Saudi Arabia has secretly offered Russia a sweeping deal to control the global oil market and safeguard Russia's gas contracts, if the Kremlin backs away from the Assad regime in Syria.

The revelations come amid high tension in the Middle East, with US, British, and French warship poised for missile strikes in Syria. Iran has threatened to retaliate.

The strategic jitters pushed Brent crude prices to a five-month high of $112 a barrel. "We are only one incident away from a serious oil spike. The market is a lot tighter than people think," said Chris Skrebowski, editor of Petroleum Review.

Leaked transcripts of a closed-door meeting between Russia's Vladimir Putin and Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan shed an extraordinary light on the hard-nosed Realpolitik of the two sides.  Prince Bandar, head of Saudi intelligence, allegedly confronted the Kremlin with a mix of inducements and threats in a bid to break the deadlock over Syria.   Here they are.

[This commencement address was originally published three years ago. We  rerun it annually at college graduation time. Feel quite free to send this to any recent college graduate you may know.]

Mr. Chancellor, Members of the Board of Regents, Members of the Faculty, Honored Graduates, Families and Friends:

It's funny that they call this ceremony a Commencement, for you've all reached the finish line:  college, goodbye, we're outta here.  Yet of course, "commencement" means a beginning, not an end.

But one is supposed to at least start - commence - a talk such as this by saying funny things.  So I'll start by talking about Clark Gable movies.  If you've heard of Clark Gable at all, you know he was the biggest movie star in Hollywood a long time ago.  His most famous movie was of course Gone With The Wind.

He made a movie in 1955 called The Tall Men with Jane Russell as his girlfriend and Robert Ryan as the heavy.  It's a pretty ordinary Western flick with outlaws and cowboys and Indians - and at the end, Ryan, the bad guy, and his henchmen get the drop on Gable, the good guy, and all seems lost.  Suddenly, surprise, Gable outfoxes Ryan and triumphs.  Gable makes his exit, and after he does, Ryan delivers a line that I want you to never forget.

Serendipity is funny, a very funny thing, finding something where you least expect it.  Out of the blue, out of a movie awash with pedestrian dialogue, comes a line so profound it detonates inside your brain. Ryan turns to his men and says:

Skype began as a very cool service. I used it and recommended it - a lot.

Skype (originally Sky peer-to-peer) was a peer to peer voice system, which means that there was no central computer controlling everything. It was also encrypted, though the internal details were never revealed.

But, as will a lot of good tech ideas, the developers were persuaded to sell it. In this case, to eBay in 2005. (For $2.5 billion, which is a lot of persuasion!) Then, after doing very little with the tech for several years, eBay sold it to Microsoft for $8.5 billion in 2011.

That's when the serious trouble began. Here are the highlights:

The number of extraordinary gaffes committed by Obambi has been proliferating of late.  Among those just this month are not knowing Afghans don't speak Arabic and that his own state of Illinois doesn't border Kentucky.  Most incredible of all is his telling an audience, "I have now been to 57 states with one left to go," then says that one is "Alaska and Hawaii."

No matter how exhausted from campaigning you are, you don't make a mistake like that under any normal circumstances.  Saying there are 57 states - actually 58, or is it 59? - is such an egregiously stupid error that it is evidence of brain malfunction.

A neuroscientist with years of research into drug abuse and brain chemistry tells To The Point that the behavior exhibited by Obama is consistent with the use of either amphetamines or cocaine. 

In his book, Dreams From My Father, Obambi admitted his drug use when young:  "Pot (marijuana) had helped, and booze; maybe a little blow (cocaine) when you could afford it. Not smack (heroin), though."

Teen-age drug use isn't, of course, evidence for its use in one's 40s.  But when someone who may be elected President of the United States starts behaving suspiciously, then it's justified to ask that those suspicions be allayed.

Thus, To The Point calls for Barack Hussein Obama to be drug tested.

My friend and Marine ‘Nam vet Bill Gregory is just blown away by the User Forum comments regarding Thompson Bummer.  "What an intelligent, insightful group of people you have as subscribers!" he effuses, and I can only agree. 

He was especially impressed with a new commentator with the wonderful forum name of "melliefluous," and those of such regulars as John Nehring (johnwss), Chris Baldi (cephran), Marco, "gary," and "prosenberg,"  among many others.   "Great thought-provoking exchanges," notes Bill.

Our TTP Salon is turning out to be a terrific place to discuss the pros and cons of the 2008 presidential candidates (mostly the Republicans, for what, really, is there to say about the goofy folks the Dems are serving up?). 

I have to say my disappointment with Fred Thompson at his speech last Saturday (5/12) was tempered a bit with his devastating quick put-down of Michael Moore on YouTube.  I would still love to see him declare and participate in the GOP candidate debates.

The debate last Tuesday (5/15) in South Carolina (here is the transcript) was intensely revealing.  Folks saw that Duncan Hunter would be A President to Watch America's Six, and that Ron Paul, like all libertarians, is not.

But what the debate most clearly exposed is John McCain as the Perfect Liberal.