LINK

For two years, he was the brains behind the Obama political juggernaut, quietly engineering what he recently boasted was perhaps the biggest political upset in history.

But in the weeks since he's come out from behind the curtain to tell how he pulled it off, David Plouffe has found it's not always easy to be the man in the spotlight.

Just Thursday, Plouffe drew fire from reporters over his insistence that a speech at a Georgetown University symposium be kept off the record.

The flap came on the heels of a Monday speech that caused potentially more serious headaches for Team Obama -- not because the speech was closed to the press, which it was, but because of where it was given: Azerbaijan.

A group with close ties to the oil-rich Caspian Sea nation, which has been criticized for human rights abuses and authoritarian leanings, paid Plouffe $50,000 to speak and also arranged for him to meet with top government officials.

That rankled stateside backers of Armenia, who emerged as an influential pro-Obama political bloc, and set off a war of words between them and their bitter rivals in the Azerbaijani-American community.

The republicans job is to make sure Obama is not successful in order to starting winning seats in congress back.  The sooner Obama looses control of the 60 member majority the sooner the republicans will start to make a difference on Obama's legislative agenda.   If it were not for the 3 republicans that moved over this bill would have been dead.   IMO I would not declare this as a major victory for Obama.  He squeaked by by a hair and this is considered the most important piece of legislation on Obama list.

With the shellacking the three republicans got from their party for crossing over on senate on the stimulus bill, I doubt if these 3 will cross over again in any future Obama legislation, unless they know they will not be running again.

Former Gov. Rod Blagojevich's brother solicited U.S. Sen. Roland Burris for up to $10,000 in campaign cash before Blagojevich named Burris to the coveted post -- something Burris initially failed to disclose under oath before an Illinois House impeachment panel, records and interviews show.

Reporting from Washington -- A senior U.S. lawmaker [Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.)] said Thursday that unmanned CIA Predator aircraft operating in Pakistan are flown from an air base in that country, a revelation likely to embarrass the Pakistani government and complicate its counter-terrorism collaboration with the United States.

[snip]

The basing of the pilotless aircraft in Pakistan suggests a much deeper relationship with the United States on counter-terrorism matters than has been publicly acknowledged. Such an arrangement would be at odds with protests lodged by officials in Islamabad, the capital, and could inflame anti-American sentiment in the country.

[snip]

Many counter-terrorism experts have assumed that the aircraft take off from U.S. military installations in Afghanistan and are remotely piloted from locations in the United States. Experts said the disclosure could create political problems for the government in Islamabad, which is considered relatively weak.

The attacks are extremely unpopular in Pakistan, in part because of the high number of civilian casualties inflicted in dozens of strikes.

[snip]

The Pakistani government regularly lodges diplomatic protests against the strikes as a violation of its sovereignty, and officials said the subject was raised with Richard C. Holbrooke, a newly appointed U.S. envoy to the region, who completed his first visit to the country Thursday.

But a former CIA official familiar with the Predator operations said Pakistan's government secretly approves of the flights because of the growing militant threat.

LA Times via War & Piece

Anyone who thinks Afghanistan is ours to solve or even help solve is sadly mistaken.  Sadly.