$.04 per gallon gas in the good old days.

Delicious twist at week's end in the oil markets when the tirelessly predictable Libya issued an operatic threat to cut its oil exports in the unlikely event that the US Congress produced legislation that became law to punish oil market speculation.   Something usefully vague about slapping around international speculators in a Scheherazade fantasy of tort law.

What would the damages be?  Thirty trillion Euros, the use of Eastern Arabia for 99 years, and we get Citibank back?

All hot stories eventually pull in the vain villains, and in this instance, Colonel Qadhafi (shaking hands left in more cautious days with an effervescent Mr. Blair) could not remain off stage. With the spot oil August contracts nearing $140, the Libyan press release  pushed the price to an all time high of $142.26 per barrel.  No one much believes that the huffing by Congress will get past the Senate, and even if it does, there is the veto pen stiil in the hands of a Texan; no one at all believes Libya will act with the cash pouring in; no one believes anything much at all except that we are not at the top.

"Never mind that this measure has practically zero chance of getting through..." was the wiseacre quote chosen by Javier Blas and Andrew Ward of the FT in theirdroll report.  "...yet another reason to buy."

Speaking Sunday 29 with Elizabeth Williamson of the WSJ at Washington in the LA show re the biting blame game in Congress.  Also speaking in NYC/DC to Jodi Schneider CQ and Laura Meckler WSJ re the Congress week with regard energy -- with an eye on the suddenly very expensive jet-fuel-driven campaigning by the two presidential candidates.

The House bill has the windbag name of "Gas Price Relief for Consumers Act," and it passed Friday with a windy margin of 324 to 84.    It escapes the House genius that the reason oil is up is because there is a sellers' strike.  In this news cycle, the smart money whispered the metric of $170 as the next target.  Much more biting ahead.

Also speaking with Jim McTague of Barron's to lead the NY/DC show Sunday 29 re the Gulf of Mexico's Destin Dome field of natural gas off Pensacola.  This field has long been approved for exploration and development, but since the 1980s, Chevron and Conoco have been blocked by Florida.  Now the popular flip-flop.  More biters bit by biters now to bite back.

The oil market opens for business Sunday evening 29.   My trusted oil trader correspondent will be on watch over the six hour course of both shows for the trend lines in the all time high in the price of oil -- and no watch is more critical than the watch on the threatened paradise of light sweet crude in the Niger Delta (right).  Libya can snort, and Tehran can fume, and Caracas can smoke cigars, but the Nigerian fields, prey to anarchy and extortion, are the immediate worry.  JB.

Speaking this Sunday 29 evening with Lou Ann Hammond of Carlist.com in Los Angeles re the bad news that Volvo has been sabotaged by Detroit's other stupid company, Ford, in an act of self-destruction.  Am also trying for Robert Anderson, FT correspondent in Sweden, to comment on the damage to Sweden's economy and morale.

The bad news detail is that Ford has announced in this news cycle that it is ordering, permitting, pushing Volvo to cut 2000 jobs, mostly at its magical plant at Gothenberg, Sweden.  Everything Volvo touches is magical except the aimless Detroit leadership and the sloppy, deaf policy that shoves Volvo off our roads.

The facts are that Volvo has been forced to cut jobs because it reported a loss of $151 million in the first quarter '08.  Blame it on the weak dollar.  Blame it on the North American consumer for not paying the premium.  Blame it on Ford for owning a gifted machine and treating it like the rest of its rubbishy line-up led by the egregious SUV Explorer and the laughable Navigator and something as numbingly out of time as an F-150 Series.

The bottom truth is that Volvo is being punished because Americans have been misled into believing that bigger vehicles that work badly and burn enormous amounts of gasoline are superior products to the best machine ever put on the road.  Any Volvo new or used is better than the latest vehicle from Ford or General Motors.   (And lose the SUV: it is a cool toy, but sentimentally retro and decidedly non 21st Century.)

It would have been straightforward to build a shimmering Volvo plant anywhere in North America and avoid the dollar sell-off.  It would have been easier to tell the American consumer that if you buy a superior machine you will be safer, happier and better treated over a longer period of time. 

Can Volvo build a machine that gets 30 or 50 mpg?  Sure.  Will it build a hydrogen vehicle when we get the batteries solved?  Sure.  Is Volvo the best piece of engineering with any power plant?  Sure.  Always has been, always will be.  If you don't understand, drive a Volvo.  Any Volvo.  It is a flying carpet.

How bad is broken, brainless, ransacked, cowardly Detroit?  It just allowed its best product to wither on the vine. 

Mars 22nd Century.

Now we wait for the correct sovereign wealth fund to float the cash to buy Volvo and let it grow again.  The best outcome is for an Indian power, like Tata Motors, to acquire a true gem as it did the lesser precious items, Jaguar and Land Rover, from Ford last year.  Volvo is not a famous brand name only.   It is an artwork of the 20^th century that I expect to see on Mars in the 22nd.  JB.

(Update: Now confirmed that the sturdy, candid CEO Doug Speck of Volvo North America will join Lou Ann with me on the Los Angeles KFI show at 720 PM Pacific Time.  And, yes, Doug, a veteran Ford executive, has certainly read this heated posting.  Your measured comments for Doug welcomed below.)

Revealed today for the first time to my reading by Professor Steve Diamond on hiscareful blog from Santa Clara University Law School, Global Labor and the Global Economy, is that the modest young attorney Barack Obama co-chaired the $49.2 million Chicago Annenberg Challenge from 1995 until 2000 with the radical celebrity Education Professor Bill Ayers of the University of Illinois, the man who had helped design the grant proposal to begin with.

Bluntly, Barack Obama worked closely, routinely, thoughtfully, effectively, devotedly with Billy Ayers - worked successfully, too, in raising least $60 million more in matching grants and then helping to award this huge amount of cash to bold if perhaps inelastic and contentious support of education reform in Chicago.

This is a major development in the discovery of "Who Is Barack Obama?"  Mr. Obama has worked hard not to reveal this fact of his Annenberg service.  Mr. Obama feigned slight knowledge of Mr. Ayers during the course of his campaign against Mrs. Clinton.  In the Philadelphia debate in April, Mr. Obama responded to an inquiry about Mr. Ayers by calling him "a professor of English," as if he was barely familiar with the facts of Distinguished Education Professor William C. "Bill"  Ayers.  On another occasion, Mr. Obama referred to Mr. Ayers as "the guy who lives in my neighborhood."  Upon review, this looks like lawyerly misdirection at best, and what is called dissembling at worst.  The mention of "neighborhood" was, during the primary campaign season, the nearest Mr. Obama came to admitting that he had some specific information about the celebrated, notorious, once even infamous boyfriend of the self-destroryed Diana Oughton and the excitable Bernadine "Kill the pigs!" Dohrn, Bill Ayers.

Why would Mr. Obama pretend to forget five or six years of demanding work and major fund-raising on behalf of education?  Mr. Obama's resume is as svelte as Mr. Obama.  Why would he not take possession of such an Brobdingnagian achievement -- spanning from before his election to the state senate to the heat of his failed run for the U.S. Congress in 2000?  Consider that of the twelve years Barack Obama has been a professional politician, the facts support that seven of them were spent in worthwhile political harness with Professor Ayers.

Steve Diamond

Steve Diamond, who was a guest on my New York show on 6/8 and on my Los Angeles show 6/15, will join me again in early July to explicate this complex tale of grant-making, fund-raising, board-serving, Chicago networking and bizarre inexactitude.  For now, Steve Diamond's collective posts on Barack Obama in Chicago are eye opening and jaw-dropping.  For seven years, Barack Obama and Bill Ayers were a savvy team.  They served with prominent Chicagoans from many distinguished local institutions that were doing good works on the crisis in the Chicago schools.  Messrs Obama and Ayers were also meeting many local dignitaries and building sophisticated relationships that have proved useful to thenon-Chicagoan Barack Obama, such as connecting with the Pritzker Foundation for $100,000.00, which may point to why the billionaire Pritzker family of the Hyatt chain is now a major component of the Obama campaign and the glamorously distinctive  Penny Pritzker is a finance bigwig.

Another striking source of matching funds for the Chicago Annenberg Challenge grant was $1 million from the Woods Fund of Chicago.  This may explain a fog-bound Obama biographical detail, because in 1999 both Mr. Obama and Mr. Ayers went on the board at the Woods Fund, where they served side by side for three years, until Mr. Obama left Woods in December 2001.  It is logical to suppose that the Woods Fund tenure followed from outreach made during the Annenberg years.  They served with distinction at the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, where they used free office space provided by Mr. Ayers's employer, the University of Illinois; then they served with distinction at the Woods Fund, where they voted funds for prominent controversial Professor Rashid Khalidi at the University of Chicago and for the Northwestern University center directed with distinction by Bernadine Dohrn.  Mr. Obama and Professor Ayers look much as if they were a well-coordinated team. Robin and Batman are overused.  What about Sundance and Butch?  (Professor Diamond flashes the detail that when Bill Ayers aimed to destroy the weakness for democracy in the SDS, he created the "Jesse James Gang."  Hence this dynamic duo of Obama and Ayers could readily be Frank and Jesse.)

In any event, Mr. Obama was certainly companionable with the good professor.  Mr. Obama would not have been surprised when sentimental and lugubrious Billy Ayers published his self-consciously provocative biography in 2001, "Fugitive Days: A Memoir."  Nor could Mr. Obama have been surprised to see the vain publicity photo of Mr. Ayers standing in an alley on an American flag, nor to learn that Mr. Ayers was quoted in a New York Times profile that appeared coincidentally on the infamous day of September 11, 2001 saying, "There is a certain eloquence to bombs."

"Like a mentor"

Rushing to correct myself, I mention that my appearance on Fox News midday February 27, 2008 featured my observations on four of Mr. Obama's then still unexamined political associations, Tony Rezko, Billy Ayers, Rashid Khalidi and Nadhmi Auchi.  My remarks were casual about Mr. Ayers, such as, "...not someone a presidential candidate would choose to hang out with."  I also noted that, because the two were not the same generation, Mr. Ayers was "like a mentor" to Mr. Obama.  Since then, Obama boosters have hooted at my use of the insipid and arch term mentor.

Steve Diamond's thoroughgoing exploration of the Ayers-Obama relationship now obliges me to amend my statement.  Bill Ayers was exactly a mentor to Barack Obama.

Questions to be asked and answered:

1.  Who chose Barack Obama, then a dutiful 34 year-old associate attorney at an unremarkable local law firm, Davis, Miner, to be the co-chair of the lavishly and aggressively funded Chicago Annenberg Challenge?  And when we know who made the choice, then we can ask why anyone would choose a non-Chicagoan, a humble, not-well-connected lecturer at the University of Chicago Law school, a man whose first autobiography, "Dreams of My Father," published quietly in July 1995, struggled with identity, adolescence, Africa, but not much with educational philosophy - and who had never evidenced any strength in progressive education reform?

2.  Now it makes sense why Mr. Ayers and his Northwestern University official wife Bernadine Dohrn hosted a candidate launch party for Mr. Obama at the Ayers home in 1995.   Why have Mr. Obama and his campaign failed to lay out the facts?  A "guy in my neighborhood" does not launch a state senator for 13th District of Hyde Park -- the neighborhood connection to the largesse in Springfield.   However a matching grant co-chair such as Mr. Ayers, looking to boost the biggest project of his career so far, the CAC, would very much want Mr. Obama to win at the polls.   It may be that Professor Diamond has uncovered the motive for Barack Obama's debut in politics.  Perhaps the native Chicagoan Bill Ayers, son of the VIP Tom Ayers of Commonwealth Edison, wanted his own ready access to Springfield power.  It may be that Mr. Ayers, then 49, encouraged, ushered, cajoled, cheered, directed,mentored Mr. Obama, then 34, into the race just because it would enhance their ability to pass the hat to Chicago society.   Sundance and Butch and all that money -- $110 million by the time they were done.

3.  How did Mr. Obama and Mr. Ayers manage also to contribute their services side by side to the prominent Woods Fund of Chicago?   Did they interview for the board posts together?  More networking?  More back scratching, all in the pursuit of those matching funds for the CAC?  This is useful to figure because it was through the Woods Fund that Mr. Obama and Mr. Ayers moved from the seeking side of the table to the sought side of the table.

4.  Present day, why has Mr. Obama concealed his deep political association with Bill Ayers?  Because of Billy Ayers's Weatherman Underground notoriety?  Horse feathers.  Because of Mr. Ayers's wife, Bernadine Dohrn, who served time rather than cooperate in the prosecution of the Brinks robbery by radical fools like Kathy Boudin in 1981? Double pshaw.   Bill Ayers was present at the creation of the startlingly precocious Barack Obama.  Ayers might have lit the fuse.  Everyone prominent in Chicago fund-raising and education and the hot issue of the Chicago schools knows that Obama and Ayers worked together.  Mr. Ayers gives Mr. Obama credibility as an education president.  Yes, there is the Ayers baggage of the Weathermen; yes there is the absurd flag-stomping photo, but truly -- if Mr. Obama can tough out his twenty-year relationship with the now convicted crook Tony Rezko, if Mr. Obama can take six weeks to jettison the predictably incendiary Jeremiah Wright and the luridly goony Michael Pfleger, then admitting to a $110 million gem of policy, button-holing and home-cooking with Mr. Ayers is a shrug and a smile.  What's the secret Mr. Obama thinks we will figure out if he tells the whole story?

The Name of the Rose

Puzzling, isn't it?  If Mr. Obama conceals his complex and meaty relationship with Mr. Ayers, what else is he concealing?  And why?  Is it because Mr. Obama does not want to be linked to his own past, or because he does not want to be associated with current provocative education policies associated with Bill Ayers?Might it have something to do with Professor Ayers's affection for the term "white supremacy?"  More soon, with the dramatically deductive Professor Steve Diamond of Santa Clara University Law School, my fresh candidate for an intellectual detective of the rank of William of Baskerville, the hero of Umberto Eco's delicious "The Name of the Rose."

Politics '08 resembles Frank Capra, just chunkier and not self-aware.

The constant gregarious emails from David Plouffe of the Obama campaign asking for my money and my attention, while also urging me to virtual networking and homespun neighborly visiting, represent what may well be an unexamined prosecution of the  "John Doe Clubs" that rocked Hollywood once upon a time.

Who Is John Doe?

You will all recall that when intrepid, raven-haired dynamo Ann Mitchell (aka Barbara Stanwyck) is laid off from her tawdry, cynical newspaper job as a wiseacre reporter, she cranks out a  phony letter from an unemployed veteran named John Doe who is threatening to kill himself on Christmas Eve by jumping from the city hall tower in protest of the selfishness, violence and cruelty in society.  Ann's fake is a huge hit that gets Ann rehired, with the caveat that she must now invent her John Doe to satisfy his cult-like audience of readers.

Enter John Willoughby (aka Gary Cooper), a limp-armed baseball pitcher and ragged, famished hobo, a sucker whom Ann finds perfect for the part she dreamed up.  Tall, inarticulate, willing, John comes along with a wise and suspicious sidekick, The Colonel (aka Walter Brennan), who regards Ann as a demon.

Gary Cooper is so perfect, convincing, charming, gee-gosh iconic in this make-believe role that soon his fans have started to organize around his story.  The American people spontaneously invent "John Doe Clubs" to demonstrate that we the people really can get along.   Club leaders approach Gary Cooper in a cheerful posture, pleading with him not to kill himself.  The John Doe Clubs spread like a fire.  There is suddenly recognizable mob appeal, which means this is a most promising political opportunity.

Enter sinister newspaper publisher D.B. Norton (aka Edward Arnold), who realizes that he can ride this fraudulent bandwagon to national power -- perhaps even the presidency.  Too far-fetched a plot?  It is 1940 outside the movie theater, Europe has collapsed to tribal war, Japan is butchering whatever it can reach in Asia, and the 25% unemployment of 1933 is a fresh fear.

Everything is rolling along to grinning D.B. Norton's satisfaction until Ann Mitchel has an attack of morality and John Willoughby decides he has to tell the truth to a national radio audience in a downpour at an outdoor gathering of tens of thousands of his idolizers.  Honesty doesn't work well.  John Doe has outgrown the truth.  

Meet Barack Obama Clubs

Frank Capra made more popular and successful movies than "Meet John Doe," --the Jimmy Stewart duo of "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" and "It's a Wonderful Life" dominate film buffs --  however he never made a film that bit harder into America's weakness for cults.

Barack Obama has just as much appeal as John Doe.  The idea of "Change You Can Believe In" has come to overpower the facts of the matter - as did that invented threat to leap off city hall because the world wouldn't get it together and sing "Shall We Gather at the River?"    Barack Obama has about the same amount of problems as the fictionalized fictional John Doe.  The details of where Mr. Obama came from, how he moved along the way, whom he knows and why he knows them (Bill Ayers, Bernadine Dohrn, Louis Farrakhan, Jeremiah Wright, Michael Pfleger, Rashid Khalidi, Tony Rezko, Aiham Alsammarae, Nadhmi Auchi, Rod Blagojevich, Emil Jones, Richard Daley, Jr.) , do not add up to an honest chronology.  John Doe had no parents, no birthplace, no education or resume or family or prospects; and his claim to a fastball was mostly bluff and posture.  With Barack Obama, we get little more than the two autobiographical books, "Dreams of My Father," and "The Audacity of Hope," and we have slowly figured out that  there are no confirmed events to depend upon in any version.

The "Barack Obama Clubs" grow apace.  Defeating Mrs. Clinton was a demonstration of how style and first acts always outperform substance and second acts.  Now that Mr. Obama leads the "Bambi" supporting actor John McCain in the battleground polls in Pennsylvania, Ohio and Florida, it is time to measure the drapes in the Oval Office.

My guess?  Mr. Obama is a better actor than Gary Cooper.  Hillary Clinton is a grittier reporter than Barbara Stanwyck and will have years to puzzle why she ever dreamed up John Doe II.  And with Bill Clinton in the Walter Brennan role, that means the ruthless, charismatic, tyrannical, double-breasted D.B. Norton role belongs entirely to the new Chicago resident, Dr. Howard Dean.

The Hollywood Ending

After months in hiding, the humiliated Gary Cooper aims to throw himself from the city hall tower on a blizzardy Christmas Eve.  Feverish, bedridden Barbara Stanwyck rushes in her satin nightgown to stop him at the critical hour -- joined by a delegation of sincerely needful and compassionate John Doe clubbies.   At long last, the lovers Barbara "Ann Mitchell" Stanwyck and Gary "John Willoughby" Cooper cling to each other as Christmas bells sound "Peace On Earth."

Important to note that this is only one of five originally filmed endings that Frank Capra tested before releasing the 123 minute film we have.  The edgiest version showed John Doe ignoring the pleas of his worshippers and flinging himself into despair.  The final Capra choice was for Ann Mitchell to persuade our hero that his life has meaning -- and then to throw herself into his arms in a stirring, well-lit hope.

Will the American people and the Barack Obama Clubs recast the Hollywood ending again?

The rules are that the last scene must leave the fans sated, moved and ready to see it again.  An added requirement is that the last scene fits the original closing speech, as a hard-nosed, big-hearted newspaper editor (in the Tim Russert role) shouts at the frustrated, still dangerous D.B. Norton, "There you are, Norton!  The people!  Try and lick that!"  JB

News arrives from the candidate that Mr. Obama plans a Baghdad visit before the election.  (And Afghanistan too).

The countdown clock of days since Mr. Obama visited Iraq (once in his career) that the GOP made available with a widget has worked spectacularly.   Was the candidate baited?  Yes.  Now the questions will be what Mr. Obama has in mind for such a rich and politically dangerous photo op.  What is risky can also provide triumph.  Not how you do it, that you do it at all.  Count the ways Mr. Obama must choose about Baghdad:

1.  Meet with PM Maliki in the Green Zone and then skedaddle?  Or then travel by air to Fallujah, to Najaf, to Basra?  Which notorious city first?  Fallujah commits him to a Sunni First strategy.  Najaf or Karbala commits him to a Sistani First strategy.  Basra commits him to the Madhouse First strategy of flying into Mookie Sadr's Mehdi Army controlled zone.  There is also the snarky opportunity to walk through Abu Ghraib.

2.  Visit with the Coalition forces?  Generals and colonels only?   Or a hand out with the Marines and the Army?  Or just handshakes on camera with the Green Zone sentries?  Visit with the Iraqi Army?  The national police?  What about the hospitals with war wounded in long-term care wards?

3.  And what about the Kurds at Kirkuk?  Or the Chaldo-Assyrians in Kurdistan?

4.  The media mob will be World Cup scale, deep and broad.  Every news agency, every Kevlar camera team, every macho blogger on the planet, not to forget the usual anchors, celebrities, sports pols, Hollywood do-gooders and five or six hundred patronage office-seekers tricked up as journalists will hunger to tag along in a fleet of press planes.  Or to meet the candidate on the ground.  Thousands are possible.  This will be the Pied Piper does Baghdad Lite.  No violence.  All smiles.  Documentaries rolling.  Michael Moore 911.

5.  The calendar is very, very tight.  The nomination will wrap up late August and then Labor Day weekend.  The debates are in October and will dominate the news cycle.  This leaves September as a fertile window.  It also means that the GOP can counter-program exhaustively.  If Mr. Obama is in Baghdad at long last -- that means Mr. McCain can easily be in Bejing? Tehran? Havana? The ISS?

6.  What to make of Mr. Obama's odd "pick up the tab" remark in his announcement press avail?

"As a consequence of a huge spike in oil prices, the Iraqi government's budget is twice as large as it anticipated, and so I think it's important for the Iraqis to start picking up more of the tab both for reconstruction efforts as well as the need to continue to boost their military capacity," Obama said. 

7.  Does this mean that Iraq is moving to pay-go in the Obama Administration.  Or better yet - pay for play?  It pays, we play.  Doesn't this mean that we are acquiring the Iraq oil wealth after all?  Clever way to run an empire.  We break it, you pay for it, and we then get bilateral deals that favor us as your market with a first-refusal?  As in, "You have to buy F-16s from us!  None of that Mig stuff!  All right, we'll give you a discount!"

8.  The irony of American history suggests that we have just seen a presidential candidate commit his administration to a customer with so much crude that the Obama Administration will soon be working for Baghdad.  Tax breaks for Sadr City Development Zone.   Intel builds new plant in Tikrit.  Saddam Nephew Manages Citibank Branches.

9.  Does Gazprom work for Moscow or does Moscow work for Gazprom?  Does Ruth work for the Yankees or do the Yankees work for Ruth?

mockery for his job in the DoD's inner circle, one of Secretary Rumsfeld's high lord lieutenants. Feith on paper was in charge of the fifteen hundred paper warriors of the Department of Defense Policy Office, the State Department within the Pentagon. The chapters are comprehensive, and labored with footnotes, and convincing in that no one was really in charge, everyone felt left out, and there were lots of phone calls.

The story organizes around three D.C. buildings like dormitories at a prep school, the Pentagon (DoD) across the Potomac, the CIA at Langley, Virginia and the State Department at Foggy Bottom in the District. In addition to the usual vanity, envy, confusion, inertia, sluggishness and human error of Washington, these three dorms genuinely and with malice aforethought make war on each other. In the Iraq war mess, the CIA blames the Pentagon and the State Department. The Pentagon blames the CIA. The State Department blames no one since it is filled with vain tattle-tales who practice the low art of ratting out a rival. All three dorms are overrun with men who compete for the attention of the father of the country, sometimes known as the White House. A private meeting with President Bush is a mark of success and also often foreshadowing of exile.

In this particular opera, following Feith - who writes without deliberate humor, but at length and with many caveats, so it is fun to imagine subplots - enters a genuine villain in the J. Edgar Hoover or Berea mold of secret police egotist: George Tenet, the DCI. Tenet is best understood as a self-conscious Walsingham serving a virgin queen, Miss Liberty, for whom he tries about anything and then explains his results in a sonorous, humble, New York cynical, world-weary, servant of the Lord voice. Tenet, according to Feith, lives by the law of the leak. When in doubt or in competition, leak. And then double-cross and start leaking again.

The State Department, according to Feith, also leaks, but not effectively and usually on itself. However in the Iraq war State did offer a semi-villain, a choice example of a kiss-up snitch and posturing numbskull, and arch arrogant prig, a reorganized Graham Greene ugly American, named Paul "Jerry" Bremer. Bremer arrived in Baghdad in late Spring 03 and quickly turned what was a mess into a catastrophe. Bremer's chief genius was to ignore the Iraqis or, whenever they got in his way, to treat them with contempt, anger, and threats of bureaucratic violence.

I will ask Feith especially of two particular months in the short span of Bremer's CPA that transformed the war from a mess to a catastrophe. August 2003, April 2004. August '03 was when Feith first arrived in theater, so he was there right as the center did not hold: the UN team was massacred at the Canal Hotel (see the rubble), and the Shia lost their superstar, al-Hakim, head of the SCIRI.   Both defeats were launched by Tehran's Al-Quds force agents pretending to be Al-Qaeda.

Meanwhile, here in June 2008, a bulletin arrives from Baghdad that the al-Maliki government has rejected the latest Washington demands to permit the U.S. to do whatever it wants, when it wants, without consequences or review by the Iraqis. In sum, Maliki say the Americas have the guns and butter and State Department planning books, but they no longer have Iraqi Green Zone permission. Is this success? Have the Iraqis found a backbone? Are the Americans stumbling toward a whining, goofy and very well paid exit? The ugly American takes a vacation?

"We can't extend the US forces permission to arrest Iraqis or to undertake the responsibility of fighting terrorism in an independent way, or to keep Iraqi skies and waters open for themselves whenever they want," Maliki said. "One of the important issues that the US is asking for is immunity for its soldiers and those contracting with it. We reject this totally..."

At long last, Iraq has discovered the freedom of, "Not!"

Shoving aside the whining, carping, blame-shifting falsehoods and thickheaded arrogance of the letter, what is left is a man who is still posturing to gain advantage over the law. Mr. Rezko is a hustler, a con man, a drummer of potions, and in his ignorance of the world he believes that he can fool anyone within reach of his voice. Why does he mention his sons, his loving family, his devoted wife Rita and teenaged daughter? Mr. Rezko only pitches what he thinks will gain him. He doesn't confess. He cons. The facts are what he needs at the moment. So why the violin serenade about his women and children when the subject is a multi-million dollar bail bond that he violated by sneaking around with millions of dollars he didn't report to the court when bail was first set In January, 2007?

The explanation for Tony Rezko's con game here might just be in the one paragraph in the otherwise banal letter that actually has weight in the world of history and grown-ups -- the paragraph about Governor Blagojevich and Senator Obama. Tony Rezko plants the paragraph firmly right before he states what he wants, to go home. It is useful to walk around the construction like studying a citadel -- one gate at a time, one wall at a time - to suppose what Mr. Rezko aims to communicate.

"They are pressuring me to tell them the "wrong" things that I supposedly know about Governor Blagojevich and Senator Obama. I have never been party to any wrongdoing that involved the Governor or the Senator. I will never fabricate lies about anyone else for selfish purposes. I will take what comes my way, but I will never hurt innocent people. I am not Levine, Loren, Mahru or Winter. I am simply an honest, humble immigrant who believes in the American dream..."

1. Mr. Rezko knows about dividing and conquering in a confidence game. Separate the stupid, nasty interrogators, the "they," from the compassionate, distinguished judge, "Your honor." In his mind, having convinced the judge that he is aware she is fair-minded like a good parent, he confides that "they" want him to lie. Mr. Rezko uses a childish construction here, "to tell them the 'wrong' things," because he hopes it will elicit affection for the harmless "humble immigrant"  he claims to be.

2. Mr. Rezko then cites two names, "Governor Blagojevich and Senator Obama." These names are his secret weapons. This is the pay-off of the con game. He wants the judge to know that he knows secrets about Blagojevich and Obama, and that this makes him a special case, exempt, protected, even magical.

3. Mr. Rezko also wants the judge to know that he will take blows rather than "hurt innocent people." What innocent people? Blagojevich and Obama. Since this is not a humble pitch, boasting his toughness and stubborness despite his penury, suffering and family duties, the only reason for this section is to communicate not only to the judge but also to the higher-ups of Blagojevich and Obama.

4. And what is the communication that Mr. Rezko wants the governor and the senator to hear? The message is that Tony Rezko is not a rat or weakling or liar like Levine, Lauren, Mahru and Winter.  The message is that Tony Rezko knows how to take it and keep shut.

This wandering, clumsy, simpering letter does accomplish its goal in the end. Written in April, it is released to the public so that we can see the warning that Mr. Rezko would long ago have communicated to Governor Blagojevich and Senator Obama. Take care of my family, and I will take care of you and never betray you.  Don't take care of my family, and I will "tell them 'wrong' things" that will "hurt innocent people."  JB.

This is a surprising video clip from April 5, 2004 on Chicago television, thanks to the Alexandria Library of Obamana at Rezkowatch.  Mr. Obama had won the Democratic nomination for the U.S. Senate seat two weeks before.  This is early Obama, and he has not yet mastered the correct spin on the Iraq war, hence the surprising reversal about "not" calling for a timetable to get out of Iraq.  The TV hostess is politely flummoxed.  Mr. Obama will grow keener in his anti-war rhetoric.  At the time, this is much the sparkling candidate, son of a Kenyan and a Kansan, who will greet Senator John Kerry, the presumptive '04 presidential nominee, as Mr. Kerry travels through Chicago in the next week.

This Barack Obama is also the man who was at the Chicago Four Seasons Hotel on April 1, four days before, to greet Governor Blagojevich, Lt. Governor Pat Quinn, Iraqi Minister of Electricity Aiham Alsammarae and more who were saluting a prize guest of honor newly arrived in Chicago, Iraqi-British billionaire Nadmi Auchi.

This Barack Obama is also the man who, along with his wife Michelle, visited theWilmette, Illinois mansion of Tony and Rita Rezko on April 3, two days before, along with Lt. Governor Quinn and the unusually jocular and treacherous Stuart Levine, who will betray Rezko and friends at Rezko's Federal corruption trial four years later, in order to fete the very same Iraqi-British billionaire Nadhmi Auchi.  According to an unnamed witness, this Mr. Obama toasted Mr. Auchi more than once.

In sum, this is the brassy, unobjectionable, promising, charming, gifted, ambitious 42-year-old part -time Illinois state legislator who would begin his climb to the contest for the Democratic nomination for the presidency within 30 more months of this video.  What you see here is the ingenue who Mr. Rezko liked to show off, who Mr. Auchi greeted cheerfully, who Governor Blagojevich admired and worried about in competition, who the out of control Stuart Levine eyed loosely.  All around this Young Mr. Obama are the sharpies, frauds, thieves, betrayers, liars, and simple miscreants who would four years later become shadows on the candidate.  What did Hamlet look like when his pal Horatio mentioned there was something odd happening on the rampart at Elsinore?  J

with attorney Eric Holder and celebrity Caroline Kennedy. Now it emerges that Mr. Johnson has enjoyed personal sweetheart mortgage deals for years with the troubled and controversial Countrywide led by the strangely unconvincing Angelo Mozilo. This is the same Countrywide that Mr. Obama attacked when it was revealed the Mrs. Clinton's guru Mark Penn was in business with Mozillo after a fashion. And Mr. Obama has gone out of his way to scorch Mr. Mozilo as an overpaid CEO who may be one of those predatory lenders who wrecked housing.  Now that Mr. Johnson is linked with Mr. Mozilo, the question is asked, what does this mean? Shouldn't you have vetted Mr. Johnson for links to unusual events such as Countrywide?

"Well, no," Obama said. "It becomes sort of a, um, I mean, this is a game that can be played - everybody, you know, who is tangentially related to our campaign, I think, is going to have a whole host of relationships -- I would have to hire the vetter to vet the vetters. I mean, at some point, you know, we just asked people to do their assignments.

"Jim Johnson has a very discrete task," Obama continued, "as does Eric Holder, and that is simply to gather up information about potential vice presidential candidates. They are performing that job well, it's a volunteer, unpaid position. And they are giving me information and I will then exercise judgment in terms of who I want to select as a vice presidential candidate.

"So this - you know, these aren't folks who are working for me," Obama said.

"They're not people you know who I have assigned to a job in a future administration and, you know, ultimately my assumption is that, you know, this is a discreet task that they're going to performing for me over the next two months."

This does not make much sense the first time you read it. Vetting the vetters is a terrific idea. The presidency is about patronage. There is due diligence with favor seekers. And then there is the strange notion that Johnson and Holder are not working for Obama. Who are they working for? Who is in charge? Who is the boss? Not working for me? What does this mean?

A trusted correspondent writes me just now, "I can no more disown Jim Johnson than I can my pastor," said Mr. Obama.

That bus that Mr. Obama first threw his Kansan grandmother under is now getting crowded with players. Need to keep score. By the close of the first Obama Administration, the list will be like a chronicle of his times.

This is classic Youtube. ""So this - you know, these aren't folks who are working for me," Obama said.

Makes me laugh to read the comments on Larry Johnson's No Quarter blog: this is my favorite tonight:

 Comment by Jay in Los Angeles | 2008-06-10 17:54:36

CIA conspiracy, but that because of the grief, because of LBJ's hostility (and corresponding fear of assassination), and because of J Edgar Hoover's lunatic domination of the FBI investigation - the only credible antidote to the CIA manipulation of the evidence that pointed to Agency misbehavior in Cuba - that it was impossible to highly unlikely that the Warren Report would be more than a slap-dash compilation.  Many of the Kennedy intimates held private views that the murder was a group effort.  Schlesinger and his wife are said still to hold those views.  Kenny O'Donnell and Dave Powers were two insiders who were at Dealey Plaza that day, and both believed they had heard two shots come from the grassy knoll in front of the motorcade - not from the book depository behind.  O'Donnell later claimed he was pressured in to changing his story.  He died of acute alcoholism in 1977 at the shockingly young age of 53.

Talbott leans heavily to a conspiracy.  We will address this directly.  He is a thorough reporter, and he goes where the sources take him.  The clue was always how many shots were fired.  If there were three, then there can be a lone shooter.  If there were four or more, then one shooter (Oswald) is out and we don't have the story.  Talbot lists three suspects, CIA, Cuba and the Anti-Castro Cubans, and uses others to emphasize the Anti-Castro Cubans.

What is deeply strange is that 40 years after MLK's and RFK's assassinations in 1968, we now have a Kansas white mother-Kenyan black father who is identified by his admirers and detractors as JFK like.  Obama is picked by the Kennedy clan as the successor in January, enjoys the boost of the pater familias of the clan, Senator Ted Kennedy, survives the counter attacks by Mrs. Clinton at the same time Ted Kennedy collapses with a dire brain tumor that will end his life within the year, and then, emerging from the pummeling of the last weeks, chooses Caroline Kennedy for his Vice-Presidential Pick team.  The Kennedys are back, since they never left.  And Mrs. Clinton was roundly bashed by the media and the Obamas that last weekend before Kentucky for making reference to RFK's assassination just as he triumphed in the California primary in June of 1968, on his way to the White House.

With Obama in the White House the Kennedys will roam as they have not since JFK.  Then again, there is the strange fate that attaches to the inspired pirate in Joseph Kennedy.  JB.

The media reports are too sparse not to be lurid.  We are told that the twocelebrities arrived at the same hour and sat together, alone, unattended, dry-lipped, in Mrs. Feinstein's living room -- did I say alone? -- while the jovial, gracious, not in the least partial or curious senator continued to work upstairs.  Cookies?  Iced tea?  Green tea?  Seagram's for her and vanilla lattes for him, soy milk?  The meeting lasted an hour.  There was gentle laughter at the close of the meeting. (Did she not sniff at the tobacco cloud that hangs on his clothes?)   The two celebrities departed.  My colleague Bill Whalen writes that the Obamas might have been smart to check going in for weapons taped behind the toilet in the wc..  Do the Democrats favor Italian opera as a style or a theme?  Scorsese is writing this scene.  But I think Tolstoy wrote it already, and it is just a foreshadow of Bonaparte at Moscow, 1812.

What does Mrs. Clinton want?  War.  The presidency.  What does Senator Obama want?  Peace.  The presidency.  For now, neither will gain their desires without some luck.

In "War and Peace," Tolstoy told the tale of Bonaparte and Alexander's meeting from the cool remove of the ambitions of the two emperors.  Both wanted confirmation of their regal status.  Nether wanted more war.   Lev Nikolaievich leaned hard on making Bonaparte impudent, bold, vulgar, fresh, dynamic, unpredictable.  The Tsar remained majestic.  Mrs. Clinton makes a Petersburg darling.  You can imagine her at the Winter Palace, in long furs, drinking green tea, writing, writing, writing.   Obama as Bonaparte?  Directing the letter "O" on the flatware, the parquet floor, the horse blankets, the bear skin hats of the Imperial Guard?  Sure.  Certain.  Start Puccini.  JB.

June 5, 2008, 10:28 am Obama and McCain Agree to Keep It Civil

 that there is bad blood between the Obamas and the Clintons, and that their staffs are not likely to work well together for the general election.  This is understatement.  The Team Clinton regards the Obamas as reckless, cunning, naive, petulant, and Chicago fixated.  Team Obama regards the Clintons as old news and perhaps even corrupted by power, though this seems too naive for the level of the game.

The WSj states, "...Further problems could arise because the Obama and Clinton staffs "have a lot of animosity," one Clinton operative says. On a daily basis -- sometimes hourly -- the top advisers fired verbal and email volleys at each other typically distributed to the press. Sen. Clinton's communications director, Mr. Wolfson, is considered a talented advocate who would be a great asset to attack Sen. McCain. However, Mr. Wolfson has been such a vigorous defender of his boss that he might be better suited, some Democratic party officials say, to take a high-level post at the Democratic National Committee....

What this does not connect is that the Clintons cannot find strength in the Obama camp.  It would be the grown-ups carrying the wannabees.

It is too much speculation.  The Clintons believe, with reason, that they can break Obama's confidence and will, and that by staying in the race they can drive down his polling against McCain.  This is the directlon of polls in critical swing states.  Mrs. Clinton leads Mr. McCain in North Carolina.  Mr. Obama is down 10% in North Carolina.  And on.

Mrs. Clinton is winning the argument that she is stronger, tougher, more passionate, more determined, and that Mr. Obama is a media star, not a winner.

Unger says that Mr. Obama has a week to make her a deal, or Hell breaks out.  No deal.  Obama will not offer the V.P.  Unless --.  No.  

Dig in.

race this week.  Not one of them could provide a reason why she should step aside.  The delegates are hers; the canvas is paid for; her debts are trivial in the face of her assets and future; and the Obama Team offers no reward.

This evening many state finance committees for the Clinton campaign aresending a letter around that will be delivered to the candidate on Tuesday that asks her to stay in the race until it is resolved in August an no earlier.  

"We, the Illinois Finance Committee, want to show our full commitment to and support for Senator Hillary Clinton, in the fight for her rightful appointment as the Democratic Party's presidential nominee at the convention this August....

"We Democrats will be united after our nomination process is completed, but only if that process is completed justly and in fair representation of the opinions of the members of our party. We believe nominating Hillary Clinton is the only way our party can guarantee victory in November."

Impossible to find a hint of quit.  Told the LA audience last even at the close that my best information is that the lady is in the contest to win.  It is foolishness to figure she will follow a calendar that suits Mr. Obama.  Her calendar includes the convention in August, 2008.

Rumors of quit are exaggeration.  Monica Crowley was adamant.  Never, never, never, no grace, no quit, no retreat.  I agree, and when I see a white flag at Chappaqua, the sun will not come up in the morning.

Also, the Todd Purdum hit in Vanity Fair was bush league and underscores how the Clintons will not bow.  To whom?  Why?  Todd said that if Obama fails, the party will turn to Gore, not Mrs. C.  Smile.

in the disputed Michigan delegates.   The explanation as to why Obama Team did not press is that it looks past the nominating process this week to rapprochement with Clinton Team.  This will be a surprising result if it happens.  The Clinton Team is determined to hold on to what it has won and to remain in contest to the convention.  Mrs. Clinton's campaign is more or an historical event than Mr. Obama's because she is female, a First Lady, and the first of her generation of feminists to fight effectively on the field with males of her party, or any party.  What I want to know form Chuck is what the Clinton Team plan is for June until the Credentials Committee gathers June 29 and we can presume it will hear the dispute over Michigan.  I also want to know what Obama Team has in mind for a peace conference with the Clintons.

What I observe today, before I speak with Chuck, is that the landscape ahead gets much more difficult for the so-called winner of the nomination than it does for the so-called loser.  Obamas must make concessions to the Clintons; Obamas must act the generous victor; Obamas must secure the Clintons to work with the large problem with Catholics, working class votes, women and the independents.  No other player in the Democratic Party can substitute for Mr. and Mrs. Clinton when campaigning to those large groups.   Mrs. Clinton probably has the Latino vote as well after today's Puerto Rico vote.

The Obamas do not look strong enough right now to make concessions.  JB.