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  Today, fighters from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, continued their push towards Baghdad. The group now controls a whole swath of territory ranging from the Euphrates valley in Eastern Syria all the way down to the string of cities surrounding the Iraqi capital.
  If you made a list of the nastiest people on earth, ISIS would top the list. The group was actually kicked out of Al-Qaeda for being too extreme and has been pretty open about how it wants to “cleanse” the “filth-ridden” Shia holy cities of Najaf and Karbala.
  When it comes to terrorist groups, ISIS is really the worst of the worst and threat to everyone everywhere, which makes it all the more the shocking that it’s apparently found a friend in none other than Arizona Sen. John McCain.
  As Steve Clemons has pointed out in a blockbuster piece for The Atlantic, McCain, along with South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, has played a key role in getting the Saudi Arabians and the Qataris, our allies, to arm rebel groups in Syria that are fighting the Iranian-backed government of Bashar al-Assad.
  Publicly, the Saudis and the Qataris say they’re only sending weapons to “moderate” rebel groups like the Free Syrian Army, but they’ve also reportedly been arming more extreme groups – groups like the Al-Nusra Front and, you guessed it, ISIS.
  According to Clemons, ISIS was a “Saudi pet project” and support for the group may have reached all the way to the top of the Saudis’ version of the CIA. He says that “ISIS, in fact, may have been a major part of [former Saudi intelligence chief Bandar bin Sultan’s] covert-ops strategy in Syria.”
  This isn’t some crazy conspiracy theory, either. As Clemons points out, John McCain’s connections to the Saudis are well documented, and during an interview with CNN‘s Candy Crowley a few months ago, he went out of his way to praise both the Saudis and Prince Bandar bin Sultan.
  Now, we don’t know whether or not John McCain knew that he was helping the Saudis arm ISIS, and my guess is that he didn’t know, but that’s a separate issue.
  The important point here is that intentionally or not, John McCain may have just set us up for another 9/11. ISIS has its sights on Iraq and Syria right now, but there are reports that it’s threatened to attack targets in the West as well.
  Back in the 1980s, the CIA, the Saudis, and the Pakistanis worked together to fund the mujahideen in Afghanistan. The mujahideen were radical Islamists, but we thought it was worth it to support them because it was the Cold War and they were fighting the Soviets, who had invaded Afghanistan in 1979.
  Here in the US, the guy most responsible for getting us to support the mujahideen was a playboy Texas Congressman named Charlie Wilson, who, like John McCain, thought he was just trying to help people fight for “democracy.”
  You might have heard of Wilson because Tom Hanks played him in a 2007 movie about the CIA’s support for the mujahideen called “Charlie Wilson’s War.”
  Whatever good intentions Charlie Wilson may have had, his plan backfired and it backfired badly. Our support for the mujahideen against the Soviets – just like our support for the Khmer Rouge against the Viet Cong and our support for the Contras against the Sandinistas – had a huge blowback effect.
  You see, one of the people who we and the Saudis armed back in the 1980s was a rich Saudi named Osama bin Laden, who, like a lot of Muslim radicals from all over the world, saw the fight against the Soviets as a chance to prove his worth as a holy warrior.
  Bin Laden went on to form a group known as “The Base” out of the remnants of his Saudi-backed mujahideen force. You probably know “The Base” by its Arabic name: Al-Qaeda.
  There’s an old saying that those who don’t remember their past are doomed to repeat it, and if we’re not careful with what’s going in the Middle East right now, we are going to see a repeat of what happened just two decades after we armed the mujahideen in the 1980s.
  In today’s real-life remake of “Charlie Wilson’s War,” John McCain is playing the role of Charlie Wilson and Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, the head of ISIS, is playing the role of Osama bin Laden. It’s only a matter of time before this remake, like all remakes of crappy movies, comes to a crashing, disastrous end.
  If you're not old enough to buy a gun, then there's absolutely no reason why guns should be marketed towards you.
  Fifty years ago, Ford unveiled a small-scale model for its atomic-powered car of the future. A capsule in the rear would contain the nuclear power and could be replaced. The engineering challenge would be dealing with the weight required for shielding the radioactivity. That was about the time Ford came out with another shaky idea, the Edsel, which, unfortunately for the company, it put into production.
  The Edsel quickly passed into history, but the Edsel's source of fuel lived on through gasoline shortages, price spikes, wars to protect oil fields and fears for a planet warmed by greenhouse gases. And it's with us today, except that our cars already go farther on less of it, and American carmakers plan to build models that will squeeze even more miles out of a gallon of gas.
  Those of us trapped in the recent debt ceiling panic may not have noticed President Obama's announcement of a big increase in fuel efficiency standards, as Detroit's Big Three carmakers applauded. Gone were the usual tooth-and-nail fights against any requirement that automakers raise their mileage. Instead, thumbs went up for a near doubling of fuel economy — a fleet average of 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025 versus today's 27 miles per gallon. This is reportedly the biggest increase in fuel efficiency standards since the government first established them in the 1970s. (Environmentalists wanted more, but they got plenty.)
  Quite a change from four years ago, when the auto executives camped out in Washington to protest proposals for tougher fuel economy standards. Why the new posture? Some will argue that the taxpayer bailout of Detroit (though not Ford) has dampened the carmakers' enthusiasm for a fight with Washington. Also, the federal government will be offering the industry credits for making battery-powered and hybrid vehicles, the details to be announced.
  But the more romantically inclined will see another reason for the change of heart. Americans are loving the new fuel-efficient cars that Detroit is offering. In any case, they're buying them.
  The Chevrolet Cruze compact powered General Motors' U.S. sales gain in July, dominating U.S. car sales for the second month in a row. Actually, six of the best-selling vehicles in the United States are small or midsize cars. Meanwhile, Ford's F-Series — including a six-cylinder engine that manages to get high mileage — is among the hottest-selling pickups.
  The carmakers' concern is this: What happens when gas prices go down? The average price for a gallon of gasoline is near its peak of about $4 and almost a dollar higher than it was a year ago. Will consumers pay extra for the advanced technology when the total at the pump strikes less awe?
  Consumers probably will, because they are older and wiser. The economic crackup may have created another Depression generation wary of expensive commitments, such as vehicles getting poor mileage. And few believe that cheap gasoline will ever return. The line on the price graph goes up and down, but “up” has become the general direction.
  The auto industry is in the business of making cars, not pumping oil. That made Detroit's former reluctance to adopt higher fuel economy standards a bit odd. We appreciate that it made good money years ago producing gas-guzzling SUVs using older, cheaper technology. With gas prices low, consumers shrugged off the extra costs. Detroit left the market for fuel-efficient cars largely to its foreign competitors, who ate their lunch when demand for them soared.
  The companies are now restructured to more nimbly respond to consumer sentiment, which, happily, now coincides with the national interest to reduce dependency on oil, most of it imported. May the love between American automakers and the American consumer continue to grow for the good of us all.
  This weekend, as 10,000 energetic, bright, young people are converging on Washington, DC, for PowerShift 2011, a geezer* is waging an all-out assault on their future. Eighty-two-year-old Texas…
  Washington - President Barack Obama announced Thursday that his administration will investigate to see if fraud or manipulation in oil markets is behind the spike in gasoline prices.…