Earlier today, I flagged a number from the most recent Pew Survey that alarmed me: 47% of independents said they believed McCain would take the country in a new direction, compared with 40% who said he would continue Bush's policies.

At dinner tonight, I was explaining this number to a friend who asked a simple but obvious question that I couldn't immediately answer: has this number gotten better or worse over the past few months?

It turns out that the answer to her question actually brings a bit of good news: although the June numbers are essentially unchanged from May, they are better than they were in March.

Last week, John McCain promised to balance the budget by the end of his first term in office. He hasn't produced a specific plan, but on Wednesday he confirmed -- in his own words -- that one of the top items on his list is "Social Security and Medicare reform." If McCain's words have meaning -- and as the GOP's presidential nominee, they obviously do -- there's only one way to interpret his remarks: he plans to dramatically cut Social Security spending.

The biggest headlines were grabbed by McCain's description of the Social Security system as a "disgrace." Substantively, though, I think McCain's pledge to slash Social Security spending is actually more significant.

Part of the reason that nobody seemed to notice McCain's promise was that when he made it, the the national press corps waiting for him at an airport 27 miles away. Many of them may never have heard what he said. Nonetheless, his plan to cut Social Security spending is important, no matter whether you prefer McCain's vision of privatization or Barack Obama's plan to strengthen the current system. It's a shame that it slipped by unnoticed.

From the new Pew Research poll conducted in late June:

By more than three-to-one (65% to 19%), Republicans say that McCain will move the country in a different direction if he is elected. Democrats by a slightly greater margin (71% to 22%) say McCain will largely follow Bush's policies. As was the case in May, a modest plurality of independents (46%) say that McCain will take the country in a new direction, compared with 40% who believe he will pursue Bush's policies.

As the first President Bush said: "This cannot stand." Seriously -- the only chance that McCain has of winning this election is if he can convince voters he is an agent of change.

There's no singular explanation for the media's bias towards McCain, but I do think that one of the reasons that many individual reporters are reluctant to challenge him is that he is a DC institution. McCain and his staff and allies have helped countless reporters on stories big and small, whether its breaking news, or getting a key quote, or just demonstrating access. Given that, it only makes sense that they would cut McCain slack. It may not be right, but reporters, after all, are human.

Conservative economic historian Amity Shlaes tiptoes around it a little bit, but her take on the Phil Gramm affair boils down to this: (1) Phil Gramm was right, but impolitic. (2) McCain needs to stand by Gramm ideologically, if not tonally.

A shocking thing has happened! I don't know what to say. But you can see how shocking it is from this headline:

Los Angeles Times: McCain hoped for a better week

Quick! Somebody put the LAT in protective custody! The media's not allowed to do that!

I'm tempted to apologize for railing on the media in post after post. It feels like Groundhog Day after awhile. But the thing I'm trying to remember is that it's not my fault that so many reporters are failing this nation so completely.

The latest: ABC's Martha Raddatz and U.S. military commanders in Iraq team up to attack Barack Obama's plan to end the war in Iraq  (also in text format). They make two points: (1) They don't want to stop fighting the war. (2) If Obama gives them a mission to end the war, they will say it is logistically impossible to end the war in a timely fashion.

I don't know which is worse: that military commanders would so brazenly inject themselves into a presidential campaign, or that Raddatz would accept what they had to say uncritically, without even pondering the possibility that she was being fed propaganda.

Whatever the case, it's a forceful reminder of the fundamental truth of President Eisenhower's warning about the military-industrial complex. And it should firm our resolve to win this election: this is our country, and we must take it back.

So Mark Halperin says John McCain had a better week than Barack Obama...but that's not the stupidest part. No, the stupidest part was Halperin's claim that the candidates are evenly matched on economic issues.

Economy: After a week in which both candidates presented their policies and attacked the other guy’s record and ideas, neither McCain nor Obama has broken out as the leader on this issue. For a question that should give a huge advantage to the Democrats, the answers still sound like “yada, yada, yada”—on both sides.

Need I remind Halperin that McCain did not get off a single shot at Obama all week long on the economy? And meanwhile he dug himself a deep hole on balancing the budget, Social Security, and, last but at all least, Mr. Mental Recession himself reared his ugly head.

I haven't focused much on polling, in part because others are far more able at analyzing polls than I am, and in part because I'm not fully convinced looking at polls is a useful exercise at this point in the campaign.

Case in point -- the new Newsweek poll which is being sold as a huge 12 point swing in McCain's favor. When it showed him leading by 15, I sounded a note of caution, so I can feel good about saying that anyone who thinks that Barack has suddenly dropped 12 points should stop worrying. It's just random -- he was almost certainly never leading by 15.

Even though I think it's silly to look at individual polls in isolation, it is useful to take stock of things using a broad basket of polls. To that end, here is a chart of the daily tracking poll averages going back to early March.

Over the past couple of years, I've been doing more and more of my surfing using RSS and newsreaders, but the biggest problem for me is that I absolutely hate all the newsreaders that I've used. Probably the one I like the most is the Sage add-on for Firefox, but even that one annoys me because it takes up part of the screen. I haven't been a big fan of the web-based services either -- all I really want is headlines, a blurb, and a link, all in a compact, unobtrusive package.

Anyway, this is all a long way of saying that I finally sat down and figured out how to use Google's AJAX to build my own personal newsreader, pretty much exactly how I want it. At the same time, I've recently learned how to use Javascript to control styles (basically allowing elements to appear and disappear). Merge those two things and you've got a collapsible newsreader -- and I just posted it a few minutes ago. It'll be accessible from the home page -- just click it, and then select from the list of feeds and happy surfing.

I've customized the list of feeds mostly because they are sites that I visit and read. If you have any special requests, I'd be happy to consider adding them, but I probably won't end up adding that many more (if any) because it just starts to get too unwieldy.

As always, you might need to hit control-F5 to clear your cache -- otherwise I hope you enjoy it, and let me know if you're having any problems making it work. (I've tested it on IE and Firefox.)

It's worth a listen (.mp3) if only to hear an Obama ad with these lines:

"Bush, McCain, Karl Rove -- that's how these guys work" and "Guess that’s why they say: John McCain – McSame as Bush!"

Transcript below.

Over at The Corner, a reader asks Jonah Goldberg about John McCain's banishment of Phil Gramm to Belarus.

Jonah:

I don't mean to single you out, but there isn't a "group" email for the Corner as I'm aware of, so I'm writing you.

Anyway, the Corner's silence on yesterday's Phil Gramm remarks is deafening.  Here it is 24 hours into a pretty-decent sized story (I don't know how you sign into AOL mail, but I saw it listed as one of the top news stories when I signed in through the web), and not even one comment on his "whiner" remarks?  I expected at least a Larry Kudlow defense or something.

Goldberg's response suggests he isn't pleased by the situation, but indicates a willingness to accept it as a political necessity. "This," he writes, "is just another example of why I've always wanted Phil Gramm to be president of the United States and why that can never, ever, happen."

My sense is that most conservatives are like Jonah Goldberg: they think there is nothing controversial with what Gramm said and they are proud of him for standing by it. They also understand that it was impolitic, and seem willing to accept McCain's heave-ho. Still, I can't imagine they were happy about it -- especially coming one day after he stabbed Larry Kudlow in the back on cap-and-trade.

I think the situation is somewhat analogous to the Clark affair, when those on the right were offended by Clark's comments and those of us on the left saw nothing wrong with them. In retrospect, the biggest difference between the two situations is that our guy ultimately stood by Clark -- and their guy is sending Phil Gramm overseas.  (Update: Please note that I am comparing the situations, not the comments. Of course there was nothing wrong with what Clark said -- and I said so at the time.)

As I write this, the Dow Jones Industrial Average is 11,045.

On July 1, 1999, the DJIA closed at 11,066.

Looking at the Dow's historical chart, I think the last time it's had a decline over a 9 year stretch was between 1965 and 1974. I was born in 1973, but I seem to recall hearing something about an oil crisis or something around about that the time...

On the chance that my "Don't donate to Obama" post was too obscure, it was tongue-in-cheek, as was the Kos diary which inspired it to which I linked. (The diarist, Stroszek, is a huge fan of Obama, and was making the point that even those who might be disappointed by an issue or two should consider the full range of issues.)

So it was a pro-Obama post -- not that there is anything wrong with not being pro-Obama, except for the part about having a worse economy, a longer war, no solution to our energy crisis, and a health care system that will get worse than better. So no pressure or anything.

George Bush is a Dr. Phil wannabe too!

Let's say that you were an AP reporter covering the 2008 presidential campaign. And let's say that you were assigned to do a profile on one of the POW comrades of John McCain. Moreover, let's say that POW comrade was not only an active member of the Swift Vet group that smeared John Kerry in 2004 (he appeared in both the ads), but also let's say that the McCain campaign had trotted that POW out as a surrogate on a McCain campaign conference call to attack Wesley Clark for comments Clark never made. And finally, let's say at on that conference call, this POW comrade attacked Wesley Clark's military service.

Now assuming all that, if you were writing a profile on this guy, how many paragraphs would it take you to mention his involvement in the Swift Boating of 2004? Would you "save" that detail until the the twelfth paragraph?

Aravosis is right -- it's time for more donuts for the AP. But what else would you expect from an "journalastic" organization that would put Rupert Murdoch on its board of directors?

This kind of stuff is red meat for conservatives -- they just hate it. In fact, it's what they hate most about John McCain. Of course, his rhetoric and tone have completely changed over the last couple of months, but here is the senator from Arizona, on April 12, 2008:

And I'm sorry to tell you that the price of oil -- as far as I can tell -- is not gonna go down anytime soon until we eliminate our dependency on it.

We can do that as a nation -- we can turn out the lights five minutes earlier, we don't have to drive the extra block.

After the backstabbing delivered to Larry Kudlow by the McCain campaign, perhaps true conservatives (not the neocons) ought to consider whether they'd be better off if McCain didn't win the presidency -- because if he does win, who knows in which direction he'll go?

ABC did a better job tonight than NBC, which set an incredibly low bar. Still, the central message of this report was something off an apology for McCain -- that he was distancing himself from Gramm just as fast as he could. Both Charlie Gibson and David Wright seem to side with those who think that the "mental recession" comment was wrongheadeaded, but either neither of them is aware that McCain has repeatedly said the same thing (probably after talking with Gramm), or decided not to include that seemingly relevant piece of information in their report.

Yeah, I know that John McCain is planning on raising another $400 million through November, and I know that he's getting it in $30,800 chunks, but seriously, don't donate to Obama. Whatever you do, just don't do it.

Here's how bad the NBC Nightly News report on the McCain-Gramm "mental recession" story was: it didn't even mention what Gramm had said until one minute into the two-minute story (allowing McCain to reject the comments first), and even then it couched it in as favorable terms as possible.

Meanwhile, Brian Williams felt compelled to run an equally long piece on Jesse Jackson's comment. I actually thought that piece was fine as far as it goes -- despite the fact that it's sad that this is even an issue, the report actually might even have been good for Obama. What's weird is that they decided to turn it today, and not yesterday. Would have they have run it had they not also done a story on McCain and Gramm?

I've posted both videos below:

Yesterday, conservative economic commentator Larry Kudlow crowed that McCain had scrapped his plans to pursue a cap-and-trade policy to reduce carbon emissions. By the afternoon, the McCain campaign had denied Kudlow's report. Kudlow, in turn, today ruminates on the McCain campaign's response. He stops short of calling them liars, but accuses them of "a certain degree of cognitive dissonance on this subject."

You get the sense from his piece that he wants to seem like he's defending McCain, but that just under the surface, there's a real frustration -- and the potential for anger.

If I were lucky enough to ask McCain a question at a town hall I think it would be something like this: "Senator, you have repeatedly said that American's economic problems are psychological. Why do you think it's our fault? Why won't you accept that the Bush Administration's economic policies -- which you supported -- have had a far greater impact on the economy than our psychology?"

It probably wouldn't be a mistake for the Obama campaign to ask McCain that question every single day until McCain provides a direct answer.

From Pew Research:

Then again, Dems didn't like Clinton in 1992. But Perot complicated that year tremendously. And Clinton also faced an equally unpopular incumbent. The R-D gap is more than twice as large in 2008.

My view on energy is pragmatic: on the whole, we need to be able to use more of it (through a combination of efficiency and production), we need it to be cleaner, and we need it to be from more stable parts of the world, the closer to home the better.

Given all that, it makes sense to me that as part of a comprehensive plan, things like offshore drilling -- even ANWR -- should be on the table, along with nuclear, coal, wind, solar, geothermal, and whatever other technology might work. Basically, I think it's a technical problem, or at least it should be.

I'm deeply skeptical of any energy policy that is based on an orthodoxy about a particular technology, such as offshore drilling -- for or against. So when I hear that congressional Democrats are open to more drilling, in theory, I think it's a good thing. They should be open to it. But if they allow an expansion of drilling outside of the context of a comprehensive plan, it would be an unmitigated disaster.

I've been trying to figure out what kind of disclosure there is for McCain's high dollar fundraising. From what I can tell, there is much -- yet. I think that the committee that McCain has set up to funnel contributions to the RNC only has to report on a quarterly basis. (The RNC itself reports on a monthly basis right now.)

Still, I've been able to come up with some numbers.

Perhaps we are finally going to put a rest to the myth that Barack Obama has a fundraising advantage over John McCain. The mainstream seems to finally be taking note (h/t: Joe Sudbay):

The McCain campaign and Republican Party have nearly $95 million cash on hand combined for use in the presidential race, campaign manager Rick Davis said Thursday. ... Including the matching funds, he estimated the campaign would have a total $400 million budget through Election Day.

Last month, I wrote that McCain would raise about three-quarters of his campaign budget from private sources, including half of his post-convention budget. These numbers from Davis are pretty much in line with what I predicted, though even my estimate on total spending was a bit conservative.

This is just awesome. Awesome.

John McCain now says he disagrees with Phil Gramm's statement that America is in a "mental recession" -- but his campaign initially defended  Gramm, and the video record shows McCain himself shares the same view.

...it's not that McCain didn't want to talk about Viagra. It's that he didn't want to talk about birth control. And it's not that McCain isn't familiar with either the pill or Viagra -- it's that for McCain, birth control is a politically touchy subject.

Believe it or not, many wingers think birth control should be made illegal. Case in point: Mike Huckabee. And McCain doesn't want to run afoul of them. So when an MSNBC newser passes his discomfort off as being related to Viagra, he's actually helping McCain out of a bind.

Steve Benen flags an article by WaPo's Michael Shearer about John McCain's growing reluctance to kibitz with reporters. Wednesday, for example, while McCain was holding a press conference, most of the national media was stranded at an airport 27 miles away, unaware of what was going on until the very last minute.

This would seem to be a strange turn of events, given the national media's love affair with St. John. So what gives? Steve thinks this might hold a clue (emphasis added):

[A]ccess has been whittled away as McCain became the nominee. The Straight Talk is reserved now as a carrot for local reporters, leaving the national press corps on a charter bus trailing behind.

The new approach may reflect the growing influence of the newly-powerful Steve Schmidt, a top adviser and protege of Bush political guru Karl Rove, who was famous for his desire to control the press’s access to his candidate.

Could it be that McCain is losing his grip on the national media? Nah, probably not. But it's fun to dream, anyway. And even if it just gets a little better, that would be a big victory.

YouTube's new player, which I hated when it first came out, has now gotten a lot better. For starters, it handles resizing a lot better, so I can embed smaller, less obtrusive videos onto the page. But best of all, if you want to watch the video in larger size, you can now watch it in full-screen mode. Simply click the button that is circled in red on this image and you'll be going full-screen with YouTube.

Earlier in New York, Barack Obama challenged (also in the vodpod) the the media's habit of mythmaking and laid out his agenda, touching on the big three items he wants to accomplish as president. (1) End the war in Iraq. (2) Develop an alternative energy economy. (3) Fix our broken health care system.

This is the time, he says. This is that moment when we can come together and actually get something done. It reminds me of that Reagan quote I posted earlier today:

So this should have been a pretty good day for McCain, what with the FISA vote going down and some Democrats angry at the way Barack voted. But if you actually look at what happened, it's been one of McCain's worst days in a long time, one in which I think he offered up plenty of material that should help cement his growing reputation both as a double-talker and and as a typical out-of-touch Republican.

Earlier today, a reporter asked John McCain how he planned to keep his promise to balance the budget by 2013. McCain's explanation (full statement after jump):

Through revenue and economic growth, by keeping taxes low, by reforming Social Security and Medicare, by making sure that we provide jobs and opportunities for all Americans, by free trade, by increasing economic activity, by creating jobs.

That's right -- McCain is pledging to cut the deficit and balance the budget in part "by reforming Social Security" -- a program that he described on Monday as "an absolute disgrace."

Keep in mind that the budget deficit is now more than $400 billion. So the question for John McCain is this: how much of that $400 billion is going to come from his Social Security 'reforms'? And how will voters respond to McCain's new plan?

Larry Kudlow loves John McCain's stunning flip-flop on cap-and-trade, a key policy for reducing carbon emissions:

Mac’s Off Cap-and-Trade   [Larry Kudlow]

After writing favorably about Sen. McCain’s recent economics speeches, where he clearly shifted toward the supply-side both on tax cuts and producing more energy, I went back last evening and carefully read his 15-page policy pamphlet called “Jobs for America.” Here’s what I found: There is no mention of cap-and-trade. None. Nada. There is a section about “Cheap, Clean, Secure Energy for America: The Lexington Project.” But that talks about expanded domestic production of oil and gas, as well as the need for more nuclear power and coal along with alternative sources. Then it has the $300 million battery and flex-fuel cars. But nope, no cap-and-trade.

So I picked up the phone and dialed a senior McCain official to make sure these old eyes hadn’t missed it. Sure enough, on deep background, this senior McCain advisor told me I was correct: no cap-and-trade.

As recently as last month, McCain said he favored a cap-and-trade system, though he wasn't clear about the specifics. But now he has abandoned it altogether.

The strange thing is that this was perhaps the only major area where there was any daylight whatsoever between McCain and Bush. Now even that is gone. Just when you'd think McCain would be moving away from Bush...he's moving closer.

Update: Is the McCain campaign paying this guy overtime? Ambinder says that Camp McCain is not flip-flopping after all. Okay. Perhaps that might be true. But I don't understand why he feels the need to go the extra mile and say that what Kudlow was told and the McCain camp is now saying are reconciliable. There not. Someone isn't tellign the truth, most likely whoever is talking to Kudlow. Now that kind of double-talk coming out of Camp McCain is an interesting story...not something to be rationalized away.

McCain touts his economic plan...and the heavens open up...a light drizzle turns into a downpour.

Update: It turns out the economists he mentions as having supported his plan...actually didn't really announce their support for his plan. Maybe it started pouring rain because he was pouring lies. (h/t kos diarist Hope Reborn)

Uh-oh, here we go. Barack Obama is making the controversial claim (sic) that multilingualism is an economic advantage and McCainiacs are set to stage a huge massive freakout! (See Jonah Goldberg Coulter and Jim Geraghty.)

Here's what Barack said:

You know, I don't understand when people are going around worrying about, "We need to have English- only." They want to pass a law, "We want English-only."

Now, I agree that immigrants should learn English. I agree with that. But understand this. Instead of worrying about whether immigrants can learn English -- they'll learn English -- you need to make sure your child can speak Spanish.

Oh, noes...Tancredo-fodder! But, wait was there more? Yes, there was:

We should understand that our young people, if you have a foreign language, that is a powerful tool to get a job. You are so much more employable. You can be part of international business. So we should be emphasizing foreign languages in our schools from an early age, because children will actually learn a foreign language easier when they're 5, or 6, or 7 than when they're 46, like me.

Which presidential candidate made the following statements?

More than anything else, I want my candidacy to unify our country; to renew the American spirit and sense of purpose. I want to carry our message to every American, regardless of party affiliation, who is a member of this community of shared values.

Everywhere we have met thousands of Democrats, Independents, and Republicans from all economic conditions and walks of life bound together in that community of shared values of family, work, neighborhood, peace and freedom. They are concerned, yes, but they are not frightened. They are disturbed, but not dismayed. They are the kind of men and women Tom Paine had in mind when he wrote--during the darkest days of the American Revolution--"We have it in our power to begin the world over again."

Nearly 150 years after Tom Paine wrote those words, an American president told the generation of the Great Depression that it had a "rendezvous with destiny." I believe that this generation of Americans today has a rendezvous with destiny.

I'm beginning to wonder if the McCain campaign even talks with their candidate. They just can't stay on the same page. Earlier today, the campaign ripped Barack Obama for what it said was flip-flopping on telecom immunity:

Today, the U.S. Senate will approve legislation providing the immunity Barack Obama supposedly opposed, and despite his promise, he will not support a filibuster. What Barack Obama will do is show that he's willing to change positions, break campaign commitments and undermine his own words in his quest for higher office.

Meanwhile, at nearly the same exact time, John McCain ripped Barack Obama for for NOT flip-flopping.

My understanding is that he is still opposed to providing that immunity. I strongly support it. ... Senator Obama and I are still in strong disagreement on the issue of immunity for the telecommunications corporations.

My unsolicited political advice to the McCain campaign...make up your minds, folks! If you're gonna' make the flip-flop charge, you had better be able to tell a straight story.

In a campaign of idiotic statements, will this (also in the vodpod) be the stupidest one yet? John McCain on the Social Security system:

Americans have got to understand that we are paying present-day retirees with the taxes paid by young workers in America today. And that's a disgrace. It's an absolute disgrace and it's got to be fixed.

As Josh explains, this is the way Social Security has always worked. There's nothing disgraceful about it whatsoever. McCain's comment is just mystifying. Maybe Steve Benen is snarkily right:

It’s possible John McCain decided he doesn’t really want to be president after all. It’s a tough, demanding job, and maybe McCain came to the conclusion he’s just not up to the task.

This interview with Barack, Michelle, and their daughters from Access Hollywood is destined to be a classic (click show full post to make the video appear):

As you (I hope) you can see, I've made a few changes to the blog, mostly cosmetic. (Putting the blog content back between the sidebars being the biggest change.) I've also added a new feature for the home page -- automatically updated headlines. Right now, I've just got a couple of providers set up, but I'll be adding in more in the coming hours/days.

If it doesn't seem to be displaying correctly, hold down the control key and press F5. If that still doesn't work, leave a comment or e-mail me.

The major news networks are considering cutting back on DNC coverage because Barack Obama will be giving his speech at a separate venue, thereby increasing their production costs.

Is that really the message that they want to send about how they decide what's news? That they just look at the dollars and cents of the bottom line? What about news value?

Is it not newsworthy that on the anniversary of Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech, 80,000 Americans will witness an African-American accept a major party's presidential nomination for the first time in our nation's history? Is that not in fact a historic event?

How dare they even consider cutting back just to save a few bucks -- especially after all the money they've made during this year's extended primary season.

Earlier this year, the NFL and NBC announced plans to reschedule the football season opener so as not to conflict with John McCain's convention appearance. If the networks news divisions can't manage a similar degree of flexibility, it will be an outrage.

Politico has a story up showing the clearest indication yet that the McCain campaign is illegally coordinating television advertising with an outside group. The short-story is this: on July 2, the McCain campaign placed $1.5 million in advertising in the Virginia area. The next day -- July 3 -- the McCain campaign canceled that media buy. On the very same day -- July 3 -- the outside group made a large media buy in the same region, filling the gap created by the McCain campaign's cancellation.

It's possible this was all just a coincidence, but given the close connections between the McCain campaign and this particular group (Vets for Freedom, also known as VFF), I have my doubts. In May, VFF attacked Barack Obama with swiftboat style ads. This created a bit of controversy, because at the time both Lindsay Graham and Joe Lieberman were on VFF's board of directors. Each has since quit the group, but it's hard to imagine that the McCain campaign has cut ties with the outfit altogether.

VFF's original ad campaign was also suspicious because it echoed the McCain campaign's line of attack on Barack Obama almost word-for-word -- except the ad preceded the campaign's attack. Moreover, just a few weeks earlier, John McCain himself personally appeared at a VFF rally and heaped praise upon the organization.

Watch for yourself -- how likely do you think it is that there was no coordination between McCain and VFF?

This is sort a post-script to my previous entry about McCain's attack strategy.

My basic view is that McCain's problem has nothing to do with how he is or is not attacking Barack Obama.

Instead, I think his big problem is the fact that he is promising to continue just about every failed policy of the Bush Administration. I know that you grow numb hearing that after awhile, but it's true: whether it's because Bush has moved towards McCain, or McCain towards Bush, or a little of both, every single major policy initiative of Bush's second term are ones that McCain supports.

Ironically, even though Bush and McCain have closed ranks, the GOP's evangelical base has not warmed to McCain as they did towards Bush. This, I think, accounts for much of the the lack of enthusiasm for McCain's candidacy on the political right.

Chris Bowers and Matthew Yglesias take a look at McCain's best strategy going forward and both conclude that the flip-flop attack is ineffective, and that McCain would benefit (politically speaking) by raising the Wright issue all over again. (They're just armchair quarterbacking -- neither one is endorsing the attack.)

While I agree that the flip-flop attack isn't likely to work (mostly because it's an easy charge to dismiss), I don't agree that McCain -- or his surrogates -- would be well-served by reverting to Wright.

NYT's Michael Powell reports that Barack Obama is fighting back against the McCain meme transcribed by the press corps in recent days:

POWDER SPRINGS, Ga. — Barack Obama had heard quite enough of the complaints that he is pirouetting, leaping, lurching even, toward the political center.

He is at heart, he told a crowd in suburban Atlanta, a pretty progressive guy who just happens to pack along a complicated world view.

The real stunner in this article was that Powell actually seemed to get it. It's not that it was a puff piece -- he pointed out that Obama has maneuvered around a bit on the second amendment, for example -- but Powell also made it clear that the Iraq frenzy was deeply flawed.

...he has wavered very little from the stance he took many months ago. He favors a phased-in 16-month withdrawal. The McCain campaign has labored hard to suggest that he is inconsistent on this issue.

That's what fair reporting looks like.

Rich Lowry seems to think the flip-flopping meme alone won't do the trick: "If it [the McCain campaign] can't win running against him merely as a flip-flopper, it has to be an element of the case against him—that he can't be trusted as both a naked opportunist who will say anything to win and as a vacillator not ready for the responsibilities of the office."

Meanwhile, Larry Kudlow is ecstatic that McCain seems to be flip-flopping: "Increasingly McCain is shifting his positions towards the supply-side: across-the-board tax cuts, keeping the Bush tax rates on investment, slashing the corporate tax rate, doubling the child deduction for family dependents, cutting pork-barrel spending, and producing more energy. On the drill, drill, drill energy front, McCain argued in favor of producing more oil and gas, and he said this would send a message to the market that would result in lower prices. He argued for nuclear power, clean coal, and oil shale. And he noted for the first time that expanded energy production would be a strong job-creator. This is so important in terms of an economic fix."

And K-Lo is again pushing the idea of Bill Bennett as VP. A McCain-Bennett ticket would have at least one advantage: efficiency. They could share the same casino host at Bellagio.

David Corn raises yet another reason that the media should get over its love affair with John McCain: his campaign is apparently screening questions from reporters on conference calls.

If you're like me, it can be hard to get fired up about something John McCain says, but earlier this evening I spent twenty-something minutes watching John McCain's October, 2002 Senate floor speech in favor of launching a preemptive war against Iraq.

It was chilling. John McCain is a war hero, but his foreign policy judgment is both terrifying and dangerous. Despite his protestations to the contrary, it's impossible to watch this speech and not come to the conclusion that he is a trigger-happy war monger.

Here's a video of key parts of the speech, which you can read here. The video is a bit over seven minutes long, but if you've got time it's worth watching, and sending to a friend. I've also posted some thoughts and essential quotes from the speech below the video.

Following is John McCain's Senate floor speech on the Authorization for the Use of Military Force in Iraq Resolution, delivered on October 10, 2002 (source: mccain.senate.gov):

In the history of nations, greatness is forged, or opportunity squandered, not by natural evolution or by the hand of mysterious Fate, but by decisions leaders make in times of potential or imminent peril. A common view in America is that these decisions are thrust on us - the world wars, Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, the attacks of September 11th - and we find meaning, and honor, in our response. As Americans, that response is guided by faith in our founding principles, in our love of freedom, and the blessings of justice.

Yet leaders always have choices, and history teaches that hard choices deferred - appeasing Hitler, choosing not to deter Saddam Hussein in 1990, failing to act sooner against al Qaeda - often bring about the very circumstances we wished to avoid by deferring action, requiring us to react in freedom's defense.

America's leaders today have a choice. It will determine whether our people live in fear behind walls that have already been breeched, as our enemies plan our defeat in time we have given them to do it. It will answer the fundamental question about America's purpose in the world - whether we perceive our beliefs to be uniquely American principles or universal values, for if they are so dear to us that we believe all people have the right to enjoy them, we should be willing to stand up for them, wherever they are threatened..

It will reveal whether we are brave, and wise, or reluctant, self-doubting, and in retreat from a world that still, in its cruelest corners, possesses a merciless hostility to our values and interests. It will test us, as did September 11th - except that we can choose to engage the enemy on our terms rather than wait for the battle to be brought to us.

Our choice is whether to assume history's burden to make the world safe from a megalomaniacal tyrant whose cruelty and offense to the norms of civilization are infamous, or whether to wait for this man, armed with the world's worst weapons and willing and able to use them, to make history for us.

It is a question of whether preemptive action to defeat an adversary whose designs would imperil our vital interests is not only appropriate but moral - and whether our morality and security give us cause to fire the first shot in this battle. It will help determine whether the greater Middle East will progress toward possession of the values Americans hold to be universal, or whether the Arab and Islamic worlds will be further influenced by a tyrant whose intent is to breed his own virulent anti-Americanism in all who fall under his influence, and use that influence to hurt us gravely.

The government of Saddam Hussein is a clear and present danger to the United States of America. Would that he were just another Arab dictator, pumping oil and repressing his people but satisfied with his personal circumstances within the confines of his country's borders. That situation alone would offend our sense of justice and compel us to militate for a regime change, but by means short of preemptive military action. But Saddam Hussein has shown he has greater ambitions.

His ambitions lie not in Baghdad, or Tikrit, or Basra, but in the deserts of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. They lie in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, where he sponsors suicide bombings by Palestinians he calls "martyrs" and the civilized world calls terrorists, using murder by proxy to advance his aspirations to lead the Arab world and fan hatred of Israel, America, and the universal ideal of freedom. These ambitions have led him to attack his sovereign neighbors - Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Iran, and Bahrain. His will to power has so affected his judgment that he has started two major wars and lost them, each time imperiling his own grip on power.

His moral code is so spare that he has gassed his own people - horror the world thought it had left behind at Auschwitz and Treblinka. We are told that he enjoys watching video of his opponents being tortured, for fun. He kills not just his political opponents but their families, cruelly.

He has developed stocks of germs and toxins in sufficient quantities to kill the entire population of the Earth multiple times. He has placed weapons laden with these poisons on alert to fire at his neighbors within minutes, not hours, and has devolved authority to fire them to subordinates. He develops nuclear weapons with which he would hold his neighbors and us hostage.

No, this is not just another self-serving, oil-rich potentate. He is the worst kind of modern-day tyrant - a conscienceless murderer who aspires to omnipotence who has repeatedly committed irrational acts since seizing power. Given this reality, containment and deterrence and international inspections will work no better than the Maginot Line did 62 years ago.

He has unrepentantly violated sixteen United Nations Security Council resolutions, defying the will of the international community so consistently, so compulsively, so completely that no leader who professes allegiance to the values the United Nations was formed to uphold can sanction his audacity. His defiance, if not ended, is a threat to every nation that claims membership in the civilized world by virtue of its respect for law and fundamental human values.

Because Saddam Hussein respects neither law nor values, advocating inspections of his weapons facilities as an alternative to war posits a false choice between ending the threat he poses peaceably or by force of arms. His character, his ambition, and his record make clear that he will never accept the intrusive inspections that, by depriving him of his arsenal of dangerous weapons, would deprive him of his power. This power gives him international stature, feeds his fantasy of being a Saladin for our time, and sustains his ability to repress his people and thus remain the ruler of Iraq.

Saddam Hussein is on a crash course to construct a nuclear weapon - as he was in 1981 when Israel preemptively destroyed his reactor at Osirak, enabling U.S. forces to go into Iraq a decade later without the threat of nuclear attack, and as he was in 1990, when he thought development of such a weapon, if completed in time, would have deterred American military action against him, allowing him to secure his control over his neighbors and dominate the region.

Saddam has masterfully manipulated the international weapons inspections regime over the course of a decade, enabling him to remain in power with his weapons of mass destruction intact, and growing in lethality. He knows how to play for time, and how to exploit divisions within the international community, greased by the prospect of oil contracts for friendly foreign powers.

His calculated ambiguity about his willingness to accept a new inspections regime are intended to stave off military attack until such time as he is able to deter it through deployment of an Iraqi nuclear weapon. He is using opponents of war in America, including well-intentioned individuals who honestly believe inspections represent an alternative to war, to advance his own ends, sowing divisions within our ranks that encourage reasonable people to believe he may be sincere.

He is not. He has had ten years to prove otherwise, and he has transparently failed. His regime would be secure if he would only acquiesce to the international community's demands to disarm, but he has not. It is Saddam Hussein who puts his own regime at risk by developing these weapons. The burden is not on America to justify going to war. The burden is Saddam Hussein's, to justify why his regime should continue to exist as long as its continuing existence threatens the world.

Giving peace a chance only gives Saddam Hussein more time to prepare for war - on his terms, at a time of his choosing, in pursuit of ambitions that will only grow as his power to achieve them grows. American credibility, American security, and the future of the United Nations Security Council rest on the will of the United States to enforce the legitimate demands of the international community for Iraq's disarmament, by means that match the menace posed by his ambitions.

Saddam Hussein's regime cannot be contained, deterred, or accommodated. Containment has failed. It failed to halt Saddam's attacks on five sovereign nations. The sanctions regime has collapsed. As long as Saddam remains in power, he will be able to deceive, bribe, intimidate, and attack his way out of any containment scheme.

Some say we can deter Saddam Hussein - even though deterrence has failed utterly in the past. I fail to see how waiting for some unspecified period of time, allowing Saddam's nuclear ambitions to grow unchecked, will ever result in a stable deterrence regime. Not only would deterrence condemn the Iraqi people to more unspeakable tyranny, it would condemn Saddam's neighbors to perpetual instability. And once Iraq's nuclear ambitions are realized, no serious person could expect the Iraqi threat to diminish.

As for accommodation, I am reminded of Winston Churchill's characterization of appeasement: continually feeding the alligator in the hope that he will eat you last.

I do not believe the threat posed by Saddam Hussein's regime will be eliminated until he is removed from power. Congress made the same point in 1998 when we passed the Iraq Liberation Act, which made regime change in Baghdad a priority of American policy.

Our regional allies who oppose using force against Saddam Hussein warn of uncontrollable popular hostility to an American attack on Iraq. But what would really be the effect on Arab populations of seeing other Arabs liberated from oppression? Most Iraqi soldiers will not willingly die for Saddam Hussein. Far from fighting to the last Iraqi, the people of that tortured society will surely dance on the regime's grave.

"I wish the Bush Administration and its predecessor had given more serious support to internal and external Iraqi opposition than has been the case. But it's a safe assumption that Iraqis will be grateful to whoever is responsible for securing their freedom. Perhaps that is what truly concerns some of our Gulf War allies: that among the consequences of regime change in Iraq might be a stronger demand for self-determination from their own people.

I commend the President for making a strong case for bringing Iraq into compliance with its international obligations to the United Nations. The Security Council bears the responsibility for enforcing the obligations it has imposed on Iraq in order to uphold international peace and security. The President was right to tell our friends and allies on the Council that if it does not act, America will.

Diplomacy is important, and I welcome the diplomatic campaign the Administration is waging to solicit the support of other nations. At the end of the day, we will not wage this war alone. Many nations are threatened by Saddam Hussein's rule, and many nations have a stake in the new order that will be built atop the ruins of Saddam Hussein's fascist state. Our friends and allies will help us construct this new order, and we should welcome that.

Our friends and allies must know that we do not target Saddam's regime simply because he is a bad man, although his continuation of his tyranny is a rebuke to every decent value of humanity. We contemplate military action to end his rule because allowing him to remain in power, with the resources at his disposal, would intolerably and inevitably risk American interests in a region of the world where threats to those interests affect the whole world. For the United States to accept Saddam's continued rule is to acquiesce to the certain prospect of strategic blackmail when, soon, Saddam wields a nuclear weapon and threatens the destruction of Israel or the invasion of Saudi Arabia, or demands the withdrawal of all American forces from the region, and America finds itself forced to respond at much more terrible cost than we would pay today.

Failure now to make the choice to remove Saddam Hussein from power will leave us with few choices later, when Saddam's inevitable acquisition of nuclear weapons will make it much more dangerous to defend our friends and interests in the region. It will permit Saddam to control much of the region, and to wield its resources in ways that can only weaken America's position. It will put Israel's very survival at risk, with moral consequences no American can welcome.

"Failure to end the danger posed by Saddam Hussein's Iraq makes it more likely that the interaction we believe to have occurred between members of al Qaeda and Saddam's regime may increasingly take the form of active cooperation to target the United States.

We live in a world in which international terrorists continue to this day to plot mass murder in America. Saddam Hussein unquestionably has strong incentives to cooperate with al Qaeda. Whatever they may or may not have in common, their overwhelming hostility to America and rejection of any moral code suggest that collaboration against us would be natural. It is all too imaginable. Whether or not it has yet happened, the odds favor it - and they are not odds the United States can accept.

To those who argue that America's threat to Saddam's rule makes it more likely that he would collaborate with terrorists to attack our homeland, I would ask: how can we sanction the continuing existence of a regime whose ruler has the capability to inflict such damage on us and would even consider doing so?

Standing by while an odious regime with a history of support for terrorism develops weapons whose use by terrorists could literally kill millions of Americans is not a choice. It is an abdication. In this new era, preventive action to target rogue regimes is not only imaginable but necessary. Who would not have attacked Osama bin Laden's network before September 11th had we realized that his intentions to bring harm to America were matched by the capability to do so? Who would not have heeded Churchill's call to stand up to Adolf Hitler in the 1930s, while Europe slept and appeasement fed the greatest threat to Western civilization the world had ever known? Who would not have supported Israel's bombing of Iraq's nuclear reactor in 1981 had we then known, as Israel knew, that Saddam was on the verge of developing the bomb?

Opponents of this resolution offer many questions that are designed to persuade the President to wait before moving against Saddam Hussein. They have every right to do so. But there is one question I don't want to be asked in the months and years ahead: "Why did you give Saddam Hussein time to harm us?"

Weighing the costs of inaction is as important as chronicling the costs of action in blood and treasure as we prepare to confront Iraq in 2002. In an age of weapons of mass destruction and global terrorists bent on acquiring those weapons, the costs of inaction could well be catastrophic.

As we hold this debate today, this future is not preordained. We have choices. I hope we make the right one.

Politics has no place in this debate. Voting for a course of action that will send young Americans off to fight and die for their country is the most solemn responsibility every member of this Congress will undertake. Those of us who have the honor of bearing that responsibility must weigh our words, and consult our consciences carefully. By voting to give the President the authority to wage war, we assume and share his responsibility for the war's outcome. Others have neither that burden nor that privilege.

We have a choice. The men and women who wear the uniform of our country, and who might lose their lives in service to our cause, do not. They will do their duty, as we see fit to define it for them.

We have a responsibility to these men and women to judge responsibly when our security is so threatened that we must call on them to uphold their oath to defend it. When we call them to serve, they will make us proud. We should strive to make them proud by showing deliberation, judgment, and statesmanship in the debate that will determine their mission.

There is no such thing as a Democrat or a Republican war. We vote on this resolution in the same way brave young men and women in uniform will fight and die as a result of our vote - as Americans. The freedom and security Americans will continue to enjoy as history's greatest nation will be their legacy, and their honor.

They will do their duty. Ours lies before us. Its outcome will determine America's course in this new century, in an age when waiting for imminence of attack is catastrophic.

In this age, liberating oppressed peoples from the tyranny of those who would do us harm serves not only narrow American interests but the ordered progress of freedom. The global success of liberty is America's greatest strategic interest as well as its most compelling moral argument. All our other interests are served in that cause. In it rests our faith in the greatness of America, the last, best hope of earth.

What ensures our success in this long struggle against terrorism and rogue leaders who conspire against us is that our military strength is surpassed only by the strength of our ideals. Our enemies are weaker than we are in men and arms, but weaker still in causes. They fight to express an irrational hatred for all that is good in humanity, a hatred that has fallen time and again to the armies and ideals of the righteous. We fight for love of freedom and justice, a love that is invincible. We will never surrender. They will. All we must do is stay true to our faith.

Yeah, I know the national media sucks. But most people get their news locally, and on that front, Barack Obama is doing pretty damn well, thank you very much.

The announcement that he will accept the nomination at Invesco Field is a perfect such example. On a day where John McCain was physically in Denver, and when Barack Obama was diverted to St. Louis due to airplane troubles, he still managed to upstage McCain, leading the local news -- and in fine fashion:

Howard Wolfson is joining FOX News as a political analyst...I guess to balance out Karl Rove or something?

Gee, Charlie Black is just such a swell guy:

Breaking: McCain Campaign "Concedes" That Obama Is Patriotic
By Greg Sargent- July 7, 2008, 10:20AM

This line from a top McCain adviser, in a Politico article on Obama's efforts to convince the electorate that he's American through and through, is unintentionally funny and revealing:

"We don't want to talk about his patriotism and character," said McCain adviser Charlie Black. "We concede that he's a patriot and person of good character. This is about big issues."

It kind of says it all that to this senior McCain campaign hand, acknowledging that Obama is patriotic is a concession.

I think John McCain may have set a little trap for himself when it comes to his campaign's conflict of interest policy. The key issue is the third provision of that policy, which states:

3.) No person with a McCain Campaign title or position may participate in a 527 or other independent entity that makes public communications that support or oppose any presidential candidate.

That's about as clear as you can get -- there's no modifiers or qualifications. It explicitly forbids participation by anyone affiliated with the McCain campaign in a "527 or independent entity" that runs candidate advocacy ads in the presidential campaign.

Here's where McCain's problem comes in: he has personally raised millions if not tens of millions of dollars -- at a pace of up to $70,000 per contributor -- for the RNC's new "independent" expenditure committee now running ads for John McCain.

If the RNC's new committee really is an independent entity as they claim, then John McCain's fundraising activity on its behalf is a blatant violation of his own policy.

On the other hand, the campaign might argue that the committee really isn't an independent entity. That's a fair argument, but it would put McCain in an even worse position, because unless the committee disbanded before the GOP convention, it would completely betray the promise he made to limit his campaign to public funds for the general election.

Chuck Todd (and I'm sure others) made a good point about the timing of the announcement that Barack Obama would give his convention address at Invesco Field (a story broken by the blogosphere's own DemConWatch): the announcement was timed to blunt the impact of John McCain's visit to Denver today.

As he points out, the local print and tv news coverage will almost certainly be dominated by Obama's decision, and not McCain's event. That's obviously a really big deal -- there's only about 120 days left in the election, and I can't imagine McCain will be back in Denver more than say 10 or maybe 15 more times at most.

So for Obama to have stepped all over one of these trips is significant. It's just another example that the real focus of the Obama campaign is on the local media, and from everything I've seen, he is doing a much better job of going local than is McCain. (I haven't tracked McCain's local coverage as closely as I have Obama's, but when he visited Las Vegas, his TV coverage was disastrous.)

Chris Matthews, wishing newly-engaged Florida Gov. Charlie Crist all the best: "I love the guy...well, I don't love him."

This morning:

PHOENIX – Senator John McCain is pledging once again to balance the budget by the end of his first term in 2013, his advisers said Monday, reverting to an earlier pledge he had abandoned in April when he proposed a series of costly tax cuts for corporations and high earners and said it might take two terms to balance the budget.

This afternoon:

DENVER -- At a town hall meeting here today, McCain touted a repackaged plan to boost the nation’s economy, but left out plans to balance the budget in four years and explore privatization of Social Security that his campaign is advocating.

If you ask me, the reason why McCain flip-flopped on his plans to announce his flip-flop is that his balanced-budget proposal is high comedy at its finest.

Update: Hilzoy demonstrates in detail just how big of a lie McCain's proposal is/was/will be.

Update 2: The Obama campaign offers a detailed critique of McCain's proposal.

Apparently, wingers are so frightened that McCain's evangelical base won't come out and vote for him that  a 527 called "The Christian Defense Coalition" is going up on the air with ads attacking Barack Obama as "the abortion president."

I think they should consider going positive: McCain is quite comfortable with the coat-hangar set. In the early 1990s, he was one of a small number of senators to oppose a federal crackdown on anti-choice domestic terrorists who were bombing women's health clinics, and more recently he's made it clear that he strongly supports overturning Roe v. Wade and will appoint Supreme Court justices who take after Roberts and Alito.

h/t: Avi Zenilman

McCain economic adviser and VP vetter Carly Fiorina: "The best stimulus package possible right now is the gas tax holiday."

The gas tax holiday would cost $9 billion. Even if the oil companies passed that money along to consumers -- and that's a big if -- any stimulative effect would be counterbalanced by the fact that McCain proposes to pay for the tax cut by cutting spending on highway and transportation projects.

At least Hillary Clinton paid for her plan by taxing the oil companies. Effectively, McCain's plan is to tax our roads.

Over the Fourth of July weekend, the McCain campaign launched a $3 million negative ad blitz against Barack Obama.

The reason that I emphasized "McCain campaign" is that the media has uncritically reported the spin that these ads are part of an independent, uncoordinated effort by the RNC.

That's not the case. While it is true that the legally speaking, the ads are being placed by what's known as an "independent expenditure committee," that's a purely technical distinction designed for compliance the campaign finance laws that John McCain himself wrote.

This isn't spin -- the McCain campaign itself has repeatedly made it clear that its efforts and those of the RNC are one and the same. It's all part of his plan to exploit loopholes in his own law -- a plan that will make a mockery of his public financing pledge.

Adam Nagourney spotlights what he thinks is one of Barack Obama's biggest political problems on the economy:

Mr. Obama, Democrat of Illinois, has had difficulty connecting with working-class voters... Winning the support of working-class voters is a major test for Mr. Obama heading into the fall, especially in swing states like Ohio and Pennsylvania.

If Barack is having difficulty, then what about McCain? According to pollster.com, Barack Obama enjoys a lead in both states -- 46.1% to 42.7% in Ohio and 48% to 40.5% in Pennsylvania, where McCain has not led a publicly released poll since April.

There's something chilling about seeing Charlie Black say that he would prefer the campaign be about national security issues:

“We are going to spend the rest of the summer talking about jobs, energy and health care,” said Charlie Black, a senior adviser to Mr. McCain. He said Mr. McCain would prefer that the campaign focus on national security, given his credentials in that area, “but that’s just not the way the world works.”

The problem, of course, is that a couple of weeks ago, Black said a terrorist attack would be an effective way to refocus attention on national security -- thereby boosting McCain's campaign:

On national security McCain wins. We saw how that might play out early in the campaign, when one good scare, one timely reminder of the chaos lurking in the world, probably saved McCain in New Hampshire, a state he had to win to save his candidacy - this according to McCain's chief strategist, Charlie Black. The assassination of Benazir Bhutto in December was an "unfortunate event," says Black. "But his knowledge and ability to talk about it reemphasized that this is the guy who's ready to be Commander-in-Chief. And it helped us." As would, Black concedes with startling candor after we raise the issue, another terrorist attack on U.S. soil. "Certainly it would be a big advantage to him," says Black.

Everything Charlie Black says about this is going to be viewed through the prism of his ghoulish comments to FORTUNE. So why is John McCain still him out?

I don't think I'm alone when I say that there is really only one question about the GOP convention that interests me: will John McCain have the political courage to stand by his convictions and publicly honor George W. Bush's failed presidency, or will he act like a teenager succumbing to peer pressure and pretend that the president doesn't even exist?

The issue isn't that McCain and Bush are one and the same. Clearly, they are not; John McCain is a genuine war hero, George Bush is a genuine chicken hawk. And while John McCain demonstrated an independent streak before he embraced his inner Rove, George W. Bush has always been a tool of the far right, his campaign rhetoric in 2000 notwithstanding.

But the real problem with McCain is that he's adopted George W. Bush's extremist, out-of-touch right-wing policies on issue after issue. There may have once been a time when there was a difference between their policy platforms, but that time has passed us by, and they now share the same destructive vision for America.

Employer-provided health insurance is about as American as apple pie, but if John McCain had his way, we'd scrap it all together.

It would be one thing if he were proposing a single payer system to take its place, but that's the last thing in the world that John McCain wants. In his ideal world, when it comes to health care, each American would be on his or her own.

You see, when McCain looks at the health care system, he thinks that it is a huge problem that 177 million Americans receive insurance through their job (47 million have no insurance and the rest get it individually or through government programs).

Talk about being out of touch.

McCain proposes to solve the "problem" of employer-based coverage by offering a recycled version of a Bush's health care plan: individual tax credits of $2,500 per individual or $5,000 per family (indexed for inflation) and elimination of the tax subsidies that support employer-based health insurance.

What this means is that under McCain's plan, employers could choose to continue offering employer-based health plans, but employees would be responsible for paying tax on the full value of those plans.

Not only would McCain's plan lead to a huge tax increase for those who maintain employer-based plans, but it would also dramatically widen the gap between health care haves and have nots without doing a thing to lower costs or improve the quality of coverage.

Today, the Obama campaign previewed a week of contrasts on the Bush-McCain economic record and agenda. They released a detailed overview of the policy issues they will focus on in a ten-page memo on the McCain economic plan (link, .pdf).

The central message: McCain's economic policies are the same disastrous economic policies of the Bush Administration. His recipe for how to get ourselves out of the hole we are in is "more of the same."

There's a lot of good nuggets in that document, but here's what caught my eye:

1. Obama is offering middle-class families much larger tax cuts than McCain, who targets almost all of his middle-class tax cuts to families with children. (Under McCain, no children, no tax cut.)
2. On the whole, McCain's plan would actually raise taxes on middle-class families due to a new health care premium tax (I'm going to write more about that in a separate post)
3. McCain's tax plan calls for a $1.2 billion tax cut for Exxon-Mobil
4. McCain doesn't pay for his tax plan -- it will increase the deficit by $200-$300 billion per year
5. On the economy, McCain does not have a short-term stimulus plan -- Obama does.

While it's no surprise that the Obama campaign is returning its focus to the domestic front, I'm a bit surprised that the McCain campaign seems to be coming back home as well. (Maybe he got homesick while he was in Colombia and Mexico?)

McCain's domestic focus is on energy issues, which he's highlighting in the first negative TV ad of the campaign, a $3 million ad buy placed by his independent expenditure committee at the RNC.

(By the way, ignore anybody who tells you there is a fundamental difference between the RNC, the McCain campaign, and its independent expenditure committee. Legally, they are all distinct organizations, but that is just a technical classification designed for compliance with the campaign finance law that John McCain himself wrote. The bottom-line is that he's raising the money for all these groups, and the donors are contributing to them to support his campaign. He must accept responsibility for their advertisements.)

Sam Loomis had some fun with Photoshop and came up with a way to make the Lap Dog Express label stick to McCain's new plane:

This video (also in the vodpod) of the press corps loving McCain's new plane explains the inspiration for calling it the Lap Dog Express.

I've been blogging at The Jed Report since early 2007, focusing primarily on the 2008 presidential election.

Until now (I'm writing this on July 6, 2008), I've mostly gone simply by my first name, Jed, but as of today I'm finally admitting what many may have long suspected -- I am indeed the one and only Jed Lewison.

Jed Lewison's e-mail address:

Now that you know my full name, I'm going to tell you more about me than you ever cared to know. I'll begin with the vitals: I'm 35 and I live in Las Vegas, Nevada, where in addition to blogging and posting the occasional YouTube video, I am a writer. I've completed one novel, a political thriller, and while I work on selling that project, I'm working on a new book, also a political thriller.

I moved to Las Vegas a couple of years ago from Seattle, Washington, where I was a marketing executive at RealNetworks, the makers of RealAudio and RealVideo. I was also a senior staffer for U.S. Senator Maria Cantwell, who was my boss at RealNetworks. (I actually lived in DC for a part of the time that I worked for Maria, but was never very fond of the city. I found I could do my job -- communications director -- more effectively from Seattle and traveling to DC when necessary.)

Although The Jed Report is relatively new, I've been active online for years. In 1994, I posted one of the first ever internet sites for a political campaign. (At the time, I was taking off a semester from my undergraduate studies at Yale to work as press secretary for Ron Sims, the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate in Washington state. Needless to say, it was 1994 and we lost -- though in 2000, I achieved some revenge when Maria defeated the incumbent Senator Slade Gorton who had defeated us in 1994.) In 1995, I posted a fan site for the Seattle Mariners -- a sort of proto-blog featuring game updates and commentary. And at RealNetworks, I led the company's internet marketing and sales operation, building a business from nothing to $15 million per quarter before joining Maria on her senatorial campaign in 2000.

::: ::: :::

The Jed Report Novel Interest List:

I've established an interest list for those of you who would like to know when my first novel, a political thriller set in Las Vegas and Washington, DC, becomes available. The more people who sign up, the stronger a case I can make to potential publishers, so if my novel interests you, please add your name to the list and encourage others to join as well. Thanks!

::: ::: :::

Jed Lewison's upcoming political thriller tells a story of vice and corruption from Sin City to Washington, DC

Nick Haynes is a former DC politico who has just returned to his native Las Vegas, where he is now a rising young star at the newest megaresort on the Strip. When Nick discovers his new company’s tie to the biggest land scam in Nevada history, he finds himself caught in a multi-billion dollar conspiracy stretching from the premier strip club in Sin City to the corridors of power in Washington, DC. Now Nick, his girlfriend, a beautiful real estate agent named April McGrath, and his best friend, a professional poker player named Eric Fisher, must expose the scheme before becoming its ultimate victims.

Join The Jed Report Novel Interest List!
There's no obligation, and your e-mail will not be shared.

For updates on availability,
enter your e-mail and click submit:

Thanks for signing up!

Agents and publishers:
If you are an agent or a publisher interested in learning more about my novel, please contact me at .