The John McCain campaign has made a major six million dollar ad buy during the upcoming Beijing Olympics. That’s one million dollars more than the previously reported figure of Senator Obama’s five million dollar ad buy.

From the Washington Post:

It appears that spending $5 million on advertising during the Olympics will get a presidential candidate only the silver medal.

Presumptive Republican nominee John McCain has taken out a $6 million ad buy for airtime during the Beijing Games that open Friday, $1 million more than Democratic rival Barack Obama had previously committed to his own media buy.

The McCain campaign declined to comment. But the public file at NBC Universal confirmed the purchase. McCain ads are to run in a variety of time slots, including prime time.

The broadcast network is airing 3,600 hours of Olympics coverage on NBC, CNBC, MSNBC, USA Network, Oxygen and Telemundo.

Advertising Age, which first reported the buy, said the spending by the two campaigns marked the first substantial buys of national network TV by any presidential candidate in 12 years. More recently, campaigns have targeted their ads to battleground states, in addition to advertising on cable networks.

The McCain campaign, which has committed to federal funding during the general election, must use the money it has raised for the primaries before McCain officially becomes the party’s nominee during the Republican National Convention, which starts September 1.

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In case you missed it, here is former President Bill Clinton’s interview in full on Good Morning America.

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Poor, poor Allyson Schwartz, a Democratic Congresswoman from Pennsylvania, who today was embarrassed on national television by MSNBC’s David Schuster who asked in the wake of Obama’s attacks on the Bush-Cheney Energy Policy:

Didn’t Barack Obama vote for the 2005 Bush-Cheney energy bill?

At first she dodged the question and tried the valiant, let’s not talk about that, let’s talk about this tactic. Schuster would have none of it and persisted. To which, the idiotic Congresswoman from Pennsylvania could only say that David Schuster would have to ask the Obama campaign. Really? So either she didn’t know or she was too embarrassed to admit the awful truth and hypocrisy of Obama’s energy attacks.

Allow me then, Congresswoman, to inform you that Senator Obama voted for the 2005 Energy Bill, written in secret by Vice President Cheney and the energy lobby. Thomas Friedman referred to the bill as “the sum of all lobbies.” U.S. PIRG noted that the bill’s “heavy tilt toward big oil companies reflects the influence of Exxon Mobil and other oil companies on policy-makers in Washington, DC.”

The Washington Post editorialized that the bill was a “piñata of perks for energy industries.” Indeed, the bill contained $6 billion in subsidies to the oil and gas industry and $12 billion to the nuclear power industry.

Although Sen. Obama voted for the legislation, he has spoken as if he opposed it on the campaign trail, criticizing it repeatedly. At a presidential debate he said “You can look at how Dick Cheney did his energy policy . . . he met with oil and gas companies forty times, and that’s how they put together our energy policy.” He attributes the failure of our current energy policy to Congress’s “failure to stand up to the lobbyists.” Actually Barack, I attribute the failure of current energy policy to shameless politicians like you and Dick Durbin who crossed the aisle to vote the most egregious give-away since the 1872 Mining Law.

Here’s the transcript of Schuster’s grilling of Allyson Schwartz:

DAVID SHUSTER: Congresswoman, during the event in Ohio today, Barack Obama attacked the Bush-Cheney energy policy. But didn’t Barack Obama vote for the 2005 Bush-Cheney energy bill?

ALLYSON SCHWARTZ: Well let’s talk about what John McCain’s been saying, and John McCain was in Pennsylvania just yesterday and really had very little to say about doing anything differently than the Bush administration’s been doing for years.

SHUSTER: Congresswoman, I’m happy to talk about that, but just a yes or no question: didn’t Barack Obama vote for the 2005 Bush-Cheney energy bill?

SCHWARTZ: Well, I think, you know, we have to go back and, and check on that. I’m sure the campaign can give you the specifics on, uh, exactly what, uh, was done.

Allyson Schwartz, I think your television career, hapless as it was, as a surrogate is over.

You can view the exchange in all its fluttering glory on here. It’s must see television as they say. You can actually see her panic when her attempt to play dodgeball failed. She looks up to the side and you can see her wonder “what do I say next?” In this case, shamelessly Allyson Schwartz chose to dodge again and pass the buck. She chose to omit the truth. Obama voted for the Bush-Cheney Energy Policy. John McCain did not. And it matters, neither did Hillary Clinton.

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The Colombian television channel Radio Cadena Nacional (RCN) has obtained new footage from Operación Jaque, the Colombian military’s rescue of Ingrid Betancourt, the three Americans and the eleven other long-term hostages of the FARC. The report is in Spanish. It should be noted that these videos were not released by the Colombian government which today is rather displeased that they have been aired. While efforts were made to obscure the faces of those involved in the operation, at a few points it seems likely that at least one of those in the operation might be idenitified.

The first three videos show the preparation leading up to rescue. The fourth video shows parts of the rescue and the first images before the helicopters landed in the Tolemaida Air Force Base. The fifth video shows the arrival at the Tolemaida Air Force Base and then the transfer to San Jose del Guaviare where the Colombians were transferred by plane to Bogotá and from where the three Americans took off to San Antonio, Texas. You can see the Americans’ first moments of freedom in this fifth video. The two FARC guerrillas were drugged in their submission and this part also covers their coming too from the effects of the drug and the realization that they were now prisoners. The fifth part also covers at the CATAM Air Base in Bogotá.

The first and fourth videos, each ten minutes in length, are pretty self-evident and speak to the detail and planning that went into Operación Jaque.

Primera Parte

Segunda Parte

Tercera Parte

Cuarta Parte

Quinta Parte

Below the fold are Colombian news reports covering the release of these new videos. Again, they are in Spanish. (more…)

Here is the Tuesday, August 5th, 2008 edition of what is making news and interesting reads from around the world.

Philippine Accord on Mindanao Halted
The Supreme Court of the Philippines prevented the signing of a territorial accord between the state and Mindanao Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), an Islamic rebel group that has been fighting to establish an independent state for decades. The accord would have expanded an Islamic homeland on the southern island of Mindanao. Opponents had called the deal unconstitutional. More from the Christian Science Monitor. Shortly after the accord was halted, the MILF resumed its terrorist attacks. More on this from Agence France Presse.

Korea’s Terms of Trade Worsen
Korea’s real trade loss hit an all-time high of 54.9 trillion won ($54 billion) in the first half, reflecting worsening terms of trade, data by the Bank of Korea showed yesterday. According to the central bank, this implies the economy lost real income equal to 54.9 trillion won in the first half, based on the condition that trade terms had remained the same as 2000, the base year. Due to worsening terms of trade in Asia’s fourth-largest economy, the real trade loss showed a sliding trend from 12.6 trillion won in the first half of 2004 to 37.1 trillion won posted in the first half of 2007. More from the Korea Herald. In international economics and international trade, terms of trade or TOT is the relative prices of a country’s export to import. An improvement in a nation’s terms of trade is good for that country in the sense that it has to pay less for the products it imports, that is, it has to give up fewer exports for the imports it receives. The culprit in Korea’s case is likely higher energy prices.

Unemployment in Spain at a Ten Year High
The number of registered jobless in Spain hit a ten year high in July as consumer confidence fell to a record low. That prompted Spain’s economy minister to say he couldn’t rule out the country falling into recession. The number of people claiming unemployment benefit rose for the fourth straight month. The total – 2.43 million – is 23% higher than July last year. At the same time, the Spanish consumer confidence index, which is calculated by the country’s official credit institute, fell to 46.3. One year ago, it was at 92.5. The full report from Euro News.

Criticism in the Comoros over the Government’s Relationship with Iran
Last year, the government of the Comoros, an island nation in the Straits of Madagscar, cancelled its oil supply with Total, the French energy gaint, and switched to a deal with Iran. That move has sparked growing outrage over acute fuel shortages across the Indian Ocean archipelago. More from IAfrica.

Italian Military Put on Crime Patrols
Soldiers were deployed throughout Italy on Monday to embassies, subway and railway stations, as part of broader government measures to fight violent crime here for which illegal immigrants are broadly blamed. The full story in the New York Times.

“A Veritable Civil War in Brazil’s Amazon
Deep in the northernmost reaches of the Amazon jungle, a land conflict between rice farmers and a handful of Indian tribes has turned so violent that the country’s Supreme Court warns it could escalate into civil war. The court is expected to decide in August if the government can keep evicting rice farmers from a 4.2 million acre Indian reservation decreed by President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in 2005. The evictions were stopped in April when rice farmers started burning bridges and blockading roads, and justices said they feared a “veritable civil war.” More from the Miami Herald.

Top Aide to Syrian President Assassinated
This story broke last Friday when it occurred but the source was an Arab language newspaper from Beirut. Now the UK Guardian is reporting that the bizarre and rather mysterious assassination of a top Syrian army officer and right-hand man to President Bashar al-Assad is triggering intense speculation about a crisis inside the Damascus regime over its complex relations with Iran, Hizbollah and Israel.

According to one report, the seaside murder of Brigadier-General Muhammad Suleiman was perpetrated by a sniper firing from a yacht moored offshore.

Suleiman was described by Syrian officials as dealing with defence and security issues in Assad’s private office. Israeli and Syrian opposition sources claimed he worked as “liaison” with the Iranian-backed Lebanese group Hizbullah, Israel’s sworn enemy.

Suleiman, 49, was killed on a beach near the Syrian resort of Tartous on Friday.

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The Obama campaign aired a new TV ad in Michigan and a few other battleground states Monday to coincide with his energy speech in Lansing. Unlike other Obama ads, this ad attacks McCain directly.

The ad states that “Big Oil is filling John McCain’s campaign with $2 million in contributions” and that McCain wants to give domestic oil companies “another $4 billion in tax breaks.” When Bush appears on the screen, the announcer says, “After one president in the pocket of Big Oil, we can’t afford another.” The announcer then says Obama supports a windfall profits tax on oil companies and a $1,000 rebate for families.

The first problem is that Obama voted for the Bush-Cheney Energy Polices and John McCain did not. The Washington Post editorialized that the bill was a “piñata of perks for energy industries.” Indeed, the bill contained $6 billion in subsidies to the oil and gas industry and $12 billion to the nuclear power industry. So who is in the pocket of whom?

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