McCain's VP Pick

There is talk that McCain might pick his VP in the next two weeks, before the Olympics. I think that timing is fine -- it's probably better timing than doing it right before the RNC convention in September.

But honestly -- I can't see McCain getting a big bounce from any of his potential picks. Romney is a phony and a flip-flopper who isn't really loved by anyone. His ludicrous statements during the primary (double Gitmo!) will come back to haunt him, and he isn't going to deliver his home state of Massachusetts.

Huckabee would be a strong pick, at least for the Christian crowd, but it would be electoral suicide for McCain to pick him. A creepy man with a creepy background (pardoning a rapist/killer, for example). Plus, fiscal conservatives don't like him.

Bobby Jindall is too young, his exorcist past would make for endless jokes, and his abortion stance is too extreme.

Tim Pawlenty seems like the safest choice, but that's also a problem -- he's boring as hell. Still, I'd guess that he's the fav no matter how much hype Romney is getting.

Gov. Sarah Palin would have been a very intriguing choice, but she's currently dealing with a big time scandal in Alaska. Cross her out.

Carly Fiorina? Give me a break. With folks losing their jobs, why pick a disgraced former CEO who botched her last job and walked away with a golden parachute? You might as well pick Phil Gramm.

Rob Portman is Bush's former budget director, so he helped take us from record surpluses to record deficits. Nope, not gonna work.

Chuck Hagel would be McCain's strongest choice, but he's an Obama guy now. Sorry.

As far as timing, I don't think it really matters. It will be good for Obama if McCain chooses first, as that allows him to decide who would make a better contrast. This is McCain's last chance, outside of the debates, to make a big splash so it's better to get it over with. If McCain really thinks he'll get much attention on the Friday after Obama's big Denver speech, he's dreaming. And with George W. Bush giving the opening night speech at the RNC convention, any positive news from the VP pick will simply be drowned out by the subsequent bad press.

If I was Obama, I'd pick my VP in the middle of August, during the Olympics, or at the start of the convention. If the last two Olympics is any guide, it's not gonna be all-consuming. Plus there is a huge time zone difference, preventing any Olympics news from jumping over his story. I don't think Obama has any home run VP prospects, but he has some good ones and some bad ones. Hopefully he picks a good one.

Good ones: Kaine, Sebelius, McCaskill, Biden, Edwards (if love-child story can be proven false), Patty Murray, Richardson.

Bad ones: Nunn, Webb, Veneman, Clinton, Hagel, Bayh.

Obama Is In Damn Good Shape

Anyone who can curl 32 kilos (70 pounds) with each arm isn't doing too bad.

McCain Reads Notes To Know Milk Price

Pretty funny:



You'd think you could just remember something that simple. But McCain is showing himself to be more and more forgetful these days. He's worse than second term Reagan.

Predictions

Me thinks that Obama is going to be hitting McCain pretty hard once he's back in the U.S.

Obama is well-known as a great counter-puncher (see: primary vs. Hillary Clinton), and McCain has given him plenty of material to work with. And plenty of reason to be pissed.

McCain Tries To Bamboozle Us On Iraq

Every day that passes, McCain has a new position on Iraq. One day it's 100 years, another day it's 2013, and today he said Obama's 16-month withdrawal plan is a "pretty good timetable".



Here is Josh Marshall's take:

Sen. McCain's made a series of pretty extraordinary statements on his interview on CNN. First, apparently Maliki didn't really mean what he said. Second, Wolf Blitzer read back to McCain his repeated claim that Obama would rather lose a war if it helped him win a political campaign. This is close to an accusation of treason. So Blitzer asked him whether this wasn't an attack on Obama's patriotism. McCain said 'no' that he was only questioning Obama's judgment. In any rational world the maverick label wouldn't survive a fib of that magnitude.

Perhaps best of all McCain appeared to embrace Maliki's timeline for withdrawal, but said there was no conflict with that also being Obama's timeline for withdrawal, because Maliki's was based on conditions and Obama's wasn't.

Last but not least, Blitzer asked McCain if it didn't make sense to scrutinize McCain's judgment in going to war in the first place if he's placing so much emphasis on scrutinizing Obama's judgment on the surge. McCain's answer, in so many words, that's old news.

Although dissecting a statement by McCain is like shooting fish in a barrel, let me concentrate for one second on his statement that once he withdraws from Iraq, "we will never have to go back". How does he know this? Does he know that Al Qaeda in Iraq and around the world will be fully destroyed, and that no future leaders of Iraq might turn out to be worse than Saddam? What if Iran invaded Iraq? And exactly what steps will McCain take to pacify Iraq to the point where we never have to go back?

Is he going to bomb the country back to the Stone Age, as we tried to do in Vietnam? Everyone knows that McCain is trying to replay Vietnam, so I'm guessing that's exactly what he has planned. He's making up stuff about how he'd love to withdraw troops, but Joe Lieberman said the same crap while running for reelection in 2006 and look where he stands now. You can't trust anything McCain says on this -- he's in general election mode and knows which way the wind is blowing. Post-election, he won't give a damn what voters think.

Here is McCain's real plan:

1. Get elected.
2. Tell Maliki we aren't going anywhere until we've "won", and if he's not happy about that too bad.
3. Increase the size of our armed forces by 150,000 and send most of those extra troops to Iraq.
4. Sadr will end his cease-fire, knowing that McCain has no plans to leave, so bloodshed will return to 2006 levels.
5. The U.S. will still have at least 150,00-200,000 troops in Iraq in 2013, and only then would McCain's ass be shown the door. Too bad for the extra $500 billion dollars and, oh, maybe 3000 more Americans lives that will be lost by that point.

And let's not even talk about Iran. In that scenario, McCain reinstates the draft, declares that we are in World War III, and begins firebombing noncompliant Mideast cities. You think things are bad now? Just wait.

That's the McCain plan. It's what he would have done in Vietnam -- double down -- and that's what he wants to do here if we give him the reins of power. You can put money on it.

Democrats Called For A Surge In 2003-04

John McCain is trying to pretend that he came up with the idea of the surge, that he was right before anyone else, that the war is going so great because of his surge idea.

It's all bullshit. As anyone with a brain remembers, Democrats were calling for more troops as far back as 2003 and 2004, as a way of stabilizing the situation so that we could leave.

Here is John Kerry, Democratic candidate for president, in April 2004:

More U.S. troops and a new president could be needed to win international support for U.S. efforts in postwar Iraq, Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry said Sunday.
The Massachusetts senator said President Bush has created a "quandary" for the nation by failing to develop a broad coalition to fight the war, to secure Iraq and to let countries that didn't fight participate in rebuilding.

"It may well be that we need a new president, a breath of fresh air, to re-establish our credibility with the rest of the world" and bring other countries into Iraq, Kerry said on NBC's Meet the Press.

He also said that "if it requires more troops in order to create the stability that eliminates the chaos" discouraging the United Nations and other countries from helping, "that's what we have to do."

And here is Howard Dean in June 2003:

MR. RUSSERT: Let's talk about the military budget. How many men and women would you have on active duty?

DR. DEAN: I can't answer that question. And I don't know what the answer is. I can tell you one thing, though. We need more troops in Afghanistan. We need more troops in Iraq now. I supported the president's invasion of Afghanistan for the obvious reasons, what had gone on and the murder of people. But I do not support what the president's doing there now. We need more people there. We cannot be making alliances with warlords in the hope that we're one day going to have the democracy in Afghanistan. And what I would do in Iraq now is bring in NATO and bring in the United Nations, because our troops on the ground deserve better support than they're getting.

Yet McCain supported, campaigned for, and voted for the guy -- George W. Bush -- who thought we had plenty of troops in Iraq. McCain supported the guy who had Donald Rumsfeld as Secretary of Defense, even knowing about his idiotic small-force theories.

So please. For McCain to pretend like he has been so far ahead of the curve on Iraq is ridiculous.

Bush Abuses Power To Foil Obama's Trip

OK, now this is becoming a pattern.

First, George W. Bush convinced German Chancellor Angela Merkel to stop Obama from speaking at the Brandenburg Gate.

Second, we learn that Condi Rice instructed all U.S. embassies to deny assistance to Obama while he was overseas.

Third, we learned that embassy workers in Berlin were banned from attending Obama's public speech yesterday.

And now today, we learn that Bush's Pentagon has prevented Obama from visiting wounded troops in Germany:

A Pentagon spokesperson confirms to me that because of longstanding Department of Defense regulations, Pentagon officials told Obama aides that he couldn't visit the base with campaign staff. This left Obama with little choice but to cancel the trip, since the plan to visit with campaign aides had been in the works for weeks.

Here is an MSNBC report on the matter:



This interference and petty abuse of power is just sickening. Yet another reason why we have to get these corrupt assholes out of power. They have literally politicized everything about government, going so far as to use fine print bullshit to keep a U.S. Senator from visiting troops while he is abroad.

Nobody Cares What McCain Says

As we've all seen, John McCain has been smearing Obama constantly for a few months now. Many of the smears are contradictory, for example criticizing Obama for not going overseas and then criticizing him for not being in America. Or accusing Obama of flip-flopping on Iraq, then hitting him for remaining consistent. McCain also speaks constantly about Obama being "wrong" on the surge, being inexperienced, being an extreme liberal, and being Dr. No when it comes to energy.

And this week we've seen some new lows. McCain says Obama wants to lose the war in order to win the campaign, he says that Obama is pro-genocide, and he has accused him of ignoring the heroism of our troops.

But you know what? None of this stuff is really sinking in. Or at least, it hasn't sink in as a result of McCain saying it. Let's be honest, folks. Nobody gives a damn what McCain says. Polls show that 80% of the country turns the channel when McCain is on TV. His town hall meetings are only half full. Magazines don't want his old, ugly mug on the cover because it wouldn't sell any issues.

McCain is becoming more and more desperate, trying out unprecedented forms of smear attacks, all in the hopes that somebody will finally listen to him. But they aren't, because McCain is boring and old and has no charisma whatsoever. Have you ever seen a McCain crowd cheer wildly during one of his attacks on Obama? Nope. At best they'll do the phony Young Republican hoot and holler, or maybe a polite applause. The biggest reaction McCain gets is when he tells everyone to either clap for veterans in the audience or when he (once again) tells stories about his POW experience. Cheap applause lines.

But when it comes to McCain's ideas, or his attacks, no one gives a shit. This is a big contrast from the primary, where lots of folks really did care about Hillary's smear attacks. In fact, Obama's problem right now is overcoming many of those baseless attacks thrown at him by Hillary and her crew: that he's inexperienced, elitist, not ready to be CiC, possibly Muslim, etc. Those all had their genesis in Hillary Clinton. McCain hasn't landed a single punch on Obama, but Hillary did.

And of course, I would be remiss if I didn't note that while McCain's attacks are pointless, they take on some heft when the media parrots them 24/7. So far, however, McCain's attacks have been so ridiculous or vague that the media has yet to hitch along for the ride. Obama just haven't given them the gaffes they need to call him "unprepared".

Going forward, it will be interesting to see how things play out. People are definitely paying attention to what Obama says, so he should be able to land lots of good punches on McCain. McCain, meanwhile, will need to rely on the right wing media to get his message across.

McCain's convention speech will be one of the lowest rated ever, perhaps down there with Dole's speech in 1996. Most of the folks watching will do so for humor value, like watching a train wreck. McCain can lash out at Obama as much as he likes, but unless he gets a personality makeover it won't do him any good.

A New Low For McCain

Forgot to mention this before, but AgentX has reminded me.

When Obama visited the Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem, Yad Vashem, he made a statement declaring "never again". Pretty standard stuff, right? And not the kind of thing you'd think a candidate would get attacked for, right?

Wrong.

McCain's campaign is just plain classless. If you want a pretty good takedown of this whole thing, read Hilzoy here or Jeffrey Feldman here.

But suffice to say that attacking someone as pro-genocide while they are in Israel, while they are at Yad Vashem, and while they are saying "never again" to another Holocaust is extremely despicable. In other words, just another day and another slime attack by the McCain campaign.

Obama Speaks To 200,000 In Berlin

Even if John McCain were elected president and personally killed Osama Bin Laden, he would never be able to attract this kind of crowd.







You can read the speech here.

My take: it was a fine speech, but also a very safe speech. When you are a candidate speaking in a foreign country, you just can't be as provocative as a U.S. president could be. So on the Obama Scale of Speechifying, wherein his New Hampshire and Iowa speeches get a 10/10, I'd give this one a 6.

Overall, Obama's trip has been a great way to build up foreign policy cred. You can't say this guy has never been to foreign countries or wouldn't know how to interact with foreign leaders, U.S. generals, or troops after this overseas tour. I doubt it will give him an instant boost in the polls (see my last post) but it will pay dividends down the road.

Oh, and what's this crap I hear on TV about Obama having never traveled the world before? Are these people on crack? He lived in Indonesia for a few years as a child, he spent a summer in Kenya just before law school, and he traveled to various countries in the 1980s and 90s (including Pakistan) to visit his mother, who was an anthropologist and international aid worker. So please, don't compare Obama to George W. Bush, who really hadn't visited other countries before taking the oath of office.

Half the time I feel like the gasbags on TV don't even know what the hell they are talking about.

A Word About Polls

Lately, I've seen quite a few talk amongst pundits and bloggers about whether Obama should be leading by even more than he currently is. Bob Herbert was just on Hardball, making the rather ludicrous claim that Obama should be leading by 15-20 points. In a perfect world this would be true. But in a perfect world Al Gore would have steamrolled George W. Bush, John Kerry would have steamrolled George W. Bush, there wouldn't be dumb saps out there who think Obama is a Marxist Muslim terrorist, and Hillary voters would wake up and realize that McCain is their worst nightmare.

Oh yes, and I should add that more folks should actually be paying attention to the issues, and where the candidates really stand.

But you know what? This is late July. Half the folks who vote in November aren't really paying attention right now. The polls are fun to look at, but they won't mean shit until after the conventions, after the debates. In fact, you could argue that none of the polls mean anything until the last week of the election.

But given all of these qualifiers, is Obama really doing that bad right now? 538 says he has a 59% chance of winning the election. Not bad for a 46-year-old first term Senator going up against a guy with 54 years of combined military and government experience. Obama has led or tied in the last 42 national polls dating to May 1st. Bush never had that kind of streak in 2000 or 2004. Obama has led or tied in the last 75 polls when you count daily tracking polls. That's an incredible streak.

And the new NBC/WSJ poll that has Chris Matthews all worried, because Obama is only up by 6? Well guess what -- when you add in third party candidates Ralph Nader and Bob Barr, Obama's lead increases to 13. Obama's support is quite solid, while McCain's is weak and subject to dissipate. And hey -- even a 6 point lead would be a blowout in a national election.

Anything can happen, and as I've long stated, there will surely be a national poll at some point (maybe even this week) that will show John McCain ahead. I don't really think that's a bad thing, because it would give the Obama campaign some impetus to stop playing things too safe and refine their message on the economy, energy, etc. I doubt either candidate will get a huge bounce from the VP picks, simply because neither one has a really fantastic option available. If anything, the candidates have to avoid losing support by picking somebody controversial or out-of touch with their base or independents (Sam Nunn, Hillary Clinton, Bobby Jindal, Rudy Guiliani).

But overall, don't expect a whole lot of movement until after the conventions. And don't panic, because things are actually looking quite good for Obama right now. If the election were held tomorrow, he'd win easily.

Another Embarrassing Day For Old Man McCain

John McCain demonstrates his hypocrisy once again, criticizing Obama for making a political speech in another country...after he did the same thing!

"I would rather speak at a rally or a political gathering any place outside of the country after I am president of the United States," McCain told O'Donnell. "But that's a judgment that Sen. Obama and the American people will make."

However, on June 20, McCain himself gave a speech in Canada -- to the Economic Club of Canada -- in which he applauded NAFTA's successes. An implicit message behind that speech was that Obama had been critical of the trade accord. Also, McCain's trip to Canada was paid for by the campaign.

Just more petty bullshit from McCain. Nothing new.

John McCain made another huge gaffe during that infamous Katie Couric interview -- stating that Iraq was the first major conflict after 9/11, totally forgetting about the Iraq war.

Sen. Chuck Hagel isn't happy that McCain keeps wanting to argue about the surge.

And speaking of the surge, John McCain doesn't seem to know what the fuck it is -- or he think you are too dumb to know when he is lying.

Obama Leads McCain -- In Israel

Israel has been the one foreign country to give higher poll marks to John McCain, mainly because Israelis have appreciated Bush's hard line towards Iraq, Iran, Syria.

So this was rather surprising:

Even more positive news from Barack Obama's trip to the Middle East: a new poll by Israel Radio shows, for perhaps the first time, Israelis preferring Obama to John McCain.

When asked "who would you rather see elected as the next president of the United States," Obama bested John McCain by a 37-28 margin. While far from a decisive advantage -- 35 percent of Israelis chose "no preference" or some other answer -- the poll reflects a notably different state of affairs from previous surveys, which generally showed McCain with a large advantage over Obama.

Obama's competitiveness spanned the political spectrum across Israel's top three parties. The Illinois Democrat trounced McCain among Israel's most liberal voters, who belong to the Labor Party (44-6), tied among more right-wing Likud voters (28-28), and held a slight edge among sympathizers of the Kadima Party, which is led by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert (40-32).

The survey of 600 respondents taken this week, likely before Obama landed in Israel, also found that more Israelis believe Obama would be a better president for the Jewish state, 31-27. (Forty-two percent registered other responses.)

Somebody should tell Joe "I Love Rev. Hagee" Lieberman.

Obama In Israel

The trip has been flawless so far. Accounts are from Haaretz:

Press conference in Sderot:

At the Sderot press conference, Obama said that Israel had every right to defend itself against attacks on its civilians, referring to the Qassam rockets that plagued the southern town and neighboring communities until a recent cease-fire with Gaza's Hamas rulers.

"If somebody was sending rockets into my house where my two daughters sleep at night, I would do everything in power to stop that, and would expect Israelis to do the same thing," he said.

With Prime Minister Ehud Olmert:

Obama vowed that as president he would not force Israel into making concessions that would put the country in danger for the sake of the peace process.

"I don't think that Ms. Livni or Mr. Barak or Bibi [Opposition leader Benjamin] Netanyahu or the others, President Peres, when they spoke to me today got any sense that I would be pressuring them to accept any kinds of concession that would put their security at stake," he said in answer to a question from a journalist.

Later in the day he meet with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert for dinner, at which point he told reporters that he had found among the Palestinians "a strong sense that progress is being made and honest conversations are taking place" in the peace talks.

"Indeed, that's right," answered Olmert, who has pursued several diplomatic initiatives even as a corruption probe threatens to force him from office.

Visiting with Bibi Netanyahu:

Netanyahu, the Likud chairman and former prime minister, said following their talks Obama promised never to seek to damage Israel's security. Both men agreed on the "primacy" of preventing Iran from becoming a nuclear power, Netanyahu said.

At Vad Yashem:

During his visit to Yad Vashem, Obama laid a wreath, lit a memorial flame, and deemed the place to ultimately be a place of hope.

"At a time of great peril and torment, war and strife, we are blessed to have such a powerful reminder of man's potential for great evil, but also our capacity to rise up from tragedy and remake our world," he wrote in the visitors' book.

American tourists who passed him by at the memorial told him, "Remember what you see here," and he replied, "Yes, I understand, I understand," said Yad Vashem's director, Avner Shalev.

Visiting Shimon Peres:

"I'm here on this trip to reaffirm the special relationship between Israel and the United States and my abiding commitment to Israel's security and my hope that I can serve as an effective partner, whether as a U.S. senator or as president," Obama said during a meeting with President Shimon Peres....

Peres gave him an effusive welcome, saying he had read Obama's two books and was moved by them. The Israeli president handed Obama an English translation of a book he himself wrote, The Imaginary Voyage: With Theodor Herzl in Israel.

Obama praised Israel's accomplishments 60 years after its creation, and complimented the 84-year-old Israeli president on his youthful appearance.

"I also want to get his recipe for looking as good he does," Obama said.

Shaking hands in Sderot:



It seems the only folks who weren't happy about Obama's visit were, you guessed it, Hamas:

In Gaza, Hamas official Fawzi Barhoum called Obama's remarks part of the American policy of bias toward Israel and giving legitimacy to Israeli crimes against our people....

The Islamic militant Hamas group, which rules the Gaza Strip, said Obama was not welcome and criticized Abbas, a bitter rival, for receiving him. "Obama wants to go to the White House through Tel Aviv, at the expense of the Palestinians," said Fawzi Barhoum, a Hamas spokesman.

Obama will also be visiting the Western Wall tonight.

McCain: Iraq War Cheerleader

The history of McCain's involvement with this ludicrous war is clear:

Media Dogpile On McCain

Hat tip to Al Rodgers for these clips.

On CNN, Jack Cafferty mocks McCain's "whining" about the Surge:



Also on CNN, Time journalist Joe Klein rips McCain for saying that Obama would "lose a war in order to win an election":



The pundits are noticing how whiny and frustrated the McCain camp has become -- all because Obama actually went on the trip that McCain wanted him to take!



Altogether, a very strong week for Obama and a very bad one for McCain. And it's only Wednesday!

McCain Oil Rig Photo-Op Cancelled By Weather, Massive Oil Spill

Hilarious. McCain plans oil rig photo op to counterprogram Obama's big Berlin speech, only to have it cancelled by bad weather and a 400,000 gallon oil spill.

Oops.

I guess McCain will have wait until another time to tell his big lie about how offshore oil drilling is safe and "not one drop" of oil spilled during Hurricane Katrina.

In May 2006, the U.S. Minerals Management Service (MMS) issued a report stating that as a result of both Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, the number of pipelines damaged was 457, and the number of offshore platforms destroyed was 113, with a total of 146 oil spills recorded.

A study of environmental impacts written for MMS by Det Norske Veritas and Company and published March 22, 2007 told an even more detailed story.

As a result of both storms, a total volume of 17,652 barrels (or roughly three-quarters of a million gallons) of total petroleum products, of which 13,137 barrels were crude oil and condensate, was spilled from platforms, rigs and pipelines. 4,514 barrels were refined products from platforms and rigs.

There were 542 reports related to offshore pipelines that were damaged or displaced, of which 72 resulted in spills that had a volume of one barrel or more of crude oil or condensate. These pipelines were reported to be dented, kinked, pulled up, twisted or bent, pinhole or valve leaks or other damages.

The 72 pipeline spills were accountable for about 7,300 barrels of crude oil and condensate spilled into the Gulf.

The report noted that response and recovery efforts kept the environmental impacts to a minimum, with no onshore impacts from these specific spill events.

However, MMS also noted that an estimated 8 million gallons (or 191,000 barrels) of oil was spilled from nine onshore facilities in the Louisiana Delta, where large holding tanks were breached by Katrina.

Obama And Rent Control

As somehow who lives in a rent-controlled apartment building in Los Angeles, and who voted against the recent Prop. 98 that would have eliminated rent control in California, this is heartening:

Chicago does not have rent control. In 1997, the Illinois legislature passed – and Republican Governor Jim Edgar signed – SB 531 (the Rent Control Preemption Act), which prohibited local jurisdictions from passing it. At the time, no city in Illinois had rent control – but the real estate lobby had a national effort to quietly stop it in places before it starts. SB 531 passed with little fanfare: the State House voted for it 96-18, and the State Senate approved it 46-6. One of the six senators who voted “no” was Barack Obama – although many liberal Democrats voted with landlords and the Senate’s Republican majority. Obama’s vote – when one considers how few people stood up with him – is an example of his core progressive principles. While it’s valid to say that he should have done more to defeat it, consider that Obama was a freshman in a very hostile climate – and as a community organizer had learned to pick his battles....

But Obama’s vote in 1997 is instructive for those following his current presidential bid – as they fear his perceived move to the center. Anyone who follows Obama’s record in the State Senate understands his background – where his vote against SB 531 was just one example. As a columnist for the right-wing National Review recently lamented, Obama worked closely in the State Senate with the Illinois chapter of ACORN to pass living wage legislation and curb banking practices. “You begin to wonder whether,” he writes, “in his Springfield days, Obama might have best been characterized as ‘the Senator from ACORN.’”

In 1995, the Chicago Reader wrote an instructive profile of Obama as he made his first bid for office, which offers more clues. “What if a politician were to see his job as that of an organizer,” said Obama, “who does not sell voters short but who educates them about the real choices before them? As an elected official, I could bring church and community leaders together easier than as a community organizer or lawyer. We would form concrete economic development strategies, take advantage of existing laws and structures, and create bridges and bonds within all sectors of the community. We must form grass-root structures that would hold me and other elected officials more accountable for their actions.”

Republicans are worried. As they should be.

Obama Meets Israeli Leaders

And so far they seem impressed:

Obama held a breakfast meeting Wednesday with Defense Minister Ehud Barak, the first event in a day packed with meetings and travel across Israel and the Palestinian territories.

Neither man spoke to reporters as they posed for news cameras at the plush downtown King David Hotel before sitting down to a breakfast of smoked salmon and local cheeses.

According to a statement released by the Defense Ministry the two held a "vigorous and intense discussion touching on all the basic issues and future challenges facing Israel and the free world in the region."

After the Barak meeting, Obama met opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu.

Netanyahu said he was impressed about Obama's understanding of the Iranian threat and said they both agreed that a nuclear Iran was unacceptable.

The opposition leader stressed that they also agreed what was important was the ends of preventing a nuclear Iran rather than the means and that when it comes to stopping Iran there were no politics.

Netanyahu also outlined his plan for economic peace with the Palestinians and Obama told him he agreed that quality of life was connected to security.

Obama said, "I'll never compromise Israel's security. Terrorism is not theoretical, it's right here a block away from this hotel, and it must be fought with full force and strength."

Netanyahu was joined in the meeting by his foreign policy advisers Dore Gold, Uzi Arad, Zalman Shoval and Ron Dermer.

I thought Netanyahu, who is on very good terms with McCain, might do his buddy a favor by expressing some disagreement with Obama. It's nice to be proven wrong.

Haaretz reports that interest is high over Obama's visit:

Not since Yitzhak Rabin's funeral has Israel hosted as many senior officials from abroad as it has this year. There was U.S. President George W. Bush (twice), German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown. And yet, the visit by presumptive U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama, who landed here for a lightning stay last night, has aroused more interest than any of them. Even more than Carla Bruni.

McCain Demonstrates His Idiocy, CBS Tries to Cover Up

This is a big one. Once again, John McCain makes a huge gaffe where he mixes up/ignores facts while attacking Barack Obama. What is especially shocking here is that CBS News and Katie Couric tried to cover up for him, only to be exposed by the full transcript.

This video gives you an idea of what happened:



Hopefully this gets more scrutiny, because it is just as embarrassing as McCain's Sunni/Shiite mixup back in March.

The reaction so far is not nice.

Americablog:

This one is hard to even explain, it's so bizarre. McCain, looking just awful on camera, made yet another major gaffe about national security policy, on CBS. So what did Katie Couric do? She aired the interview with McCain, aired the question that led to the gaffe, and then inserted an "answer" to the question that wasn't the real gaffe-filled answer - it was something McCain said in a total other part of the interview. It's absolutely astounding how far the corporate media is willing to go in order to defend John McCain. And seriously, take a good look at McCain in this video, I was kind of shocked by his appearance - he doesn't look well at all.

AP has noticed as well:

The problem with McCain's statement — as Obama's campaign quickly noted — was that the awakening got under way before President Bush announced in January 2007 his decision to flood Iraq with tens of thousands of additional U.S. troops to help combat violence.

In March 2007, before the first of the additional troops began arriving in Iraq, Col. John W. Charlton, the American commander responsible for Ramadi, a city in Anbar province, said the newly friendly sheiks, combined with an aggressive counterinsurgency strategy and the presence of thousands of new Sunni police on the streets, had helped cut attacks in the city by half in recent months.

HuffPo slams McCain on it.

And blogger Ilan Goldenberg thinks it is bad enough to disqualify McCain:

This is not controversial history. It is history that anyone trying out for Commander in Chief must understand when there are 150,000 American troops stationed in Iraq. It is an absolutely essential element to the story of the past two years. YOU CANNOT GET THIS WRONG. Moreover, what is most disturbing is that according to McCain's inaccurate version of history, military force came first and solved all of our problems. If that is the lesson he takes from the Anbar Awakening, I am afraid it is the lesson he will apply to every other crisis he faces including, for example, Iran.

This is just incredibly disturbing. I have no choice but to conclude that John McCain has simply no idea what is actually happened and happening in Iraq.

At this point, I think John McCain is just as intellectually lazy as George W. Bush. He doesn't care about economic issues, so he is dumb as a stone in that department. And while he cares about foreign policy, his ego is so huge that he thinks he knows everything when he doesn't.

He also has a horrible temper that causes him to lash out and fudge the facts in order to win an argument. You know, the kind of guy who can't lose an argument because he will lie and raise his voice and tell you how wrong you are until finally you just give up? That's what McCain is.

As I've stated before, Obama should take about a week to study up for the debates. Learn all of McCain's votes, all of his key policy statements, and brush up on foreign policy facts. It would all be worth it when he can call McCain out on his multiple lies and inconsistencies. I'm sure McCain would blow his top if that happened.

John McCain: Asshole

I already mentioned this, but it is worth going back to. Here is what John McCain said twice today while campaigning in New Hampshire:

This is a clear choice that the American people have. I had the courage and the judgment to say I would rather lose a political campaign than lose a war. It seems to me that Obama would rather lose a war in order to win a political campaign.

This is simply disgusting, and I really hope that Barack Obama takes time out of his schedule to issue a denunciation of this kind of politics. If I was Obama, I'd say that John McCain should be ashamed of himself, that what he said is despicable and un-American, and he is simply wrong to question a fellow senator's patriotism. Make this a big fucking issue, because John McCain is a full-blooded asshole and needs to finally be called on it. Nobody can defend what McCain said today.

Even Joe Klein thinks it is a huge blunder:

This is the ninth presidential campaign I've covered. I can't remember a more scurrilous statement by a major party candidate. It smacks of desperation. It renews questions about whether McCain has the right temperament for the presidency. How sad.

Veterans are sickened by McCain's remark.

John Aravosis thinks this has Rove's fingerprints all over it. I wouldn't be surprised. But the media needs to get off their asses and show some outrage for once. They showed how it is done when Wes Clark said some inartful things about McCain's service and whether it qualifies him to be president. Will they do the same now that John McCain himself has questioned Obama's patriotism?

We'll see, won't we?

Obama's Great Uncle Speaks About Liberating Nazi Camp

A very touching story:

CHICAGO—Charles T. Payne was 20 years old and, like any good Midwesterner, he knew how to listen.

He was making conversation, in pieced-together English and German, with a freed prisoner of Ohrdruf, the Nazi work camp Payne's infantry division had just liberated at the end of World War II.

"With great difficulty we conversed and, if I got what it was he was telling me about, it was that the Germans had killed a million Jews and that the world didn't really know this yet," Payne, 83, told The Associated Press in an interview Tuesday as, on the other side of the world, his great-nephew, Barack Obama, prepared to visit the Yad Vashem national Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem.

Helping liberate Ohrdruf, a subcamp of the Buchenwald concentration camp, in April 1945 was Payne's first close brush with history.

He is enjoying, for the most part, a second brush as the great-uncle of the Democratic presidential candidate.

In May, Obama mentioned "Uncle Charlie" at a meeting with veterans but mistakenly said Payne had helped liberate Auschwitz, when he should have said Buchenwald. Bloggers seized on the error and the Republican Party demanded an explanation.

Obama's campaign corrected the mistake the next day. Soviet forces liberated Auschwitz as they marched across Poland in January 1945.

Payne, with an Obama button pinned to his shirt, told the AP he was "truly astonished" by the attention paid to Obama's flub. The brother of Obama's maternal grandmother, Payne figures Obama heard the story wrong from his grandparents, "whose grasp of geography wasn't always the firmest." He said at the time he asked friends if he should "try to set the record straight," but that they advised him to ignore it.

Payne said he didn't want to say anything to embarrass the Obama campaign and minimized his role in the liberation of Ohrdruf.

"I have no heroic story to tell," he said. "I was just there."

He had seen plenty of death during his two years in the Army, but the cruelty of what he witnessed at Ohrdruf appalled him. In the courtyard, he saw lying dead "a circle of the inmates in their rags, and you could see they were mostly near starvation. They were there with their tin cups like they were called to get food, then had been machine gunned."

In a shed, he saw bodies stacked like cord wood. The survivors, many near starvation, were "nothing but just skin over bones with nothing, no flesh at all." He said the 1993 movie "Schindler's List" was "very good, but it didn't begin to show the desperate plight of the prisoners. I guess in real life you can't really starve people next to death in order to make a movie."

During the war, home was Augusta, a small town in central Kansas. Payne had enlisted in 1943 along with most of his high school graduating class. He served in a mortar squad, then a communications squad rigging telephone lines.

After the war, Payne went to college in Kansas on the GI Bill and then to graduate school at the University of Chicago, where Obama would later lecture on constitutional law. He later became interested in computers and how they could be used in libraries. He retired at age 70 as assistant director of the University of Chicago's library.

Payne is proud of his great-nephew, who is prominently displayed in family photos.

"He's truly an astounding young man and always has been," he said.

As attention turns to the Holocaust with Obama's expected visit to the Israeli memorial on Wednesday, Payne reflected on the lessons of history.

"Clearly to me it's proof that there's no limit to what a man will do to man and what government out of control will do," he said. "I guess we need to be on our guard eternally."

Vanity Fair Does Their Own Cover

Too bad it's just a parody, and won't actually be published. I'd love to see more covers like this.

Of course, laughs aside, the difference with the Obama cover is that this image -- while exaggerated -- is actually based on truth. John McCain does admire many of Bush's policies, he is old and in poor health, he does want to trash the Constitution, and Cindy McCain was addicted to prescription medications in the past. The Obama cover, meanwhile, was entirely about baseless smears.

A truly analogous cover would show George W. Bush planning 9/11 with Osama Bin Laden and Muhammed Atta while Dick Cheney prepares some Iraqi oil contracts, or an image of a deranged Manchurian Candidate McCain getting ready to hit the red button while Kim Jong-Il directs his actions with a remote control. But I don't think we'll see anyone publishing such covers anytime soon.

Breaking: McCain Accuses Obama Of Treason

At a townhall in New Hampshire today, McCain said "it seems to me that Senator Obama would rather lose a war in order to win a political campaign."

I know John McCain has said similar things in the past, such as "You can't lose in Iraq in order to win in Afghanistan", but those were much more abstract comments. But to say that Barack Obama, a presidential candidate, wants us to lose a war?

This is pretty outrageous. Let's see how much coverage it gets.

Obama In The Green Zone

The troops in Baghdad seemed to be excited about Obama's visit:



Dave Weigel:

McCain's goading Obama to make this trip stands tall and proud as one of the dumbest blunders of the campaign. He couldn't have helped the Democrat more if he'd challenged him to a slam dunk contest.

39

Today marks 39 days until John McCain turns 72 years old.

For reference sake, our last "old" president, George H.W. Bush, was only 68 years old when he left the White House in 1993. So basically, McCain would start his presidency being older than the first Bush would have been at the end of his second term (if he had one).



That's scary.

McCain's Defense: "I'm John McCain And The Surge Rocks"

Funny and pathetic:



And don't miss this nugget, where old man McCain gets confused and starts talking about the nonexistent Iraq-Pakistan border:



Everyone worried about Obama making this kind of gaffe while overseas. But in steps McCain to fill our embarrassing gaffe quotient of the day. Thanks, John.

(And I should mention that these sorts of verbal miscues really don't mean much. If I was on TV this much, I'd probably sound like a drooling moron. But we know the Republicans and the media would go into all-out crisis mode if Obama said something like this, so it's perfectly fair to call out McCain on it.)

Horrible Implosion For McCain's Campaign

No, it's not the end of the world for McCain's campaign, and their standing in the polls won't really shift that much, but damn, the last few days have just been horrible for McCain. I really don't know how he can show his mug on TV without looking punch-drunk. He spent two months complaining about how Obama hasn't been to Iraq and Afghanistan, the RNC put a counter on their website, and now that Obama has called their bluff it has backfired on McCain in the biggest way.

Not only is Obama getting fairly glowing press coverage as he meets with the troops and foreign leaders, but Prime Minister Maliki endorsed his Iraq plan. It doesn't get much better than that.

First, Maliki told Der Spiegel that he agreed with Obama's plan. The Bush administration pressed Maliki's folks to issue a partial retraction, but that retraction was ridiculous on its face. McCain got a brief reprieve, as some of his pals in the press didn't play up the major impact of this story.

Then, today, Obama actually met with Maliki. Afterwards,