Straight talk...discuss.

Did John McCain have his ultimate senior moment?

Republican presidential candidate John McCain said on Friday that his Democratic opponent, Barack Obama, is likely to be in Iraq over the weekend.

The Obama campaign has tried to cloak the Illinois senator's trip in some measure of secrecy for security reasons. The White House, State Department and Pentagon do not announce senior officials' visits to Iraq in advance.

"I believe that either today or tomorrow -- and I'm not privy to his schedule -- Sen. Obama will be landing in Iraq with some other senators" who make up a congressional delegation, McCain told a campaign fund-raising luncheon.

If there are two things that we know about John McCain, it's that he doesn't like to talk about being a P.O.W...except for when he's constantly talking about it or putting out ads featuring it, and that only he understands war and all that it entails. So why in the hell would he cheerfully reveal information like this? Did he forget that secrecy surrounds any notable person's visit to Iraq, or did he think Al-Qaeda was in Iran for the weekend and wouldn't be a problem?

See turneresq's diary on this.

George Bush is a man of his word...he will never, ever, ever set a timeline to withdraw troops from Iraq. He will however set a horizon. Via Atrios:

President Bush and Iraq's prime minister have agreed to set a "time horizon" for the withdrawal of U.S. combat troops from Iraq as security conditions in the war-ravaged nation continue to improve, White House officials said here Friday.  [...]

"In the area of security cooperation, the president and the prime minister agreed that improving conditions should allow for the agreements now under negotiation to include a general time horizon for meeting aspirational goals...The president and prime minister agreed that the goals would be based on continued improving conditions on the ground and not an arbitrary date for withdrawal."

In other words, nothing changed, just a little PR to make any agreement to leave troops in Iraq that Bush signs a little easier to shove down the throats of the American people. And remember, to John McCain, the horizon can be 100 years from now because after all, bringing home the troops is "not too important" to him.

From Media Matters:

ABC News and The Washington Post issued staggered releases of the results of their latest poll, withholding from their first release results favorable to Sen. Barack Obama, including the finding that 50 percent of registered voters would vote for Obama for president versus 42 percent for Sen. John McCain. The next day, the Post ran an article headlined "Poll Finds Voters Split on Candidates' Iraq-Pullout Positions," which did not mention Obama's 8-point lead over McCain. Later that day, ABC News and the Post issued a second release with additional poll results that stated: "Obama continues to hold most of the advantages in the presidential race."

Here's the article the Washington Post chose to run the next day, where they failed to mention that, when asked,

If the 2008 presidential election were being held today and the candidates were (Barack Obama, the Democrat) and (John McCain, the Republican), for whom would you vote?

...50% said Obama and 42% said McCain. The article also failed to mention that if Bob Barr was included in the choices, Obama's lead went up to 10 points.

ABC News went with a lengthly article titled, "McCain Tops Obama in Commander-in-Chief Test; Stays Competitive on Iraq," also without bothering to mention the most important finding in the poll.

Details, details, why bother their readers with the details when it would mess up the planned narrative? They can always release those later.

Way to boost morale, guys...and fight terrorism at the same time:

The Air Force's top leadership sought for three years to spend counterterrorism funds on "comfort capsules" to be installed on military planes that ferry senior officers and civilian leaders around the world, with at least four top generals involved in design details such as the color of the capsules' carpet and leather chairs, according to internal e-mails and budget documents.

Air Force officials said that the comfort capsules were needed to ensure leaders could talk and work. Which doesn't really explain why they were to be:  

..."aesthetically pleasing and furnished to reflect the rank of the senior leaders using the capsule," with beds, a couch, a table, a 37-inch flat-screen monitor with stereo speakers, and a full-length mirror.

Words fail...

A new Associated Press/Yahoo poll shows that John McCain is "facing an excitement deficit." Some of the findings:

• 38 percent of his supporters [Obama] say the election is exciting compared to 9 percent of McCain's.
• By 2-to-1 or more, McCain backers are likelier than Obama's to say the campaign makes them bored, angry and helpless.
• More than twice as many Democrats than Republicans have gotten more excited about the campaign since the fall, 22 percent to 9 percent.

You can appreciate McCain backers feeling bored, angry and helpless as they watch their candidate, stumble, stutter and flip-flop on a daily basis. But it's not all great news:

• Independents are about evenly divided between the two candidates, with about a quarter behind each. Four in 10 remain undecided, and half say they could still change their minds.

Your one stop pundit shop.

Charles Krauthammer, needing a hook for his latest rant against Barack Obama, turns the Brandenburg Gate into a holy shrine. Then he rants.

R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. thinks that Barack Obama is in trouble. And to prove it he mentions arugula, a waffle and words like oracle, prophet, cult and Limbaugh. Assuming you are completely insane, a compelling read.

David Brooks explains that we are entering an era where there are huge problems that our government will need to address,

Yet, historically, periods of great governmental change have often been periods of conservative rule. It’s as if voters understand that they need big changes, but they want those changes planned and enacted by leaders who will restrain the pace of change and prevent radical excess.

Ignoring that it was conservative rule that got us into this mess, Brooks thinks that McCain can channel Teddy Roosevelt and Benjamin Disraeli and bring about reform that preserves truth, justice, and the American way. And he won’t make you ride a bike.

E.J. Dionne says the Democrats lack "oomph" on the issue of gas prices. Can Al Gore provide it?

Thomas Sowell is concerned about facts losing their relevancy in the presidential campaign and doesn’t mention John McCain’s name once. Apparently Sowell isn’t as fond of facts as he pretends to be.

Mitch McConnell (R-KY) give the standard, dishonest, GOP talking points on oil exploration and gas prices.

 

Because it can't be said too often...

The fifty state strategy in action:

Sen. Barack Obama's campaign announced Wednesday that it is adding 20 offices across Virginia, an unprecedented effort by a presidential candidate and another sign that he plans to compete vigorously in a state that has been on the sidelines during past presidential contests.

The offices, which will open Saturday, will be in nearly every medium-size city in the state, along with a few locations often overlooked by statewide candidates, much less a presidential campaign.

"A lot of these places may have never had a presidential campaign before," state Sen. John S. Edwards (D-Roanoke) said at an event announcing the offices. "It shows [Obama] is investing in the commonwealth and it is a bottom-up, not a top-down campaign."

A McCain spokesman called it a "tremendous waste of money" and said:

It is being done to create this image of momentum and enthusiasm that frankly is just not out there.

Uh huh.

The other day the Los Angeles Times ran an op-ed about political blogs, looking at who reads them, how effective they are, and what their potential is to generate political change. There were no earth-shattering revelations in this piece, but one thing did catch my eye:

To determine just how polarized blog readers are, we constructed a measure of political ideology by drawing on blog readers' attitudes toward stem cell research, abortion, the Iraq war, the minimum wage and capital gains tax cuts. Using this measure, we then arrayed respondents from left to right. Here's what we found.

Readers of liberal blogs were clustered at the far left...

What does "the far left" mean?  Here's the attitudes of Americans as a whole on these issues:

Iraq War:

Do you favor or oppose the U.S. war in Iraq?

Favor    Oppose    Unsure    

  30            68            2

If you had to choose, would you rather see the next president keep the same number of troops in Iraq that are currently stationed there, or would you rather see the next president remove most U.S. troops in Iraq within a few months of taking office?

Keep Same    Remove Most    Unsure

    33                  64                   3

Stem Cell research:

There is a type of medical research that involves using special cells, called embryonic stem cells, that might be used in the future to treat or cure many diseases, such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, diabetes, and spinal cord injury. It involves using human embryos discarded from fertility clinics that no longer need them. Some people say that using human embryos for research is wrong. Do you favor or oppose using discarded embryos to conduct stem cell research to try to find cures for the diseases I mentioned?

Favor    Oppose    Unsure

  73           19            8

Abortion:

Do you think abortion should be legal in all cases, legal in most cases, illegal in most cases, or illegal in all cases?

Legal:  All   Most   Illegal:  Most   All   Unsure

          19    38                   24      13       6

Minimum wage:

Do you favor or oppose an increase in the minimum wage?

Favor    Oppose    Unsure

  80          18            2

We reflect the majority opinion of this country on pretty much every issue, yet the media continues to pretend that we're the far left, the lunatic fringe. They're still unwilling to admit the obvious...we are the mainstream.

Your one stop pundit shop.

Harold Meyerson concludes that the Gospel of Reaganomics has failed the Republican Party, no one more so than John McCain.

...as McCain tries to balance the tattered libertarianism of Reaganomics with the financial exigencies of the moment, he and his campaign have moved beyond inconsistency into utter incoherence.

Gail Collins discusses gay marriage in Massachusetts and says it’s become less and less of an issue there because, "There is no greater force against bigotry than the moment when something becomes so routine that you stop noticing it."

David Broder waxes poetic over the can-do spirit and bipartisanship shown by governors, past and present, and while recalling a past National Governors Association party, uses a phrase I never thought I’d see from Broder:

...people got seriously wasted.

Dan Senor offers advice to Barack Obama on his upcoming trip to Iraq.  And who better than this former member of the Bush administration, the Iraq Coalition Provisional Authority advisor, a frequent Fox News contributor and the front man for Ari Fleischer’s 527?

Bob Barr takes a few shots at John McCain.  And in November, hopefully he’ll take a few point from him.

Dan Payne wonders about things. BarbinMD wonders if Dan drew a blank when he sat down to write his column today.

Clarence Page hopes the much talked about New Yorker cover "leads more voters to seek the real story" of Barack Obama.

Planned Parenthood lets John McCain speak for himself.

Once again, you just can't make this stuff up:

The McCain campaign is taking their effort to distance their candidate from the unpopular President Bush to a whole new level: McCain's advisers are now openly attacking Bush on Iraq -- and not only that, they're also saying that Barack Obama is the one who is like Bush on the war!

And before you ask, no, the link doesn't go to The Onion. The McCain camp held a conference call today where McCain's foreign policy advisor said:

I think the American people have had enough of inflexibility and stubbornness in national security policy...We cannot afford to replace one administration that refused for too long to acknowledge failure in Iraq with a candidate that refuses to acknowledge success in Iraq.

Write your own punchline...

Huh?

Military surge in Iraq ends; 150,000 troops remain

The military surge into Iraq that began more than 18 months ago has ended. But 150,000 U.S. troops remain, as many as 15,000 more than before the buildup began.

Black is white, up is down...the confusion continues:

The Pentagon's top military officer said Wednesday that he is likely to recommend further troop reductions in Iraq this fall.

The surge is over even though there are more troops than when it started and the good news is, there will be even more reductions?

• James at Swing State Project looks at the second quarter fundraising reports from various congressional candidates.
• Kit Bond (R-MO) joins the long line of Republicans who are lying about oil spills during Hurricane Katrina.
• Thank you:

  Can I just note that I seem to live in some kind of mirror universe where the fact that Barack Obama has, for months, maintained a modest lead over John McCain in every public poll constitutes bad news for Obama and that the specific reason it constitutes bad news for Obama is that the larger political climate is favorable to Obama.

• John McCain decided it was time to address the NAACP. Apparently the applause was polite.
• George Bush is negotiating with "radicals and terrorists." John Cole sees three possible reactions to this story:

  Option #1 is a pure freak out by the wingnut crowd (if I had to bet money, either someone from Malkin’s enterprise or Commentary will lead the charge), who claim it is more evidence Bush is not a true conservative, all the while claiming McCain would never do something like this. Option #2 is to deny they are actually, you know, negotiating, and Burns is just along for the ride. Option #3 is the tried and true "BUT THE DEMOCRATS ARE WORSE." And the final option is to simply pretend this didn’t happen.

• From the Jesus' General, some advertising advice for Washington state's groping Commissioner of Public Lands.
• It took 15 innings for the National League to lose another All-Star game.

 

Oh dear. Someone had better tell the conservatives of the GOP base, who don't quite trust John McCain anyway, that he has changed his tune from the other day and now apparently favors adoptions by gay couples.

"Sen. McCain's expressed his personal preference for children to be raised by a mother and a father wherever possible," the statement added. "However, as an adoptive father himself, McCain believes children deserve loving and caring home environments, and he recognizes that there are many abandoned children who have yet to find homes. John McCain believes that in those situations that caring parental figures are better for the child than the alternative."

Hardly a ringing endorsement for adoptions by gays, but certainly a change from two days ago when he unambiguously said, "I don't believe in gay adoption." Of course he may come back tomorrow and say that he meant only if the alternative was being boiled in oil, because after all, when it comes to the straight talker, you never know who he's going to be pandering to next.

No surprise here:

President Bush has asserted executive privilege to prevent Attorney General Michael Mukasey from having to comply with a House panel subpoena for material on the leak of CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity.

A House committee chairman, meanwhile, held off on a contempt citation of Mukasey — who had requested the privilege claim — but only as a courtesy to lawmakers not present.

Rep. Henry Waxman, chairman of the House Oversight Committee, rejected Mukasey's suggestion that Vice President Dick Cheney's FBI interview on the CIA leak should be protected by the privilege claim — and therefore not turned over to the panel.

Waxman said they will act in "a reasonable and appropriate period of time," which means the Attorney General of the United States will soon be cited for contempt of Congress...or there will be a flurry of sternly worded letters.

Via Atrios:

Out of all the people to try to honor in an Act dedicated to fighting AIDS, Elizabeth Dole spits in the face of LGBTs by proposing the now-dead Jesse Helms be added to the "Tom Lantos and Henry J. Hyde United States Global Leadership Against HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria Reauthorization Act of 2008."

Joe Jervis reminds us of some of Helms' greatest hits:

Jesse Helms, the man who in 1987 described AIDS prevention literature as "so obscene, so revolting, I may throw up."

Jesse Helms, the man who in 1988 vigorously opposed the Kennedy-Hatch AIDS research bill, saying, "There is not one single case of AIDS in this country that cannot be traced in origin to sodomy."

Jesse Helms, the man who in 1995 said (in opposition to refunding the Ryan White Act) that the government should spend less on people with AIDS because they got sick due to their "deliberate, disgusting, revolting conduct."

Jesse Helms, the man who in 2002 announced that he'd changed his mind about AIDS funding for Africa, but not for American gays, because homosexuality "is the primary cause of the doubling and redoubling of AIDS cases in the United States."