Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama hold their first joint fund-raisers to benefit Obama tonight and tomorrow in New York City.

But today the New York Times reports on tensions between the two camps and the lack of enthusiasm among Obama fund-raisers to help Clinton retire her $23 million in debt.

Reportedly they have amassed less than $100,000.

There remains lots of resentment among Clinton supporters who believe their candidate was poorly treated during the long primary. Likewise among Obama supporters angry she stayed in the race so long.

Tomorrow morning especially will be interesting, a Women for Obama breakfast with Clinton.

Meanwhile, here’s a clever t-shirt modeled by James Jeanty.

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Howard Wolfson, Hillary Clinton’s former strategist and communications director, has signed with Fox News as a contributor.

If you think that’s an odd match-up, consider that Wolfson told the New York Times that he thought Fox’s coverage during the primary was the comprehensive, fair and even-handed.

And the Clinton campaign did complain about press coverage in favor of Sen. Barack Obama.

“Howard was part of the inner working circle of Senator Clinton’s campaign and has a unique perspective on just how unconventional this election year already is,” John Moody, an executive vice president at Fox, said in a statement.

Wolfson continues as a partner at the Glover Park Group, a political and media consulting group.

He makes his debut tomorrow.

Over the weekend, I saw Wall-E and it is as charming and inventive as you’ve heard—the first half more than the second.
Wall-E is a delightful robot still compacting trash hundreds of years after humans have abandoned the polluted Earth for space.

Here’s the start of Roger Ebert’s review:
Pixar’s “WALL•E” succeeds at being three things at once: an enthralling animated film, a visual wonderment and a decent science-fiction story. . . .(H)ere is a film, like “Finding Nemo,” that you can enjoy even if you’ve grown up. That it works largely without spoken dialogue is all the more astonishing; it can easily cross language barriers, which is all the better, considering that it tells a planetary story.

But don’t tell that to some conservatives.
Here’s Shannen Coffin from National Review Online’s The Corner:
“From the first moment of the film, my kids were bombarded with leftist propaganda about the evils of mankind. It’s a shame, too, because the robot had promise. The story was just awful, however. Nice to see that Disney and Pixar can make mega-millions off of telling us just how greedy, lazy, and destructive we all are. There’s no hope for mankind. Hand over your wallet.”
And Greg Pollowitz on National Review Online’s Planet Gore:
“It was like a 90-minute lecture on the dangers of over consumption, big corporations, and the destruction of the environment.”

Afteward I couldn’t help but notice all the trash all around — on the sides of the roads, on the sidewalks. And the haze that engulfed the New York City skyline by the end of the weekend.

Independence Day weekend in Connecticut.         PHOTOS from Terri and Molly O’Donnell 

“NVIROCAR”

A license plate on—what else?—a Prius.

With greenhouse gases smothering us, you’ve got to think more people are wondering about solar and wind power.

Here’s an interesting story about getting green power through the electric grid.

And you don’t have to even have to wear hemp.

ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — Even as more Americans look to shrink their carbon footprints, relatively few have switched to providers of electricity generated by wind, water and sun.
“Green power” programs allow consumers to purchase renewable energy, usually at a premium, without having to go through the far greater expense of erecting a windmill or installing a solar panel. The programs are widely available, yet there are estimates that fewer than 1 percent of residential consumers nationwide receive their electricity from “green power” providers.
Call it a green power disconnect.
People involved in the alternative energy industry say Americans are interested in reducing the amount of greenhouse gases they are responsible for — witness the popularity of compact fluorescent bulbs. But they say many consumers aren’t aware of programs designed to reduce their reliance on fossil fuels. Or how they work. Or even if they work.
“They don’t think wind and solar power can keep the lights on at night, keep the heat on the winter and keep the air conditioning on in the summer,” said Brian F. Keane, president of Smart Power, a not-for-profit clean energy marketing group. “It conjures up all of the worst caricatures of the environmental movement … They must wear hemp, they must buy organic, they must live in a cold, dark house.”
Green power programs allow consumers to buy wind, hydro, solar and biomass energy without disconnecting from the electrical grid. In states with deregulated utilities, consumers can often shop directly for renewable electricity suppliers. More common are programs through utilities that allow customers to buy some of their power from green providers.
The “GreenUp” program offered by National Grid is typical. The utility’s upstate New York customers can choose among four renewable providers that offer a mix of wind and small hydro power that costs from 1 to 2.5 cents more per kilowatt hour, which for an average New Yorker would mean roughly $6 to $15 in additional electricity costs a month.

The electricity is still delivered over wires maintained by National Grid, and the utility still bills the consumer. But National Grid secures the power from one of the clean energy providers on behalf of the subscribers. There’s no new equipment and no visit from a power crew to get the green power running.
About 13,000 of National Grid’s 1.4 million New York residential customers participate in GreenUp — a low signup rate on par with statewide and national figures.
The National Renewable Energy Laboratory estimated last year that were about 700,000 customers nationwide — almost all of them residential — buying green power through either competitive markets or utilities in 2006. While there are 122.5 million residential customers nationwide, not all of them have access to green power programs. A better gauge might be the participation rate of 1.8 percent.
Industry analysts say higher prices likely dissuade consumers from switching. But advocates argue that the larger problems are perception and marketing. John Holtz, director of operations for Green Mountain Energy, notes that when people flick a light switch, they simply don’t think of power plant smokestacks.

“Shopping for electricity is such a low-interest category with consumers, and confusing,” said Holtz.
Keane said some people still equate green power with having to install a solar panel in their back yard. Others aren’t sure how to shop for the program. What word do you search on Google? Renewable? Green? Alternative?
Still, Holtz said Green Mountain has had success in working with utilities like National Grid and that the customer base is growing. Similarly, the number of customers switching over has been growing steadily at least since 2000, according to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.
The laboratory’s senior energy analyst Lori Bird said not all utilities market their green programs, which can significantly boost participation rates. For instance, the municipal utility in Palo Alto, Calif., has a nation-high participation of around 20 percent for its PaloAltoGreen program.
PaloAltoGreen program manager Brian Ward said the affluent, educated Palo Alto population is more inclined to spend a few extra dollars a month for wind or solar — “there are a lot of Prius drivers here.” But he said they also market it heavily via e-mail, direct mail and bill inserts. New utility customers are sometimes asked whether they prefer “green” or “brown” power, he said.
Keane of Smart Power said consumers need to see green power working so they can shed their misperceptions. His group is particularly bullish on programs in which local governments sign up for green power, like Hartford, Conn., which buys a fifth of its power from renewable sources. He said the programs show that renewable energy is a workable alternative, and not something from the fringe.
“The American people are primed. They are ready to take these messages,” Keane said. “We just need to get these messages through.”On the Net:

http://www.nrel.gov/
http://www.smartpower.org/
PHOTOS from AP

USA Today warns against $20 scratch-off tickets still being sold after the top prizes are gone.

Even I’m indignant—and I don’t buy lottery tickets.

According to USA Today, about half the states that have lotteries engage in this seemingly shabby practice.

The states say it’s fair because other prizes are available.

Not when I’ve dreaming of multi-millions it isn’t.

More here.

For today, I wrote about the Victor Goldberg IIE Prize for Peace in the Middle East.

It was created and endowed by Goldberg and the Institute of International Education, which administers the Fulbright Students and Scholars and the Humphrey Scholars for the State Department and offers corporate training and scholarship programs.

Goldberg, who is retired from IBM, returned from Jerusalem last week where this year’s winners were honored.

You can see Goldberg and the two winners—Aziz Abu Sarah and Lily Yaffe—here.

Abu Sarah and Yaffe work together to bring about tolerance and reconciliation as members of the Parent Circle-Families Forum, a group for bereaved families. They speak to young Israelis and Palestinians about their personal loss and their unwillingness to seek revenge and encourage students to examine their own feelings of suspicion and fear.

This is the fourth year the prize was awarded.

Previous winners were the founders of a Jewish-Arab school; the creators of an Arab Jewish Community Center in Jaffa, and two professors for a shared history project, “Learning Each Other’s Historical Narrative.”

PHOTO: Pictured are the winners of the Goldberg IIE Prize, Lily Yaffe and Aziz Abu Sarah; Peggy Blumenthal, the chief operating officer of the Institute of International Education, and Victor J. Goldberg.

Kids who bring plastic bags to Playland Park in Rye tomorrow could get a free ride.

One hundred plastic bags or more entitles you to three free rides and a round of miniature golf—redeemable any day in the season.

The bags can be turned in at a recycling table near the entrance.

Accepted bags? Grocery, produce, newspaper, dry-cleaning and packaging for toilet paper and paper towels.

Westchester County added plastic bags to is list of collectibles in the spring. About 7,000 pounds of bags have been collected so far—and could eventually could become outdoor decks and fences.

Sitting in a waiting room the other day, I read the Newsweek article on Cindy McCain.

One part jumped out at me—when she talked about keeping some privacy from the media.

Her comments reminded me a little bit of Hillary Clinton talking about a zone of privacy and her determination to keep reporters away from her daughter while the Clintons were in the White House.

I don’t mean that the women are similar, just that both have had to face reporters determined to catalogue every aspect of their lives.

Here are a few paragraphs from the article in the June 30 edition:

“Recently, Cindy has set out to show the country that she is no vacant “Stepford wife.” She has started doing more press interviews and can be surprisingly candid about her personal life and her feelings. Still, she clearly finds the confessional mode of American politics distasteful, and does not feel the need to overshare. “It’s more about … feeling comfortable … and not feeling compelled to do things that I wouldn’t normally do,” she says

“John McCain has made a virtue—and a career—of his unwillingness to go along, an independent streak his wife shares. If he doesn’t want to be reined in by convention, neither does she. After nearly 30 years together but apart, she has her own sense of mission, one that does not necessarily require a husband in the White House.”