NASCAR Busch Series Rolls into Montreal

Today is the inaugural NASCAR event at Villeneuve in Montreal. 2 pm central time....

Image of the road course from Google Earth.





By the numbers, from NASCAR.com


UPDATE: Kevin Harvick wins. Ho-hum.

Lots of controversy about Robby Gordon's agressive driving. Only at a road course would he make any difference.

Happy 29th Birthday, Kurt Busch!

Make it extra happy by moving up a spot or two in the point standings at Pocono...

John Edwards in a Hypocrite.

John Edwards took over $800,000 from FOX News employees. This after lambasting another candidate for taking what turns out to be less money from Rupert Murdoch and his employees yesterday. Link to yesterday's story.

It looks like the famed Clinton oppo team is fully operational. The turnaround time on this story was very, very small.

Is this the last flailings of a desperate candidate? He's not even ahead in Iowa anymore. It's now a three way tie.

NASCAR: Junior wins first pole since 2002

Dale Earnhardt Jr. won the pole today for the Pennsylvania 500. Lineup here. I don't want to disappoint members of the Earnhardt nation, but he was the first one to go out after a rain delay. The track was just quicker. I didn't realize this, but this is Jr's first pole since 2002. Quelle dominance! I mean, Sterling Marlin has won poles since then...Junior wasn't particularly quick in the first practice.

Kurt Busch starts second and qualified before the rain delay. Sometimes my clairvoyance astounds even me. He's still my pick to win. He was, by the way, fastest in practive by six tenths. With his teammate starting 4th, this could be a very good weekend for the Penske boys.

Different Day, Different Obama Worldview

I am getting dizzy. Last week, Barack Obama was all for meeting with tyrants without preconditions. Yesterday, he was ready to invade Pakistan. Today, he has ruled out using nuclear weapons as commander-in-cheif. This guy would be a dream come true for the Republicans.

Clinton responds to the daily vacillation that is the Obama foreign policy:

"Presidents should be very careful at all times in discussing the use or nonuse of nuclear weapons," Clinton said. "Presidents since the Cold War have used nuclear deterrence to keep the peace. And I don't believe that any president should make any blanket statements with respect to the use or nonuse of nuclear weapons."

Dodd responds, also from ABC:

"Over the past several days, Senator Obama's assertions about foreign and military affairs have been, frankly, confusing and confused," said Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn. "He has made threats he should not make and made unwise categorical statements about military options."

The New York Post's Brookes calls the wisdom of Obama's Pakistan speech into question. Who's Bush - Cheney Lite now?

What with Rupert Murdoch taking over The Wall Street Journal, John Edwards is calling on Hillary Clinton to return the contributions made to her campaign by News Corp officials.

Poll Report

Clinton's lead is expanding. As of today, the Real Clear Politics average for her is the highest it has been all year.

A new Pew Poll out today confirms almost to the number yesterday's NBC / WSJ poll. Also, the most recent Rasmussen tracking poll has almost identical numbers.

The Christian Science Monitor on the GOP race in South Carolina. Interesting read.

Pocono Picks

*Kurt Busch- PICK TO WIN- Kurt only has one win at Pocono, but he was second here twice last year and was coming on strong when the rain delay prematurely ended the race in June. He needs this win badly. Sitting 13th and 14th in points, it's do or die time for Team Penske.

*Denny Hamlin- Swept here in '06. His car was not one that could have won the race in June. He does, however, seem to have Pocono figured out and will be a strong force to contend with.

* Tony Stewart- is a world class ass. However, he has one win at Pocono. His average finish here is 13.2, which is low for Tony but he has 12 top tens in 17 races here. His team in on a roll now, and he will be in the top 10.

*Jimmie Johnson - cheats. But, his 8.1 average finish makes Northeast Pennsylvania one of his favorite stops all year. He is in the top ten this weekend, reversing his recent slide.

* Jeff Gordon - will be in the top 10 and probably in the top 5. NASCAR called the rain delay in June seconds after Jeff went on the radio to tell his team that his tires were going away from him and that he would lose if it didn't start raining. (Funny how that worked out for him...) He edged out Ryan Newman by a fender before the caution was called and would have lost had the race gone literally 5 more feet. I almost picked him again, but I think that Busch, Hamlin or Stewart are more likely winners.

*Ryan Newman - Needs a good finish here. He is still in the Chase hunt by the grace of a blown DEI engine and will not have a chance of making the field for the playoffs if he has another disastrous weekend like at Indianapolis. Pocono is one of his stronger tracks, and he had the car to beat in June. Pit strategy by Steve Latarte and intervention by NASCAR kept him from getting the win.

*Matt Kenseth - You never go wrong putting Matt in a top 10. He is just damned consistent.

* Jeff Burton- Two top 10s in 2006, and a top 15 in June. If his car is good enough, he will be there.

* Kevin Harvick- is moderately good at Pocono. He has 4 top 10s here, in 13 races. His team is also really strong at this point in the season.

* Carl Edwards - won at Pocono is 2005 and was a factor in June. He is having a really strong season and I expect that he will be in the mix. He might even win.

Obama Talks Tough / Clinton Expands Lead

The Obama people crack me up. Last week, a substantial portion of Democratic primary voters were shown how their candidate's lack of experience can manifest itself: naive and potentially dangerous policy making from a debate lectern. So, what's the solution? Get together a few experts and write a wonkish speech on American policy toward Pakistan. And the Oba-media fawns.........

Obama wants to redeploy the forces from Iraq and send two brigades to Afghanistan. And condition assistance for Pakistan on the Musharraf government's cooperation in hunting Al-Qaeda.

The speech is drawing mixed reviews. From the Washington Post's The Trail blog.

John Podhoretz is not impressed.

Obama is all thumbs when it comes to this foreign policy stuff. If I understand correctly, what he wants to do is condition aid. If they don't cooperate, we invade. So, we pull out of what Obama rightly calls a wrong-headed war in Iraq, only to possibly invade another Muslim country, of nearly 200 million people that we know has nuclear weapons and has been cooperating with us in our hunt for Al Qaeda to the extent that the government can politically and survive. What a novel construct.

New NBC / WSJ poll

Apparently, Obama needed to show a little foreign policy gravitas this week. NBC and the Wall Street Journal are out with a new poll today that shows Sen. Clinton's lead nationally to have grown to 21 percent, with another 8 points back to Edwards. I know this is a national poll and not an Iowa / NH / SC poll, but it is hard to see how she loses with numbers like these.

From the WSJ, this represents a net 7 percent increase for Hillary! over Obama since June.