SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 10:41 P.M. ET:

COMPROMISE? – Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has postponed a scheduled vote on his own debt bill until tomorrow, giving more time to negotiations that presumably are underway among Dems, Republicans, and the White House.  No specifics on those negotiations have leaked out.  Although Republican leaders said earlier in the day that a deal was close, Reid poured water on that assessment this evening.  Default day is Tuesday.

HIM AGAIN? – Real estate magnate, TV personality, and supreme hair comber Donald Trump, says that he may run for president if the economy stays bad.  There appears to be no chance that Trump could get the GOP nomination, meaning he would have to run as an independent.  Thus he would duplicate the ego trip of Ross Perot in 1992, which probably cost George H.W. Bush a second term, and sent Bill Clinton to the White House.  Trump would take votes from the Republicans.  I doubt if many Obama voters would defect to him.  I wish he would stay in the apartment-house business.

INCREDIBLE – Iran will name a new oil minister this week, and that individual is set to become the president of OPEC, which has a rotating presidency.  It's Iran's turn.  The new minister will probably be a general in Iran's  Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which is under sanction by U.S., European Union, and U.N. sanctions.  As president of OPEC, he could have substantial influence in world oil markets at a time of stress and uncertainty.  Obama's outreach to Iran has certainly done a lot of good, hasn't it?

SAME OLD MIDEAST STORY – The prestige of Libya's rebel movement has suffered a serious blow as it was acknowledged that Islamic elements within its ranks murdered the rebels' top battlefield commander.  There is now growing concern that extreme Islamic elements are far more powerful in the rebel movement than we'd previously thought.  We must now contemplate that the fall of Gadaffi's government might bring in a regime that is even worse, a prospect that we must already contemplate in Egypt.  One day the Arabs will get something right.  Maybe a lovely new pyramid, painted in bright colors, or a new exotic dance.  Hey, you gotta begin somewhere.

July 30, 2011