Ok - Senator Obama has just gone into the realm of the ridiculous.

Obama’s willingness to sit down with the Iranian president demonstrates Obama’s lack of understanding of international relations, McCain said during a speech in Chicago, Illinois.

“Such a statement betrays the depth of Senator Obama’s inexperience and reckless judgment,” McCain said. “Those are very serious deficiencies for an American president to possess.”

Obama quickly responded during a speech in Billings, Montana, asking why the presumptive Republican presidential nominee was afraid to talk to Iran and that it was the “Bush-McCain” war policy in Iraq, not diplomacy, that would make Iran stronger.

“Make no mistake, Iran is the single biggest beneficiary of a war in Iraq that should have never been authorized and should have never been waged,” the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination said.

“Thanks to George Bush’s policy, Iran is the greatest threat to the United States and Israel and the Middle East for a generation. John McCain wants to double down on that failed policy.”

Because of George Bush’s policy. For a generation.

First, George Bush may have been in office a lot longer than you can stand - it may feel like a generation to you - but 8 years does not a generation make.

Iran is the greatest threat to the United States and Israel and the Middle East for a generation because of Jimmy Carter’s policy. A policy that was ill-equipped to deal with the demands of Iranian Islamo-fascists (although we didn’t call them that back then). A policy so entrenched in a lack of resolve during the outbreak of the Iranian Revolution that the message sent by the Carter Administration was ” we are weak”. A policy grasped by leftists in Congress as a Hail Mary pass of appeasement while Iran arms itself with nuclear weapons. The same policy Jimmy Carter is now peddling with Hamas. That you don’t realize that worries a lot of people - hopefully enough to defeat you in November.

Senator Obama - your claim that everything wrong in the world is the fault of President Bush is ridiculous. Your entire presumptuous foreign policy rhetoric is ridiculous.

Nancy Pelosi is sending President Bush a letter.

WASHINGTON, April 22 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — Speaker Nancy Pelosi sent the following letter today to President George W. Bush urging him to sign into law legislation that Congress has passed to help American families with the rising price of gasoline.

“I respectfully ask you again to work with the Congress to allow the Justice Department to pursue oil cartel price-fixing, allow the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) the authority to investigate and punish price gougers, end taxpayer subsidies to Big Oil and invest those funds in renewable American energy. Lastly, your Administration must use the authority given to it by the Congress to end market manipulation. We cannot wait to act in the face of these prices increases,” she wrote.

Big Oil! Boy they are just soaking us, are they not?

The US Consumes 388,600,000 gallons of gasoline per day. This is 141,839,000,000 gallons per year.

Big Oil and Retailers markup represents about 9% of the cost of a gallon of gasoline. About 32 cents per gallon profit at $3.50 a gallon. The Federal Government gets about 19 cents per gallon in taxes and the states average about 23 cents per gallon in taxes.  So taxes represent 42 cents per gallon. Now, you tell me who is gouging.

Out of a cost per gallon of $3.50, Big oil makes 32 cents. The rest is cost of oil, refining, transpertaion and distribution, and taxes.

Both John McCain and Nancy Pelosi have called for legislation to help Americans struggling with fuel prices. Notice the differences in approach. With John McCain’s model - the price of gasoline can be reduced almost instantly and push money into the economy almost immediately. With Nancy Pelosi’s model, oil companies will start cutting costs - which always means cutting jobs - which takes money out of the economy. Yet, with her way the government will get paid at the detriment of Americans.

The difference is Pelosi wants the oil companies to give the fuel away, and John McCain wants the government to stop gouging Americans.

I know President Bush has done some great things for America during his presidential tenure. I am certain history is going to be a lot nicer to him than the present is being. We have seen President Bush capitulate on a number of things important to republicans, even while acting courageously (in the political sense) on things like Judicial appointments, Bolton appointment, and the war on terror.

I never thought President Bush would capitulate to his 2000 election rival.

President Bush is poised to change course and announce as early as this week that he wants Congress to pass a bill to combat global warming, and will lay out principles for what that should include.

I understand the reasoning which dictates passage of some sort of Global Warming legislationto stave off more stringent legislation after the elections. Democrats are likely to strengthen their control in both houses this cycle and the resultant muddle on all of the controversial topics is going to be fierce.  However, I don’t believe the ploy will work. The fierce debate which is going to take place to define the contents of such legislation puts the White House in a bad situation. For the first time, President Bush is going to recognize the need for some sort of initiative and then have his staff and supporters in congress work to limit the scope and impact of the initiative. It is oxymoronic. You cannot play into the global warming game by sticking your toe into the water.

It is one thing to propose legislation to strengthen the clean air act or one of the myriad existing environmental initiaitives. But what the White House just did is lend credence to the wild global warming is doom hand-wringing party engaged in by the left.

President Bush seems to be working hard to enhance the potential of having a positive legacy. He is working hard to not be seen as a lame duck president. Usually, this means working hard for the policies of your own party - not pandering to the drivel of the leftist nutters.

A small lesson for you, my esteemed readers, on how Leftists “do” economics.  There are three basic processes which must be considered in Leftist economic models:

1) Analysis

2) Planning

3) Execution

The Analysis phase of Leftist Economics goes something like this:

- Why are you cutting spending on social programs? You are spending way too much money on war. You are not spending enough money on the soldiers themselves, just war in general.  Oh, you’re giving them a 4% pay raise? You are bribing them so you can send them to war. Our military cannot sustain another emergency, we need our reservists and guard home, where they belong. You are spending too much money increasing the size of our standing army! You are spending $400 million to dispose of chemical weapons - that money should be going to social services and urban development. Why do we have chemical weapons - still - in the 21st Century no less?! Now you want to spend $7 million to repair an old damn? that money should be going to health care! It is your fault that damn/canal/levee broke and flood those people out! You spend too much money! You are going to make our deficit $250 billion by 2009 - no wait $300 billion, I mean! Heck - $400 billion!

The Planning phase of Leftist Economics goes something like this:

We are going to spend more money on education, social services, Medicare, energy, and economic stimulus. We are not going to fund the war in Iraq and Afghanistan past 2009. We are going to ballon the deficit through 2009 to $350 billion, but by 2013, we’ll have a surplus. Trust me. More spending means more money! Government spending is the key, remember that!

The Execution phase of Leftist Economics goes something like this:

You wanted all this government spending, remember? Now you have to pay. more taxes should cover this. We’ll get back to you, if we need more.

Hey, guess what? You can’t continue to talk about President Bush’s suspicion of Iran as being unilateral. I told you how the Dutch feel about Iran right now and now we have indications that Germany has a similar view.

  BERLIN (Reuters) - German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Tuesday a U.S. intelligence report saying Tehran had stopped an active nuclear weapons program in 2003 was not an excuse to give the Islamic Republic the “all clear”.

I am sure you will come up with something else to extend your vilification  of our President over, but this won’t be it.