Never listen to the mob, they never know what they want.
Topic: General News.

A new poll out taken by a Republican pollster, Ed Goeas, and a Democratic pollster, Celinda Lake, that was sponsored by George Washington University found that 58% of voters said the federal government did a poor job responding to hurricane Katrina. That's not much of a surprise, but what is interesting is how they said they would pay for Katrina relief: As we know W.'s plan is to slash social programs that help the poor and make tax cuts to the rich permanent. Voters surveyed in this poll, reported in the Philadelphia Inquirer, had other ideas; 73 percent said they would, "cut highway spending that did not go directly to roadwork, 68 percent said they would raise taxes on people earning $200,000 a year, and 63 percent said they would start withdrawing troops from Iraq and pull all of them out by the end of next year."

These are pretty large majorities, why are the Democrats so terrified of forcefully calling for a withdrawal of troops from Iraq? Hillary won't even say whether she regrets voting to give W. authority to go to war, so she's not likely to start a "class war" by calling for more taxes on the rich.

China's nukes:

The Ap reports that, "The U.S. government is trying to help China's booming nuclear-power industry tighten security by conducting demonstrations this week of measures meant to prevent the theft of radioactive material." Before they sign on to this deal the Chinese might want to think about checking out the ABC News report that found nuclear reactors on university campuses around the country are almost defensless. Among its findings: "unmanned guard booths, a guard who appeared to be asleep, unlocked building doors and, in a number of cases, guided tours that provided easy access to control rooms and reactor pools that hold radioactive fuel. The report found none of the college reactors had metal detectors, and only two appear to have armed guards."

Windfall taxes anyone?

The LA Times reports, "When major U.S. energy companies including Exxon Mobil Corp. and Chevron Corp. announce their third-quarter earnings in the next few days, the results are certain to be staggering. Exxon Mobil alone is expected to report quarterly profit of about $8.7 billion." House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert is said to have really taken the bull by the horns and told the oil companies to invest some of that money in building new refinaries, in order to "ease the pain" of high prices. (Whoa there, Dennis, don't get all marxist on us.) They could just stop gouging consumers, but you know...By the way, didn't congress already pass the no-oilman-left-behind Act that was supposed to help them out with refinary construction?

Apparently, some in congress want to "slap the industry with a windfall-profit tax like the one imposed in 1980." But, they're so generous! Remember that, all the major oil companies as a group gave $11 million whole dollars to Katrina relief!!!! So what if "together, the 29 major oil and gas firms in the Standard & Poor's 500 stock index are expected to earn $96 billion this year, up from $68 billion last year and $43 billion in 2000," big deal, they're broke. Don't you know all those government environmental laws are just killing them, otherwise they'd be more charitable. No doubt, that W. and congress will charitable to the oil industry and we'll hear no more about wind fall profits taxes.