I asked him to explain why certain senators had voted a certain way. And with halting breath he said to me, “You must always realize that senators vote in a priority order. First, they vote for their states; second, they vote out of institutional loyalty to the Senate; and, third, if they have not decided on the basis of either of those, and the president happens to be of their own party, well maybe they will give him a vote. But the state or the district always comes first, the institution second, and only then the president.” Another thing to remember is how important back home is. They used to call Reagan the great lobbyist, but I remember sitting in the Oval Office as we lobbied not only in 1981, 1982, and 1983, but also in 1987 and 1988, and member after member would say, “Mr. President, I really want to support your package. The problem is I am not hearing anything from back home.” The key was to make sure that we explained why things were important to the district, and why the district really would support what Reagan wanted. The bad news also is that once the president gets a vote he wants, the immediate instinct of most members is to cast the next vote to show their independence from the administration. This is especially true when you have asked them to vote for a big package, in which some provisions did not make sense for their districts but had to be swallowed as part of the overall package. Then their answer is, "I need the next vote to show that I am independent of the White House."

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Bipart Key Bipart is key to the agenda – it’s the only way to get controversial bills done ST PETERSBURG TIMES 11 – 10 – 6 Republican George Allen conceded in the Virginia Senate race Thursday, ending the prospect of a lengthy recount and sealing the victory for challenger Jim Webb. It means Democrats will control both houses of Congress. At first, that looks like a recipe for gridlock: a Democratic Congress and a Republican president known for being stubborn. But the political wave that gave the Democrats control also gives President Bush something he lacked when Republicans were in charge: a license to compromise. Bush is no longer tethered to his party's agenda and can now cooperate with Democrats in ways that weren't possible when Republicans ran the show. If he and the Democrats are willing (and I'm not sure they are), they can spend the next two years tackling difficult problems such as immigration and the solvency of Social Security and Medicare. And on some issues, particularly immigration, they have more common ground than you might expect. For six years, Bush has played to his party's conservative base. He appointed conservative judges, cut taxes and pushed his "faith-based initiative" so religious groups could receive federal money for providing social services. Bush played hardball against the Democrats because it helped his legislative strategy. It solidified the GOP base and led to remarkable party unity. Republicans voted with him nearly 90 percent of the time. Likewise, the Democrats refused to budge on many issues, trying to prevent their enemy from winning even the smallest victory. At times, they seemed more interested in denying Bush a win than solving problems. But hardball won't work any more. For either side. Bush and the Democratic Congress must compromise if they want to get anything accomplished. Compromise? Bush? That hasn't been one of his strengths. "When President Bush is convinced he's right, he doesn't make deals," said Rep. C.W. Bill Young, a senior Republican on the Appropriations Committee who often has to negotiate with Bush and his aides. During the 2004 campaign, Bush portrayed himself as more principled than pragmatic, a guy who would rather lose than sacrifice his principles. Indeed, compromise isn't easy. Sometimes it takes more courage to compromise than it does to be unyielding. You have to be able to go back to your allies and say: "We didn't get everything, but we got enough." You must be willing to take some heat from them in return for accomplishment. But Bush has been more flexible than many people realize. As governor of Texas, he had good relations with Democrats in the state Legislature. As president, he initially opposed a Democratic proposal to create a Cabinet-level Department of Homeland Security. But when he realized Congress was sure to pass it, he changed his mind and then took credit for the idea. He might learn a lesson from his predecessor. Some of Bill Clinton's biggest legislative achievements - welfare reform and the balanced-budget deal - occurred when Republicans ran Congress. The Democrats now taking control are frustrated because Republicans often shut them out, preventing them from proposing amendments and having much of a voice in legislation. The Republican leadership could muster enough votes without them, so the Democrats were practically irrelevant. They were left on the sidelines with little to do except gripe. But the Democrats

are running Congress now, and they can't spend the next two years whining about Bush or their new majority could disappear in the elections of 2008. They have to compromise, too. Since Tuesday's vote, there have been positive signs that both sides are willing to govern rather than play games. Bush was remarkably humble in a news conference Wednesday, describing the election as "a thumping" for his party. He pledged to cooperate. "I'm confident that we can work together," he said. "I'm confident we can overcome the temptation to divide this country between red and blue. The issues before us are bigger than that and we are bigger than that." After having lunch with Bush on Thursday, incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she and the president recognize that "we have our differences and we will debate them, and that is what our founders intended. But we will do so in a way that gets results for the American people." Bipartisanship key to the agenda. Inland Valley Daily Bulletin, 1 / 24 / 07 (Bush agenda opens door to bipartisanship, lexis) President Bush laid out a domestic agenda Tuesday night that should garner a good deal of bipartisan support. Most of the goals he enumerated in his State of the Union address can be embraced by Republicans and Democrats alike in Congress. But because the two parties envision vastly different means for arriving at some of those goals, working out policies to produce results such as oil conservation, fiscal responsibility and health-care reform will require serious give and take. Bush, sounding more humbled than previously, must realize he can't be the lone "decider" on his domestic agenda. He will have to share power with the new Democratic majority in Congress, even as those Democrats know their bills are worthless without Bush's signature.

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Bipart key Lack of bipart means the president can’t get his agenda passed Lance LeLoup and Steven Shull, Political Scientists, 1999, “THE PRESIDENT AND THE CONGRESS,” p. 15. As the figure suggests, moving up the vertical axis as conflict increases, presidential leadership becomes less likely and deadlock becomes more probable. Conversely, at low levels of conflict, the legislation is more likely to fit the pattern of cooperation/consensus than presidential leadership.

Partisanship hurts the president’s agenda Lance LeLoup and Steven Shull, Political Scientists, 1999, THE PRESIDENT AND THE CONGRESS, p. 13. Because Congress rarely speaks with one voice, we are looking at conflict between the presidency and various substantial factions in the House and Senate. Whatever its source, the level of conflict between the White House and Capitol Hill plays a major role in determining the pattern of policy-making that emerges.

Bipart is key to the agenda Steven Shull, Professor of Political Science, 2k “PRESIDENTIAL-CONGRESSIONAL RELATIONS,” p. 15. [ Presidential leadership and/or congressional followership clearly provide an inadequate picture of modern presidential-congressional relations; rarely is either dominant or submissive. Increasingly, divided government does make institutional conflict more likely, but policy deadlock is not inevitable. Neither actor completely sets the agenda on its own, and cooperation is nearly always necessary for agenda ideas to be adopted subsequently.

Cooperation is critical for agenda success Steven Shull, Professor of Political Science, 2k “PRESIDENTIAL-CONGRESSIONAL RELATIONS,” p. 15 Despite increased leadership powers such as central clearance and legislative liaison, conditions must be right for presidential leadership to be accepted. Generally presidents who have cooperated with Congress have had greater success with their programs and, to a large measure, such cooperation is dependent upon the political climate.

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Bipart key Cooperation is absolutely necessary for the president to get his agenda passed Steven Shull, Professor of Political Science, 2k “PRESIDENTIAL-CONGRESSIONAL RELATIONS,” p. 136. Both branches seemed to recognize that only by cooperating, rather than through conflict, would the policy goals of either be accomplished. Renewed efforts toward compromise and policy agreement should enhance governability as America enters the twenty-first century.

Bush can’t get anything done without bipartisanship Joseph A. Pika and John Anthony Maltese, Prof and Acting Chair Dept of Pol Sci and Int’l Rels @ University of Delaware and Assoc. Prof @ University of Georgia, 2004, The Politics of the Presidency, 6th Edition. [Bhattacharjee] Because presidents cannot rely on full support from their own party members, they must build coalitions by obtaining support from some opposition members. Coalition building is especially important when the opposition controls one or both houses—the situation for most presidents since 1969. Several factors other than party membership influence congressional voting decisions, including constituency pressures, state and regional loyalty, ideological orientations, and interest group influence. On many occasions, presidents have received crucial support from the opposition. Eisenhower successfully sought Democratic votes on foreign policy matters; Republicans contributed sizable pluralities to the enactment of civil rights legislation in the 1960s; conservative Democrats, mainly from the South, often supported the domestic policy proposals of Nixon and Ford; conservative Democrats in the House were essential to Reagan’s 1981 legislative victories; Clinton depended on Republican support for the passage of NAFTA and GAT’T; and George W. Bush received critical, though limited, support from Democrats on his tax-reduction and education-reform proposals.

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Moderates Key Moderates will be key – Senate rules and crucial swing votes. Bangor Daily News 6 (Lauren Smith, “Moderates Still Wield Power in Congress” , 11-30-06, http://www.bu.edu/washjocenter/newswire_pg/fall2006/conn/Moderates.htm) WASHINGTON, Nov. 30 —Despite the ouster of many moderate Republicans in the midterm elections, politicians and political experts still expect moderates to play a pivotal role in the upcoming Congress. “Nearly 45 percent of Americans describe themselves as moderates and I think that speaks volumes about what the people want, what Maine people want: an independent voice building a political center,” said Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine), who won reelection with almost 75 percent of the vote. The Democrats will enjoy a 31-seat majority in the House come January. In the Senate, Democrats will have a slim two-seat majority in combination with the two independents who have said they will be caucusing with the Democrats. “Because of the Senate rules, it takes 60 votes to get any major bill passed,” said Sen. Susan Collins (RMaine). “That means the moderates on both sides of the aisle will be the ones who determine whether or not legislation is approved.” The slight majority in the Senate could put Republican moderates in a powerful position. “The few moderate Republicans that exist in the Senate are in an influential position,” said Richard Powell, political science professor at the University of Maine, Orono. “They still control the swing vote in such a narrowly divided Senate.” Because of the rules in the House which allow the majority party to control the flow of legislation, Republicans in the House will have less influence, said Powell. But the Blue Dog Coalition, a group of moderate and conservative House Democrats, of which Rep. Michael Michaud (D-Maine) is a member, hopes to reach over to the Republican side of the aisle on at least some issues, said Eric Wortman, the coalition’s spokesman. “I think you will see a rise in bipartisanship. The leadership of the House has made that clear,” Wortman said. The recent election brought a number of new Blue Dog Democrats to the House but took a particularly hard toll on the already endangered New England Republican. Rep. Chris Shays is not only the last Connecticut Republican in the House, he’s the only Republican left in the chamber from New England. The state’s other two GOP representatives, Nancy Johnson and Rob Simmons, viewed as moderates on most issues, lost to Democratic challengers. “This is just the latest in a long line of elections in which the number of moderate Republicans has been declining in both the House and the Senate,” Powell said. “The trend has been underway for quite some time now.” New Hampshire’s two Republican House members, Charles Bass and Jeb Bradley also were defeated by Democratic challengers. In Rhode Island, moderate Republican Sen. Lincoln Chaffee was ousted from his position. In Massachusetts, a Democratic governor was elected for the first time in 16 years, putting the statehouse in line with the state’s entire congressional delegation. “It is not healthy for Republicans to have such a small presence in an entire region of the country,” Shays said. “Competition makes everyone perform better. It would be better for the Republicans, the Democrats and the country to have two strong parties in New England.” Shays said he would be happy to travel in New England to help rebuild the moderate wing of the party in the Northeast. “Moderates in both parties have an important role of reaching across the aisle to get things done,” Shays said. “Most Americans are not red or blue, they are purple.”

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Concessions Key Compromises key to the agenda, Columbus Dispatch 1/7/7, lexis Gridlock is not an inevitable consequence of a Democratic Congress dealing with a Republican president. With the right dose of consensus, Congress and President Bush could accomplish a lot in the final two years of his presidency. Regardless, the 110th Congress is likely to achieve more than the Republican-led 109th, which failed to act on a number of Bush's priorities, including Social Security reform and immigration. Bush is right to extend his hand to Democrats, who will control both houses of Congress for the first time in 12 years. In an opinion piece on Wednesday in The Wall Street Journal, Bush wrote that if congressional Democrats take a conciliatory tone, "The next two years can be fruitful ones for our nation." Also necessary will be compromises by the Bush administration. And the new Democratic majority will have to be more inclusive of the minority party than Republican leaders were during their years in power. Among the inherent advantages of having the executive and legislative branches in the hands of opposite parties is that neither side can dominate the other. Meaningful ideas then can emerge from the middle of the political spectrum, where consensus usually is built. In the 1990s, a GOP-led Congress and a Democratic president, Bill Clinton, achieved welfare reform and, aided by a robust economy, set the stage for budget surpluses that vanished after Bush took office. Bush said he agrees with the new appropriations-committee chairmen that congressional earmarks that bloat government spending should be scaled back. Bush said that voters made clear in November they wanted to end "the secretive process" in which pork-barrel projects totaling billions of dollars are slipped into spending bills without congressional review. On immigration policy and shoring up Social Security and Medicare, a bipartisan government would seem to have a better chance of getting something accomplished. Reform of entitlement programs, especially Social Security, is highly politicized. But changes need to come soon to make the programs sustainable beyond midcentury. Bush contends that his fiscal proposals will lead to a balanced budget in 2012. The burden will be on his administration to explain to Congress and the nation how that will be achieved if tax cuts enacted early this decade are extended. Congress' new leaders say members will be working more and longer days. The agenda is full; there will be plenty for them to do. Concessions are key – Presidents pass bills the other party likes to get their agenda. Ornstein, American Enterprise Institute 9/10/01 (Norman, Roll Call “Congress Inside Out”) Most important, the energy bill demonstrated that the President can find majority coalitions in creative ways, not just by trying to hold every Republican in Congress or by pairing most of his party loyalists with a handful of conservative Democrats. On some issues he can enlist labor (the most important political ally of the Democratic Party) and find a cadre of moderate and liberal, labor-oriented Democrats to join his coalition Some of those Democrats came on board because labor is so important to them and their party in 2002. (For the same reason, the President's road to TPA victory in the House - something labor will vehemently oppose - is much rockier.)

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Concessions key Concessions are key to breaking Congressional gridlock. Volden and Brady – Brady is a professor of political science and business, and Senior Fellow and Deputy Director of the Hoover Institute at Stanford University, and Volden is an assistant professor of political science at the Ohio State University - 06 (David W. Brady and Craig Volden, “Revolving Gridlock : Politics and Policy from Jimmy Carter to George W. Bush,” Pg 35, Westview Press, 2006) More often, however, gridlock is maintained through members from divorce districts who are very responsive to the electorate and thus at odds with their fellow legislators. In these cases, gridlock can be overcome only through legislative compromise, and only when status quo policies are outside the gridlock region. When a policy advocate suggests a change so major that supermajorities are difficult to achieve, the change will be stopped by a filibuster or veto. To build the needed coalition for cloture or a vet override, compromises will need to be struck, often taking one of two forms. First, the policy itself could be watered down. This was the main way that President Clinton overcame Republican filibusters in 1993 on issues like the job stimulus package, voter registration, and family and medical leave. A smaller change was more acceptable to moderate Senators. A second possible compromise with these pivotal members needed to build a supermajority involves concessions not on the ideological position of the bill at hand, but on other issues. Often these include distributive budgetary items, like roads, bridges, research labs, and targeted tax cuts. Riders attached to budget bills add these benefits needed to smooth out compromises on earlier bills. Quite clearly, to the extent that budget concessions are needed to build coalitions on all sorts of issues, gridlock is more likely when congress is confronting deficits than when it is ignoring them or facing surpluses.

Empirically, concessions are necessary to get bills passed: Clinton administration proves. Robinson, 95 (Peter Robinson – Fellow at the Hoover Institute – “Can Congress be Fixed? (And Is It Broken?),” Pg. 4) Brady presented two examples of Clinton administration gridlock. The first was the 1993 Budget Reconciliation act. President Clinton first submitted a budget proposal to Congress, Brady argued, that would have represented a dramatic break in policy, a decisive shift to the left. The president’s proposal called for new taxes on the top 1 percent of income earners, higher taxes on corporations, limits on the deductibility of executive pay, and new taxes on virtually all fossil fuels. The Democratic Congress rejected the Democratic president’s proposal outright. Negotiations ensued. President Clinton made one concession after another, agreeing to deeper spending cuts and fewer new taxes. In Brady’s words, the president was forced “to accommodate the moderate Democrats in Congress who could threaten to join the republicans to defeat the measure.”

Bush will have to make compromises to make the last months of his presidency successful. The Columbus Dispatch, 7 (1-7-2007, “Harmonious discord; Division of power between parties in Washington can help foster consensus,” Lexis-Nexis) Gridlock is not an inevitable consequence of a Democratic Congress dealing with a Republican president. With the right dose of consensus, Congress and President Bush could accomplish a lot in the final two years of his presidency. Regardless, the 110th Congress is likely to achieve more than the Republican-led 109th, which failed to act on a number of Bush's priorities, including Social Security reform and immigration. Bush is right to extend his hand to Democrats, who will control both houses of Congress for the first time in 12 years. In an opinion piece on Wednesday in The Wall Street Journal, Bush wrote that if congressional Democrats take a conciliatory tone, "The next two years can be fruitful ones for our nation." Also necessary will be compromises by the Bush administration. And the new Democratic majority will have to be more inclusive of the minority party than Republican leaders were during their years in power.

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Among the inherent advantages of having the executive and legislative branches in the hands of opposite parties is that neither side can dominate the other. Meaningful ideas then can emerge from the middle of the political spectrum, where consensus usually is built.

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Concessions key Concessions on Democratic issues insure agenda success on other policies – past & present prove The New Yorker, 2000 (Joe Klein, 11-20-2006, “Winners and Losers,” Pg. 35, Lexis-Nexis) // THK

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Concessions not key Prior political affiliation is most important: concessions have no effect. This fact is overlooked by their authors. Smith - Director of the Weidenbaum Center on the Economy, Government, and Public Policy- 7, (Steven S., “Party Influence in Congress,” Pg 56) Before turning to tangible incentives that party leaders can offer as incentives for cooperation, it pays to note a feature of party life in Congress that scholars have recognized as important: Supporting the party appears to be a default voting strategy for most legislators. Scholars Charles O. Jones (Jones 1961) and David Truman (Truman 1959), studying the mid-twentieth century Congress, observed a widespread proclivity to support the party line when other significant pressures were not present, creating a baseline of support for the party. Studies offer at least three distinct stories about the origin of this minimum level of partisanship. First, many arrive in Congress with a strong psychological identification with their parties. Many of them have long experience working for and with their parties in their home states, state legislatures, and elsewhere. This is reinforced in everyday life with their party collegues on Capitol Hill. A disposition to “go along” with the party position, in the absence of other influences, is the product. Identification with party collegues created the opportunity for “peer pressure,” which political scientists may overlook but legislators do not. Barber Conable (RNY), once the senior Republican on the Committee on Ways and Means, observes that “peer group pressure is of considerably greater significance that presidential blandishments.” Leaders exploit legislators’ predispositions by frequently appealing to party loyalty when soliciting votes (Kingdon 1973; Ripley 1967)

Concessions are counter-productive – they alienate the base Bond & Fleisher, professor in Political Science - Texas A&M and Professor in Political Science. Fordham 1996 (Jon R. and Richard. "The President in Legislation" p.45-46) Occasionally, a president takes a position that attracts support from cross-pressured members and from the opposition. Such a strategy, however, may be counterproductive. As the president's position appeals to factions further and further from his base-cross-pressured partisans to cross-pressured opponents to opposition party base-the risk of alienating members of his party base increases. Polsby (1986, 194) observes that the president sits on the horns of an old dilemma: is it more effective to take positions to "help thy friends or woo thine enemies?" Two empirical propositions follow from this conceptualization of congressional parties. First, if the interaction of party and ideology creates varying predispositions to support the president, then the president should attract the most support from his party base and the least support from the opposition party base. Although support from the two cross-pressured factions should fall somewhere in between, predicting which of the cross-pressured factions will be more supportive is difficult. One could make a case that cross-pressured partisans have a greater incentive to support the president than do members of the cross-pressured opposition. Despite the fact that congressional parties and party leaders are weak in comparison to their counterparts in most contemporary parliaments, the formal party organization with elected leaders is likely to exert a stronger force on members' behavior than the relatively informal ideological voting blocs, which lack a formal organization and leadership But given that cross-pressured members won election at least in part because their ideological orientation appealed to their constituents, we may find that the pull of ideology is often as strong as the push of party. The second proposition relates to party unity. Unity is low in American parties because (1) the parties are ideologically diverse and (2) party leaders (including the president) lack authority to control nominations and discipline members. While we can only speculate about what might happen if leaders had more authority, our four-faction model permits us to observe the effects of reducing ideological diversity. If ideological diversity is the primary cause of the lack of discipline in American parties, then the behavior of the more ideologically homogeneous party bases should be closer to the responsible party model-that is, on most presidential roll calls. The president s party base should unify in support of his preference, and the opposition party base should unify against. Failure to observe unified behavior in the party bases would suggest that variables other than ideological diversity are more important causes of party discipline.

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Flip-Flops Hurts Agenda Flip-flops hurt the agenda – president will be held personally accountable. Michael A. Fitts 96 Professor of Law, University of Pennsylvania Law School “THE PARADOX OF POWER IN THE MODERN STATE,” University of Pennsylvania Law Review, January, 144 U. Pa. L. Rev. 827 Centralized and visible power, however, becomes a double-edged sword, once one explores the different ways in which unitariness and visibility can undermine an institution's informal influence, especially its ability to mediate conflict and appear competent. In this context, the visibility and centralization of the presidency can have mixed effects. As a single visible actor in an increasingly complex world, the unitary president can be prone to an overassessment of responsibility and error. He also may be exposed to a normative standard of personal assessment that may conflict with his institutional duties. At the same time, the modern president often does not have at his disposal those bureaucratic institutions that can help mediate or deflect many conflicts. Unlike members of Congress or the agencies, he often must be clear about the tradeoffs he makes. Furthermore, a president who will be held personally accountable for government policy cannot pursue or hold inconsistent positions and values over a long period of time without suffering political repercussions. In short, the centralization and individualization of the presidency can be a source of its power, as its chief proponents and critics accurately have suggested, as well as its political illegitimacy and ultimate weakness. Flip-flops kill political capital – visibility increases tensions Michael A. Fitts 96 Professor of Law, University of Pennsylvania Law School “THE PARADOX OF POWER IN THE MODERN STATE,” University of Pennsylvania Law Review, January, 144 U. Pa. L. Rev. 827 Yet, the ability of the president to justify actions through claims of "democratic legitimacy" has diminished in many ways. While the president could rely in the past on his popular election to legitimate his current position, today, public opinion polls and instant communication can bolster virtually any opposing political leader who claims popular support on a particular issue. n146 A president Clinton who is elected on a pledge to [*870] reform health care, for example, must confront polling data that shows his plan does not enjoy popular support. At the same time, the narrowness of many of the issues faced by a modern unitary president and the decline of party identification more generally reduce the president's ability to rely on a past broad electoral mandate to legitimate particular decisions. n147 Modern leaders do not run on the basis of a clear platform. In this environment, the president's ability to lay claim to the democratic or party mantle has declined; he must often piece together a divergent coalition, bargaining, like other politicians, with individual political actors and groups who hold positions of influence in our divided government. This process of keeping members of a coalition together and prioritizing issues depends much more on conflict mediation skills than the traditional reliance upon party loyalty and claims of democratic legitimacy. In light of this shift, what should a unitary president do to maximize his influence? Under this analysis, his position demands a subtle balancing of roles. As the sweep of history has shown, the institutional power of the president is derived in part from his ability to rise above existing incremental relations and plot a new course for the country - that is, to solve the collective action problemof systematic change, whatever the direction. n148 As [*871] Robert Inman and I have argued, n149 and as the literature describing a strong presidency suggests, n150 when confronted with the collective action problems of congressional and public action, the president's clarity of position and toughness in the face of adversity may be a precondition for effective leadership. The story of a president engaged in successful high visibility and high stakes politics has marked our vision of presidential leadership over the years. n151 Unfortunately, there is another side to the story, which emerges when the president is unsuccessful, or not involved, in such high stakes politics. As this Part indicates, the president's role as a visible focal point - so dependent on his singularity and clarity - can also create a conflict that, once unleashed, hinders the modern president's ability to mediate effectively as a single individual. n152 In areas such as social security or health care reform, the president may be poorly positioned to resolve conflict or to take the political heat if he does not. To paraphrase the language of law and economics, his virtue (in minimizing transaction costs) can be his vice (in mediating conflict over the public benefits or "surplus" produced by minimization). n153 [*872] III. Individual Moral Assessments A second and related way in which the visibility and centralization of the presidency may undermine and frustrate the exercise of presidential power is by leading the public to evaluatethe president according to a standard of moral assessment appropriate for individuals, rather than for institutions. A greatdeal has been written over the years about the significance ofpresidential "style." Usually, the endless proliferation of relevantvariables in this literature limits the generalizability of the analyses. Every individual president has a unique style that can explain - although only in hindsight - his success or failure. My argument, however, is more generic:

Continued – no text removed…

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Flip-Flops Hurts Agenda Continued – no text removed… The presidential personality, whatever the style, can undermine the institution. In this sense, the presidential personality may produce a less valuable political "brand name." At first, this claim might seem unusual; as noted above in the description of the modern president, the public personality of politicians is usually perceived as a political advantage. Politicians routinely attempt to create public personae as warm, caring, and principled individuals who will do all they can to help their constituents. This image creation is one of the benefits of constituency servicing, public posturing, and the family stories that are so frequently planted in the press. To the extent that a politician simply presents herself as a "good and responsive person," her personality is usually thought to be a win-win issue, especially as compared to her actual positions on more divisive programmatic issues. n154 For members of Congress, personal connections may also complement quite well their roles as advocates for specialized constituencies in their districts. n155 [*873] For the president, however, this type of familiarity can create two problems. First, part of the power of the presidency is its mystique and its ability to project general abstract symbols. The fact that "it is not just an office of incredible power but a breeding ground of indestructible myth" strengthens the president's authority. n156 We seem "to look to presidents for symbolic identification." n157 To tap into this resource, presidents have relied on the "royalty" of their position to garner broad support. n158 Yet a highly visible personal presidency is less able to invoke the grandeur of the office. Who is awed by the sight of a president jogging in running shorts or commenting on each public issue? n159 "Just as putting too much money in circulation causes inflation and diminishes the value of a currency, too much presidential talk cheapens the value of presidential rhetoric." n160 Second, the focus on individual presidents and their personalities can create greater

tension with the president's pursuit of normal political activities. More than individual members of Congress, the unitary president is necessarily in a position to balance personally the interests of groups within his constituency as well as to change his individual position publicly over time, especially as he moves from the primaries, to the general election, to the presidency, and to the advancement of legislation through Congress. In order to be an effective leader, a president must, in other words, be less than candid to different constituencies and appear confident about positions that are subject to doubt or change. But balancing interests and changing positions in different institutional contexts can be in tension with his persona as a caring [*874] and principled individual. As discussed in Part II, institutions are expected to mediate and evolve in this manner; individual politicians who are supposed to have strong moral convictions may not be offered that luxury. The modern personal presidency thus can be caught between the different normative standards frequently applied to individual and familial relationships, on the one hand, and political institutions, on the other. Commentators have pointed out this distinction in moral approaches in other contexts as well. n161 While we apply the personal standard to our friends, family, and extended family, whom we expect to be trustworthy, truthful, and caring, the president must often act impersonally toward individuals and the public. This detachment is often needed for public institutions and officials to balance competing interests and overcome the collective action problems that permeate government. n162 As a result, a single and visible president must act not only with impunity toward many individual constituents, but also strategically in order to balance their competing interests. What are some illustrations of this tension? On the one hand, the qualities that allow a politician to exercise power effectively in the political game have conflicted with the attitudes and normative values that will satisfy private normative standards. Reagan, for example, was constantly asked to reconcile his public concern for family values with his lack of concern for his own family. n163 Similarly, Clinton has been forced to reconcile his support for women's rights with his marital infidelity. n164 Carter may have had the opposite problem: a model personal life, but a seeming inability to engage in instrumental political behavior. [*875] On the other hand, and more importantly, this tension can subject a president's public political behavior to private standards of morality. Clinton and Bush, for example, found that their attempts to mediate conflict on taxes and health care through evolving but inconsistent statements were not considered acceptable instrumental political methods, but rather a sign of a lack of character and moral conviction. Making "speeches that play to public opinion" tends to "create new discontinuities between past proclamations and present ones," n165 even though politicians may simply be attempting to keep up with evolving political forces. Good individuals with strong moral values are not supposed to change positions in light of changing political coalitions, although political institutions and parties can and should do so. n166 Caught in this predicament, politicians easily fall subject to characterizations such as "tricky Dick" (in the case of Nixon), "slick Willy" (in the case of Clinton), or someone who "runs under so many identities it [is] hard to keep track of who he [is] from day to day" (in the case of Bush). n167 The problem is especially difficult because, as studies on leadership have found, "the ultimate impact of [a] leader [often] depends most significantly on the particular story that he or she ... embodies." n168 The personal story of a modern president attempting to respond to changing political forces can be in tension with that role. n169 [*876]

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***OUTER CONTINENTAL SHELF***

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1NC OCS – Bush good (1/2)

A. OCS drilling is up in the air – pressure from Bush is key to ensure drilling The Wall Street Journal, 7-16-08, (“US prohibition on outer continental shelf energy search has been shelved” http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24026023-20142,00.html) US PRESIDENT George W. Bush lifted an executive prohibition on energy exploration in the outer continental shelf, firing the latest salvo in the debate over how to respond to soaring oil prices. Mr Bush's move to lift the executive moratorium on offshore drilling, in place since 1992, will not have any effect until a separate congressional prohibition expires or is overturned. A month ago, Mr Bush had said he would lift the executive ban after Congress acted. But yesterday the President changed tactics, in a move that puts pressure on congressional Democratic leaders already feeling the heat from voters on the drilling issue. Mr Bush said lawmakers should pass legislation that gives states a say in potential drilling off their shores, provides for the sharing of leasing revenue and protects the environment. The congressional ban expires on September 30, but record oil prices make it politically difficult to extend the ban. On the House side, it is not clear whether Democrats will have the votes for an extension. In recent days, congressional leaders have suggested they may relax restrictions on offshore drilling, but only in return for concessions from the oil industry, such as surrendering leases that are sitting idle. Presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain has sided with Mr Bush, despite previous opposition to offshore drilling, while likely Democratic nominee Barack Obama is a critic of opening more offshore territory to drilling.

B. Plan drains political capital

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1NC OCS – Bush good (2/2) C. Failure to open the OCS crashes the economy through the trucking industry Newswire, 7-16-08, (“ATA Applauds Bush Decision to Lift Off-Shore Drilling Moratorium” http://www.azstarnet.com/sn/news/248476.php) Consumers have struggled with high energy costs for everything from gasoline to home heating oil. The cost of diesel fuel has also pushed the prices of food and consumer products higher as the higher cost of transportation adds to product prices. The U.S. trucking industry depends upon sufficient and affordable diesel fuel supplies to haul 11 billion tons of freight every year. Given current fuel prices, the industry is on pace to spend an unprecedented $170 billion on fuel this year. Environmentally sound expansion of the Outer Continental Shelf leasing program will help ensure that the U.S. trucking industry has enough diesel fuel at affordable prices so that it can continue to deliver the American economy. Restricted areas of the Outer Continental Shelf contain at least 18 billion barrels of oil and 76 trillion cubic feet of natural gas that can be recovered using environmentally safe technology. This is enough oil to power 40 million cars and to heat 2 million households for 15 years and enough natural gas to heat 60 million households for almost 20 years. Currently, wells in the Central and Western Gulf of Mexico supply 30 percent of the oil and about 20 percent of the natural gas produced in the United States. Other resource rich areas, however, remain under moratoria, preventing exploration and production off most of the U.S. coastline. These restrictions deny American consumers access to vast domestic energy supplies. Expanding access to new areas would ensure adequate domestic energy supplies because areas currently restricted contain large, untapped resources of oil and natural gas, which are critical to sustaining U.S. economic growth. The American Trucking Associations is the largest national trade association for the trucking industry. Through a federation of other trucking groups, industry-related conferences, and its 50 affiliated state trucking associations, ATA represents more than 37,000 members covering every type of motor carrier in the United States.

D. U.S. economic collapse causes nuclear war Richard C. Cook, writer, consultant, and retired federal analyst U.S. Treasury, 6-14-07 (“It’s Official: The Crash of the U.S. Economy has begun” http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=5964) Times of economic crisis produce international tension and politicians tend to go to war rather than face the economic music. The classic example is the worldwide depression of the 1930s leading to World War II. Conditions in the coming years could be as bad as they were then. We could have a really big war if the U.S. decides once and for all to haul off and let China, or whomever, have it in the chops. If they don’t want our dollars or our debt any more, how about a few nukes?

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1NC OCS – Bush bad (1/2) A. OCS drilling is at a gridlock in congress – democrats are preventing passage of Bush’s policy Reuters, edited by David Gregorio, 7-11-08, (“Bush urges Congress to open new areas to oil drilling” http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/feedarticle/7645760) "They have a responsibility to explain to their constituents why we should not be drilling for more oil here in America to take the pressure off of gasoline prices," said Bush, who announced last month he favored lifting the restrictions on offshore drilling. "One way to deal with supply problems is to increase supply here in America," said the president. "And yet the Democratic leaders of Congress just consistently block opening up these lands for exploration." Democrats say there is no need to give oil companies protected areas to drill, because they already have 68 million acres under federal leases that have yet to be drilled. Crude oil prices hit a record high on Friday near $147 a barrel, spurred by growing worries of threats to supplies from Iran and Nigeria and the possibility of a strike by Brazilian oil workers next week.

B. Plan is a concession to democrats C. Concessions are key to Bush’s agenda Patton Boggs LLP, law firm and lobby shop, ‘06 (“The Agenda of the 110th Congress, A New Form of Divided Government?” available at http://www.pattonboggs.com/files/News/f50d4124-24f6-474e-9bd7b5a2c77c933a/Presentation/NewsAttachment/4e83e09f-2fa5-4c5e-906a-b61bb6c91e88/FINAL%20full %20memo.pdf) In this new period of even more divided government, whether the 110th Congress ends up mired in gridlock or engaged in legislating will depend in large measure on the attitude of the White House and the popularity of the President. On many issues over the next two years, President Bush will have to decide whether to stand on principle, using his veto pen to block Congressional initiatives, or to seek common ground with both the House and the Senate. As recent history demonstrates, Presidents who have opted for compromise with their opponents have been able to achieve significant victories. For example, notwithstanding the impact of the Iran-Contra scandal, President Reagan -- by reaching out to Democrats -- was able to achieve major victories, including building up the defense budget (and with it, setting in motion forces which helped lead to the fall of the Berlin Wall) and enactment of fundamental tax reform. President George H. W. Bush and a Democratic-controlled Congress enacted the Americans with Disabilities Act and one of the most far-reaching deficit reduction programs in history. Similarly, by reaching out to the Republican Congress elected in 1994, President Clinton was able to achieve major legislative victories, including enactment of fundamental welfare reform and adoption of the first balanced budget in three decades. President Bush will similarly have the opportunity to pursue legacy initiatives in the 110th Congress, including comprehensive immigration reform, fundamental tax reform, and potentially the most difficult of all, comprehensive entitlement reform (Medicare and Social Security). But to be successful, the President will have to reach out to Democrats, who will have the power, and going into the 2008 election cycle, may have the incentive, to block his legislative initiatives. For the first time in decades, both parties will be heading into a Presidential election in which no heir apparent is in place. (This will be the first election in over a half century in which a sitting President or Vice President is not seeking re-election. And, for the first time since James Madison and James Monroe held office two centuries ago, whomever is elected will follow two presidents who served two full terms in succession.) Moreover, having won control of both houses,

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Democrats may conclude it ultimately is in their overall interest to ensure nothing of consequence beyond their own agenda gets done on Capitol Hill. Finally, no matter what the President and his Republican allies on Capitol Hill want to achieve legislatively, developments in Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, and North Korea may dominate the agenda.

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1NC OCS – Bush bad (2/2) D. Oil drilling causes oil spills Washington Post, 7/14/08, “Offshore Drilling Back as Remedy for Oil Prices” On Jan. 28, 1969, a blowout on a Unocal rig six miles off the coast of California spilled 3 million gallons of oil into the waters off Santa Barbara. The blackened beaches and oil-soaked birds and seals became icons for the environmental movement and eventually brought oil exploration off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts of the United States to a halt. Now, President Bush, Republicans in Congress and big oil companies want to reopen those waters to oil and gas exploration. In his radio address Saturday, Bush said that "technological advances have allowed us to explore oil offshore in ways that protect the environment" and that outer continental shelf areas now off limits "could produce enough oil to match America's current production for almost 10 years." Although the overwhelming majority of safety valves did in fact work during the hurricanes, the Minerals Management Service of the Interior Department reported that there were five spills, each between 1,000 and 2,000 barrels. Altogether, 125 small spills totaled 16,302 barrels, almost a quarter as big as the Santa Barbara spill. (The MMS says that over the past 20 years, less than 0.001 percent of oil produced in U.S. waters has been spilled.) Foes of offshore drilling argue that the oil industry isn't taking advantage of lease areas already available on federal lands and waters. Democratic Sens. Russ Feingold (Wis.), Christopher J. Dodd (Conn.) and Robert Menendez (N.J.) have introduced "use it or lose it" legislation.

E. Oil spills cause species loss Teaching Tools, No Date, Oil spills are often harmful to marine birds, mammals and, sometimes, fish and shellfish. Birds are protected from the elements by their feathers, which overlap like tiles on a roof. The separate strands on each feather are bound together by rows of tiny hooks, creating a tight weave. The bird’s skin stays warm and dry underneath. However, oil can clog the feather’s strands and hooks and allow water to penetrate to the bird’s skin. Oil also can damage the insulating ability of fur-bearing mammals such as sea otters. Many animals try to clean themselves but are poisoned after ingesting the oil.

F. Species loss guarantees human extinction St. Louis Post Dispatch, May 23, 1999, p. Lexis (MHBLUE1256) Whether we realize it or not, every one of us depends directly on the Earth's living systems -- the plants, animals, fungi and micro-organisms that have made the air we breathe, the soil, the landscapes we enjoy each day. All of our food comes directly or indirectly from plants, and more than half of it from just three members of the grass family: corn, wheat and rice. The great majority of medicines also are derived from plants; many of the remainder from fungi and bacteria. And almost all of the rest have been improved through knowledge gained about other naturally occurring compounds, applied experimentally to the development of other drugs it continues. Our relationship with the Earth, however, is such that as many as a quarter of all species may be lost within 25 years, and as many as twothirds of them by the end of the century -- a tragedy in terms of the prospects for human progress, and a truly ignorant way to treat the systems on which we depend wholly for our survival now and in the future. It is basically the characteristics of the living organisms that we are squandering that afford the best chances of improving our lives and those of our grandchildren -- but we seem unable or unwilling to act intelligently on this basic truth

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**UNIQUENESS – WONT PASS**

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Wont pass - security OCS wont pass – security is Bushes only strong point BEN FELLER, AP news, 7-11-08, (“On national security, Bush still has juice” http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5j0pvISNafxE8dxMzz2F9UVgjngrwD91R7EQ00) WASHINGTON (AP) — For an unpopular guy on his way out of his office, President Bush still has some juice. When Bush signed a law Thursday to broaden the government's eavesdropping power, he served notice of how much sway he still holds on matters of national security. Yes, he is relevant in the twilight of his second term, even with anemic public approval ratings and much of the country tuning him out. Bush got the anti-terrorism spying legislation largely on his terms. He also has won fight after fight to keep the Iraq war going without a timeline for withdrawal of U.S. troops. He vetoed a bill that would have banned waterboarding for terror suspects, then watched as Democrats failed to override him. Contrast this to Bush's domestic agenda, which is all but ignored by the Democratic-controlled Congress. He keeps pushing for items that seem to be going nowhere, from offshore drilling to tax cuts to a trade deal with Colombia. Lawmakers blew right by him in approving a massive farm bill.

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Wont pass – Pelosi Pelosi wont let OCS be voted on Alexander Mooney, CNN staff writer, 7-17-08 (“Pelosi: Bush 'a total failure'” http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/07/17/pelosi.interview/index.html) "What we are saying is, Mr. President, free our oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve," Pelosi said. "We're saying, let's take 10 percent of that, which has been paid for by the American taxpayer, and use that to put on the market so that we increase supply, reduce price." "And when the price comes down, we can buy back the oil at a lower price, put it in the SPR, use the spread for renewable energy resources." The House speaker has faced heavy criticism from House Republican leader John Boehner, who is leading a congressional delegation to ANWR this weekend and has said Pelosi's action does not adequately address the problem. He's also said Pelosi is leading the moderate faction of her party "off a cliff" by refusing to allow a vote in the House on offshore drilling. "Just because John Boehner, who is my friend, has my respect, says it doesn't make it so," she responded, reiterating that she will block any vote to allow lifting the ban.

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Wont pass - Democrats Democrats will stop OCS drilling DEB RIECHMANN, AP news, 6-21-08 (“Bush says Democrats keep blocking his energy plans” http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5j057jBReERcsF-FcZRSWe0h1gaXQD91EL7I05) WASHINGTON (AP) — President Bush is accusing Democrats in Congress of blocking his energy proposals, saying they are partly to blame for high gasoline costs pinching Americans' budgets. In his Saturday radio address, Bush urged Congress to lift its long-standing ban on offshore oil and gas drilling to increase U.S. energy production. Democrats have rejected the idea. "This is a difficult time for many American families," Bush said. "Rising gasoline prices and economic uncertainty can affect everything from what food parents put on the table to where they can go on vacation." Bush said offshore drilling could yield up to 18 billion barrels of oil over time, although it would take years for production to start. There are two prohibitions on offshore drilling, one imposed by Congress and another by executive order signed by Bush's father in 1990. Bush's brother, Jeb, fiercely opposed offshore drilling when he was governor of Florida. What the president now proposes would rescind his father's decision — but the president took the position that Congress had to act first and then he would follow behind. Congressional Democrats have been quick to reject the push for lifting the drilling moratorium, saying oil companies already have under lease 68 million acres on federal lands and waters — outside the ban area — that are not being developed. Drilling proponents say that number is misleading because sometimes it takes years for actual development to take place.

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Wont pass – Democrats No chance of OCS passing congress – Pelosi and Reid wont let it happen Washington Post, 7-19-08, (“Washington's Dry Well: President Bush turns up the heat on offshore oil drilling.” http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/18/AR2008071802803.html) WITH OIL hovering around $130 a barrel and an American public increasingly antsy about gasoline prices resting comfortably above $4 a gallon, President Bush ratcheted up the pressure on Congress this week to open the Outer Continental Shelf to oil drilling by rescinding the executive order prohibiting such exploration. There's just one catch: For the president's action to take effect, Congress has to lift its own ban, which has been in place since 1983. And that's not going to happen. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) oppose giving states the power to permit offshore drilling for oil because -- as they correctly point out -- drilling for the estimated 18 billion barrels of oil underneath the Outer Continental Shelf would have no immediate impact on the pain consumers are feeling at the pump. Yet, after spending the Fourth of July recess getting an earful from their constituents about high gas prices, they feel the need to do something. Thus the recent push for the passage of "use it or lose it" legislation that would force the oil companies to use the offshore oil leases they already have. Mr. Reid's office released a series of statistics on the number of acres "not producing oil" and "not being drilled." That tally makes three assumptions: that in a time of record prices Big Oil would let viable areas sit untapped; that every lease represents a guarantee of oil; and that areas not producing or not being drilled are inactive.

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**UNIQUENESS – WILL PASS**

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Will pass - prices Congress will overturn the ban on OCS drilling – oil price pressure proves The Wall Street Journal, 7-16-08, (“US prohibition on outer continental shelf energy search has been shelved” http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24026023-20142,00.html) US PRESIDENT George W. Bush lifted an executive prohibition on energy exploration in the outer continental shelf, firing the latest salvo in the debate over how to respond to soaring oil prices. Mr Bush's move to lift the executive moratorium on offshore drilling, in place since 1992, will not have any effect until a separate congressional prohibition expires or is overturned. A month ago, Mr Bush had said he would lift the executive ban after Congress acted. But yesterday the President changed tactics, in a move that puts pressure on congressional Democratic leaders already feeling the heat from voters on the drilling issue. Mr Bush said lawmakers should pass legislation that gives states a say in potential drilling off their shores, provides for the sharing of leasing revenue and protects the environment. The congressional ban expires on September 30, but record oil prices make it politically difficult to extend the ban. On the House side, it is not clear whether Democrats will have the votes for an extension. In recent days, congressional leaders have suggested they may relax restrictions on offshore drilling, but only in return for concessions from the oil industry, such as surrendering leases that are sitting idle. Presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain has sided with Mr Bush, despite previous opposition to offshore drilling, while likely Democratic nominee Barack Obama is a critic of opening more offshore territory to drilling.

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Will pass – public pressure (bipart) Democrats are already crossing party lines to support OCS drilling – public pressure is forcing action Gail Russell Chaddock, staff writer for the Christian Science Monitor, 7-15-08 (“On Capitol Hill, Democrats push back on offshore drilling” http://features.csmonitor.com/environment/2008/07/15/on-capitol-hill-democrats-pushback-on-offshore-drilling/#) President Bush and Congress traded accusations Tuesday over who’s more to blame for America’s latest oil crisis and offered different assessments of the need to lift a long-standing moratorium on new offshore oil drilling. Despite the apparent rancor over the issue – some of it no doubt attributable to partisan branding efforts ahead of the fall elections – there are signs that some lawmakers are trying to reach across party lines to find common ground on what to do about soaring prices. For the second time in as many days, the president Tuesday called on Congress to “clear the way for offshore exploration on the outer continental shelf,” which has been restricted since Mr. Bush’s father sat in the Oval Office. On Monday, the White House lifted an executive prohibition on offshore exploration, but leasing of offshore tracts cannot go forward unless Congress decides to lift its drilling ban, too. “This means that the only thing standing between the American people and these vast oil resources is action from the US Congress,” Bush said during a news conference. In response, Democratic leaders in the House and Senate renewed calls for the president to start releasing oil from the nation’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve and to back pending legislation to curb speculation in the oil futures market. “For eight years, he’s done nothing,” said Senate majority leader Harry Reid after a caucus luncheon on Tuesday. “We had to pass a law to stop him from pumping more oil into the SPR, which is 98 percent full.” Rather than open offshore areas for drilling, Bush should “tell oil companies to drill in the 6.8 million acres they already have [leased],” he said. Moreover, any oil produced offshore should be reserved for Americans, he added. “It becomes American oil.” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called on Bush to immediately release “a small amount of oil” from the SPR to reduce prices for American consumers. “Whether the president knows it or not, there is an emergency in our country,” she said at a news conference with energy experts Tuesday. The real need isn’t for more drilling, which won’t produce relief at the pump for years, Speaker Pelosi said. Instead, she announced that House Democrats will propose a second stimulus package to help offset rising prices in gasoline, food, fuel, healthcare, and education. But congressional Democrats probably have an uphill battle in their bid to reshape the debate, if opinion polls are any indication. Almost three-quarters of American adults strongly or mildly favored increased drilling for oil and natural gas in offshore water, according to a CNN/Opinion Research poll conducted June 26-29. Republicans in the House and Senate want an immediate vote to put lawmakers on record about whether to relax restrictions on energy exploration offshore and on US public lands. “If the speaker is serious about taking action to stimulate the economy, she should start by allowing a vote on increased American energy production,” Rep. John Boehner, House Republican leader, said in a statement on Tuesday. A new bipartisan working group – the Gang of 10 – aims to build on the success of a previous group, the so-called Gang of 14, which broke a previous Senate gridlock over judicial nominations. The group, organized by Sens. Kent Conrad (D) of North Dakota and Saxby Chambliss (R) of Georgia, is looking for consensus on which restricted areas could win a majority of Senate votes for lifting a ban on exploration, focusing especially on easing restrictions in the Gulf of Mexico. Senate Republicans, meanwhile, count 10 Democrats willing to consider opening up restricted areas to more exploration.

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Will pass - compromise Democrats DON’T like drilling but WILL compromise – public frustration and bush pressure prove Henry J. Pulizzi and Siobhan Hughes Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES, 7-14-08 (“Bush Lifts Executive Ban on Offshore Drilling” http://www.smartmoney.com/breaking-news/ON/index.cfm?story=ON-20080714-000554-1558) Democrats have objections to Bush's drilling proposal on several fronts. They say it would take years to affect energy prices and would put the nation's shoreline in environmental peril. They also say energy companies aren't taking full advantage of existing offshore leases. The debate is a political hazard, with Democrats looking to balance concerns over the environment with public frustration over high prices at the pump. The White House hopes to pressure lawmakers to speed the legislative process, and signal to markets that more supply is eventually on the way. "Today I've taken every step within my power to allow offshore exploration of the OCS," Bush said. "All that remains is for the Democratic leaders in Congress to allow a vote." Bush said lawmakers should pass legislation that gives states a say in potential drilling off their shores, provides for the sharing of leasing revenues and protects the environment.

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Will pass - compromise Democrats will compromise – credible sources prove Energy Washington Week, 7-16-08 (“Pelosi Not Likely To Support Coalition's Bipartisan Move On Drilling” Vol. 5 No. 29, pLn) One Democratic source said that they will even consider expanding the NEED Act to include offshore oil drilling alongside the bill's original call for offshore natural gas drilling. This highlights the goal of the working group, which is to consider as much as possible to reach a compromise and have something to bring to the floor following the August break in September. The working group seeks to bring together the conservation and efficiency approach of the Democrats with the GOP's call for increased drilling, rather than continue a stalemate in having one approach dominate over the other, these sources say. Boehner, for his part, will be touring both DOE's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) later this week, followed by a July 20 visit to Alaska to survey the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), eyed by the GOP for its untapped oil reserves. Boehner would reportedly support a strategy to bolster renewable fuels production alongside increased drilling for fossil fuels as a way to beat back high gasoline prices. Pelosi has stood firm against the push to open ANWR, while also considering the clamor by some in her party for a reexamination of the nation's renewable fuels policy as a link to high food prices. The pressure to reconsider offshore drilling in Congress is steadily rising, in the face of recent public opinion polls that strongly support discussing the idea. At press time, President Bush relinquished the executive ban on OCS drilling, saying it is time for lawmakers to follow suit to lower gasoline and diesel prices. He also called on Congress to move on oil shale. The initial response from Democrats was that they would persist in their opposition to OCS. -- John Siciliano

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Will pass – political climate Democrats will compromise – key political climate Jon Ward, staff writer Washington Times, 7-14-08 (“Bush will end executive ban on offshore drilling” http://www.washtimes.com/news/2008/jul/14/bush-will-end-ban-offshore-drilling/) Almost a month ago, Mr. Bush called on Congress to lift their ban on offshore drilling and said he would lift the presidential prohibition, instituted by his father in 1990, whenever Democrats did the same. On Monday he did what many said he should have done last month, acting unilaterally to put maximum stress on Democrats' opposition to offshore drilling, which he said could yield enough oil to supply the U.S. for 10 years. "The time for action is now. This is a difficult period for millions of American families They are rightly angered by Congress' failure to enact common sense solutions," Mr. Bush said. The Bush administration's political calculation is that with gas heading toward $5 a gallon for car drivers, public demand for some meaningful action has grown so intense that Democrats will be forced to capitulate or suffer the consequences. The upcoming presidential election only maximizes the potential negative political effect for Democrats. "We wanted to work with Congress on it. The Democratic leaders in Congress have not shown a willingness to move forward," said White House press secretary Dana Perino Monday morning. "Were going to move forward. Hopefully that will spur action by Congress. The ball is now squarely in their court. I'm sure Americans will be watching what they do," she said.

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Will pass - expiration Congressional ban wont be renewed in September when it expires Henry J. Pulizzi and Siobhan Hughes Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES, 7-14-08 (“Bush Lifts Executive Ban on Offshore Drilling” http://www.smartmoney.com/breaking-news/ON/index.cfm?story=ON-20080714-000554-1558) Citing the Energy Information Administration, Markey said repealing the drilling moratoriums today would have no impact on prices until 2030. The congressional ban expires on Sept. 30, but record oil prices make it politically difficult to extend the ban. On the House side, it isn't clear whether Democrats will have the votes for an extension.

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Will pass – company pressure Companies are pressuring congress into opening up the OCS Newswire, 7-16-08, (“ATA Applauds Bush Decision to Lift Off-Shore Drilling Moratorium” http://www.azstarnet.com/sn/news/248476.php) ARLINGTON, Va., July 15, 2008 /PRNewswire-USNewswire via COMTEX/ -- The American Trucking Associations today praised the Bush Administration for lifting the executive moratorium on offshore drilling. ATA also urged Congress to follow suit and lift its ban on offshore drilling as part of a long-term strategy to reduce U.S. dependence on foreign oil and curb skyrocketing fuel prices. "We need the ability to explore new, untapped areas for domestic energy supplies," said ATA President and CEO Bill Graves. "The U.S. has an opportunity to improve our energy situation and continue to support economic growth, while providing consumers and businesses with the essential energy they need." U.S. companies are seeking permission to drill for oil and natural gas on the Outer Continental Shelf, 100 miles off the U.S. coast. The government of Cuba, meanwhile, has already granted leases to foreign corporations for oil exploration just 60 miles off Florida. If the United States were to develop these resources, U.S. technology and U.S. environmental regulations will ensure that the environment is protected.

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Will be up for vote Reid will put OCS drilling up for vote IAN TALLEY, Wall Street Journal, 7-16-08, (“Reid Faces More Heat to Ease Oil-Drilling Ban” http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121617044402856421.html?mod=googlenews_wsj) WASHINGTON -- Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid faced more pressure to ease a congressional ban on expanded offshore drilling for oil, as both Republicans and Democrats sought to show they are responding to high energy prices in an election year. Sen. Reid, a Nevada Democrat, said he is ready to move a bill targeting what he called "greedy speculators," which would give the Commodity Futures Trading Commission greater authority to regulate energy futures, particularly over-the-counter swaps markets and foreign exchanges operating in the U.S. But Republicans said they may try to block that legislation if it doesn't include measures to allow new domestic oil production. Sen. Reid suggested Tuesday he might agree to at least allow votes on the drilling issue. "We're happy to take a look at a number of different approaches," he said. "If we get on to the speculation bill, we'll take a look at ways to amend that." With several polls showing a rise in public support for more drilling offshore, Republicans are hammering away at the issue, starting with seeking to open long-closed areas on the outer continental shelf, where the government says an estimated 18 billion barrels of oil and several trillion cubic feet of natural gas lie undiscovered. President George W. Bush Monday lifted a decades-old presidential moratorium on drilling on the outer continental shelf. The act was largely symbolic, but it put more pressure on Congress to lift its own moratorium on offshore exploration, which expires at the end of September.

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Now key - expiration Now is key – congress must act before August Reuters, edited by David Gregorio, 7-11-08, (“Bush urges Congress to open new areas to oil drilling” http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/feedarticle/7645760) WASHINGTON, July 11 (Reuters) - U.S. President George W. Bush urged Congress on Friday to act before its August break to open new areas for oil exploration in the United States to help ease record high oil prices. "The members of Congress, particularly the Democratic leadership, must address this issue before they go home for this upcoming August break," Bush told reporters after a briefing from his economic advisers at the Department of Energy.

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Now key - elections Republicans are pushing for oil drilling – elections prove key time Erin Kelly and Maureen Groppe / Star Washington Bureau 7-12-08 (“Republicans accusing Dems of inaction on gas prices But GOP's ties to Big Oil, Bush may blunt attack” http://www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article? AID=/20080712/NEWS05/807120448) WASHINGTON -- Battered by poor poll numbers and rampant retirements in their ranks, congressional Republicans are pounding Democrats over record gasoline prices to try to win back voters in the November election. GOP leaders attack the Democrat-led House and Senate daily for "doing nothing" to lower gas prices and for blocking newly popular proposals to lift the bans on oil and gas drilling off most U.S. coasts and in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. A group of Republican challengers from Indiana, South Dakota, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania is even planning to fly to the arctic refuge Monday to promote drilling. Recent polls have shown a majority of Americans now favor more oil exploration in the refuge and along coastal areas.

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Bush pushing Bush is pushing for OCS drilling – recent actions prove that he is willing to go all in Henry J. Pulizzi and Siobhan Hughes Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES, 7-14-08 (“Bush Lifts Executive Ban on Offshore Drilling” http://www.smartmoney.com/breaking-news/ON/index.cfm?story=ON-20080714-000554-1558) WASHINGTON -(Dow Jones)- U.S. President George W. Bush lifted an executive prohibition on energy exploration in the Outer Continental Shelf, a move Democrats swiftly labeled a political stunt that will bring no relief to consumers stung by soaring gasoline prices. "The time for action is now," Bush said in a statement designed to pressure Congressional Democrats. "This is a difficult period for millions of American families." Bush's move to lift the executive moratorium on offshore drilling is largely symbolic because the ban, in place since 1981, won't be fully reversed until Congress takes action. Bush asked lawmakers to do just that a month ago, saying he would remove the executive ban when Congress moved. That strategy changed Monday, with Bush deciding to take the first step. "As the Democratically controlled Congress has sat idle, gas prices have continued to increase," Bush said. "The failure to act is unacceptable."

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Bush pushing Bush is pushing for OCS drilling George Bush, president of the U.S. 6-18-08 (“STATEMENT BY THE PRESIDENT ON ENERGY” speech at the Rose Garden, accessed at http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/06/18/oil-crunch-trumping-climate-concerns/) In the short run, the American economy will continue to rely largely on oil. And that means we need to increase supply, especially here at home. So my administration has repeatedly called on Congress to expand domestic oil production. Unfortunately, Democrats on Capitol Hill have rejected virtually every proposal — and now Americans are paying the price at the pump for this obstruction. Congress must face a hard reality: Unless Members are willing to accept gas prices at today’s painful levels — or even higher — our nation must produce more oil. And we must start now. So this morning, I ask Democratic Congressional leaders to move forward with four steps to expand American oil and gasoline production. First, we should expand American oil production by increasing access to the Outer Continental Shelf, or OCS. Experts believe that the OCS could produce about 18 billion barrels of oil. That would be enough to match America’s current oil production for almost ten years. The problem is that Congress has restricted access to key parts of the OCS since the early 1980s. Since then, advances in technology have made it possible to conduct oil exploration in the OCS that is out of sight, protects coral reefs and habitats, and protects against oil spills. With these advances — and a dramatic increase in oil prices — congressional restrictions on OCS exploration have become outdated and counterproductive. Republicans in Congress have proposed several promising bills that would lift the legislative ban on oil exploration in the OCS. I call on the House and the Senate to pass good legislation as soon as possible. This legislation should give the states the option of opening up OCS resources off their shores, provide a way for the federal government and states to share new leasing revenues, and ensure that our environment is protected. There’s also an executive prohibition on exploration in the OCS. When Congress lifts the legislative ban, I will lift the executive prohibition.

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High prices  spin Bush using high prices for political spin Kirit Mathur, India Daily, 7-12-08, (“Bush and Singh using higher oil price to advance their agenda – offshore oil in US for oil companies and nuclear deal in India targeting $100 billion” http://www.indiadaily.com/editorial/19796.asp) It is interesting to find the leaders of the two largest democracies in the world trying to use higher oil price to gain leverage for their political funding sponsors. Bush and Dick Cheney are well known as agents of the oil company. They want offshore oil drilling lease for the oil companies while the oil comopanies and sitting on millions of acres of lmainland US with no drilling plans. Bush justifioes offshore drilling with higher oil price while casualy side steppinmg the question – why disturb the enviroment before drilling in the main land where oil reseve is plentiful. He and his administration is using political spin and their sleek propaganda machine to further the cause of the oil companies. Oil comapies want to gqin more lease to offshore drilling and sit on the same till they take oil to $300 a barrel.

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High prices  compromise High oil prices create key time for compromise Reuters, edited by David Gregorio, 7-11-08, (“Bush urges Congress to open new areas to oil drilling” http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/feedarticle/7645760) High oil prices have begun to have an impact on the U.S. economy, and Bush last month urged Congress to end a ban on offshore oil drilling in a bid to ease consumer anxiety over $4-a-gallon gasoline prices. Bush advocated opening federal land off the U.S. East and West coasts, where oil drilling has been barred by both a presidential executive order and a congressional moratorium. He has estimated offshore drilling could yield 18 billion barrels of oil. The president also advocated opening up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) in Alaska to drilling, as well as promoting the exploitation of oil shale in the U.S. West.

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Bush blamed for prices Bush blamed for high prices Erin Kelly and Maureen Groppe / Star Washington Bureau 7-12-08 (“Republicans accusing Dems of inaction on gas prices But GOP's ties to Big Oil, Bush may blunt attack” http://www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article? AID=/20080712/NEWS05/807120448) "I'm going to ANWR to see firsthand what it may offer to keep our economy running during our energy transition," said former GOP Rep. Mike Sodrel, who is trying to regain the southeastern Indiana seat he lost to Democratic Rep. Baron Hill in 2006. "The only solutions coming from this Congress are to file lawsuits, increase taxes, investigate or regulate." The GOP challengers to Rep. Joe Donnelly, D-Granger, and Rep. Brad Ellsworth, D-Evansville, also are going to Alaska. "It's the number one issue on voters' minds," said Ken Spain of the National Republican Congressional Committee. "Democrats' inaction has certainly left an opening for Republican candidates." But that opening may not be as easy to exploit as Republicans hope, political analysts say. "There are limits on the strategy, and the main limit is that the president, who in this case is a Republican, is the blame magnet on gas prices," said Jack Pitney, a political scientist at Claremont McKenna College in Southern California. "When things go wrong with the economy, people look to the White House, not Capitol Hill." A USA Today/Gallup Poll released in June underscored that point. Asked who deserved the greatest blame for high gas prices, respondents deemed U.S. oil companies to be the biggest culprits, followed by the Bush administration and then by foreign oil-producing nations. Congress ranked fourth. "Even if Republicans are right that Democrats should do more, they are burdened with a Republican president that most Americans hold responsible for the problem," said Gerald Gamm, chairman of the political science department at the University of Rochester. "He's a heavy load for Republicans to bear."

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Bipart key Opposition is waning – bipartisanship is key to open up the OCS Energy Washington Week, 7-16-08 (“Pelosi Not Likely To Support Coalition's Bipartisan Move On Drilling” Vol. 5 No. 29, pLn) The House Democratic leadership is likely to oppose a bipartisan move to use a once-scrapped offshore drilling and renewable energy promotion bill, together with other provisions, to address offshore drilling in the wake of record gasoline prices, according to congressional sources. Reps. John Peterson (R-PA) and Neil Abercrombie (D-HI), reportedly facing roadblocks from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), are scrambling to put together a "group of 20" coalition to break the deadlock between Republicans and Democrats on drilling legislation and have a bill ready before the August recess, say these sources. Nevertheless, it is unlikely it will be taken up this session, sources say, leaving a stalemate in place for the national election.

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Concessions key Democrats will only allow OCS if they get concessions The Wall Street Journal, 7-16-08, (“US prohibition on outer continental shelf energy search has been shelved” http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24026023-20142,00.html) US PRESIDENT George W. Bush lifted an executive prohibition on energy exploration in the outer continental shelf, firing the latest salvo in the debate over how to respond to soaring oil prices. Mr Bush's move to lift the executive moratorium on offshore drilling, in place since 1992, will not have any effect until a separate congressional prohibition expires or is overturned. A month ago, Mr Bush had said he would lift the executive ban after Congress acted. But yesterday the President changed tactics, in a move that puts pressure on congressional Democratic leaders already feeling the heat from voters on the drilling issue. Mr Bush said lawmakers should pass legislation that gives states a say in potential drilling off their shores, provides for the sharing of leasing revenue and protects the environment. The congressional ban expires on September 30, but record oil prices make it politically difficult to extend the ban. On the House side, it is not clear whether Democrats will have the votes for an extension. In recent days, congressional leaders have suggested they may relax restrictions on offshore drilling, but only in return for concessions from the oil industry, such as surrendering leases that are sitting idle. Presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain has sided with Mr Bush, despite previous opposition to offshore drilling, while likely Democratic nominee Barack Obama is a critic of opening more offshore territory to drilling.

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OCS key for compromise OCS key area for compromise – dependence on foreign oil and lack of environmental concerns prove Henry J. Pulizzi and Siobhan Hughes Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES, 7-14-08 (“Bush Lifts Executive Ban on Offshore Drilling” http://www.smartmoney.com/breaking-news/ON/index.cfm?story=ON-20080714-000554-1558) He believes offshore areas currently off limits for drilling could eventually produce a decade's worth of oil in a way that doesn't damage the environment. That would address some concerns of Democrats and in the long term alleviate the U.S.'s dependence on foreign sources of oil.

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AT: House key Lack of house leadership means senate is key – they are willing to cross party lines to compromise Energy Washington Week, 7-16-08 (“Pelosi Not Likely To Support Coalition's Bipartisan Move On Drilling” Vol. 5 No. 29, pLn) With the lack of House leadership involved, the Senate may have an increasing role in shaping the legislation. The Senate Democratic leadership is willing to work with the GOP to craft drilling legislation. Because of this, a Senate bill is likely to emerge ahead of the House. House sources planning the group of 20 efforts say they have been in close conversations with the Senate in crafting the NEED Act-based legislation.

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AT: Pelosi key Compromise with Pelosi can be side stepped Energy Washington Week, 7-16-08 (“Pelosi Not Likely To Support Coalition's Bipartisan Move On Drilling” Vol. 5 No. 29, pLn) Pelosi has stated her firm opposition to any bill that would open the nation to more drilling. Both Peterson and Abercrombie staff believe there is middle ground between Pelosi and the stated position of House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH), who has renewed the call to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) along with new offshore drilling. Staff for Abercrombie and Peterson is arguing the necessity to resolve the stalemate, saying their constituents demand House action for fuel relief, and asserting that if working outside the leadership is what is necessary then that is the course they will take.

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AT: Lame duck congress/minority Elections create an incentive to pass OCS drilling – even when republicans are the minority LAURIE KELLMAN, AP news, 7-11-08 (“Congress mostly going through the motions for now” http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gY2mr_SA3rb3a3Iv-SNUy4ja539QD91RMF2O2) Optimistic or realistic, his comments offer a glimpse of the delicate choice of items to be served up by party leaders coordinating Congress' schedule with the presidential campaigns of Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain. Thursday alone provided several examples of how Bush and Democratic congressional leaders are playing for time as it ticks toward the election. There would be no point, Reid suggested, in calling a lame-duck Congress back into session after Election Day to hash out the remaining spending bills only to send the finished products to a lame-duck president who is not shy of exercising his veto power. Republicans, predictably, voiced outrage, but they're the minority and have little power to set the agenda. They've still got access to microphones, however. They exercised this power repeatedly Thursday when they turned virtually every debate in the House to offshore oil drilling — a once-dead idea that has caught on with some voters paying $4-plus for a gallon of gasoline. Members of Congress have a list of accomplishments to counter charges of ineffectiveness.

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Elections?? McCain supports – Obama opposes Henry J. Pulizzi and Siobhan Hughes Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES, 7-14-08 (“Bush Lifts Executive Ban on Offshore Drilling” http://www.smartmoney.com/breaking-news/ON/index.cfm?story=ON-20080714-000554-1558) The president's statement Monday is the latest salvo in an increasingly heated debate. On the presidential campaign trail, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., has sided with Bush, despite previous opposition to offshore drilling, while Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., is a critic of the plan. Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton said lifting the moratorium on offshore exploration wouldn't have the desired effect. "If offshore drilling would provide short-term relief at the pump or a long-term strategy for energy independence, it would be worthy of our consideration, regardless of the risks," Burton said in a statement. "But most experts, even within the Bush administration, concede it would do neither." Citing the Energy Information Administration, Markey said repealing the drilling moratoriums today would have no impact on prices until 2030.

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**IMPACTS - GOOD**

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Oil Drilling Good – Dependence Oil drilling is key to decreasing foreign oil dependency Newswire, 7-16-08, (“ATA Applauds Bush Decision to Lift Off-Shore Drilling Moratorium” http://www.azstarnet.com/sn/news/248476.php) Restricted areas of the Outer Continental Shelf contain at least 18 billion barrels of oil and 76 trillion cubic feet of natural gas that can be recovered using environmentally safe technology. This is enough oil to power 40 million cars and to heat 2 million households for 15 years and enough natural gas to heat 60 million households for almost 20 years. Currently, wells in the Central and Western Gulf of Mexico supply 30 percent of the oil and about 20 percent of the natural gas produced in the United States. Other resource rich areas, however, remain under moratoria, preventing exploration and production off most of the U.S. coastline. These restrictions deny American consumers access to vast domestic energy supplies. Expanding access to new areas would ensure adequate domestic energy supplies because areas currently restricted contain large, untapped resources of oil and natural gas, which are critical to sustaining U.S. economic growth.

Foreign dependence leads to unexpected price spikes and supply shocks – crashing the U.S. economy George Bush, president of the U.S. 6-18-08 (“STATEMENT BY THE PRESIDENT ON ENERGY” speech at the Rose Garden, accessed at http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/06/18/oil-crunch-trumping-climate-concerns/) High oil prices are at the root of high gasoline prices. And behind those prices is the basic law of supply and demand. In recent years, the world’s demand for oil has grown dramatically. Meanwhile, the supply of oil has grown much more slowly. As a result, oil prices have risen sharply, and that increase has been reflected at American gasoline pumps. Now much of the oil consumed in America comes from abroad — that’s what’s changed dramatically over the last couple of decades. Some of that energy comes from unstable regions and unfriendly regimes. This makes us more vulnerable to supply shocks and price spikes beyond our control — and that puts both our economy and our security at risk.

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Oil Drilling Good – Dependence (quals) Offshore drilling will help decrease U.S. dependence on foreign oil – professors of economics agree Joe Brown, staff writer/ reporter, 7-16-08 (“Texas A&M Economist Weighs Pros and Cons of Offshore Drilling” http://www.kbtx.com/local/headlines/25544349.html) Couple high gas prices with a highly-charged political season and the subject of offshore drilling is sure to be a flashpoint for controversy. President Bush's call to lift the Congressional ban on offshore drilling is already drawing vocal opposition from Democrats and environmental groups. But Texas A&M Economics Professor Dr. John Moroney, who has studied and written extensively on the oil industry, believes the time has come to begin searching for new sources of crude. "We use about 13.6-million barrels of imported oil everyday," said Moroney. "It's estimated the reserves in the new Outer-Continental Shelf (OCS) are around 18-billion barrels. So, yes, it would make an impact." But he's quick to add that the impact of offshore drilling would not be immediately felt at the gas pump. "It won't make any difference whatsoever because new oil that could be found and produced on the new Outer-Continental Shelf won't take place for at least eight to 10 years." Many who oppose offshore drilling are raising concerns about its environmental risk. But Moroney says it's comparatively small. "A National Academy of Sciences study found that in the past 15 years there has not been an oil spill from a platform that exceeded 1,000 barrels," he said. "A thousand barrels is a drop in the bucket compared with the oil spills that occur from tankers that are carrying the oil for import. So the environmental risk for major oil spills is tiny." Moroney says all things considered, offshore drilling is a sound, long-term economic strategy. "If we don't start now, that just postpones the delays since it will be eight or 10 years before production prospectively can occur."

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Oil Drilling Good – Dependence (signal) OCS key international signal on US oil dependence Henry J. Pulizzi and Siobhan Hughes Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES, 7-14-08 (“Bush Lifts Executive Ban on Offshore Drilling” http://www.smartmoney.com/breaking-news/ON/index.cfm?story=ON-20080714-000554-1558) "We're going to have to look at that and put together a plan to deal with that issue," Markey told reporters. The conservative Institute for Energy Research said Bush's move Monday is an important first step. "Fortunately, we appear to be nearing the end of nearly three decades of short-sighted, one-size-fits-all policies that restrict access to domestic supplies despite explosive global demand," IER President Thomas Pyle said. "Ending these bans will send a strong signal to the rest of the world that America is finally getting serious about producing more of its own energy."

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Oil Drilling Good – Economy Oil drilling is key to the economy Newswire, 7-16-08, (“ATA Applauds Bush Decision to Lift Off-Shore Drilling Moratorium” http://www.azstarnet.com/sn/news/248476.php) Consumers have struggled with high energy costs for everything from gasoline to home heating oil. The cost of diesel fuel has also pushed the prices of food and consumer products higher as the higher cost of transportation adds to product prices. The U.S. trucking industry depends upon sufficient and affordable diesel fuel supplies to haul 11 billion tons of freight every year. Given current fuel prices, the industry is on pace to spend an unprecedented $170 billion on fuel this year. Environmentally sound expansion of the Outer Continental Shelf leasing program will help ensure that the U.S. trucking industry has enough diesel fuel at affordable prices so that it can continue to deliver the American economy. Restricted areas of the Outer Continental Shelf contain at least 18 billion barrels of oil and 76 trillion cubic feet of natural gas that can be recovered using environmentally safe technology. This is enough oil to power 40 million cars and to heat 2 million households for 15 years and enough natural gas to heat 60 million households for almost 20 years. Currently, wells in the Central and Western Gulf of Mexico supply 30 percent of the oil and about 20 percent of the natural gas produced in the United States. Other resource rich areas, however, remain under moratoria, preventing exploration and production off most of the U.S. coastline. These restrictions deny American consumers access to vast domestic energy supplies. Expanding access to new areas would ensure adequate domestic energy supplies because areas currently restricted contain large, untapped resources of oil and natural gas, which are critical to sustaining U.S. economic growth. The American Trucking Associations is the largest national trade association for the trucking industry. Through a federation of other trucking groups, industry-related conferences, and its 50 affiliated state trucking associations, ATA represents more than 37,000 members covering every type of motor carrier in the United States.

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Oil Drilling Good – AT: Environment Environmental concerns are outdated – our newly developed technology prevents environmental collapse

New York Times, 7/15/08, “Bush Acts on Drilling, Challenging Democrats, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/15/us/15bush.html?_r=1&oref=slogin William L. Kovacs, vice president for environment, technology and regulatory affairs at the United States Chamber of Commerce, said the ban on drilling on the outer shelf reflected an environmental concern that was now outdated. “The drilling, plus the technology, is much safer than it was 15 years ago,” he said.

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Oil Drilling Good – AT: Environment Safe guards prevent environmental destruction – only a risk that we stop US dependence on foreign oil Ben Lieberman, The Heritage Foundation, 7-15-08 (“Lifting the Offshore Drilling Ban” http://frontpagemagazine.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=512F7722-500C-4712-B0EB-C844E917B085) These restrictions effectively banned new offshore energy production off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, parts of offshore Alaska, and the eastern Gulf of Mexico. Recent DOI estimates put the amount of energy in these off-limits areas at 19.1 billion barrels of oil and 83.9 trillion cubic feet of natural gas—approximately 30 years' worth of imports from Saudi Arabia and enough natural gas to power America's homes for 17 years. It should also be noted that these initial estimates tend to be low. OCS restrictions are a relic of the past. They were put in place at a time when energy was cheap, the need for additional domestic supplies was not seen as dire, and the political path of least resistance was to give in to environmentalists. All that has changed, with more than a quadrupling of oil and natural gas prices since the restrictions were first imposed. Extra energy is badly needed, and the risk of producing it has been reduced. All new drilling would be subject to strict safeguards and would require state-of-the-art technology with a proven track record for limiting the risk of spills.

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Oil Drilling Good - Perception Opening OCS decreases oil prices through perception of more oil Jon Ward, staff writer Washington Times, 7-14-08 (“Bush will end executive ban on offshore drilling” http://www.washtimes.com/news/2008/jul/14/bush-will-end-ban-offshore-drilling/) The White House, and many oil market experts, say that opening up the OCS along U.S. coasts, along with the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve, will send a meaningful signal to the market and bring down costs, despite the fact that no oil would actually come on line for several years.

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Oil Drilling Good – Trans/Manufacturing OCS is key to the transportation and manufacturing sectors Jon Ward, staff writer Washington Times, 7-14-08 (“Bush will end executive ban on offshore drilling” http://www.washtimes.com/news/2008/jul/14/bush-will-end-ban-offshore-drilling/) The White House, and many oil market experts, say that opening up the OCS along U.S. coasts, along with the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve, will send a meaningful signal to the market and bring down costs, despite the fact that no oil would actually come on line for several years. They also contend that until the U.S. transportation and manufacturing sectors are able to diversify their energy away from oil and toward other fuels, the U.S. must increase their domestic output. Democrats have largely already been forced to agree with that conclusion, but continue to oppose drilling in the OCS and ANWR.

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Oil Drilling Good – Trucking High fuel prices crushes the trucking industry collapsing the economy ABC News 7-9-08 (“Fuel costs threaten economy: freight industry” http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/07/09/2298280.htm) A road transport industry body says so many companies will have left the sector by the end of the year that freight costs will as much as quadruple. Steve Shearer, from the Road Transport Association, says some operators are imposing a levy of up to 25 per cent on their services to offset the rising price of fuel. He says trucking companies are closing at a rapid rate, because fuel costs have risen by 40 per cent since last September. Mr Shearer says governments could help spread the message to business about why freight companies are charging more, or will have to deal with the economic collapse that follows. "If government stands next to us and says 'Look' to the business community 'this really is a serious issue and if we don't all start taking a long-term view then there won't be a truck industry'," he said. "By the end of this year without doubt there will be so many transport companies that have gone broke and out of business that the ones who are left will be charging three to four times as much because they can and that means that the cost for all sorts of things will be skyrocketing."

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Oil Drilling Good  Renewables OCS legislation leads to increased renewables – solving case Energy Washington Week, 7-16-08 (“Pelosi Not Likely To Support Coalition's Bipartisan Move On Drilling” Vol. 5 No. 29, pLn) Peterson and Abercrombie, driven by energy security concerns and record fuel prices, see the need to cut a bipartisan deal and negotiate a bill that would enhance fossil fuel production while simultaneously increasing the nation's reliance on renewable energy, say congressional sources. They say the starting point is Peterson's National Environment and Energy Development (NEED) Act, which relinquishes the moratorium for outer-continental shelf (OCS) drilling for natural gas, while using the royalties to create a fund to support wind, solar, geothermal and other alternative energy resources. The group of 20 congressmen will meet this week to brainstorm on the potential of the NEED Act in forming new comprehensive energy legislation. The two congressmen are pushing for openness during the forum to gain as many supporters as possible, say sources. As staffers sent out a memo to would-be participants last week, neither the Republican nor the Democrat side of the proposed 20-member working group had been fully fleshed out, say congressional sources. At press time, Monday July 14, the House group of 20 was preparing to assemble -- announcing the group's mission and members on July 15.

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Oil Drilling Good - AT: SPR solves Strategic Petroleum Reserves won’t solve the oil crisis Henry J. Pulizzi and Siobhan Hughes Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES, 7-14-08 (“Bush Lifts Executive Ban on Offshore Drilling” http://www.smartmoney.com/breaking-news/ON/index.cfm?story=ON-20080714-000554-1558) A number of top Democrats have called for oil to be released from the nation's emergency stockpile, an idea the White House has long rejected. Administration spokeswoman Dana Perino repeated that opposition Monday. "What we have seen in the past when people have tried to use the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to affect price is that it hasn't worked," Perino said. "It might bring it down a penny or two, and that's not enough."

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**IMPACTS – BAD**

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Oil Drilling Bad – Oil Spills Ext Oil spills devastate the environment Mark Prado, Maxin Independent Journal, 5/308, “Oil spill’s environmental impact studied six months later” http://www.marinij.com/ci_9147391?source=most_emailed Tiny oysters, herring eggs and shrimplike amphipods may be the bay sentinels that hold the key in determining the ecological impact of the Cosco Busan oil spill. It's been six months since the container ship Cosco Busan clipped the Bay Bridge, spilling 53,000 gallons of oil, fouling the bay shoreline and beaches up and down the coast. The oil affected 50 miles of rocky intertidal habitat, 41 miles of sandy beach habitat, 7.5 miles of salt marsh habitat and 200 acres of eelgrass habitat around the Bay Area. Fort Baker, Rodeo Beach, Kirby Cove, Black Sand Beach, Tennessee Valley and Angel Island beaches were cordoned off as oil washed ashore. More than 1,000 oiled birds were collected alive, while another 2,000 were found dead. About 44 percent of the bunker crude was collected, but some of the remaining oil slipped onto shores and into mud, fouling small crustaceans, worms, larvae and other species. Marin's muddy shores are full of invertebrates, clams and other animals that birds feast on during migration.

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Oil Drilling Bad – Environment  Extinction Environmental degradation leads to extinction. Paul Ehrlich, Professor of Population Studies, Stanford University, and Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1998, “Rivets and Redundancy” – BioScience, Lexis. But just because some functional groups consist of single species that warrant special attention, it does not follow that where there is significant redundancy in a functional group we can afford to lose some of the species. Such a policy would lead to loss of resilience. The essential message of both the redundancy and rivet-popper hypotheses is that we force species and populations (Hughes et al. 1997) to extinction at our own peril. Humanity is utterly dependent on services delivered by ecosystems (Daily 1997). Considering the uncertainties and complexities in the relationships between biodiversity and ecosystem services, policy decisions should have a large “insurance” bias toward protection of biodiversity – and therefore especially toward functional groups in which there is little or no redundancy.

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Oil Drilling Bad – No Impact OCS is just a political stunt – no impact Henry J. Pulizzi and Siobhan Hughes Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES, 7-14-08 (“Bush Lifts Executive Ban on Offshore Drilling” http://www.smartmoney.com/breaking-news/ON/index.cfm?story=ON-20080714-000554-1558) But Bush's Rose Garden remarks drew raspberries from key Democrats: "I've been in Washington long enough to know a political stunt when I see one," Rep. Rahm Emanuel, D-Ill., said in a statement. "The Bush oil policy is an attempt at mass deception by a White House that has for the last seven-and-a-half years pursued Big Oil's agenda of drill, drill, drill," Rep. Edward J. Markey, D-Mass., chairman of the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, said in a statement. "But drill, drill, drill has failed, failed, failed."

OCS wont affect oil market for at least five years Reuters, edited by David Gregorio, 7-11-08, (“Bush urges Congress to open new areas to oil drilling” http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/feedarticle/7645760) Drilling in the closed areas would not lower prices in the short-term. Experts at the Energy Department say it would take at least 10 years to bring any ANWR oil to market, and five to 10 years to develop new offshore fields. (Editing by David Gregorio; Editing by David Gregorio)

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**IMPACTS – AT: DEPENDENCE**

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Oil Drilling Bad – Russian Instability A. Western dependence on Russian oil maintains Russian stability and relations. Steve Hargreaves, CNN Money, “Russia plays hardball, and markets take notice”, 1/2/07, l/n "The [Russian] government has become much more empowered by high oil prices," said Andrew Neff, a senior energy analyst at the consultancy Global Insight. "They see that control and access to energy is their key to a seat at the top table" of the world's most powerful nations. The stakes are high. In addition to being the world's second largest oil exporter, at 9.6 million barrels per day, Russia accounts for over 10 percent of total world production. That makes it the world's second largest producer behind Saudi Arabia's 11.1 million bpd. And its natural gas reserves are the largest on earth, nearly double that of number two Iran. Yet most analysts see little danger of Russia shutting off its energy exports for any length of time. Indeed, up to a quarter of the country's gross domestic product is tied to energy, according to the Energy Information Administration. "It's not like Russia does whatever it wants to," said Denis Maslov, an analyst covering Europe and Eurasia for the Eurasia group, a political risk consultancy. "It does rely on selling its energy to sustain its budget."

B. Russian instability causes hard-line takeover and nuclear war. Victor Irsraelyan, Soviet ambassador, diplomat, and arms control negotiator, Winter, 98' /Russia at the Crossroads: Don't Tease a Wounded Bear. Washington Quarterly/ The first and by far most dangerous possibility is what I call the power scenario. Supporters of this option would, in the name of a "united and undivided Russia," radically change domestic and foreign policies. Many would seek to revive a dictatorship and take urgent military steps to mobilize the people against the outside "enemy." Such steps would include Russia's denunciation of the commitment to no-first-use of nuclear weapons; suspension of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) I and refusal to ratify both START II and the Chemical Weapons Convention; denunciation of the Biological Weapons Convention; and reinstatement of a full-scale armed force, including the acquisition of additional intercontinental ballistic missiles with multiple warheads, as well as medium- and short-range missiles such as the SS-20. Some of these measures will demand substantial financing, whereas others, such as the denunciation and refusal to ratify arms control treaties, would, according to proponents, save money by alleviating the obligations of those agreements. In this scenario, Russia's military planners would shift Western countries from the category of strategic partners to the category of countries representing a threat to national security. This will revive the strategy of nuclear deterrence -- and indeed, realizing its unfavorable odds against the expanded NATO, Russia will place new emphasis on the first-use of nuclear weapons, a trend that is underway already. The power scenario envisages a hard-line policy toward the CIS countries, and in such circumstances the problem of the Russian diaspora in those countries would be greatly magnified. Moscow would use all the means at its disposal, including economic sanctions and political ultimatums, to ensure the rights of ethnic Russians in CIS countries as well as to have an influence on other issues. Of those means, even the use of direct military force in places like the Baltics cannot be ruled out. Some will object that this scenario is implausible because no potential dictator exists in Russia who could carry out this strategy. I am not so sure. Some Duma members -- such as Victor Antipov, Sergei Baburin, Vladimir Zhirinovsky, and Albert Makashov, who are leading politicians in ultranationalistic parties and fractions in the parliament -- are ready to follow this path to save a "united Russia." Baburin's "Anti-NATO" deputy group boasts a membership of more than 240 Duma members. One cannot help but remember that when Weimar Germany was isolated, exhausted, and humiliated as a result of World War I and the Versailles Treaty, Adolf Hitler took it upon himself to "save" his country. It took the former corporal only a few years to plunge the world into a second world war that cost humanity more than 50 million lives. I do not believe that Russia has the economic strength to implement such a scenario successfully, but then again, Germany's economic situation in the 1920s was hardly that strong either. Thus, I am afraid that economics will not deter the power scenario's would-be authors from attempting it. Baburin, for example, warned that any political leader who would "dare to encroach upon

Russia" would be decisively repulsed by the Russian Federation "by all measures on heaven and earth up to the use of nuclear weapons." n10 In autumn 1996 Oleg Grynevsky, Russian ambassador to Sweden and former Soviet arms control negotiator, while saying that NATO expansion increases the risk of nuclear war, reminded his Western listeners that Russia has enough missiles to destroy both the United States and Europe. n11 Former Russian minister of defense Igor Rodionov warned several times that Russia's vast nuclear arsenal could become uncontrollable. In this context, one should keep in mind that, despite dramatically reduced nuclear arsenals -- and tensions -- Russia and the United States remain poised to launch their missiles in minutes. I cannot but agree with Anatol Lieven, who wrote, "It may be, therefore, that with all the new Russian order's many problems and weaknesses, it will for a long time be able to stumble on, until we all fall down together." n12

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Oil Drilling Bad – Hegemony A. Reliance on Russian oil causes Ukraine to fall under Russian control. Paul Gallis, Specialist in European Affairs (Foreign Affairs, Defense, and Trade Division), “NATO and Energy Security”, 3/21/06, http://64.233.167.104/search? q=cache:so8wjwWuv0oJ:www.usembassy.at/en/download/pdf/nato_energy.pdf+russia+oil+depe ndency+NATO+africa&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=7&gl=us&client=firefox-a Over the last several years, the view has grown that the power to ensure access to international energy resources has shifted away from energy consumers to energy producers. The growth of China and India as large consumers of energy, coupled with an inability to develop reliable and affordable alternatives to oil and natural gas, has led to this development. 2 In December 2005-January2006, when Russia dramatically raised the price of natural gas that it was supplying to Ukraine, many saw an effort to squeeze Ukraine politically and economically to secure Kiev within Russia’s orbit. Moscow’s effort also underscored the shift towards the ability of energy producers to exert pressure on countries dependent upon them for supplies. 3 In addition, Russia’s actions made the issue of energy security a high-priority item on the European Union’s agenda.

B. Ukraine is key to US heg. BRAMA, Ukrainian news agency, 9/29/04, http://www.brama.com/news/press/2004/09/040929uccaconf.html Senator McCain went on to remind the audience of a critical fact that has been lost in much of recent thinking in Washington and Europe. “Ukraine is extremely important to its region, to the world and to the United States . I’d like to repeat that – Ukraine is extremely important to the world to the US and to its region. I fear that in recent years that US and Europe have not been fully cognizant of the critical role Ukraine plays and as a result, the aspiration of Ukrainians to see their nation firmly ensconced in the West have drifted. I don’t believe that most Ukrainians, if offered the choice, would choose a future tied closely to Russia . But many Ukrainians believe that they have not been offered this choice. NATO has made clear that Ukrainian membership is not on the horizon, and the EU has offered Kyiv little hope of joining one day. While the West’s door seems closed, Russia’s is always open.” If the trend continued, he thought that it would “be of little surprise if Ukrainian leaders increasing aligned their county’s ambitions with those of their Russian neighbor.” As he saw it: “The US and Europe must see Ukraine for what it is – an important, proud and populous country in a geostrategically critical position – a country with much to offer the West. It would be a terrible blunder if, because of our inattention or mistakes, we allowed Ukraine to slip back into the Russian orbit.” The Arizona Senator did add that “while US needs to pursue an enhanced relationship with Ukraine , it is also imperative that we make clear to its leadership that close ties to the West and membership in our institutions bring certain obligations and the most important of these is to move down the path of democracy.”

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Oil Drilling Bad – Iran Nuclearization 1. Our dependence on Iranian oil is the only way to control Iran, and its nuclear program. Shikha Dalmia, senior analyst with the Reason Foundation, 5/5/06,"Defend America, Buy More Iranian Oil Energy independence isn't a good national security strategy" Vaziri's concern is not so much for the world's oil consumers, of course, as for the economic consequences for his own country. The Iranian government depends on oil exports for nearly half of its total revenues. If it cuts these exports, buyers could go to other suppliers. But there is not much else that Iran could sell to other countries to replace its lost oil revenues. Our dependence on Middle Eastern oil is only the flip side of their dependence on our purchases. But given the narrow base of Middle Eastern economies, the power in the relationship is firmly on the side of the oil buyers. If that relationship were to end because of "energy independence," we would give up crucial leverage to control the worst behavior of some of the world's worst regimes. Of course, this leverage is no magic wand that would protect us from a totally irrational regime willing to absorb the economic cost of using the oil weapon. But the more oil we get from such a regime, the higher the price it would have to pay.

2. Iran nuclearization causes extinction. Stanley Kurtz, Staff Writer for the NRO, 8/28/06, National Review, http://article.nationalreview.com/? q=OWU4MDMwNmU5MTI5NGYzN2FmODg5NmYyMWQ4YjM3OTU= But what if there is no preemptive strike? What if Iran gets the bomb? (I find it tough to credit the notion that a negotiated agreement with Iran can prevent it from developing nuclear weapons. At any rate, only an imminent American military strike would have any hope of generating a verifiable bargain.) An extraordinary new article by Stephen Peter Rosen, “After Proliferation: What to Do if More States Go Nuclear,” makes it obvious that our lives and our politics are going to change dramatically in a post-proliferation world. So either we go to war with Iran — likely a more costly war than any we’ve faced since 9/11 — or our lives will transform forever. To see what I mean, let’s take a tour of Rosen’s remarkable argument. Who Hit Me? Rosen begins by sidestepping (or seeming to sidestep) the controversy between hawkish proliferation pessimists and dovish proliferation optimists. Proliferation pessimists (like yours truly) see only a limited chance of averting disaster if states like Iran get the bomb. For hawkish proliferation pessimists, tough action in the present is our last, best chance to keep the dangerous nuclear genie corked-up

in his bottle. Proliferation optimists, on the other hand, see reasons for hope in the record of nuclear peace during the Cold War. While granting the risks, proliferation optimists point out that the very horror of the nuclear option tends, in practice, to keep the peace. Without choosing between hawkish proliferation pessimists and dovish proliferation optimists, Rosen simply asks how we ought to act in a post-proliferation world. Rosen assumes (rightly I believe) that proliferation is unlikely to stop with Iran. Once Iran gets the bomb, Turkey and Saudi

Arabia are likely to develop their own nuclear weapons, for self-protection, and so as not to allow Iran to take de facto cultural-political control of the Muslim world. (I think you’ve got to at least add Egypt to this list.) With three, four, or more nuclear states in the Muslim Middle East, what becomes of deterrence? A key to deterrence during the Cold War was our ability to know who had hit whom. With a small number of geographically separated nuclear states, and with the big opponents training satellites and specialized advance-guard radar emplacements on each other, it was relatively easy to know where a missile had come from. But what if a nuclear missile is launched at the United States from somewhere in a fully nuclearized Middle East, in the middle of a war in which, say, Saudi Arabia and Iran are already lobbing conventional missiles at one another? Would we know who had attacked us? Could we actually drop a retaliatory nuclear bomb on someone without being absolutely certain? And as Rosen asks, What if the nuclear blow was delivered against us by an airplane or a cruise missile? It might be almost impossible to trace the attack back to its source with certainty, especially in the midst of an ongoing conventional conflict. More Terror We’re familiar with the horror scenario of a Muslim state passing a nuclear bomb to terrorists for use against an American city. But imagine the same scenario in a multi-polar Muslim nuclear world. With several Muslim countries in possession of the bomb, it would be

extremely difficult to trace the state source of a nuclear terror strike. In fact, this very difficulty would encourage states (or ill-controlled elements within nuclear states — like Pakistan’s intelligence services or Iran’s Revolutionary Guards) to pass nukes to terrorists. The tougher it is to trace the source of a weapon, the easier it is to give the weapon away. In short, nuclear proliferation to multiple Muslim states greatly increases the chances of a nuclear terror strike.

Continued – no text removed…

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Oil Drilling Bad – Iran Nuclearization Continued – no text removed… Right now, the Indians and Pakistanis “enjoy” an apparently stable nuclear stand-off. Both countries have established basic deterrence, channels of communication, and have also eschewed a potentially destabilizing nuclear arms race. Attacks by Kashmiri militants in 2001 may have pushed India and Pakistan close to the nuclear brink. Yet since then, precisely because of the danger, the two countries seem to have established a clear, deterrence-based understanding. The 2001 crisis gives fuel to proliferation pessimists, while the current stability encourages proliferation optimists. Rosen points out, however, that a multi-polar nuclear Middle East is unlikely to follow the South Asian model.

Deep mutual suspicion between an expansionist, apocalyptic, Shiite Iran, secular Turkey, and the Sunni Saudis and Egyptians (not to mention Israel) is likely to fuel a dangerous multi-pronged nuclear arms race. Larger arsenals mean more chance of a weapon being slipped to terrorists. The collapse of the world’s non-proliferation regime also raises the chances that nuclearization will spread to Asian powers like Taiwan and Japan. And of course, possession of nuclear weapons is likely to embolden Iran, especially in the transitional period before the Saudis develop weapons of their own. Like Saddam, Iran may be tempted to take control of Kuwait’s oil wealth, on the assumption that the United States will not dare risk a nuclear confrontation by escalating the conflict. If the proliferation optimists are right, then once the Saudis get nukes, Iran would be far less likely to make a move on nearby Kuwait. On the other hand, to the extent that we do see conventional war in a nuclearized Middle East, the losers will be sorely tempted to cancel out their defeat with a nuclear strike. There may have been nuclear peace during the Cold War, but there were also many “hot” proxy wars. If conventional wars break out in a nuclearized Middle East, it may be very difficult to stop them from escalating into nuclear confrontations. Over and above our political arguments over precisely how much to expand our military (really a lot, or a whole heck of a lot), we’re also going to argue about our alliance strategies. With multiple nuclear powers, there will probably be a lot of shifting coalitions. True, the initial alliances are already evident. In a nuclear Middle East, we will be allied with Turkey, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia against Iran. But who knows whether Iran may try to strike a deal with one of the other Muslim states at some point, perhaps cozying up to Saudi Arabia if America puts too much pressure on the House of Saud. Just as America (very imperfectly) peeled Pakistan away from the informal rogue-state coalition after 9/11, shifting alliances between multiple nuclear camps will become a real possibility. American power will no longer command a fully

nuclearized world. Instead, we’ll be the first among nuclear equals, jockeying for position against coalitions of powers who collectively may be able to stand us down. In this new world, Ned Lamont and the Daily Kos will be a distant memory. The most egregious American doves don’t even bother to think out a position on the prospects for deterrence in a post-proliferation world. Implicitly, however, like their realist counterparts, the Howard Dean doves are proliferation optimists. Whether they’ve thought it through or not, their policy preferences require them to believe that a nuclear Iran can be deterred on the model of the Cold War. Rosen claims to be neutral between the dovish proliferation optimists and the hawkish proliferation pessimists. But the truth is, everything Rosen says inclines us toward pessimism. One after another, Rosen knocks down the pillars of the Cold War deterrence analogy, showing that in a

post-proliferation world, the balance of forces will tend toward instability. The lesson is that we face two choices: preemptive war with Iran, or a nightmare world on the brink of nuclear war and nuclear terror for the foreseeable future. Anyway you slice it, the doves are doomed. Unfortunately, so may we be all. Ready or not...duck and cover!

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357 Politics Generic Revamped!

**IMPACTS – TURNS CASE**

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Oil Drilling Bad – Economy A decrease in Middle Eastern exports will cause a growth in the industrial sector, outcompeting Western countries. Gavin Longmuir, Energy Economist and Associate Professor at Ohio Northern University, 2/26/07, “Need For A Balancing Act: Reducing Oil Dependence Without Triggering A Global Crisis,” Middle East Economic Survey, VOL. XLIX No 9, Feb 26, 2007. As yet another alternative, if oil-consuming countries begin to reduce their dependence on oil, major oil exporters could seek to use their now less-valuable oil within their own borders as cheap fuel for a greatly expanded heavy industrial sector. Instead of exporting oil directly, they could export the energy from it embedded in metals, chemicals, and manufactured products at prices that far undercut anything Western producers could match, constrained as they would be by using higher-cost alternative energy sources. In fact, cheap energy in those countries might make their new industries completive with cheap labor industries in China, India, and south Asia. The net result would be a loss of jobs and economic strength, by West and East, without having any impact on the overall global consumption of fossil fuels.

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359 Politics Generic Revamped!

Oil Drilling Bad – Trades Off with RE Increased oil supply destroys our focus on long-term goals of renewable energy. Ethan Goffman, CSA (a worldwide information company) writer, “Global Oil Supply and United States Energy Policy”, 2005,

http://www.csa.com/discoveryguides/ern/05jun/overview.php The United States' reaction to oil shortages has tended to be short-term. During each of four periods of price spike-the 1973 embargo, the 1979 crisis in Iran, the 1991 Gulf War, and today-policy adjustment has ensued on such issues as "conservation, more efficient use of energy, and development of alternative energy sources" (RL31720). Overall, however, the stability and low price of oil has obscured enduring follow-through. The danger of a permanent oil supply shrinkage crisis has seemed remote only partially because of U.S. influence on oil producers. Certainly, American diplomatic relations affect decisions that influence the price of oil, and we are constantly walking a fine diplomatic line, for instance in Saudi Arabia.

The disad turns case – offshore drilling would reduce incentives for alternative energy Richard L. Revesz, dean of NYU School of Law and Michael A. Livermore, executive director of the Institute for the Study of Regulation at NYU School of Law, 7/15/08, “Cost-benefit analysis can help environmentalists battle offshore drilling” http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2008/7/15/04841/6594/ Even aside from the risk of drilling, bringing more oil into the economy will produce little long-term benefit. While it might reduce the price of gas in the short run, it will also reduce incentives to develop more fuel efficient cars and alternative energy sources. Supply-side strategies like offshore oil drilling are ultimately doomed to fail. The result will be more pollution -- threatening public health and contributing to global warming -- with little tangible benefit to show for it. Increased production of oil would destroy production of renewables. Gavin Longmuir, Energy Economist and Ass. Prof at Ohio Northern Univ, 2/26/07, “Need For A Balancing Act: Reducing Oil Dependence Without Triggering A Global Crisis,” Middle East Economic Survey, VOL. XLIX No 9. Oil exporters could take Western commentators seriously and assume that oil importers will indeed reduce their demand for oil, leaving them with then-unmarketable oil sitting in the ground. Their logical response to this threat would be to accelerate production of their oil resources while they still have some value. This would of course drive down the price of oil and undermine the economic feasibility of alternative sources of energy. A collapse in the price of oil would be a death sentence for several new energy technologies, which would consequently increase the demand for oil. In fact, the oil-producing countries might view increasing oil production and lowering prices as a logical interventionist policy to counter the anti-oil interventionist policies of the governments of the consuming countries. Historical data from periods of oil price collapses support this point: low oil prices increase oil demand, decrease efficiency improvements, choke alternative energy resources, and increase wastage.

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Oil Drilling Bad – A2: Solves Dependency Oil drilling won’t decrease our foreign oil dependence until 2020 at the earliest Washington Post, 7/14/08, “Offshore Drilling Back as Remedy for Oil Prices” But developing those resources would take time. A report last year by the Energy Department's Energy Information Administration said that "access to the Pacific, Atlantic, and eastern Gulf regions would not have a significant impact on domestic crude oil and natural gas production or prices before 2030. Leasing would begin no sooner than 2012, and production would not be expected to start before 2017." It added, "Because oil prices are determined on the international market, however, any impact on average wellhead prices is expected to be insignificant."

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Oil Drilling Bad – A2: Solves Dependency Oil drilling maintains oil dependency Sandy Moser, president of REP's Pennsylvania “Cut Oil Dependence” Chapter published in the Philadelphia Inquirer on 11/ 14, 2006 http://www.rep.org/opinions/letters/80.html Yes, a new source of oil is good news. But it is crucial that we understand that increased domestic oil production will not break our dependence on Persian Gulf oil. Oil is a commodity traded in a global market. We cannot wall off our energy economy from the rest of the world even if we wanted to. American companies will buy and sell energy goods and services from other nations in transactions governed by price and value, not by the locality where it was found. In short, as long as we are dependent on oil, we will be dependent on foreign oil. The current offshore drilling proposal to turn our public lands and coastal waters over to the oil companies would be a useless diversion that would raise false hopes and perpetuate our dangerous dependence on oil. Instead, we should aggressively reduce our oil dependence, through greater efficiency and diversifying our energy mix with ethanol and other non-petroleum alternatives.

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Oil Drilling Bad – A2: Solves Dependency Offshore drilling would have no effect until 2030 at the earliest Joseph Romm, staffwriter for the Grist, 6/19/08, “EIA to McCain: Drop offshore (drilling)” http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2008/6/18/132416/923 The U.S. Energy Information Administration recently did a detailed study of the likely outcome of offshore drilling for their Annual Energy Outlook 2007, "Impacts of Increased Access to Oil and Natural Gas Resources in the Lower 48 Federal Outer Continental Shelf (OCS)." The sobering conclusion: The projections in the OCS access case indicate that access to the Pacific, Atlantic, and eastern Gulf regions would not have a significant impact on domestic crude oil and natural gas production or prices before 2030. And the impact of the projected 7 percent (!) increase in lower-48 oil production that might result in 2030 thanks to opening the OCS is ... wait for it ... "any impact on average wellhead prices is expected to be insignificant."

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363 Politics Generic Revamped!

***COLOMBIA FREE TRADE***

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364 Politics Generic Revamped!

1NC – Colombia FTA (1/2) A. Colombia is being blocked by democrats – compromise over jobs is key to passage STEVEN R. WEISMAN, staff writer NYT, 7-13-08, (“Colombia Trade Deal Is Threatened” http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/13/washington/13trade.html?_r=1&ref=americas&pagewanted=all&oref=slogin) WASHINGTON — To President Bush, the free-trade deal his administration negotiated with Colombia has something for everyone. In April, Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the House was not ready to vote on the trade deal. If approved by Congress, it would open a new market for American produce and manufactured goods. Unlike other trade deals, it would not threaten American jobs, because imports from Colombia are already coming in nearly dutyfree. And it would have the added benefit of shoring up a respected ally, President Álvaro Uribe, who has made progress in taming the narcotics traffickers, right-wing death squads and left-wing guerrillas that had almost made Colombia a failed state. In recent months, nearly 100 newspapers in the United States have endorsed the Colombia trade agreement. So have many top Democrats, including Mayor Richard M. Daley of Chicago. And Mr. Uribe, who was already popular in Congress, was widely lionized after the dramatic rescue of hostages in Colombia on July 2. Yet the trade agreement remains a long shot, because of opposition by American labor unions, Democratic leaders in Congress and Senator Barack Obama of Illinois, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee. “I am not optimistic that the Congress will have an opportunity to review the bill this year, unless something unforeseen or dramatic occurs by the administration,” said Representative Charles B. Rangel, the New York Democrat who is chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee. “I don’t think they handled this correctly.” As the price for approval of the Colombia deal, Representative Nancy Pelosi, the House speaker and a California Democrat, demands specifically that the administration expand programs for American workers. She blocked the agreement from coming to a vote in April, infuriating Mr. Bush.

B. The plan would be the perfect compromise for democrats Brian Tumulty, Gannett News Service, 12-23-06 (“Can alternative energy spur job growth?” http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/energy/2006-12-23-energy-jobs_x.htm) WASHINGTON — Expect Democrats who take control of Congress in January to talk about alternative energy as a way to create new jobs, from factory workers who assemble windmills to construction workers who build new ethanol plants.

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1NC – Colombia FTA (2/2) C. Colombia FTA would destroy the Amazon. Tom Loudon, Coordinator, ART, March 2007. [Alliance for Responsible Trade, The "Contaminated" Environmental Chapter of the Free Trade Agreement] Colombia has many regions full of biodiversity, especially in the Andean region, the Chocó jungle, and the Amazon rain forest. The availability of water and the abundance of forests make Colombia one of the richest countries, in terms of natural resources, in the world. This natural heritage is claimed by transnational corporations. They transform renewable and non-renewable natural resources into profits, but still don't have access to the quantity of natural resources that their growing demand requires. Private investors see in the free trade agreements, like those promoted by the U.S. since 1994, the possibility of investing in this sector and gaining access to other resources in order to satisfy their demand. It is not a coincidence that primary materials and natural resources, necessary for the industrial transformation, are many times imported to the U.S. with very low or non-existent taxation.[19] The Andean region of Colombia, composed of the sub-Andean forests, the Andean mountains, and the high plains, holds almost half the total biodiversity of the Neotropic ecozone, which includes South America, Central America, and the Caribbean. It is one of the 12 regions in the world from which cultivated plants come from. Unfortunately, it is also one of the most threatened regions, with highly degraded ecosystems that have resulted from urban expansion and the concentration of the population.[20] Colombia possesses 68,143 square miles of Amazon rain forest[21], of the million and a half square miles of land; it is the largest and richest tropical jungle in the world. The Amazon contains 2,500 species of trees, a third of all species of plants, a third of the tropical wood in the world, and the largest diversity of fresh-water fish, birds and butterflies anywhere. The Amazon River is the longest river on the planet, crossing close to 4,000 miles to the Atlantic Ocean, where it spills about 20% of the world's river water into the ocean.[22] The aforementioned arguments are weighty and sufficient enough to ask the Congress of the United States and the Congress of Colombia, to reject the ratification of the Free Trade Agreement. As has been demonstrated, it is not only the environmental regulations that should be negotiated in the FTA, but the text in its entirety, which negatively and gravely affects the environmental conditions not only in Colombia, but in the entire world.

D. The Amazon is key to planetary survival. Greenwatch 9-29-2006. [Bush Free Trade Plan Puts Amazon up for Grabs, p. http://www.bushgreenwatch.org/mt_archives/000319.php] Because the Amazon rainforest - one of the most biologically diverse regions on earth - filters out massive amounts of the carbon dioxide that generates global warming, experts say the Bush plan will literally endanger the health of the planet. Among other things, the rainforest provides one-quarter of the world's oxygen. And although it comprises less than one percent of the world's land area, the upper Amazon basin in the tropical Andes region is home to one-sixth of all the earth's plant life.

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366 Politics Generic Revamped!

**UNIQUENESS – WILL PASS**

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Will pass – Concession Pelosi is stalling because she wants worker benefits in the U.S. Michael Collier, COHA Research Associate, 6-27-08 (“FREE TRADE WITH COLOMBIA: MCCAIN'S MISGUIDED CAMPAIGN” states news service, pLn) In an interview with the Washington Post, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi made it clear that stalling a vote on ratification of the CTPA was designed to pressure the Bush Administration to provide further domestic economic stimulus provisions and worker benefits. With Bush unlikely to acquiesce, the prospects for Congress to pass the agreement rest on the outcome of the November elections, which presently do not appear favorable for Republicans. Meanwhile, Democratic nominee Barack Obama has openly declared his opposition to the CTPA, based on Colombia's track record with organized labor and paramilitary groups. Still, Obama's opposition to the CTPA is partially rooted in election year posturing, and his recent vote in favor of the U.S.-Peru free trade agreement indicates he is not opposed to free trade in principle. In the event of a November victory, it is unlikely he would ask Congress to ratify the CTPA in its current form. Alternatively, McCain is an outspoken proponent of the free trade deal, as he will reiterate in his forthcoming trip to Colombia. Since he has repeatedly insisted that maintaining free trade is a key part of his agenda, McCain would categorically pursue CTPA ratification if he wins the 2008 election.

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Will pass – Concession If Colombia is put up for vote it will pass – concessions to Pelosi over workers is key WILLIAM ARMBRUSTER, staff writer Florida Shipper, 5-12-08 (“Tangle over trade: Dispute between Democrats and Bush thwarts congressional action on Colombia free-trade agreement” pLn) Deal would lower tariffs on U.S. exports and boost an important ally The clock is ticking down as the Bush administration enters its final months in office, but U.S. Trade Representative Susan Schwab said she is intent on "sprinting to the finish line" in order to win congressional approval of pending free-trade agreements with Colombia, South Korea and Panama. She has her work cut out for her. President Bush and Congress are at loggerheads over the Colombia trade agreement, the top priority for the administration and business leaders. If the Colombia deal fails, there is no chance that Congress will approve the others. On April 8, Bush sent Congress legislation that would implement the agreement. That set in motion a clock that would require full congressional action by September. But two days later, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., stopped the clock, saying that domestic priorities must come first. Bush struck back in his weekly radio address on April 19. "Unfortunately, the Speaker of the House has chosen to block the Colombia free-trade agreement instead of giving it an up or down vote that Congress committed to. Her action is unprecedented and extremely unfortunate. I hope that the Speaker will change her mind. If she does not, the agreement will be dead," he said. Pelosi responded by charging that Bush is putting the agreement "ahead of the concerns of working families." The House must act before the Senate takes up the measure. But there, too, the deal faces a tough road. Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., chair of the Senate Finance Committee, has made it clear that his first priority is "a robust reauthorization of the Trade Adjustment Assistance Act," a spokesman for the committee said. The act provides assistance, including training in new skills, for workers who lose their jobs as a result of trade agreements. Democrats want to increase the number of workers covered under the law. Another priority is to increase the advance notification period given by employers who shut down their factories to move overseas. The tangle over trade adjustment assistance leaves the Colombia agreement hanging despite the economic and political benefits it offers both countries. Opponents have not raised any substantive objections to the agreement itself, though Democrats and labor leaders argue that Colombia must do more to reduce violence against union members. The key benefit from the U.S. perspective is that it would eliminate or substantially reduce duties on most U.S. exports to Colombia. Colombia's current tariffs on imports of U.S. manufactured goods average 14 percent, and range as high as 35 percent. (An article in last week's issue incorrectly stated that the average tariff was 35 percent.) Tariffs on farm products are much higher. In contrast, under legislation first enacted in 1991 and renewed last year, 90 percent of all imports from Colombia enter the U.S. duty-free, while the average duty for the remaining 10 percent is just 2.2 percent. The law, known as the Andean Trade Preference Act, is designed to combat drug production and trafficking in the Andean countries Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru by offering trade benefits to help them develop and strengthen legitimate industries. "Colombia enjoys nearly free access to our marketplace, while our access to theirs remains limited," the U.S. Chamber of Commerce said in a publication seeking to bolster support among small businesses for the accord, officially known as the U.S.-Colombia Trade Promotion Agreement. The National Association of Manufacturers estimates that passage of the agreement would boost U.S. exports by an additional $1.5 billion, thus creating more jobs for American workers. Colombia's increasing affluence its gross domestic product rose 6.5 percent last year, according to the CIA Factbook has made it an increasingly attractive market for U.S. exporters and investors. U.S. exports last year totaled $9.4 billion, up from $5.5 billion in 2005 and $6.7 billion in 2006. Those increases, combined with a drop in imports from Colombia, left the U.S. with a trade surplus of $881 million last year. That made Colombia one of the few countries with which the U.S. has a favorable trade balance. Container trade is also tilting heavily in favor of U.S. exporters. Volume last year decreased just shy of 120,000 TEUs, up 17 percent over 2006, while imports declined 9 percent to about 92,000 TEUs. By contrast, Colombia's containerized exports held a substantial lead over U.S. exports in 2005. Despite the vocal opposition from Pelosi and organized labor, John Engler, NAM's president, said he believes the agreement would pass if Pelosi would put it to a vote. Speaking with reporters at a press luncheon on April 17, Engler said he had read 40 editorials on the Colombia trade agreement, and that all of them supported the deal.

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Will pass – Concession Colombia will pass if it is put up for vote – the only thing stopping it is Pelosi; who will compromise if Bush helps U.S. workers Scott Stearns, VOA White House Correspondent, 5-23-08 (“Bush Wants Free Trade with Colombia” pLn) U.S. President George Bush wants Congress to approve a free trade agreement with Colombia. VOA White House Correspondent Scott Stearns reports, opposition Democrats have delayed that vote until after November elections. Most Colombian exports enter the United States duty free. But the 9,000 U.S. businesses selling goods and services in Colombia still face stiff tariffs. That is why President Bush says it is time for Congress to pass a free trade agreement with Colombia. "Their goods are not taxed. Our goods are," he said. "It seems unfair to me. And people of Congress should understand how unfair it is to the workers in their districts or the farmers in their districts or the people who are working hard for a living in their districts who count upon selling goods overseas." The president says the free trade agreement has enough support in the House of Representatives to pass. But House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has delayed that vote until after November's presidential and legislative elections. Pelosi says President Bush should do more to help American workers hurt by the economic slowdown before Congress passes another trade agreement. Some congressional Democrats are also raising concerns about Colombia's human rights record and its past repression of trade unionists. Mr. Bush says Colombian President Alvaro Uribe has addressed those issues by demobilizing thousands of paramilitary units and naming an independent prosecutor to pursue cases involving attacks against labor leaders.

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Will pass – Bipart If Colombia is put up for vote it will pass with bipartisan support – Peru proves Erika Andersen, staff writer for human events, 7-4-08 (“Colombia Free Trade Agreement in Trouble” http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=27350) Padilla believes the CFTA deserves a swift vote in Congress, which will prove wide bipartisan support for it. He cited last year’s vote to enact the Peru Free Trade Agreement as an example, noting that even Sen. Barack Obama said he would have voted for it had been present. (Obama was absent due to the presidential primary season campaigning.) “The provisions in the Peru free trade agreement that passed the Congress late last year with very heavy bipartisan support -- I think it was 350 votes in the House,” said Padilla. “So, if it’s got identical provisions, I don’t understand why we wouldn’t also seek support for Colombia.”President Bush said Colombia’s President Uribe has expressed that “approving the free trade agreement is the best way for America to demonstrate our support for Colombia.” Bush noted that people are watching to see what America does here and by not passing the CFTA, America would “Not only abandon a brave ally; it would send a signal throughout the region that America cannot be counted on to support its friends.” Republican presidential candidate John McCain this week released an ad supporting the CFTA and bolstered his credentials by featuring the commercial with a Spanish translation. Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama does not support the agreement. “I don’t understand how we can say we want to work with the world and then refuse to pass agreements that are in our own interest with allies,” Padilla said.

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**UNIQUENESS – WONT PASS**

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Wont pass – Democrats/Pelosi Democrats and Pelosi are blocking Colombia – Pelosi is key Erika Andersen, staff writer for human events, 7-4-08 (“Colombia Free Trade Agreement in Trouble” http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=27350) White House Undersecretary for International Trade Christopher A. Padilla said Congress is holding the CFTA hostage to election year politics, having refused it even a debate on the House floor due to Congress’ disagreement with President Bush over “protocol” measures and concerns for labor unions in the country. At a meeting at the Heritage Foundation Tuesday, Padilla reported that Americans have paid $1.1 billion in tariffs -- import product taxes -- to the Colombian government. Colombia, though, exports about 92 percent of their products to us duty free, in what Padilla tagged “one-way free trade.” A result of the Andean Trade Preferences Act, which was enacted to help fight drug trafficking and alleviate poverty in Colombia, the U.S. opened its market to Colombian imports, but did not remedy things positively for the U.S. Enacting the CFTA would benefit both countries by reducing barriers for the US and installing trading security for Colombia The CFTA would significantly decrease the tax burden on Americans and increase American exports. The current trade agreement between the countries is set to run out on December 31, 2008. If the measure doesn’t come to the floor for a vote, it could expire under the 110th Congress. Earlier this year, President Bush signed a letter to Congress designed to move forth legislation to implement the CFTA, but progress remains to be seen -- even though 9,000 American companies that do business with Colombia would likely benefit economically, according to a recent report from the Competitive Enterprise Institute. As trading partners worldwide move forward, the U.S. lags behind and Padilla noted pending trade agreements with Korea and Panama as well. “The Koreans are negotiating with the EU, with Canada, and they’re even talking to the Chinese…so if we really want to stand by and watch East Asia integrate around China as opposed to integrating with the United States, well, that’s what happens if we turn our backs on allies like Korea,” Padilla said. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is a principal force against moving the CFTA to the floor for a vote but Padilla cited that “10 or 11 Democrats” have voted against her position. Representatives Gregory Meeks (NY), Joseph Crowley (NY), Jim Matheson (Utah), and Jim Cooper (Tenn.) all support the agreement. Earlier this year, Pelosi and the Democrats on the House Rules Committee were able to change established congressional rules for “fast tracking” trade agreements because President Bush had planned to send the measure to Capitol Hill without the support of Democratic leaders.

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Wont pass – Democrats/Pelosi Colombia wont pass because of democratic opposition and Pelosi Reuters 7-16-08 (“House Republicans push for Colombia pact vote” http://www.reuters.com/article/politicsNews/idUSN1648117020080716?sp=true) WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republicans pressured U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Wednesday to set a vote on a free trade pact with Colombia, which they said would die if Congress does not approve it this year. "If the 110th Congress adjourns without a vote in both the House and the Senate, the agreement will be well and truly dead," senior Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee and the House Rules Committee said in a letter to colleagues. The free trade deal with Colombia, one of the United States' staunchest allies in Latin America, has been in limbo since April, when Pelosi rebuffed an effort by President George W. Bush to force a vote on the pact. Bush submitted the agreement under White House trade promotion authority, a law passed in 2002 which required Congress to vote approve or reject trade agreements within 90 days and without making any amendments. However, Pelosi pushed through a rule change allowing her to delay action indefinitely on the pact. She said Bush had ignored her warning that Congress was not ready to vote on agreement, which many Democrats strongly oppose on the grounds that they believe Colombia has not done enough to curb violence against labor groups.

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Wont pass – Violence Pelosi won’t let Colombia pass because of violence in Colombia – this is the deciding factor Mike Michaud, Maine Rep, 5-14-08 (“MICHAUD JOINS U.S. AND COLOMBIAN LABOR LEADERS TO SPEAK OUT AGAINST COLOMBIAN FTA” states news service, pLn) "When I confronted President Uribe about the violence, he issued an unconvincing flat denial, hoping that we would turn a blind eye toward the violence in order to pass a free trade agreement. The Bush Administration shows complete disregard for the views of American people by promoting a trade agenda that has been a boon for big business at the expense of working families and their jobs. Furthermore, the Colombia FTA rewards a country whose record of violence against union organizers is nothing short of disgraceful. The Administration is pushing an agenda under the guise of national security in order to promote its own special interests. I am pleased Speaker Pelosi has halted the consideration of the Colombia FTA until the violence is addressed in Colombia," said Congressman Michaud.

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AT: Hostage Rescue  passage Pelosi says hostage rescue is not enough – helping the economy is key Doug Palmer, staff writer Reuters, 7-3-08, (“Hostage rescue may not free US-Colombia trade deal” http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSN03258932) WASHINGTON, July 3 (Reuters) - Colombia's dramatic rescue of hostages held for years by a rebel group probably won't lead to quick approval of a U.S.-Colombia free trade agreement that has been snagged for months in the U.S. Congress. "Politically, it's just not in the cards," said Peter Hakim, president of the Inter-American Dialogue, a think tank focused on Western Hemisphere affairs. Colombia soldiers posing as aid workers tricked the4-decade-old FARC guerrilla group into releasing Colombian politician Ingrid Betancourt, three Americans and 11 other hostages on Wednesday. The rescue raised White House hopes that House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi might reconsider her opposition to the U.S.-Colombia free trade agreement and schedule a vote soon on the pact. "One of the concerns that she said she's had has been security in Colombia," White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said. "We maintain that President (Alvaro) Uribe, since elected -- since he was elected -- has done a tremendous job of improving security there in Colombia." Although Pelosi applauds the rescue, it doesn't reduce longstanding concerns she has had about violence facing union workers in Colombia, Pelosi spokesman Nadeam Elshami said. Also, she still believes Congress and the Bush administration must do more to boost the U.S. economy before turning to the Colombia trade pact, Elshami said. The rescue is a "wonderful thing obviously," said Thea Lee, policy director for the AFL-CIO labor federation, which has strongly fought the U.S. Colombia free trade deal. "It doesn't change the critique that we had of the challenges facing Colombia workers -- the ongoing violence, death threats and impunity," Lee said.

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AT: Tax cuts  passage Bush’s tax cuts aren’t what Democrats are looking for AP, 4-14-08 (“Bush Says Colombia Trade Deal 'Dead' Unless Pelosi Schedules Vote” http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,351224,00.html?sPage=fnc/politics/executivebranch) Bush also talked with members of his Cabinet about the troubled U.S. economy and urged lawmakers to make his tax cuts permanent. Noting that income taxes are due on Tuesday, Bush said the economic stimulus package will allow some tax payments to be returned to taxpayers. "The second week of May, checks and/or credits to your account will start coming to you," Bush said. "And that's going to be an important part of making sure this economy begins to recover in a way that will add confidence and hope." "One way Congress can act is to make the tax cuts permanent. If they really are that concerned about economic uncertainty, they ought to create certainty in the tax code." He said his administration has set up programs to help more homeowners stay in their homes, but that Congress also needs to modernize the Federal Housing Administration and implement other changes that will encourage the housing market to turn around. "Congress recently has been working on legislation for beach monitoring and landscape conservation, and those are important issues, but not nearly as important as FHA modernization and the Colombia Free Trade Agreement or making the tax cuts permanent," Bush said. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Bush's call to extend the tax cuts would help multimillionaires and special interests, not average working Americans. Reid said that stagnating incomes and rising health care, education, food and energy prices are squeezing middle-class families, who are looking for a change in U.S. economic policy — "not the same economic ideas that got us into this mess in the first place."

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**PELOSI KEY**

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Pelosi Key Pelosi is in control of Colombia – if she gets what she wants it will pass AP, 4-14-08 (“Bush Says Colombia Trade Deal 'Dead' Unless Pelosi Schedules Vote” http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,351224,00.html?sPage=fnc/politics/executivebranch) ASHINGTON — President Bush stepped up pressure Monday on Congress to approve a controversial free-trade pact with Colombia, saying the deal is "dead" unless House Speaker Nancy Pelosi schedules a vote. After a meeting with his Cabinet, Bush said it's not in America's interest to "stiff an ally" like Colombia. Bush sent the agreement to Capitol Hill earlier this month, but the House, led by Democrats, decided to eliminate a rule forcing a vote on the deal within 60 legislative days. The House's decision probably kills consideration of the Colombia agreement this year, leaving it for the next administration. "This free trade agreement is in our national interests," Bush said. "Yet that bill is dead unless the speaker schedules a definite vote. This was an unprecedented move. It's not in our country's interests that we stiff an ally like Colombia and that we don't encourage our goods and services to be sold overseas." Pelosi, D-Calif., who initiated the rules change, blames Bush for submitting the agreement before a consensus was reached with congressional leaders on outstanding differences. She has said that whether the agreement is dead for the year depends on the good faith of negotiations between Democrats and the White House. The president, Pelosi said Monday at a news conference, has demonstrated again "how out of touch he is with the concerns of America's working families." Responding to Bush's charges she had stiffed an ally, she said that "for seven long years the president's economic policies have stiffed" the American people. Bush has staked out free trade as one of his chief economic legacies, winning a bruising battle to implement the Central American Free Trade Agreement with six countries in Latin America as well as a number of individual pacts. While two other agreements with Panama and South Korea are also pending, analysts said the Colombia agreement is likely to be the last one that has any chance of winning approval in Bush's last year in office. The administration insisted the deal would be good for the United States economically because it would eliminate high barriers that U.S. exports to Colombia now face, while most Colombian products are already entering the United States duty-free under existing trade preference laws. Trade also is shaping up as a key issue in the presidential campaign and in the fight for control of Congress. The administration charged that Democrats were forsaking a key South American ally while Democrats said Colombia needed to do more to halt the violence against union organizers before they would consider the trade pact. In explaining their opposition, Democrats have cited the continued violence against organized labor in Colombia and differences with the administration over how to extend a program that helps U.S. workers displaced by foreign competition. White House press Dana Perino told reporters later that unless Pelosi scheduled a vote, she will be accused of killing the deal. Perino said she was not aware of any conversations between Bush and Pelosi since last week, but that presidential advisers are working with lawmakers. "The president believes she (Pelosi) made a choice to kill the Colombia free trade agreement, and that if, and until, she schedules a vote on the Colombia free trade agreement, she has, in effect, killed it," Perino said.

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Pelosi Key - Jobs Pelosi will compromise on Colombia is she gets what she wants – which is jobs The Washington Post, 4-20-08 (“Colombia’s Case; The intellectual poverty of a free-trade deal’s opponents” pLn) HOUSE SPEAKER Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) says the Bush administration's free-trade agreement with Colombia may not be dead, even though she has postponed a vote on it indefinitely. If the White House doesn't "jam it down the throat of Congress," she said, she might negotiate. Ms. Pelosi wants an "economic agenda that gives some sense of security to American workers and businesses . . . that somebody is looking out for them" -- though she was vague as to what that entails. Nor did she specify how anyone could "jam" through a measure on which the administration has already briefed Congress many, many times.

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Pelosi Key - Economy Pelosi blocking because of Bush’s economic policies Rob Kyff is a teacher and writer in West Hartford, 6-6-08 (“TALK IS CHEAP (SO KINDLY TIP YOUR WRITER)” pLn) A few weeks, ago, when a cranky U.S. House of Representatives voted to postpone a free-trade agreement with Colombia, President Bush complained that Congress had "stiffed" Colombia. In response, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi said, "The president's failed economic plan has stiffed the American people."

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Concessions key to agenda Concessions are key to Bush’s agenda Patton Boggs LLP, law firm and lobby shop, ‘06 (“The Agenda of the 110th Congress, A New Form of Divided Government?” available at http://www.pattonboggs.com/files/News/f50d4124-24f6-474e-9bd7b5a2c77c933a/Presentation/NewsAttachment/4e83e09f-2fa5-4c5e-906a-b61bb6c91e88/FINAL%20full %20memo.pdf) In this new period of even more divided government, whether the 110th Congress ends up mired in gridlock or engaged in legislating will depend in large measure on the attitude of the White House and the popularity of the President. On many issues over the next two years, President Bush will have to decide whether to stand on principle, using his veto pen to block Congressional initiatives, or to seek common ground with both the House and the Senate. As recent history demonstrates, Presidents who have opted for compromise with their opponents have been able to achieve significant victories. For example, notwithstanding the impact of the Iran-Contra scandal, President Reagan -- by reaching out to Democrats -- was able to achieve major victories, including building up the defense budget (and with it, setting in motion forces which helped lead to the fall of the Berlin Wall) and enactment of fundamental tax reform. President George H. W. Bush and a Democratic-controlled Congress enacted the Americans with Disabilities Act and one of the most far-reaching deficit reduction programs in history. Similarly, by reaching out to the Republican Congress elected in 1994, President Clinton was able to achieve major legislative victories, including enactment of fundamental welfare reform and adoption of the first balanced budget in three decades. President Bush will similarly have the opportunity to pursue legacy initiatives in the 110th Congress, including comprehensive immigration reform, fundamental tax reform, and potentially the most difficult of all, comprehensive entitlement reform (Medicare and Social Security). But to be successful, the President will have to reach out to Democrats, who will have the power, and going into the 2008 election cycle, may have the incentive, to block his legislative initiatives. For the first time in decades, both parties will be heading into a Presidential election in which no heir apparent is in place. (This will be the first election in over a half century in which a sitting President or Vice President is not seeking re-election. And, for the first time since James Madison and James Monroe held office two centuries ago, whomever is elected will follow two presidents who served two full terms in succession.) Moreover, having won control of both houses, Democrats may conclude it ultimately is in their overall interest to ensure nothing of consequence beyond their own agenda gets done on Capitol Hill. Finally, no matter what the President and his Republican allies on Capitol Hill want to achieve legislatively, developments in Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, and North Korea may dominate the agenda.

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**LINKS**

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Link - Wind Wind necessitates a lot of workers Brian Tumulty, Gannett News Service, 12-23-06 (“Can alternative energy spur job growth?” http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/energy/2006-12-23-energy-jobs_x.htm) And when they speak, companies like Tower Tech Systems on the western shore of Lake Michigan in Manitowoc, Wis., and Suzlon Rotor Corp. in the southwest Minnesota community of Pipestone will exemplify what they mean. Tower Tech was a start-up firm two years ago formed by four local investors. The company employs 94 people who fabricate and weld steel towers for windmills. Most are shipped to Canada under contract with a Danish company that is assembling them, but in 2007 more shipments will go to sites around the United States. CONGRESS: Democrats keep energy goals modest for '07 Tower Tech is planning to open a welding school to train more workers who manipulate a joy stick and watch their welding on a video screen as it ramps up production from two towers a week to four-a-week in 2007 and eight-aweek in 2008, said Dan Wergin, a vice president. "If we could produce 1,000 of these towers, we could sell them," said Wergin, one of the founders. The company is providing workers will a full package of benefits that includes health, vision, dental, disability and life insurance, while paying then $17 to $25 an hour. On top of that, Tower Tech already is one of the larger consumers of domestically produced steel in Wisconsin, according to Wergin. Other jobs are being "in-sourced," which means foreign companies are creating manufacturing jobs by investing in the United States. Suzlon Rotor Corp., the American subsidiary of India-based Suzlon Energy, began producing windmill blades and nose cones in late November. It employs 235 and expects add 40 jobs by late summer of 2007, said spokeswoman Michelle Montague. Congressional Democrats are committing themselves to a policy agenda that includes energy independence by 2016. And Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack, a Democratic candidate for his party's 2008 presidential nomination, is making energy security a central campaign theme. The new jobs that could be created would help address "the middle-class squeeze," according to Vilsack. That's Democrat-speak for stagnating incomes, higher energy and college costs, and the erosion of manufacturing jobs The Apollo Alliance, a coalition of labor unions and environmental advocates, is advocating a $300 billion, 10-year public-private program to create "clean energy" industries. They project the program would create 3.3 million new jobs and free the United States from the need for imported oil. Is that a realistic goal?

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Link – Ethanol/Bio-diesel Ethanol and Bio-diesel create jobs Brian Tumulty, Gannett News Service, 12-23-06 (“Can alternative energy spur job growth?” http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/energy/2006-12-23-energy-jobs_x.htm) Economist John Urbanchuck of the consulting firm LECG LLC describes it as a "laudable" objective that would require some new technological breakthroughs and may not be politically achievable. Urbanchuck, whose specialties are agriculture and renewable fuels, estimates the ethanol industry currently employs only about 5,000 and is directly responsible for about another 100,000 jobs in associated fields such as transportation. Bio-diesel employs even fewer people. He estimates 1,500 are directly employed in manufacturing and another 25,000 in associated jobs.

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Link – Wind/Solar Wind and solar create manufacturing jobs Brian Tumulty, Gannett News Service, 12-23-06 (“Can alternative energy spur job growth?” http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/energy/2006-12-23-energy-jobs_x.htm) Wind and solar energy, meanwhile, are produced passively and require very few maintenance employees. Jobs in those fields involve mostly manufacturing windmills and solar panels. The legislative vehicle for accomplishing much of this would be The New Apollo Energy Project, a bill introduced in 2005 by Rep. Jay Inslee, D-Wash. Inslee's bill, which did not have any chance of becoming law in a Republican-controlled Congress, is not likely to become law even with a Democratic majority because President Bush still occupies the White House and could veto it, according to Rep. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., a co-sponsor of Inslee's bill. "I do not see the prospect of a 180-degree pivot on energy policy," said Baldwin, who hopes nonetheless that the new Congress can at least remove regulatory obstacles. For example, Baldwin points to how she and other lawmakers persuaded the Federal Aviation Administration to consider new applications for wind farms on a case-by-case basis after the agency had earlier issued a directive stopping the construction of all new windmill farms because they could interfere with radar. The United States has about 20,000 windmills that produce electricity, according to the American Wind Energy Association. Although windmills are low-maintenance energy producers that don't require many workers to monitor, there is a demand for factory workers to manufacture their parts, for transportation workers to haul them and for construction workers to pour foundations and erect the towers.

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Colombia key to other FTA’s If Colombia fails congress wont pass Panama or North Korea FTA’s WILLIAM ARMBRUSTER, staff writer Florida Shipper, 5-12-08 (“Tangle over trade: Dispute between Democrats and Bush thwarts congressional action on Colombia free-trade agreement” pLn) She has her work cut out for her. President Bush and Congress are at loggerheads over the Colombia trade agreement, the top priority for the administration and business leaders. If the Colombia deal fails, there is no chance that Congress will approve the others.

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AT: Labor Violence Violence has gone down 90 percent Erika Andersen, staff writer for human events, 7-4-08 (“Colombia Free Trade Agreement in Trouble” http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=27350) Many Congressional Democrats cite violence against labor union workers as the reason for their opposition to the CFTA but the statistics show that union members are no more prone to violence than the general population. According to CEI, murders in the country overall have decreased almost 90% from 1996.

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**IMPACTS – FTA GOOD**

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Colombia Good - Naroctics Failure to pass CFTA hinders the war on narcotics Erika Andersen, staff writer for human events, 7-4-08 (“Colombia Free Trade Agreement in Trouble” http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=27350) Colombia’s patience -- sometimes valuable in the war on narcotics -- may soon wear thin because the U.S. Congress is continuing to stall a vote on a Free Trade Agreement, in limbo since its signing 590 days ago in November of 2006.

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Colombia Good – Economy Passage before December is key to the U.S. economy Erika Andersen, staff writer for human events, 7-4-08 (“Colombia Free Trade Agreement in Trouble” http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=27350) Padilla believes the rule changes are actually “a trend toward economic isolationism on the part of the Congressional leadership, and not these excuses about needing more time or labor environment issues.” Colombia has already signed and renegotiated their side of the agreement but the U.S. hasn’t finalized their end. Padilla said that if the Congress hasn’t acted by the December date, the Colombians will not have a preferential benefit any more. The U.S. has free trade agreements with Central America, Peru and Chile, and Colombia may fear they will lose jobs from people investing in countries more available to free trade. President Bush said the CFTA will advance America's national security interests, strengthen Colombia and help America's economy and workers. The Bush Administration has pushed the measure, having more than 50 members of Congress -- Democrat and Republican -- visit the country for assessment purposes. “[My Grandma] would say throwing away coupons from the Sunday paper is like throwing away free money…The good news is we have a coupon that would eliminate all of the tariffs on our products, in most cases immediately as soon as the trade agreement goes into effect…And the coupon as of today is worth $1.1 billion, and it’s called the Colombia Free Trade Agreement,” Padilla said. According to CEI, the CFTA would make it so “more than 80 percent of consumer and industrial products exported to Colombia would enter that country duty-free immediately.” By enacting the agreement, America could also decrease import prices, thereby relieving price anxieties on Colombia and helping to improve their economy overall.

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Colombia Good - Economy A. The Columbia FTA would create jobs necessary to sustain the American economy Washington Post, 4/10/08, “Drop Dead, Colombia” http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/article/2008/04/09/AR2008040903638.html THE YEAR 2008 may enter history as the time when the Democratic Party lost its way on trade. Already, the party's presidential candidates have engaged in an unseemly contest to adopt the most protectionist posture, suggesting that, if elected, they might pull out of the North American Free Trade Agreement. Yesterday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi declared her intention to change the procedural rules governing the proposed trade promotion agreement with Colombia. President Bush submitted the pact to Congress on Tuesday for a vote within the next 90 legislative days, as required by the "fast-track" authority under which the U.S. negotiated the deal with Colombia. Ms. Pelosi says she'll ask the House to undo that rule. That political turf-staking, and the Democrats' decreasingly credible claims of a death-squad campaign against Colombia's trade unionists, constitutes all that's left of the case against the agreement. Economically, it should be a no-brainer -- especially at a time of rising U.S. joblessness. At the moment, Colombian exports to the United States already enjoy preferences. The trade agreement would make those permanent, but it would also give U.S. firms free access to Colombia for the first time, thus creating U.S. jobs. Politically, too, the agreement is in the American interest, as a reward to a friendly, democratic government that has made tremendous strides on human rights, despite harassment from Venezuela's Hugo Chávez.

B. Economic collapse leads to nuclear war Walter Russell Mead, Senior Fellow for U.S. Foreign Policy at the Council on Foreign Relations, World Policy Institute, 1992 Hundreds of millions – billions – of people have pinned their hopes on the international market economy. They and their leaders have embraced market principles – and drawn closer to the west – because they believe that our system can work for them. But what if it can’t? What if the global economy stagnates – or even shrinks? In that case, we will face a new period of international conflict: South against North, rich against poor. Russia, China, India – these countries with their billions of people and their nuclear weapons will pose a much greater danger to world order than Germany and Japan did in the 30s.

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Colombia Good – Terrorism/Security Passage is key to stop terrorism in South America Erika Andersen, staff writer for human events, 7-4-08 (“Colombia Free Trade Agreement in Trouble” http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=27350) Economics aside, accepting the CFTA would amp up American national security interests. Colombia has successfully battled the domestic terrorist group FARC by upholding democracy and maintaining free markets under President Alvaro Uribe, who enjoys an 80% approval rating. Colombia is surrounded by dangerous countries like Venezuela, who would be more than happy to assist them in coming up against the US should we prove unreliable. “I think the debate about Colombia is an important litmus test in many ways for whether America is going to remain committed to the policies of openness, the basic idea that we are better as a society because we are open to foreign trade and investment,” Padilla said.

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**IMPACTS – FTA BAD**

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FTA bad – Human Rights Cred - Terrorism A. Colombia FTA kills US human rights credibility. Representative Phil Hare, D-Ill. (17th CD), 1-17-2008. [US Fed News, BUSH TRADE AGENDA WOULD COMPOUND ECONOMIC PAIN OF WORKING AMERICANS, p. lexis] "Despite a slight decrease in the number of murders since trade negotiations began, Colombia remains the most dangerous nation in the world for union organizers. According to Colombian labor rights groups, more than 2,500 trade unionists have been killed over the last 20 years and 38 in 2007 alone, with almost all cases remaining unsolved. There were also 201 death threats against trade unionists last year. Is this the progress Ambassador Schwab is crowing about? "The right to organize and bargain collectively is essential to human freedom. I believe passage of the Colombia FTA would greatly diminish our reputation as a leader in the fight to end human rights abuses worldwide.

B. Our human rights credibility is the only way to win the war on terror. Tom Malinowski, Advocacy Director for Human Rights Watch, 7-7-2004. [Human Rights News, "Promoting Human Rights and Democracy," p. http://hrw.org/english/docs/2004/07/07/usint9009_txt.htm] Having an effective and principled American strategy to promote democratic freedoms around the world has never been more important to America’s national security. Indeed, I strongly believe that promoting human rights is central to America’s central national security imperative of defeating terror, for three reasons. First, the aims of Al Qaeda and its allies are advanced by the actions of repressive regimes in the Muslim world, which stretches from Africa to the Middle East to Central, South and Southeast Asia. The terrorists’ primary aim, we should remember, is to turn the hearts and minds of the people of this region against their governments and against the West, and to seize upon that anger to transform the region politically. When governments in countries like Pakistan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Uzbekistan shut down political dissent, lock up non-violent dissidents, torture opponents, abuse the rule of law, and deny their people fair justice, they are contributing to the radicalization of their people, thus playing right into the hands of terrorist movements. And when ordinary people in the region associate the United States with their repressive governments, Al Qaeda’s aim of painting the United States as the enemy is also advanced. Second, in the long run, the only viable alternative to the rise of violent, extremist movements in this region is the development of moderate, non-violent political movements that represent their peoples’ aspirations, speaking out for economic progress and better schools and against corruption and arbitrary rule. But such movements can only exist under democratic conditions, when people are free to think, speak, write and worship without fear, when they can form political organizations, and when their rights are protected by independent courts. Without a doubt, more radical organizations can also exploit democratic freedoms to express their views, and they will be part of the political landscape as societies in the Middle East become more open. But as for terrorists, they do not need human rights to do what they do. They have thrived in the most repressive societies in the world. It is the people who don’t use violence who need democratic freedoms to survive. Third, promoting human rights and democracy is important because America’s moral authority partly depends on it. American power in the world is more likely to be respected when it is harnessed to goals that are universally shared. People around the world are more likely to aid the United States in the fight against terrorism and other important goals if they believe the United States is also interested in defending their rights and aspirations. When America is seen to be compromising the values it has long preached, its credibility and influence are diminished.

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FTA bad – Human Rights Cred - Terrorism C. Extinction Alexander 03(Yonah, Director of Inter-University Terrorism Studies, Washington Times, August 28, 2003. http://www.cross-x.com/vb/showthread.php?t=983842&highlight=Alexander ) Last week's brutal suicide bombings in Baghdad and Jerusalem have once again illustrated dramatically that the international community failed, thus far at least, to understand the magnitude and implications of the terrorist threats to the very survival of civilization itself. Even the United States and Israel have for decades tended to regard terrorism as a mere tactical nuisance or irritant rather than a critical strategic challenge to their national security concerns. It is not surprising, therefore, that on September 11, 2001, Americans were stunned by the unprecedented tragedy of 19 al Qaeda terrorists striking a devastating blow at the center of the nation's commercial and military powers. Likewise, Israel and its citizens, despite the collapse of the Oslo Agreements of 1993 and numerous acts of terrorism triggered by the second intifada that began almost three years ago, are still "shocked" by each suicide attack at a time of intensive diplomatic efforts to revive the moribund peace process through the now revoked cease-fire arrangements [hudna]. Why are the United States and Israel, as well as scores of other countries affected by the universal nightmare of modern terrorism surprised by new terrorist "surprises"? There are many reasons, including misunderstanding of the manifold specific factors that contribute to terrorism's expansion, such as lack of a universal definition of terrorism, the religionization of politics, double standards of morality, weak punishment of terrorists, and the exploitation of the media by terrorist propaganda and psychological warfare. Unlike their historical counterparts, contemporary terrorists have introduced a new scale of violence in terms of conventional and unconventional threats and impact. The internationalization and brutalization of current and future terrorism make it clear we have entered an Age of Super Terrorism [e.g. biological, chemical, radiological, nuclear and cyber] with its serious implications concerning national, regional and global security concerns.

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FTA bad – Human Rights Cred - Demo Promo A. Colombia FTA kills US human rights credibility. Representative Phil Hare, D-Ill. (17th CD), 1-17-2008. [US Fed News, BUSH TRADE AGENDA WOULD COMPOUND ECONOMIC PAIN OF WORKING AMERICANS, p. lexis] "Despite a slight decrease in the number of murders since trade negotiations began, Colombia remains the most dangerous nation in the world for union organizers. According to Colombian labor rights groups, more than 2,500 trade unionists have been killed over the last 20 years and 38 in 2007 alone, with almost all cases remaining unsolved. There were also 201 death threats against trade unionists last year. Is this the progress Ambassador Schwab is crowing about? "The right to organize and bargain collectively is essential to human freedom. I believe passage of the Colombia FTA would greatly diminish our reputation as a leader in the fight to end human rights abuses worldwide.

B. Human rights credibility is key to democracy promotion. Thomas Carothers, Foreign Affairs, March/April 2006, “The Backlash against Democracy Promotion” The recent "color revolutions" in Georgia, Ukraine, and Kyrgyzstan and the widespread suspicion that U.S. groups such as the National Democratic Institute (NDI), the International Republican Institute (IRI), Freedom House, and the Open Society Institute played a key behind-the-scenes role in fomenting these upheavals have clearly helped trigger the backlash. Politicians from China to Zimbabwe have publicly cited concerns about such events spreading to their own shores as justification for new restrictions on Western aid to NGOs and opposition groups. Yet there is something broader at work than just a fear of orange (Ukraine's revolution came to be known as the Orange Revolution). The way that President George W. Bush is making democracy promotion a central theme of his foreign policy has clearly contributed to the unease such efforts (and the idea of democracy promotion itself) are creating around the world. Some autocratic governments have won substantial public sympathy by arguing that opposition to Western democracy promotion is resistance not to democracy itself, but to American interventionism. Moreover, the damage that the Bush administration has done to the global image of the United States as a symbol of democracy and human rights by repeatedly violating the rule of law at home and abroad has further weakened the legitimacy of the democracypromotion cause.

C. Extinction Diamond, 1995 (Larry, Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution – “Promoting Democracy in the 1990s,” wwics.si.edu/subsites/ccpdc/pubs/di/1.htm) This hardly exhausts the lists of threats to our security and well-being in the coming years and decades. In the former Yugoslavia nationalist aggression tears at the stability of Europe and could easily spread. The flow of illegal drugs intensifies through increasingly powerful international crime syndicates that have made common cause with authoritarian regimes and have utterly corrupted the institutions of tenuous, democratic ones, Nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons continue to proliferate. The very source of life on Earth,

the global ecosystem, appears increasingly endangered. Most of these new and unconventional threats to security are associated with or aggravated by the weakness or absence of democracy, with its provisions for legality, accountability, popular sovereignty, and openness. LESSONS OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY The experience of this century offers important lessons. Countries that govern themselves in a truly democratic fashion do not go to war with one another. They do not aggress against their neighbors to aggrandize themselves or glorify their leaders. Democratic governments do not ethnically "cleanse" their own populations, and they are much less likely to face ethnic insurgency. Democracies do not sponsor terrorism against one another. They do not build weapons of mass destruction to use on or to threaten one another. Democratic countries form more reliable, open, and enduring trading partnerships. In the long run they offer better and more stable climates for investment. They are more environmentally responsible because they must answer to their own citizens, who organize to protest the destruction of their environments. They are better bets to honor international treaties since they value legal obligations and because their openness makes it much more difficult to breach agreements in secret. Precisely because, within their own borders, they respect competition, civil liberties, property rights, and the rule of law, democracies are the only reliable foundation on which a new world order of international security and prosperity can be built.

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FTA bad – Human Rights Cred The Columbian FTA would destroy our human rights credibility abroad Keith Jennings, former director of Citizens Participation Programs at the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs and a former regional director at Amnesty International USA, 1/30/08, “Fair Trade, not 'free trade,' with Columbia” The Colombia “free trade” deal currently being promoted by the Bush administration should be opposed by all those who seek justice and those who want the United States to regain some of its lost respect at the international level. The human rights situation in Colombia, Latin Americas’ third largest country, is appalling and should be clearly and unequivocally condemned by all members of Congress, but especially the Congressional Black Caucus, given the abuses faced by the Afro-Columbians. The free trade agreement, as proposed, is not about fair trade and in effect would further exacerbate human rights violations and environmental degradation in Colombia. This agreement would continue the marginalization and social exclusion of Afro-Colombians, Indigenous peoples and the poor. Furthermore, the consequential exporting of manufacturing jobs from the United States will continue to have a disproportionately destructive and detrimental impact on Black workers. Why the deal should be opposed During the Bush administration’s two terms, Latin America has largely been ignored, except for trade deals and immigration bashing by right-wing intellectuals, media pundits and politicians. All of the agreements pursued by the Bush administration, from Chile to the Dominican Republic, have exhibited several consistent features. The agreements have all marginalized human rights concerns while only paying lip service to the strengthening of democratic institutions. None have ever included any anti-racist provisions or equal opportunity encouragements or demands to respect the land rights of indigenous or African descendant populations

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398 Politics Generic Revamped!

FTA bad – Columbian Civil War Passage of the FTA causes Colombian civil war and kills our Latin American interests José María Rodríguez González, foreign policy analyst, 3-29-2007. [Colombia FTA: Monkey Business for U.S., p. http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0703/S00521.htm] The Free Trade Agreement (FTA) appears to offer a fair deal. It promises to open U.S. markets to Colombia in exchange for opening the Colombian market to the U.S. But in reality it is a Trojan horse in a minefield. The U.S. negotiators were a skillful team, intent on imposing U.S. conditions on a “take it or leave it” basis. The Colombian negotiators, on the other hand, were intent only on achieving short-term political gains for Mr. Uribe’s government and the narrow interests it represents. Consequently, this FTA ends up bearing guaranteed economic and political goodies for the U.S. -- but only uncertainties and best wishes for Colombia. Colombia is pursuing this FTA as its way to push itself to the free and global market. It’s a very worthy aspiration -- if only the country wasn’t overrun by packs of domestic economic hyenas, seasoned speculators and corrupt middle men, not to mention the narco traffickers who have infiltrated the current government. This unsavory band is slavering to use the FTA for their advantage, but the unexpected beneficiaries of FTA are likely to be the resilient guerrillas, FARC (Colombia’s Revolutionary Arm Forces). The FARC have been in existence for over four decades, and are badly in need of a new cause to revive their anti-imperialist ardor and inflame patriotic and nationalistic feeling in Colombia. By playing on the split between Colombia’s FARC and anti-FARC, Mr. Uribe is advancing his narrow political goals and enriching his friends even as he aggravates conditions for civil war -- a war initiated by the narco-paramilitaries. It is a war that could find further fuel in the Pandora’s Box of the FTA. Until now U.S. policy has been driven to support the worst of all possible choices: either the narcoparamilitary or the FARC. Can the U.S. untie itself from the false equation that camouflages the true intentions of Mr. Uribe’s narco-para-politics? If there is one Free Trade Agreement in the world that the U.S. has to consider carefully, is the one with Colombia. Is this the right Colombian government to make this agreement with? Shouldn’t the U.S. Congress listen to Cardinal Rubiano Saenz of the Colombian Catholic Church who foresees a health catastrophe intensified by the FTA? What about the development concern of Colombian economists like Mr. Guillermo Maya or Colombian Senator Jorge Robledo? These respected authorities predict that the FTA with Colombia would worsen the critical livelihood of the 60% of Colombians living in chronic poverty. When U.S. economic treaties failed in Brazil and Argentina, the U.S. lost two important allies; but if the FTA fails in Colombia, an explosive country of vast potential danger, the U.S. can expect serious and lasting consequences against its interests in the whole of Latin America.

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399 Politics Generic Revamped!

FTA bad – Civil War  US Economic Collapse Regional instability kills the US economy. Boris Saavedra, professor, Center for Hemispheric Defense Studies, National Defense University, April 2003. [NDU Working Paper, Confronting Terrorism in Latin America, p. http://www.ndu.edu/chds/journal/PDF/2003-0403/Saavedra-article.pdf] The United States shares with its Latin American neighbors an increasingly and vitally important financial, commercial, and security partnership. Any kind of political-economic-social-security deterioration in the region will profoundly affect the health of the U.S. economy—and the concomitant power to act in the global security arena.

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FTA bad – Civil War  Brazil Nuclearization Civil war in Colombia threatens Brazilian security and nationalism. Richard L. Millett, Ph.D., Senior Fellow at the North-South Center, Oppenheimer Chair of Modern Warfighting Strategy at the U.S. Marine Corps University, Professor Emeritus of History at Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville, Oct. 2002. [Strategic Studies Institute, Colombia's Conflicts: The Spillover Effects of a Wider War] The impact of Colombia’s conflicts on Brazil have been considerably less dramatic. This reflects two basic factors, the relative isolation and lack of population along the 1,644 kilometer common border, and the large size and relative power of Brazil. The affected area is also far distant from Brazil’s economic and population centers which helps limit media coverage. But, despite these factors, the Colombian situation has become the subject of growing concern in Brazil, in good part because of increased narcotics trafficking. As early as 1996, in terms obviously aimed at Colombia, Brazil’s national security doctrine recognized the problems posed by what it described as “adjacent areas of instability” afflicted by the operations of “armed bands,” and “transnational crime.” 76 The Brazilian military presence in the region was strengthened, but much of the border still remained essentially uncontrolled. As a result, Colombian troops were able to transit Brazilian territory in November 1998 as part of their response to a FARC assault on the nearby Colombian city of Mitu. 77 This produced a brief crisis in bilateral relations and contributed to a Brazilian reevaluation of the border situation. The military presence was further strengthened, and by the fall of 1999 an 8,000-man Army battalion was stationed in the region, supported by additional Marine, Navy, and Air Force units. In 2000 the Brazilian military initiated “Operation Cobra” (name drawn from the first letters of Colombia and Brazil), designed to combine an increase in Federal Police presence in the region with the positioning of a highly mobile army unit supported by helicopters. 78 This was backed up by a $1.2 billion “Amazon Surveillance System” combining radar and aircraft to track activities in the region. 79 According to one Brazilian military source, this represented both an effort to continue a policy of nonintervention in Colombia’s conflict and a growing fear that U.S.-supported escalation of the conflict could push it into Brazilian territory. 80 This increased force has evidently had some success. In March 2002 Brazilian military units moved against suspected FARC camps in their territory, producing an armed encounter with a FARC unit which was wiped out. 81 Efforts to control the border have been complicated by disputes between Federal police and military units over responsibilities in antinarcotics operations. In May 1999 the former commander of Federal Police in Amazonas State testified before the Brazilian Congress that there were only 15 police agents assigned to antinarcotics operations in the state. 82 The same month a Brazilian Government report called the border region “lawless,” and called for the signing of joint agreements with Colombia and Peru to combat narcotics trafficking. 83 In August 1999, Brazil intercepted a plane loaded with weapons traveling from Suriname to Colombia. In a speech to the Armed Forces a few days later, Brazil’s President,

Fernando Henrique Cardoso, stressed the dangers in the emergence of “zones of instability” and declared that “drug trafficking and other illicit cross-border activities threaten our people and our sovereignty.” But, he also stressed that “the Armed Forces are not to be used on an everyday basis in these battles, except to support the police.” 84 This speech was quickly followed by the announcement that the Federal Police would begin an operation to block routes used to transport food from Brazil to areas of Colombia controlled by the FARC. 85 Brazilian and Colombian officials also began to cooperate in destroying clandestine airstrips in the border region. In 2001, several prominent leaders of Brazilian organized crime, involved in smuggling arms into Brazil and drugs into Brazil, were captured in Colombia. This followed a Brazilian Congressional investigation which found that Brazilian narcotraffickers were selling large amounts of sophisticated weapons to the FARC, and with the connivance of hundreds of Brazilian officials, transporting them through the Amazon basin. 86 This underscored the growing importance of Brazil as a link in the international narcotics trade and the rising levels of domestic narcotics consumption. For Brazilian authorities, the problem was

expanding from its primary focus on defending national sovereignty in the Amazon Basin to include a growing concern about escalating international criminal influences throughout the nation. Operations continue to be hampered by problems of jurisdiction and coordination between military and police units, by local corruption, and by limited resources. Meanwhile trafficking in arms and narcotics through or over Brazilian territory has generated growing concern. In a military sense, Brazil has sufficient force to discourage any significant use of its territory by either guerrillas or paramilitaries. Problems are unlikely ever to approach the scale of those currently experienced in Venezuela, Ecuador, or Panama. But the problem remains serious both for those living in the region and for Brazil’s relations with the region and with the United States. President Cardoso’s chief security advisor has said, “For Brazil Colombia is causing the biggest worry. Our attention is dedicated to the effects it could have on Brazil like the flight of guerrillas and the transfer of (drug) laboratories and plantations.”

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FTA bad – Civil War  Brazil Nuclearization This ensues in nuclear war Donald E. Schulz, Ph.D., Chair of Political Science at Cleveland State U., fmr. Research Professor of National Security at the Strategic Studies Institute of the US Army College, March 2k. [Strategic Studies Institute, The United States and Latin America: Shaping an Elusive Future, http://www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pubs/display.cfm?PubID=31] While we are in a speculative mode, it may be useful to raise the issue of whether, two or three decades from now, the United States might have to deal with a regional hegemon or peer competitor. The most obvious candidate for such a role would be Brazil, which already accounts for almost half of Latin America’s economic production and has by far the largest armed forces in the region (313,250 active troops). 53 That country could very well assume a more commanding political and military role in the decades ahead. Until recently, the primary U.S. concern about Brazil has been that it might acquire nuclear weapons and delivery systems. In the 1970s, the Brazilian military embarked on a secret program to develop an atom bomb. By the late 1980s, both Brazil and Argentina were aggressively pursuing nuclear development programs that had clear military spin-offs. 54 There were powerful military and civilian advocates of developing nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles within both countries. Today, however, the situation has changed. As a result of political leadership transitions in both countries, Brazil and Argentina now appear firmly committed to restricting their nuclear programs to peaceful purposes. They have entered into various nuclear-related agreements with each other—most notably the quadripartite comprehensive safeguards agreement (1991), which permits the inspection of all their nuclear installations by the International Atomic Energy Agency— and have joined the Missile Technology Control Regime. Even so, no one can be certain about the future. As Scott Tollefson has observed: . ..the military application of Brazil’s nuclear and space programs depends less on technological considerations than on political will. While technological constraints present a formidable barrier to achieving nuclear bombs and ballistic missiles, that barrier is not insurmountable. The critical element, therefore, in determining the applications of Brazil’s nuclear and space technologies will be primarily political. 55 Put simply, if changes in political leadership were instrumental in redirecting Brazil’s nuclear program towards peaceful purposes, future political upheavals could still produce a reversion to previous orientations. Civilian supremacy is not so strong that it could not be swept away by a coup, especially if the legitimacy of the current democratic experiment were to be undermined by economic crisis and growing poverty/inequality. Nor are civilian leaders necessarily less militaristic or more committed to democracy than the military. The example of Peru’s Fujimori comes immediately to mind. How serious a threat might Brazil potentially be? It has been estimated that if the nuclear plant at Angra dos Reis (Angra I) were only producing at 30 percent capacity, it could produce five 20-kiloton weapons a year. If production from other plants were included, Brazil would have a capability three times greater than India or Pakistan. Furthermore, its defense industry already has a substantial missile producing capability. On the other hand, the country has a very limited capacity to project its military power via air and sealift or to sustain its forces over long distances. And though a 1983 law authorizes significant military manpower increases (which could place Brazil at a numerical level slightly higher than France, Iran and Pakistan), such growth will be restricted by a lack of economic resources. Indeed, the development of all these military potentials has been, and will continue to be, severely constrained by a lack of money. (Which is one reason Brazil decided to engage in arms control with Argentina in the first place.) 56 In short, a restoration of Brazilian militarism, imbued with nationalistic ambitions for great power status, is not unthinkable, and such a regime could present some fairly serious problems. That government would probably need foreign as well as domestic enemies to help justify its existence. One obvious candidate would be the United States, which would presumably be critical of any return to dictatorial rule. Beyond this, moreover, the spectre of a predatory international community, covetous of the riches of the Amazon, could help rally political support to the regime. For years, some Brazilian military officers have been warning of “foreign intervention.” Indeed, as far back as 1991 General Antenor de Santa Cruz Abreu, then chief of the Military Command of the Amazon, threatened to transform the region into a “new Vietnam” if developed countries tried to “internationalize” the Amazon. Subsequently, in 1993, U.S.-Guyanese combined military exercises near the Brazilian border provoked an angry response from many high-ranking Brazilian officers.

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FTA bad – Columbia Instability Columbia FTA will lead to massive Columbian instability – current political and economic tensions prove Huffington Post, 2/22/07, “U.S. "Free Trade": Death, Drugs and Despair in Colombia” http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jonathan-tasini/us-free-trade-death_b_41845.html Pedro Arenas is not a person that most of the elites in the U.S.--in the mainstream media, inside the Beltway think-tanks, and in elected positions on Congress--would meet in order to understand the real crime of socalled "free trade." For the elites, so-called "free trade" is an unassailable concept, something that is as natural and obvious as the sun rising in the east and setting in the west. But, for hundreds of thousands of Colombians like Arenas, so-called "free trade" is a question of life and death. And, in our name, our government--Republicans and potentially key Democrats--is pushing to sign death warrants for Colombians in the guise of a so-called "free trade" agreement between our two countries. This might strike some as a bit hyperbolic. But, the proposed deal would, at the very least, push thousands of farmers off their lands. And, as likely, empower the paramilitary death squads that have flourished, in part through the U.S. financing of the "war on drugs, but also via the strengthening of the powerful business interests who fund some of the most violent political forces in Colombia. Here is the tale, in relative brevity, of the intersection between so-called "free trade," political violence, economic violence and drug cultivation. Colombia is the most dangerous place to live if you are a union leader, activist or member: 3,000 have been murdered since 1985, according to an annual survey of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions. The Colombia Free Trade Agreement. What would it do? The FTA's grant of duty-free U.S. access for flowers and certain other commercial-scale agri-export crops will certainly put pressure on Colombia to expand agribusiness plantations for such exports. These plantations have been a disaster for the regular farmer. Indeed, under pressure in the 1990s from international lending organizations, Colombia implemented a program of "economic openness," which unleashed a tide of traditional cereals, rice and oats pouring into the country. As a result, 1.1 million hectares of cultivated land were lost. Arenas says that 300,000 farmers, then, turned to cultivating coca. "So, now, with FTA, they want to lower every tariff to zero which will devastate every farmer and make them grow coca," says Arenas. Foreign investor rights--a typical pro-corporate, so-called "free trade," measure--would tighten the grip that large corporations have on the country's natural resources and launch a large-scale plundering of those resources such as timber and minerals. Without a government willing to nationalize such resources or, at the very least, make sure that the benefits of the commercial exploitation are widely spread, you can be sure that huge riches will flow to a handful of people, while most of the population is left with pennies. The upshot: the so-called "free trade" deal would likely displace hundreds of thousands of poor rural Colombians from their lands, sending them into far deeper economic despair--and forcing many of them to work for the very groups that violently displaced them from their lands. The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs conducted a study of the effects of the 1990s economic "liberalization" and concluded that such a move led to a 35 per cent drop in employment. You can be sure that the proposed so-called "free trade" deal will wreak similar havoc. As Public Citizen notes: "Increased Drug Production is Linked to Past NAFTA-style Agricultural Trade Policies on Which the Peru and Colombia FTAs are Based: We do not need to rely on experts' opinions regarding how the proposed FTAs will lead to increases in drug production. Unfortunately, there is a factual record demonstrating the phenomena. After NAFTA drove down commodity prices in Mexico and eventually 1.3 million Mexican campesinos were driven out of the business of growing corn and beans, many Mexican farmers turned to illegal drugs to compensate for lost income. The U.S. Customs and Border Protection Office reports that in NAFTA's first decade, marijuana seizures doubled at the U.S.-Mexico border." Let's not forget the drug companies. Pharmaceutical companies will get exclusive patent rights, getting 20year monopoly rights to market drugs in Colombia--the very kind of provisions that have driven up drug prices in the U.S. Generic drugs will effectively be banned for ten years--putting tremendous economic pressure on the health care system in Colombia.

Continued – no text removed…

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FTA bad – Columbia Instability Continued – no text removed… Put simply, the deal would benefit business and political interests tied to the paramilitary forces. If you have any doubts about the links between the government and these right-wing paramilitary forces, check this out. In November 2006, two powerful senators and two members of Congress--allies of President Uribe resigned because of evidence they had conspired with paramilitary groups. The Uribe government was rocked this past Monday when its foreign minister resigned: The opposition also comes from Afro-Colombian representatives, who wrote to Rep. Charles Rangel: In Colombia, the problems associated with trade go far beyond labor rights. As the Washington Post recently reported, members of Colombian President Álvaro Uribe's own political party have been arrested for coordinating massacres of rural communities with illegal armed paramilitary groups. These massacres are directly related to trade. In many cases, these deeds have served to accelerate the concentration of ownership of the best lands in the hands of paramilitary leaders or their front groups and to significantly weaken land rights, facilitate natural resource exploitation, weaken our communities' environmental rights and facilitate the advance of development projects into our territories. In the Colombian context, politically powerful export industries such as "African" palm oil, timber, mining and oil interests are directly benefiting from, and undoubtedly funding and coordinating, the systematic use of violent force to displace Afro-Colombian communities from their traditional territories in order to expand their exports to the U.S. Side agreements on labor will not protect us from these abuses. If the U.S.-Colombia trade agreement were to be ratified without a complete overhaul, including the renegotiation of the agriculture and investment sections, the situation will deteriorate even more rapidly. The investment provisions would embolden export-oriented natural resource extraction corporations, while the agricultural rules would undermine rural economies. This lethal combination would result in the displacement of millions of poor rural Colombians from their lands, worsening their economic and social conditions and leaving them with no option other than to work for those groups that have violently displaced them from their lands and appropriated their natural resources, or to become involved in the informal or even illegal economic sectors. We must break this cycle. In my opinion, Rangel is seeking a middle position for a situation that does not warrant compromise. You can not make this so-called "free trade" agreement--or any similar past agreement--better by tinkering around the edges. Pedro Arenas says, "we have to completely reopen the negotiations of the agreement." Arenas views the deal with Colombia as much worse than NAFTA or the Central American Free Trade Agreement because it is far more sweeping in the invasion of the country's sovereignty, as I've detailed above. Is Colombia an extreme example? Advocates of so-called "free trade" will no doubt say, "well, we don't support death squads but Colombia is not typical." The problem is that Colombia's conditions can simply be plotted on a spectrum of bad to worse when it comes to the consequences of so-called "free trade." There may not be roving paramilitary death squads in Mexico (though political violence is still a fact of life there, too), Guatemala, Honduras, or other countries. But, the underlying dynamic for so-called "free trade" is corrosive: driving down wages and seeking the lowest cost, compliant labor pool possible. Period. And, so, it is troubling that Rangel would be arguing for an approach that does not "damage" existing U.S. trade deals. These are damaged deals--if you are one of the millions of workers here and abroad who have suffered the loss of jobs, declining wages and a work environment where all the power rests with corporations.

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404 Politics Generic Revamped!

FTA bad – Columbian Instability The FTA will lead to Columbian instability Keith Jennings, former director of Citizens Participation Programs at the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs and a former regional director at Amnesty International USA, 1/30/08, “Fair Trade, not 'free trade,' with Columbia” Plan Colombia has not stopped the flow of drugs into the United States or Europe. The spraying of toxic chemicals – “fumigation” – and violence have pushed almost 2.5 million Colombians off the most productive tracts of land. The newly proposed free trade deal would be nothing more than an economic extension of Plan Colombia, which has resulted in the second largest internally displaced population in the world, following Darfur, and a state at war with itself. These types of agreements only benefit transnational corporations and the local elite. Liberalized trade and more privatization of state owned industries will only mean less public spending on education, health care, social security and electricity. It will also mean more spending by citizens on basic necessities such as food, water, housing and transportation. The impact of such an agreement in the United States will continue the “race to the bottom” that pits workers in this country against workers in other countries who do not enjoy union protections, who make poverty wages and who face slave-like working conditions.

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405 Politics Generic Revamped!

FTA bad – Human Rights Violations The Columbia FTW would worsen human rights violations in Columbia – something that should always be rejected Gregory A. Pallesen, vice president of the Association of Western Pulp and Paper Workers, 5/1/08, “Columbia free trade bad for America” < http://www.westlinntidings.com/opinion/story.php?story_id=120958301754287400 They rightfully argue that consideration of a trade agreement with Colombia is inappropriate until that nation improves its atrocious human rights record. Why, then, does Congresswoman Darlene Hooley remain undecided? As bad as past trade policies have been, however, the Colombia Free Trade Agreement is even worse. This pact is especially repugnant given Colombia’s status as the deadliest country in the world to be a union member. Since 1991, more than 2,300 labor advocates have been assassinated there – many only after being kidnapped and brutally tortured first. Trade between nations simply cannot be “free” when workers in one country lack basic freedoms of speech and assembly. Nearly 15 years after enactment of the North American Free Trade Agreement, we today know that large corporations use such pacts to shift jobs around the globe to wherever labor is the cheapest. If passed, the Colombia trade deal would force Oregonians to compete with workers literally forced to accept poor working conditions under the threat of death. The fate of the Colombia Free Trade Agreement today rests in the hands of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. While acknowledging the human rights concerns implicit in the agreement, the Speaker has repeatedly pronounced her willingness to negotiate with the Bush administration over allowing it to the floor. In this context, it is crucial that all members of Congress express their disdain for the agreement. A clear message must be sent that there is no room for negotiation when it comes to the basic rights of working people. While including strong and enforceable labor, environmental and human rights standards should be a prerequisite for any future trade agreement, this alone is not adequate for the Colombia trade deal to pass muster. In a country where the rule of law is so often disrespected, simply putting new rules down on paper is not enough.

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FTA bad – Human Rights Violations The Columbian FTA would lead to massive human rights violations Keith Jennings, former director of Citizens Participation Programs at the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs and a former regional director at Amnesty International USA, 1/30/08, “Fair Trade, not 'free trade,' with Columbia” Human rights violations in Colombia In fact, according to Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, human rights violations have not disappeared over that period and are of such a dreadful magnitude today that they cannot be relegated to a secondary category or a practically meaningless side agreement. The government of Colombia has systematically committed and tolerated gross human rights abuses. Torture and disappearances are commonplace for leaders who stand up for social justice or stand in the way of foreign investment. Amnesty International believes that there has been a phony demobilization of the expected 25,000 paramilitaries, which may actually result in de facto amnesties for horrific human rights violators. Human Rights Watch also believes that Colombian President Alvaro Uribe’s claims of demobilization are unfounded. As evidence in support of its position, Human Rights Watch points to an Organization of American States report that identified 22 illegally armed groups in which paramilitary are actively recruiting new troops and are participating in drug trafficking, extortion, selective killings and forced displacement of citizens. Moreover, the continuation of the violence in Colombia is mainly due to the government failure to bring the perpetrators to justice and fully dismantle paramilitary mafias that have deliberately targeted trade unionists and others. In fact, Colombia is the country with the worse violence against labor leaders, who are killed almost every day. Since Uribe took office, over 400 labor leaders have been killed and more than 1,300 received death threats. Indigenous communities are completely disrespected and ignored. And the state has become a permanent war machine. The latest United Nations human development report shows 70 percent of the country’s wealth is concentrated in the hands of the top 20 percent of the population, while 64 percent of its citizens are impoverished. In fact, the Colombian Gini Index, an economic measure of inequality, is virtually the same as that of Haiti, the hemisphere’s poorest country. Finally, it should be noted that President Uribe is embroiled in a scandal involving high ranking officials in his administration and some 40 Congressmen over their links to the paramilitaries. Democrats and Colombia Recognizing that serious challenges to current U.S. policy exists, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice recently traveled with a delegation of Democratic lawmakers, who apparently needed to be convinced firsthand of the so-called “progress” being made in Colombia. Some have already shown where they stand and obviously intend to use the trip to rationalize their vote in support of the trade agreement. But let’s be clear on what their vote will really mean. It will mean more of the same: more deaths and misery; more marginalization and social exclusion; and more humiliation, exploitation, internal displacement and migration. Some of the Democrats traveling with the secretary oppose House Resolution 618, which simply calls for the United States Congress to recognize the plight of Afro-Colombians. Why members of the Congressional Black Caucus, who routinely support resolutions that recognize the plight of Israeli civilians, would oppose such a common sense resolution, is daunting? At the same time it does suggest that some members must be placing a greater value on their relationship to corporate interests and prefer to remain insensitive to the very visible human rights abuses, environmental damage, health problems and displacement from land historically occupied by Afro-Colombians before Bolivar’s liberation wars that’s now being fumigated and poisoned by herbicides – supplied by some of the same U.S. corporations that make contributions to their campaigns – that are sprayed from U.S. piloted planes.

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FTA bad – Columbian Economy The Columbia FTA will kill the Columbian economy Kevin P. Gallagher, professor in Boston University's Department of International Relations, 4/9/08, “Comment: Congress is right to oppose trade deal with Colombia” http://www.reuters.com/article/reutersComService4/idUSDIS95196720080409?sp=true The U.S.-Colombia Free Trade deal is one of the most deeply flawed trade pacts in U.S. history. It will hardly make a dent in the U.S. economy, looks to make the Colombian economy worse off and accentuate a labor and environmental crisis in Colombia. The Democratic majority in Congress is right to oppose this agreement and call for a rethinking of U.S. trade policy. According to new estimates by the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America, the net benefits of the agreement to the U.S. will be a miniscule 0.0000472 percent of GDP or a one-time increase in the level of each American's income by just over one penny. The agreement will actually will make Colombia worse off by up to $75 million or one tenth of one percent of its GDP; losses to Colombia's textiles, apparel, food and heavy manufacturing industries, as they face new competition from U.S. import, will outweigh the gains in Colombian petroleum, mining, and other export sectors, it concludes. Nor is it clear that the agreement will bring foreign investment to Colombia. The World Bank's 2005 Global Economic Prospects report warned that trade and investment agreements themselves would not necessarily translate into new foreign investment. This conclusion was based on a study they commissioned that examined the experience of twenty developing countries between 1980 and 2000 to determine whether agreements that provided assurances to foreign investors did indeed attract investors. More recent studies have similar findings for Latin America. Articles in peer-reviewed journals Latin American Research Review and Journal of World Investment and Trade found no independent correlation between foreign trade or investment agreements and increases in foreign investment in the region. The deal amounts to a rollback of previous environmental provisions in U.S. trade agreements. Unlike past U.S. trade pacts, this deal doesn't provide any new funding for cooperation, clean up, or compliance. Finally, the deal has a little secret also not allowed under the WTO. It leaves open the possibility that ad hoc investment tribunals will interpret social and environmental regulations as "indirect expropriation." Under such interpretations, multinational firms themselves (as opposed to states filing on a firm's behalf such as in the WTO) can file suit for massive compensation from foreign governments. Under NAFTA such suits have been filed against the U.S., Mexico, and Canada. Indeed, Methanex Corp. filed a $1 billion suit against the state of California for banning a gasoline additive that was polluting water sources. The Democratic majority is right to oppose this agreement. Rather than granting a lame duck president another foreign policy quagmire for his successor, Congress should wait until a new president is in office and then rethink the direction of U.S. trade policy has taken over the past eight years..

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***RANDOM INTERNAL SCENARIOS

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Pickens Important T. Boone Pickens support very important—major political influence CNN.com 7-22-08 http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/07/22/pickens.profile/? iref=hpmostpop#cnnSTCText When Texas oilman, investor and sometime political player T. Boone Pickens talks, people listen. Experts credit him with the power to influence oil prices with a word. In May, as prices hit $129 a barrel -- a record at the time -Andrew Lebow, a broker at MF Global in New York, said one cause was Pickens' remark on television that morning that crude would reach $150 a barrel this year. "I was watching it, and I was like, 'whoa,' " Lebow said. "It seems that had an impact on the market." Pickens was in Washington on Tuesday, hoping to have a similar influence on senators as he pushes what he modestly calls the Pickens Plan, a scheme to wean the United States off imported oil. "Our country is in a deep hole, and it's time to stop digging," he told the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. But the testimony in favor of his energy plan is far from his first effort to influence Washington. He was among the highest-profile supporters of Swift Boat Veterans and POWs for Truth, giving $1 million in 2004 to the group that savaged Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry's war record. He contributed $2.5 million the same year to the Progress for America voter fund, a group closely linked to President Bush and the Republican National Committee, and tens of thousands of dollars to individual Republican candidates for Congress, according to Federal Election Commission filings. Three years later, he offered a million dollars to anyone who could disprove claims made by the Swift Boat group, whose name became synonymous with underhanded attacks on political opponents. Kerry and a group of his allies took Pickens up on the challenge, offering two rebuttals to the Swift Boat claims, but Pickens rejected both. The New York Times reported that Pickens said the terms of his original challenge had been misreported. Pickens has said he is staying out of politics this cycle, putting his money into his energy plan instead. The plan calls for investing in domestic renewable resources such as wind and switching from oil to natural gas as a transportation fuel. Pickens has substantial investments in wind and natural gas. His company Mesa Power recently announced a $2 billion investment as the first step in a multibillion-dollar plan to build the world's largest wind farm in Pampa, Texas, and his company Clean Energy specializes in natural gas as a transportation fuel. Pickens said that if the United States harnesses the "wind corridor," stretching from the Canadian border to West Texas, energy from wind turbines built there could supply 20 percent or more of the nation's power. He proposes that the project be funded by private investors. Watch Pickens say time is now to act » "We can solve this problem with our own resources," he said after his Senate testimony. He does not oppose more domestic oil drilling; on the contrary, he said he favors drilling in protected areas such as the outer continental shelf offshore and Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, known as ANWR. "I say East and West Coast and ANWR -- get it all! You're drilling and putting into the domestic system to help us," he said. He also welcomes more nuclear power. "Fine, do it," he told CNN's Wolf Blitzer. "Anything in America, do it. Get away from foreign oil. I'm ready to put my money where my mouth is." Pickens, 80, made a fortune in oil and was a key figure in the corporate takeover frenzy of the 1980s before founding BP Capital, an investment firm, and the company that became Clean Energy. He is worth an estimated $3 billion, according to Forbes magazine, which ranked him as the 117th richest person in the United States in 2007. He has given more than $600 million to charity, according to his Web site.

Pickens plan giving public attention to alternative energy issues—key to presidential campaign Environment News Service 7-8-08 http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/jul2008/2008-07-08-091.asp To keep the public's attention on the issue and push it to the forefront in the presidential campaign, Pickens is funding a media blitz to advance "The Pickens Plan," which he said could reduce America's demand for foreign oil by one-third within 10 years. The plan calls on private industry to build wind farms across the Midwest. Calling it the nation's "wind corridor," Pickens said the region has the potential to meet at least 20 percent of the country's electricity needs with energy generated by wind turbines. The United States currently meets less than 10 percent of the country's electricity demand using all renewable energy sources - solar, hydroelectric, geothermal, biomass and wind - combined. By boosting the contribution from wind, America could divert for transportation use the natural gas that's now used to generate electricity, according to The Pickens Plan. Currently, 23 percent of the nation's electricity demand is met by burning natural gas, a source of energy that is produced largely domestically, and is less carbon-intensive than gasoline.

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Pickens Not Important Pickens won’t be giving money this year USA Today 7-21-08 http://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/election2008/2008-07-21-Donors_N.htm Texas oilman T. Boone Pickens, who gave $4.6 million to Republican-leaning groups in 2004, won't give anything, spokesman Jay Rosser says. The top overall political donor, financier George Soros, has no plans to match the $24 million he spent in 2004, spokesman Michael Vachon says. "He's focused on business and philanthropy rather than politics," Vachon says of Soros. Pickens is focusing on promoting his plans for wind-generated electricity and natural gas-powered vehicles.

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Plan helps bush—Pickens Bush passing plan gives him Pickens’ support US News and World Report 7-22-08 http://www.usnews.com/usnews/politics/bulletin/bulletin_080722.htm The Washington Times reports, "Oil prices could hit $300 a barrel if the United States does not take drastic action to reduce its heavy dependence on foreign oil, but neither of the top presidential candidates is addressing the crisis, Texas oilman T. Boone Pickens said Monday." Pickens "said he has stopped giving to political campaigns and renounced his previous Republican affiliation in his drive to focus the nation's attention on the need for immediate, drastic action on energy" such as solar and wind. The Washington Post says that "perhaps the strangest role" Pickens "has fashioned for himself is his current one: the billionaire speculator as energy wise man, an oil-and-gas magnate as champion of wind power, and a lifetime Republican who has become a fellow traveler among environmentally minded Democrats -- even though he helped finance the 'Swift boat' ads that savaged" Sen. John F. Kerry's presidential campaign. In an editorial, the New York Times reports Pickens "has decided that drilling for more oil is not the answer to the nation's energy problems. President Bush should listen to his fellow Texan and longtime political ally."

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Alternative energy key to decide the extremely important Ohio race Julie Carr Smyth, AP Statehouse Correspondent, 7-20-08, http://www.coshoctontribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article? AID=/20080720/NEWS03/807200329/1002/NEWS01 Witness voter sentiment on the presidential race at a suburban Meijer store one recent afternoon. One Obama, a couple of lukewarm McCains, one non-voter, a possible Nader and an undecided. "I might just close my eyes," said Derek Collins, a 20-year-old Ohio State University student. "I don't trust Obama on the economy, and McCain's just past his prime." It is against this backdrop that Democrat Mary Jo Kilroy and Republican Steve Stivers are locked in one of the nation's most expensive, closely watched contests for Congress. The winner of Ohio's 15th Congressional District will replace nine-term Rep. Deborah Pryce, who is retiring. The district is so evenly split along party lines that Kilroy nearly won it in 2006, fueling Democrats' hopes this year. The 15th is one of three open seats long held by Republicans, as Reps. David Hobson and Ralph Regula also are retiring. The three lawmakers will have served a combined 71 years in Congress. The GOP now has an 11-7 majority in Ohio, so a swing of three seats would give Democrats control and even more clout if Congress remains in the hands of their party. Ohio's 15th Congressional District has been described as a microcosm of the country, with Columbus at its urban center, Ohio State University's huge youth vote, populous white-collar suburbs and two mostly rural neighboring counties. With the party faithful so closely split, courting swing voters could make all the difference. Taking a page from presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama, Kilroy, 59, is campaigning on a theme of change. To reinforce her populist message, the Franklin County commissioner highlights Stivers' background as a former banking-industry lobbyist and, though he has never served there, says Stivers will give Ohioans more of the same in Washington. Stivers, 43, a state senator and an Iraq war veteran of the Ohio National Guard, makes no apologies for being pro-business - particularly in a capital city heavy on banking, insurance and retail headquarters. He points to Kilroy's loyalty to organized labor during recent construction talks for a new city baseball stadium to suggest she favors big government spending in economically strapped times. No independent polling in the race was available. Meijer shopper Dorothy Harrison, 84, said the tax burden is a huge issue with her consistently Republican husband. She, meanwhile, is leaning - at least theoretically toward independent candidate Ralph Nader. "I would like to vote for Ralph Nader or Ross Perot, someone like that," Harrison said. "They're the most honest and fair-minded men. They're not in it for the power." Independent-minded voters like Harrison are abundant in Ohio, which mirrors the nation's presidential pick almost without fail every four years. They have made up a consistent quarter of the state's electorate since 2000, with the remainder split almost evenly between Democrats and Republicans, AP exit poll data show. Independents made up a quarter of those who voted in Ohio's Democratic presidential primary in 2004, the data show. In 2006, independent voters across the nation led the resurgence of Democratic control in Congress, with 55 percent favoring Democratic candidates. In Ohio, they contributed to Democrats taking control of four of five statewide elective offices long held by Republicans. Though voters who avoid party labels - or, like Collins, threaten to just close their eyes and guess - are difficult for candidates to count on or predict, it is treacherous to ignore them. Particularly in a race as close as Kilroy-Stivers will be this year. Courting swing voters is credited with twice delivering victory in the state for Bill Clinton. Ignoring them subsequently helped sink Democratic presidential candidates Al Gore and John Kerry here. Their campaign priorities make clear both Kilroy and Stivers are reaching out to those outside their parties. Mother and grandmother Rosemary Blumenschein, 61, lives in rural Union County. She said she has not decided how she will vote in either the presidential or congressional races in November. She's worried Obama lacks experience and Republican presumptive nominee John McCain, at 71, is too old. The economy is her greatest worry, putting her right in line with the mainstream. Carroll Doherty, associate director of the Washington, D.C.-based Pew Research Center, said polling is showing the economy and energy have trumped the politically troublesome war in Iraq as priority issues for American voters this year. "The economy is not a surprise, but energy is now an emerging concern," he said. "Opinion there is still sort of forming." Kilroy has shifted gears from her heavily anti-war 2006 campaign to her change-in-Washington message. That includes, she says, reining in the power of special interests such as the oil, banking and pharmaceutical industries. She recently blamed big oil for rising food prices. Both candidates have offered energy plans as the solution to high gas prices. Stivers advocates higher mile-per-gallon standards for autos, creation of a federal agency to build domestic oil supplies and refining capabilities, and $100 billion in investment over 10 years in alternative energy research. Kilroy favors full use of refinery operations, expanding regulators' power over the commodities markets and eliminating gas-powered automobiles by 2020.

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AE in Connecticut Key Getting credit for major AE policy wins Connecticut PETER URBAN 7-14-08, Connecticut Post, http://www.connpost.com/localnews/ci_9872405 WASHINGTON — With gasoline well past $4 a gallon, Democrats and Republicans have put energy at the top of their election agendas — touting their own solutions and criticizing their opponents' plans to relieve the pain at the pump. In Connecticut, 60 percent of voters say that gas prices have caused hardship for someone in their household and they lay much of the blame for higher costs on oil companies and the federal government, according to the latest Quinnipiac University Poll. Sensing that public anger, Congress members have ratcheted up their rhetoric on energy policy, proposing everything from more offshore drilling to renewing a 55 mph national speed limit. Connecticut Democratic lawmakers have focused on commodity futures traders, who some experts claim have driven the price of oil up by as much as $75 a barrel. And they have looked ahead to this winter's heating needs, given the region's dependence on heating oil, which is even more expensive than gasoline. Meanwhile, the Republican and Democratic campaign machines are running at full throttle. In contested congressional races across the country, Democrats blame Republicans for being in the pocket of Big Oil as they advocate expansion of oil exploration in environmentally sensitive areas. Republicans blame Democrats for restricting oil production. "It's become astoundingly clear that Chris Murphy and his Democrat leaders have no direction and no hope for solving the nation's energy crisis," says National Republican Congressional Committee spokesman Ken Spain. "The American people demand action and accountability for record high gas prices and Chris Murphy has responded by sitting on his hands while his party plays political games." The GOP claims that Murphy, a freshman who won a surprising victory over a 12-term incumbent Republican, voted against allowing their energy bill to come to the House floor for debate. The legislation, they say, would increase production, encourage conservation and promote alternative energy sources. Instead, Spain said House Democrats staged a vote on an anti-price-gouging bill that was nearly identical to a bill the House approved a year earlier that still awaits Senate action. Spain offered similar criticism of Rep. Joe Courtney, D-2, the state's other freshman, who was elected by an 83-vote plurality in November 2006. "Joe Courtney owes an explanation to his constituents for his failure to provide relief to the families and kids who are suffering the most and see no relief in sight," he said. "He should have to answer questions about why he has been voting at every turn to block the sensible solutions that have been proposed to address gas prices." The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is also on the attack. "It's not just George Bush that Chris Shays is holding hands with these days, it is also his Big Oil supporters," says DCCC spokesman Doug Thornell. "While Shays is patting the backs of Big Oil for getting no-bid contracts in Iraq, people in Connecticut are struggling to pay $4.37 per gallon for gas. In fact, if it was up to Chris Shays, and his gas tax was implemented, they would be paying even more." Shays recently praised news that large U.S.-based oil companies were close to signing contracts in Iraq. He was also quoted recently as saying that a benefit of rising gasoline prices was that it would help spur interest in mass transit, alternative energy and conservation. Shays later explained that he did not mean to imply that high prices were a good thing. Gary Rose, a professor of politics at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, Conn., expects voters will ignore the negative attacks unless they show a politician is clearly in the pocket of the oil industry. "In studying the reaction to energy issues in the Democratic primary, I believe that voters have crossed over a certain line here where they won't be swayed by gimmicks," Rose said. "People want to see long-term strategies." Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-3, said last week that Congress has to address energy prices, which have become a suffocating tax on our entire economy. "We are in a crisis, and as such, we need to look at every aspect that could potentially affect energy prices," she said. "Of course, we must take into account factors such as a weak dollar, strong demand from emerging economies, geopolitical tensions in oilproducing regions and supply disruptions. But we must also do everything in our power to protect consumers from unregulated market manipulation and excessive energy speculation."

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Minnesota Uniqueness Obama slipping in the key state of Minnesota Obama may also be slipping in some key states. He lost a narrow lead in Colorado, falling 5 percentage points in the past month, and now trails McCain 46% to 44%, a new Quinnipiac University poll found. In Minnesota, Obama fell 8 percentage points, though he still leads McCain 46% to 44%, the survey found. The polling spanned the five days before Obama went abroad and the first four days of his trip. But while both Sens. John McCain and Barack Obama embrace nuclear power as a viable form of energy, hurdles remain to ramping up production, including the cost of building plants, where to store the related waste and how to transport it. Moreover, politicians will have to overcome jitters about building new plants in local communities. With 104 nuclear power plants in the U.S., nuclear energy currently produces about 20% of U.S. power and is mostly used to make electricity.

Minnesota race is extremely close in the status quo Alan Abramowitz, The Huffington Post, 7-25-08, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alanabramowitz/the-color-purple-an-exami_b_115033.html Because the Gallup weekly samples involve more than 5000 interviews, the results can be considered highly reliable. In contrast, some state polls are based on samples of only 500 or 600 voters. The relatively small number of respondents along with differences in the sampling, interviewing, and weighting procedures used by different polling organizations can produce dramatically different results between polls conducted at approximately the same time in a particular state. For example, the Quinnipiac poll, based on interviews between July 14 and 22, showed Barack Obama leading John McCain by only 2 points in Minnesota. But a Rasmussen poll based on interviews conducted on July 22 showed Obama leading McCain by 13 points in Minnesota. Since the Quinnipiac poll was based on a much larger sample of likely voters (1261) than the Rasmussen poll (600), one would normally have more confidence in the Quinnipiac results. On the other hand, the results of the Rasmussen poll were much closer to the results of other recent polls in the state which might lead one to have more confidence in its results.

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Minnesota Links and Internals Minnesota Environmental Lobbies hate nuke power Minnesota Historical Society 08 http://www.mnhs.org/library/tips/history_topics/22nuclear.html Since the 1970s, activists in Minnesota have been protesting against the three nuclear reactors operated by NSP/Xcel Energy. While energy industry representatives say that nuclear power is a safe and economical alternative to coal, environmental activists counter that nuclear plants are prone to technological failures, that they are disproportionately located on Indian reservations or in minority communities, and that long term storage of nuclear waste affects nearby communities in the form of higher cancer rates.

Minnesota is a critical swing state BBC News 04, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/3946723.stm The race has now effectively narrowed to nine states: New Mexico, Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota, Nevada and New Hampshire. The candidates are pouring their resources into these remaining states. They are focusing their television advertising in those states and making both the candidates and their running mates are criss-crossing the states in a last minute campaign press. Some commentators joke that President Bush could run for governor of Pennsylvania. He's made at least 43 campaign appearances there.

Minnesota is important and the race is very tight Peter Nicholas, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer , 7-25-08, http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-nachallenges25-2008jul25,0,1054470.story Several new surveys show that Obama is in a tight race or even losing ground to Republican John McCain, both nationally and in two important swing states, Colorado and Minnesota. One new poll offered a possible explanation for his troubles: A minority of voters see Obama as a familiar figure with whom they can identify.

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Oil Companies Not Important Oil companies have no political clout Jeannette J. Lee, Associated Press Writer, USA Today, 8-5-07, http://www.usatoday.com/news/topstories/2007-0805-3543651886_x.htm

The former head of the oil field services company VECO Corp. was once a model of political clout. From the halls of Congress to the Alaska capital city of Juneau, Bill Allen spent more than two decades throwing lavish fundraisers for favored candidates, sending them generous campaign contributions and lobbying hard for the oil and gas industry. But Allen's seemingly unshakable influence ended abruptly this year when the founder and then-chairman of VECO pleaded guilty to bribing state legislators. Now, he appears to be the link between at least three investigations of Alaska politicians by the Department of Justice, the FBI and the Internal Revenue Service. Two influential members of Alaska's congressional delegation, Sen. Ted Stevens and Rep. Don Young, both Republicans, are under investigation for their relationships with VECO. And three former Republican state legislators have been indicted since December for accepting bribes from Allen and other high-ranking VECO officers. Stevens' son, Ben, former president of the state senate, also is under investigation for ties to VECO but has not been charged.

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2AC No Link Neither Obama nor McCain owns the energy issue—plan passage won’t change anything MSNBC 7-24-08 http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/07/24/1218858.aspx No longer does the phrase “It’s the economy, stupid” suffice. We need more of an expletive to drive home the point how central the economy is to this presidential election. In the poll, the economy and energy/gas prices are the two biggest voter concerns; Iraq is third. Voters are screaming for the candidates to focus on the economy, which is what makes the European portion of Obama's trip potentially more troublesome. It’s not clear that either Obama or McCain owns this issue right now. Just 28% have confidence that Obama would be able to get the economy back on track, while only 17% say that of McCain. (But Democrats do enjoy a comfortable lead when it comes to which party better handles the economy and energy.) Also according to the poll, voters -- overwhelmingly -- want McCain to pick a running mate who’s an expert on the economy. They want Obama to pick an expert in military or foreign affairs, but a close second is an economic expert. Who out there fits those bills for McCain and Obama? Will Michael Bloomberg get second looks from both candidates? Romney and Portman rise to the top of McCain's list? Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina too? What about Mark Warner on the Dem side? Will Robert Rubin's name suddenly surface?

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Gag rule internal Obama would instantly repeal the gag rule Barbara B Crane, Executive Vice President, Ipas (Women’s Rights NGO), Chapel Hill NC, and Jennifer Dusenberry, Research Assistant, Population Action International, November 2004, Reproductive Health Matters, Vol. 12, No. 24, p. 134-135 The Gag Rule has neither broad-based political support nor a compelling public health or development rationale. If the Democratic party prevails in the November 2004 presidential election, the Gag Rule will be rescinded. It would still be likely to remain as a political bone of contention between the Executive branch and Congress, however, with continuing efforts to impose a legislated version, as occurred under Clinton. Also, because the Helms Amendment will still be in place, prohibitions will continue on the involvement of USAID in abortion and use of USAID funds to advance access to and quality of safe abortion care. Restoration of federal funding of abortion services domestically may be necessary before the Helms Amendment is likely to be repealed – both distant objectives unless political alignments shift markedly. If Republicans prevail in the election, it is virtually assured that the Gag Rule will remain in place, at least until 2008. Opponents of the Gag Rule can nevertheless be encouraged by increasing condemnation of the Gag Rule by individual health and development leaders overseas, in both developing and European countries. A gathering of African health leaders in Addis Ababa in March 2003 called on African governments and the global community to oppose the policy.35 In September 2003, the parliamentary assembly of the Council of Europe voted 89 to 8 to adopt a resolution calling for ‘‘enlightened debate with the United States on the harmful effects of the re-establishment of the Mexico City Policy in an attempt to encourage President George W Bush to cancel it’’.36 Other European policymakers have also expressed strong disagreement in a variety of fora.37,38 Isolation of the US in the arenas where the ten-year review of ICPD has been carried out has also sent a strong message about where other members of the international community stand on reproductive rights, including a number of key donors.