The LA Times reports, “President Bush plans to ask lawmakers next week to approve another massive spending measure — totaling nearly $200 billion — to fund the war through next year, Pentagon officials said.”

Currently, the war in Iraq is costing the U.S. $720 million a day — an amount that could “could buy homes for 6,500 families or health care for 423,529 children.”

After joining Rev. Al Sharpton for dinner in Harlem, Fox’s Bill O’Reilly remarked that “couldn’t get over the fact that there was no difference between Sylvia’s restaurant and any other restaurant in New York City … even though it’s run by blacks, primarily black patronship.”

Steven Benen writes further:

On the same program, O’Reilly was describing his experience to NPR’s Juan Williams. “There wasn’t one person in Sylvia’s who was screaming, ‘M-Fer, I want more iced tea,’” O’Reilly said, adding, “You know, I mean, everybody was — it was like going into an Italian restaurant in an all-white suburb in the sense of people were sitting there, and they were ordering and having fun. And there wasn’t any kind of craziness at all.”

“Students jammed into a University of Wisconsin-Madison building Thursday to disrupt Halliburton Co.’s attempt to recruit at a campus job fair.

Protesters angrily accused the company of profiting from the war in Iraq and sat in front of the company’s booth to discourage students from meeting with its representatives.”

UPDATE: ThinkProgress points out that “CEOs at top defense contractors have reaped annual pay gains of 200% to 688% in the years since the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.” Additionally, “The CEOs made an average of $12.4 million a year, easily more than the average corporate chief. Since the start of the war, CEOs at defense contractors such General Dynamics, Halliburton and Oshkosh Truck have made, on average, more in four days than what a top general makes in a whole year, or $187,390.”

“Investors around the world dumped the dollar today, pushing it to an all-time low of $1.40 against the euro and to parity with the Canadian dollar for the first time in three decades as currency traders digested the full implications of the Federal Reserve’s new course for interest rates.”

On his new blog, “The Conscience of a Liberal,” Paul Krugman writes that too many political journalists may be in the wrong profession:

One of my pet peeves about political reporting is the fact that some of my journalistic colleagues seem to want to be in another business – namely, theater criticism. Instead of telling us what candidates are actually saying – and whether it’s true or false, sensible or silly – they tell us how it went over, and how they think it affects the horse race. …

To a remarkable extent, punditry has taken a pass on whether Gen. Petraeus’s picture of the situation in Iraq is accurate. Instead, it was all about the theatrics – about how impressive he looked, how well or poorly his Congressional inquisitors performed. And the judgment you got if you were watching most of the talking heads was that it was a big win for the administration – especially because the famous MoveOn ad was supposed to have created a scandal, and a problem for the Democrats. …

But here’s the thing: new polls by CBS and Gallup show that the Petraeus testimony had basically no effect on public opinion: Americans continue to hate the war, and want out.

Krugman apologizes in the beginning of his piece for it being a “a bit of a rant.” Sadly, however, his “rant” is an accurate picture of the state of political reporting.

In his new book, The Age of Turbulence, former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan offered several sharp critiques of the Bush administration and the Republican party at large for a “lack of fiscal discipline.” “The Republicans in Congress lost their way. They swapped principle for power. They ended up with neither,” he writes.

Vice President Cheney is not happy with Greenspan’s characterization. In the Wall Street Journal yesterday he offered Greenspan a “few gentle reminders,” calling Greenspan’s assessments “off the mark.” Rather, Cheney argues that President Bush — who has shepherded government spending to a “record high” — has a “superb” record of fiscal discipline.

UPDATE: ThinkProgress notes that “Bush’s tax cuts have ‘been the single largest contributor to the reemergence of substantial budget deficits.’ “Between 2001 and 2006, the passage of the Bush tax cuts without the offsetting savings have cost $1.2 trillion in lost revenues, or more than 80 percent of the cumulative deficit during this period.”

“Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns will resign his Cabinet seat tomorrow to begin preparing to run for a Senate seat from Nebraska” being vacated by Sen. Chuck Hagel (R).

“City officials in New York have denied Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s request to visit the site of the destroyed World Trade Center next week, a police spokesman said Wednesday.”

Yesterday, Rev. Jessie Jackson “sharply criticized presidential hopeful and Illinois Sen. Barack Obama for ‘acting like he’s white‘ … Jackson also said Obama, who consistently has placed second in state and national polls behind New York Sen. Hillary Clinton, must be ‘bolder’ in his political positions if he is to erase Clinton’s lead.”

Jessie Jackson endorsed Obama in March. (via HuffPost)

UPDATE: Jackson is disputing the quote.

A majority of the Senate voted today to approve Sen. Jim Webb’s (D-VA) amendment to the Defense Authorization act, but failed to garner the 60 votes needed to break a GOP filibuster. The measure would have required “that troops get as much time at home as they spend overseas before being redeployed.” Currently troops are promised 12 months at home after each 15-month deployment.

Sen. John Warner (R-VA) had previously voted for such a measure. Today, however, with the help of Sen. John McCain (R-VA), he undercut the Webb amendment by offering a “toothless, watered-down substitute.” The measure would have expressed the content of the Webb amendment as the “sense of the Senate,” but would have no binding effects. The Warner/McCain resolution failed as well.

Sen. Mel Martinez (R-FL) argued against the Webb amendment saying, “I think we would demean their service if we were to say to them that there had to be a parity between the time in service out of the country and the time at home.” Martinez couldn’t have it more wrong.