Barack Obama released a comprehensive energy plan [PDF] yesterday that's received high praise in a number of places (fuller detail below the fold) — especially from those who've been underwhelmed with Obama's energy stances thus far.

Here are a couple… 

Over at Grist.com David Roberts writes about Obama's “bold new energy proposal”…

Overall, I'm pleasantly surprised — even shocked — at its quality. It's a deft mix of good politics and strong, substantive policy. Here are what I see as the three headlines:

• 100% auction of cap-and-trade credits. This is a home run, a real act of standard-setting boldness (the kind that Obama always promises but rarely delivers). The green community should immediately use it to push Clinton and Edwards into making the same commitment, insuring that it's the new baseline for any cap-and-trade program.
• Smart investment. The revenue from auctions will be considerable, up to $50 billion a year, and Obama's smart about putting it to work, dividing it between energy R&D, protections for low-income workers, and market deployment of existing clean tech.
• A focus on efficiency. Clearly Obama gets that efficiency is the easiest route to emission reductions, and he's got a set of thoughtful, detailed initiatives to make it work.

…

Much has been said about Edwards' important role in this campaign: pushing the other candidates toward stronger, more ambitious policy. You can see it at work here — in several respects Obama's energy proposal echoes Edwards'.

However, with his promise to auction 100% of cap-and-trade credits, Obama has put himself out ahead of all the other frontrunners. He deserves the praise he'll get for it.

The Leage of Conservation Voters responds:

Senator Barack Obama has put forward an aggressive plan that would point America in the right direction toward a clean, renewable energy future, reduce greenhouse gas pollution and reverse the disastrous policies of the current Administration.
 
With the Obama plan in place, America would boldly regain its footing as a world leader in environmental protection and clean, renewable energy production.

We should all be pleased with how all of the Democratic candidates this year have been pushing each other back and forth to make substantive policy initiatives — on a variety of topics — central to the discussion.

More details below the fold… 

From the campaign's press release…

Portsmouth, NH – In a major policy address today, Barack Obama will announce a visionary plan to make America a global leader on energy. After years of broken promises and unfulfilled plans that have fallen victim to the Washington status quo, Obama will pledge to provide real leadership on the issue by challenging conventional thinking and loosening the grip of special interests.  Obama’s plan lays out bold steps to combat global climate change, free America from the tyranny of oil, and create millions of new jobs and entire new industries here in America. 

Senator Obama has been a proven leader on energy with a strong record of fighting to invest in renewable fuels and raise fuel economy standards. Obama has been honest in telling the defenders of the status quo that when he’s President, the same failures won’t do. 

Senator Obama’s plan to make America a global leader on energy includes:

•      Implementing an economy-wide cap-and-trade program to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to the level recommended by top scientists to avoid calamitous impacts 
•      Investing $150 billion over the next ten years to develop and deploy climate friendly energy supplies, protect our existing manufacturing base and create millions of new jobs  
•      Dramatically improving energy efficiency to reduce energy intensity of our economy by 50 percent by 2030 
•      Reducing our dependence on foreign oil and reducing oil consumption overall by at least 35 percent, or 10 million barrels of oil, by 2030 
•      Leading a new international global warming partnership 

The plan can be viewed in full HERE.

As the campaign season heats up, and we hear the breathless reports in the media on one day about how a single poll supposedly shows that Candidate X has surged ahead — and yet no similar stories about Candidate X plummeting the next day when the first was shown to be an anomaly, I thought you all might enjoy this amusing description of how polling is done…

It’s for this reason that I think most polls are ultimately push polls — when you analyze the subtexts that they almost always promote.

What would happen if every blog published on the same topic on the same day? Blog Action Day aims to find out. On October 15 2007, bloggers around the world unite for one day to change the conversation. To find out more and get involved visit blogactionday.org.

[via YouTube, here; posted by BlogActionDay (August 14, 2007); length: 1:08 minutes/seconds]

This is one of those stories that has to be passed on as far and as wide as possible, but it really makes you wonder if some of these partisan, win-at-all-costs Republicans are actually some different species or something. Think Progress has done the work on this, so I'll just excerpt from them:

Two weeks ago, the Democratic radio address was delivered by a 12-year old Maryland boy named Graeme Frost. Graeme told his story of being involved in a severe car accident three years ago, and having received access to medical care because of the Children’s Health Insurance Program. He said:

If it weren’t for CHIP, I might not be here today. … We got the help we needed because we had health insurance for us through the CHIP program. But there are millions of kids out there who don’t have CHIP, and they wouldn’t get the care that my sister and I did if they got hurt. … I just hope the President will listen to my story and help other kids to be as lucky as me.

Now, you know what's coming – you just might not believe it. The right wing attack machine has, in response, gone after this kid and his family. And we're not just talking about a few easily dissmissable nutjobs here (although the smear did begin with an anonymous wingnut at freerepublic.com), the attack has been picked up and amplified by The National Review, Michelle Malkin, Wizbang, Powerline, the Weekly Standard blog, and House GOP leader John Boehner – and the attacks have crept into ABC's online site as well. The message is, as TP put it, “that Frost was actually a rich kid being pampered by the government” and that “Graeme and his sister Gemma attend wealthy schools that cost 'nearly $40,000 per year for tuition' and live in a well-off home”

The real message – given the above attacks and reports that the family is getting a barrage of harassing phone calls, and have picked up Michelle Malkin as a stalker into their private lives – is basically; don't open your mouth and screw with us or we'll come after you. Any conservative with any kind of conscience should damn well get out in front and condemn this twisted smear and intimidation campaign.

Here are the facts about the family, for the record:

1) Graeme has a scholarship to a private school. The school costs $15K a year, but the family only pays $500 a year.

2) His sister Gemma attends another private school to help her with the brain injuries that occurred due to her accident. The school costs $23,000 a year, but the state pays the entire cost.

3) They bought their “lavish house” sixteen years ago for $55,000 at a time when the neighborhood was less than safe.

4) Last year, the Frost’s made $45,000 combined. Over the past few years they have made no more than $50,000 combined.

5) The state of Maryland has found them eligible to participate in the CHIP program.

Desperate to defend Bush’s decision to cut off millions of children from health care, the right wing has stooped to launching baseless and uninformed attacks against a 12 year old child and his family.