Quotes From Around Yon Blogosphere

If you thought the war in Iraq would provide us with cheap gas, you were wrong. If you thought the war in Iraq would bring record corporate profits to the oil giants, you were right. It's a curious thing. Put a Texas Oil Man in the Oval Office and the same stuff keeps happening. But no matter how many times we try it, land wars in Asia are always a bad idea.

-- BOOMAN

Hillary Clinton’s decisive Pennsylvania primary win last week may have reinvigorated her campaign, but you wouldn’t know it from listening to the Republican Party. . . . From top to bottom, from McCain down to the youthful campaign and party staffers who work nearly around the clock to get him elected, the working assumption seems to be that the Democratic contest is over and Obama has won.

-- JONATHAN MARTIN

From soaring gas prices to weaker job prospects, Americans are gloomier about the economy than just before the U.S. invasion of Iraq. They’re so anxious that fewer people say they are planning to take a vacation than in 30 years. And those are worrying signs for the already deteriorating economy, since eroding consumer confidence foreshadows weaker spending.

-- ANNE D'INNOCENZIO

Perhaps just as important for Obama's attempt to regain control of his campaign was the fight he picked with Clinton and McCain over lifting the gas tax for the summer driving season. The other candidates have backed this crowd pleaser, but Obama labeled it as a phony Washington solution that wouldn't do much to help real people. "This isn't an idea designed to get you through the summer, it's designed to get them through an election," he said at a town hall meeting in Winston Salem, N.C.

-- JOHN DICKERSON

Having never met, lunched, or lectured with Bill Ayers, I'm feeling left out.

-- EZRA KLEIN

"The Federal Reserve's moves to prop up Bear Stearns Cos. will come to be seen as "the worst policy mistake in a generation," the Fed's past head of monetary affairs said. The action is comparable to "the great contraction" of the 1930s and "the great inflation" of the 1970s, said Vincent Reinhart, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, who retired from the Fed last fall.

-- GREG IP

He wanted it to be New Politics vs. Old Politics but, as the states dwindle down to a precious few, Barack Obama is being tied in political knots by ancient divisions of race, culture and social class that are being exploited by the Clinton campaign, with some unexpected help from Obama's former spiritual adviser.

-- ROBERT STEIN

Cartoon by Pat Oliphant/Universal Press Syndicate