Freedom of speech, yes. But make fun of the President’s advisors when you are the U.S. General in charge of NATO operations in Afghanistan? Not the best career move. I think that yesterday’s article on Politics Report did a superb job of pointing out how boneheaded it is for a General to insult the President during wartime. 

It is most definitely inexcusable, and there is really no excuse- especially for someone who works in a field that is all about following orders and not asking too many questions about what your superiors have to say about what they want you to do.

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Rolling Stone, has published an interview with Gen. Stanley McChrystal, America's man in Afghanistan. The general said that many White House officials have betrayed him, that he was "disappointed" with President Obama after their first meeting, which he said he found the president unprepared for. He felt betrayed by Ambassador Karl Eikenberry, and said that his "real enemy" was "the wimps in the White House." Good Lord! What else didn't this man say?

From Kabul, this morning, Tuesday, Gen. McChrystal issued a statement -- "I extend my sincerest apology for this profile, (in the Rolling Stone). It was a mistake reflecting poor judgment and should never have happened." He couldn't say truer words.

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Monday,  yesterday in New York City, Faisal Shahzad, the Pakistan-born, naturalized U.S. citizen, who tried to blow up of Times Square with an exploding van, plead guilty to ten terrorism and weapons counts, crimes -- but he called it war. He calmly plead guilty, called himself a "Muslim soldier," defending Muslim people. He said that unless the US leave Muslim lands alone "we will be attacking the US" See the news video.

There are a lot of issues here. I shall deal with two.

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Reuters just referred to Bill Clinton as Bill “The Comeback Kid” Clinton. Where did that come from?

He’s campaigning for Democrats to try and help them retain majorities in both Houses of Congress this Fall. For one, how is that a comeback? And for two, how is it strange for a current or former president to campaign to help his party? Referencing his campaigning for Blanche Lincoln, Reuters credits Clinton with helping her overcome “anti-incumbent fervor” in her Arkansas re-election bid. I’m sure it helped people to see the home-state former governor and president out stomping for Lincoln, but that doesn’t seem like anything out of the ordinary to me. It seems like how politics work.

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This is the kind of thing I’m talking about: nitpicky gossip that has nothing to do with the real situation. Guilt-mongering that has more to do with what will sell papers or drive traffic to blog posts, rather than a real discussion of what is going on. BP CEO Tony Hayward went to a yacht race. And he did it while there are tens of thousands of barrels of oil leaking out of one of his company’s oil wells into the Gulf of Mexico. Unthinkable, right?

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It may be the beginning of the unraveling of Obama’s plan to change the medical and health care system in the United States. The Senate just agreed (unanimously) to rescind a 22% pay cut for doctors treating people with Medicare, to restore Medicare payments with a 2.2% increase, and to delay any other cuts for six months. So, we’re not cutting costs on a program anymore, we actually increased the cost? It’s complicated. But the bottom line is that the Senate is pushing for something to make them look good in front of seniors and the doctors, but at the same time they don’t want to set anything up long-term (because that would mean that they are adding billions of dollars to the federal deficit, and there’s no way anybody wants to be held responsible for that going into the Fall elections… hence the unanimous vote.

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BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil leak is looming over everything that happens in the U.S. and international politics. People are angry, but can’t do anything tangible about it. Yes, you can donate money, or if you live along the shore you can become part of the cleanup effort, but the fact that the rest of us (unless you volunteer there) can’t do anything with our hands to help out is frustrating and makes us feel powerless. No matter how many blog entries I write about it, I can’t get BP to go back and do something about the safety standards, I can’t get the oil leak filled in with concrete, and I can’t bring back the dead animals or the destroyed wetlands. And while I have a strong urge to tell BP what’s what, no matter how much I do that, I can’t change the way things are at this very moment.

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Politics are often a war fought with words and deals- even as the teams and causes are within the same country or inside the same city. In Ciudad Juarez, the art of politics has lost the power to take control of local events. Instead, the city is run by drug and human trafficking gangs, but the money that those acts generate, and rather than deals being made, hitmen who are hired to do the work of the people who are in charge. The politics of guns and power are brutally different than the flashy but domestic debates and arguments in the buildings of the capitals. There are no rules, no motions, no decorum that can be used to bring a familiar order to the decision-making.

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I have to say, for all the flak Obama has taken throughout his presidency about not being tough enough, or about not playing enough hardball in the Washington political world, he gets a lot of things done. Health Care reform? The one that nobody could get through for decades? Through. Copenhagen Summit Agreement? Brokered. BP escrow account? Created. And now he is writing letters to China about their yuan currency and what he thinks should be done about it. He may walk softly and rely on diplomacy more than our previous president did, but there is no denying that he gets results on the things that he puts his mind and energy toward.

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A Colorado man, Gary Brooks Faulkner, has taken the hunt for Osama bin Laden into his own hands, and in his pursuit was arrested crossing from Pakistan into the nearby Afghan province of Nuristan.  The Associated Press reports he was arrested with a pistol, 40-inch sword, night-vision gear, a dager and some hashish.  His brother, Dr. Scott Faulkner, who lives in Colorado told CNN, "My brother is not crazy.  He is highly intelligent and loves his country and has not forgotten what Osama has done to this country."  The crazy part of this whole ordeal is that, according to his sister, Deanna Faulkner, his kidneys are failing and that he needs dialysis.  She told the New York Daily News, "He only has 9 percent kidney function, and the only thing that can cure him is a transplant," she told the Daily News. "He needs dialysis three times a week.

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