THis interview of Newt Gingrich today on Fox demonstrated just how close the Dem party leaders are from giving a win-win to John McCain and the Republicans in the fall on America’s oil crisis.
Reid and Pelosi are unable to allow open drilling and are hopeful that the REPs will acquiece to a face-saving move. It looks like no way for Reid Pelosi and Obama as they will try to argue that they know best as they did all along in Iraq.

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Only the great seeyer of visions and ironies like The Great One can do this:
A Brett Farve head on a Manny Ramirez body solves all Mets ills.

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from Baseball Crank.

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We were told that Barack Obama’s trip to the war zone, Israel and Europe would bolster him with voters at home. It didn’t. So here’s why by Obama himself:

Heading home from an overseas trip aimed at strengthening his foreign policy credentials, Sen. Barack Obama said Saturday he’s not counting on an immediate political boost and thinks it’s just as likely he’ll experience a short-term dip in polls simply because he’s been out of the country for nine days.

“The reason that I thought this trip was important was I am convinced that many of the issues that we face at home are not going to be solved as effectively unless we have strong partners abroad,” Obama said, speaking outside 10 Downing Street after his private meeting with Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

Thats rich.

So you were expecting that you would be hurt somehow? Or that it would provide no benefit? Really now?

Then why in sam hill did you go in the first place? Wasn’t it because you wanted to seem more in touch with foreign policy and put voters more at ease? Wouldn’t this have manifested itself in the polling data?

Obama now is averaging more than one gaffe and slip-up dialy. Yesterdays revelation that he called wounded soldiers on the phone after taking the heat for not going was making a mistake and attemping to correct it by making a worse one. Talk about transparent.

Now today he’s saying that they believed the trip wasn’t expected to help politically prior to going. And the day’s not over yet.

H/T: Lucianne Goldberg

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Maybe: From Newsbusters:

Imagine if a bunch of disgruntled Mitt Romney supporters were currently stalking John McCain or Republican events loudly demanding that their candidate be nominated. Think the national press would be featuring it bigtime as an example of Republican party disunity? Well, the same thing is happening except the people are disgruntled Democrats expressing their opposition of Barack Obama while loudly continuing to support Hillary Clinton. They are known as PUMA (“People United Means Action” or “Party Unity My Ass”). PUMA was formed last month in the aftermath of Hillary Clinton conceding the Democrat nomination to Obama. However, contrary to being just a desperate last gasp by Hillary’s supporters, PUMA activities seem to be surging lately despite the overseas trip by Obama which was widely heralded by the mainstream media. In fact, the official PUMA PAC website has today announced, in a message directed towards Obama campaign strategist David Axelrod, their view that the Obama trip was a “flop”:

Curious. I’ve been wondering what drives this particular movement. Is it just bitter Clinton supporters? Or are there some staunch Dems who really are unhappy with Obama and the manner in which he will have obtained the nomination. Maybe both? And what will happen after the convention? Will they just come home as most Dem talking heads are saying?

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In Toby Hyde’s informative blog on the Mets minor league teams comes word that Jon Niese had an excellent start on Thursday night (7IP, 6H, 0R, 1BB, 8K). According to Hyde, all six hits were singles. Its already been reported that serveral scouts attend Niese’s starts. They liked what they saw Thursday night and the reports were likely to be in the hands of personel people yesterday when they spoke to Minaya. As they’ve let it out already that Niese is in potential deals, its likely the Mets did not have enough else to get Nady whom the Mets would have loved to get back. Or maybe the Pirates wanted to move both Nady and Marte in the same deal.

But with the acquisition of Casy Blake by the Dodgers, two good fits for the Mets’ needs are out of circulation. But I don’t believe the Mets would have moved Niese for Blake. Maybe for Nady though.

So to put Niese’s value in another perspective, only one other OF reported to be available which matches Niese in value is Jason Bay. Not Raul Ibanez. Not Brian Giles. I don’t believe that Minaya would move Niese for either of the later two, but for Bay, yes.

Still, I believe that Minaya is also still trying to help his bullpen and wouldn’t mind packaging assets in a deal to get both much like the Yankees did in their acquisition of Nady an Marte.shig Perhaps he’s like to get both Ibanez and Arthur Rhodes in a deal. This would make some sense.

And what of the Colorado Rockies? The Mets would love to have Brian Fuentes, and would also welcome discussing an OF, too. If not Matt Holiday, then perhaps Brad Hawpe. But things seem to be cooling from the Rockies on the trade front.

In summary, the Mets need to assess where they are. The Yankees trade could prompt them more than you think. With the team in first, Minaya needs to show that he is trying to help. The club has responded far better than anyone could fathom. Minaya will have to do something to make the team better to sustain the current team psyche for the 2 months that remain.

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Pundits on both sides are harshly criticizing Barak Obama’s continued stance that the Surge was wrong. Why would he take this stance? Only two calculations make sense.

1. Purely political. He’s assuring his extreme left wing base and their dollars will not abandon him. He’s calculated a certain amount of cover for himself by favoring agressive stances in Afghanistan and with Iran.

2. He’s being honest, yet evasive with his philosophy. Obama is of the opinion that the Iraq war was just wrong and that anything short of getting out is unacceptable. He’s signaled elements of this thinking in both his insistance on a clear timetable for withdrawal and publically noting his disagreement with General Petraus on this.

In all probability there are elements of both. The later is the philosophy with the former being the implementation. But in the second is revealed the Viet Nam era liberal thinking of the wrongness of American military power and it is dangerous. In Obama’s ultimate decision to withdraw, it allows for no responsibility for what could happen. Unspeakable savagery and genocide followed our withdraw from southeast Asia.

The left deal with this in two ways. First in its loud denial. Second in its silent shrug that well, we were wrong to be there in the first place.

Essentially, it would be amoral to leave Iraq with any sense of abruptness as it was in the Democrat Congress whom cut off financial support for the South Viet Nam government.

Yet in Obama and the left this is neither their reality nor part of their moral compass.

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Perhaps it will be the one that lingers longest. By Obama’s own words we are to pay more attention to his actions than what he says, his failure to visit wounded in Germany is unable to explain away with words. Trying to spin that they were told they couldn’t makes it worse. To easy to check quotes nowadays. This from the Pentagon via the Weekly Standard Blog:

Did the Pentagon discourage Obama from visiting Landstuhl? “No,” says Pentagon spokesperson Bryan Whitman.

Did the Pentagon tell Senator Obama that it was inappropriate for him to visit because he is on a campaign trip? “No. That’s inaccurate,” Whitman said.

Was Obama’s Senate office told that he and his Senate staff could visit the facility? “Absolutely.”

“As a sitting United States senator, Obama obviously has an official interest in the well being of our service members and how the wounded are being treated,” Whitman said, adding:”He is welcome to visit a military medical center any time that he wants to. As you all know, we do have certain policy guidelines for political campaigns and elections and what is appropriate and what’s not appropriate in those situations,” Whitman said. “The Pentagon did not tell the senator that he could not visit Landstuhl.”

“If you are both a sitting senator and a political candidate when you are doing things like a visit to Landstuhl, you need to do it in your capacity as a sitting senator or you have to do it with the restrictions that apply,” Whitman added. Those restrictions include the law that campaign events may not be conducted on a military installation.

With the Obama campaign is saying that the trip couldn’t be political. Well, sort of. The Pentagon realized that Obama just couldn’t bring staff and the media with him, but he could come as in his capacity as a US citizen. I don’t believe the press corps and the Obamatuorage was able to accompany him everywhere in Afghanistan and Iraq either.

In other words, Dude…you can come but you can’t bring your posse.

Weren’t we told…or rather shouted at that its was Obama’s superior judgement, stupid?

In a visit that he would have received the least amount of criticism for, he chose not to go. As no cooler heads were around Obama to say forcefully, “Senator, you just are going to have to find time to see the wounded at Landstuhl,” it speaks volumes to the seperate reality that is the campaign itself.

I cannot imagine any other previous presidential aspirant of giving themselves the mental ok NOT to go. But this non-trip, the world tour itself, the ObamaSeal, the scheduling of the Dem Convention acceptance speech at Invesco Field instead of the convention center and the never-ending list of folks thrown under the tour bus is giving pause.

The snub of the wounded troops during wartime is inexcusable. If the vision of what is being run more as a movement than a campaign continues, other unforgetable slip-ups will be certain to occur.

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This Fox News story will give the reluctant MSM the go ahead to print the story of John Edwards affair.

I find no happiness in this. A family will be damaged forever.

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AJ Strata provides an excellent link to an article which discusses the Pakistani’s efforts in outlying regions against Taliban/AQ elements:

Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi has said, Pakistan is using multilateral and multi-pronged strategy to curb the menace of terrorism. Talking to private TV channel ARYONE, the Minister said, “We are of the view that political engagement of the people and economic development of the stakeholders should also be kept in view, and use of force should be the last resort for curbing the menace of terrorism”.

Still the PM points to their military efforts as proof they are attempts at engaging the enemy:

Meanwhile in an interview to BBC TV, the Minister said “Pakistan is taking Al-Qaeda very seriously. And we have arrested over six hundred terrorists, broken the network effectively, moved over a hundred thousand troops into the tribal areas and have thousand of check posts on Pak-Afghan border.”

He said, “Nobody is denying the fact that Al-Qaeda is still present, but they are on the run. We are chasing them.”

And about cooperting with US forces:

He said, Pakistan and Afghanistan are partner with America in war on terror. So, both the countries will have to resolve all the issues with mutual understanding by convincing each other through dialogue.

To a question he said, if the allies have any information about any movement, they should share the intelligence with Pakistan.
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“Pakistan forces are present in the areas and are ready for extending full cooperation with them”, he added.

As Strata points out, it is a wide decision of the Pakistani’s to engage local populations in addition to the application of force. This seems similar in theory to the Iraqi model which combined the Awakening and the Surge.

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This post was written by bobsikes on July 25, 2008