Above: Barack Obama and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown (NYT)

Courtesy of evathia in the comments, here's Barack Obama last November speaking to the Keene Sentinel (NH) editorial board: "I am always best as a counter-puncher...if somebody comes at me, I will knock them out." (The key comments start about 90 seconds into the clip.) Also: Ben Smith sees a counterpunch TV ad coming from Obama within 24 hours.

There is only one candidate in this race who thinks it was a mistake to go to war with Iraq in the first place. There is only one candidate in this race who stood up against the war before it even started. And now, more than five years later, there is only one candidate in this race who is pushing to end it.

The other candidate advocated waging a war that claimed the lives of more than 4,000 American troops and caused injuries to tens of thousands more.

For that candidate to attack the other's commitment to the troops is the ultimate dishonor and disgrace. It reveals the sinister ambition that has invaded his soul.

A strong response from the Obama campaign to John McCain's detestable new TV ad:

Obama spokesman Tommy Vietor: "John McCain is an honorable man who is running an increasingly dishonorable campaign.  Senator McCain knows full well that Senator Obama strongly supports and honors our troops, which is what makes this attack so disingenuous."

Before Barack Obama's overseas trip:

• Rasmussen (7/16-18): 46% Obama, 46% McCain (tie)
• Gallup (7/16-7/18): 45% Obama, 43% McCain (+2 for Obama)

Near the end of Barack Obama's overseas trip:

• Rasmussen (7/23-25): 49% Obama, 43% McCain (+6 for Obama)
• Gallup (7/23-25): 48% Obama, 41% McCain (+7 for Obama)

Compare what McCain said yesterday to what he said while attacking Mitt Romney just before Super Tuesday. (h/t: Josh Orton)

Also worth keeping in mind: even though McCain now says he thinks the 16-month timetable is "pretty good," unless he commits himself to a specific plan on how he will achieve it, it's just meaningless campaign rhetoric.

During the Reagan Library Presidential debate on January 30, Janet Hook of the LA Times asked John McCain what made him more qualified than Mitt Romney to manage the eocnomy. McCain's answer: that his Navy and POW experience shows he's ready to lead, that he's ready to fight Islamic extremism, and that Democrats want a timetable for withdrawal which would be surrender in Iraq.

Full text below.

DoD's Bryan Whitman

AMERICAblog's Joe Sudbay documents that one of the key DoD spokesmen pushing the the attack on Barack Obama for not visiting wounded troops at Landstuhl is Bryan Whitman, who has a history of pursuing attacks against Barack Obama.

My personal favorite part of Whitman's on-the-record quote is "quite frankly, I expected them to have the visit." First, in Washington, DC "quite frankly" means "I'm lying." Second, if, as he claims, he just told "them" that they couldn't make a political visit, why in the world would he expect them to visit?

After tonight’s broadcast of ABC News with Charlie Gibson, ABC might as well openly declare its support for John McCain.

Hours after first watching it, I’m still stunned at just how blatant its bias was. About the only good thing I can say about it is that at this point Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos are so confident that they won’t be held accountable that they are getting arrogant and sloppy. As a result, tonight they made some glaring mistakes that make it easy to prove their bias towards McCain.

Here’s a video from the broadcast, followed by a writeup documenting the many ways in which it was biased.

I've been thinking a bit more about John McCain's seeming embrace of Barack Obama's and Nuri al-Maliki's withdrawal timetable. (His "I think it's a pretty good timetable" comment.)

On the one hand, it's nice to say "McCain endorses Obama's position on ending the Iraq war." And it's true, he did effectively make that endorsement. But he didn't say how he would accomplish the goal.

In fact, McCain is sending all sorts of mixed signals about whether or not he would do what he now says he supports. He is still refusing to suggest any specific plan to begin withdrawals. To meet the 16 month timetable, the new president will need to start implementing a withdrawal plan as soon as he takes office, and John McCain has not even come close to suggesting that he would actually do that.

So unless John McCain offers a plan on how he expects to meet the timetable, his words today really have no meaning -- except as a dishonest attempt to convince American voters he intends to end the war.

I keep on hearing and reading pundits puzzle over why Barack Obama hasn't put this race away already. I mean, it's already July, dammit! Shouldn't he be getting sworn next month or something?

To be fair, it's not as ridiculous question to ask in 2008 as it would be in any other year. I mean, in 2000 or 2004 if you told me at the end of July that Barack Obama had consistently led John McCain in every single national poll for the past two months, I'd have been thrilled.

But in 2008, an overwhelming majority of Americans oppose Bush's policies and want to take the country in a new direction. Substantively, John McCain shares George Bush's policy vision -- so by all rights, he should be getting walloped by Barack Obama at this point.

But even though McCain is trailing, he's not getting thoroughly crushed. Why not?

Well, most pundits seem to answer the question by focusing on Barack Obama. Certainly, he's part a key part of the equation, but almost universally, they make the mistake of underestimating John McCain's political strengths.

Today:

BLITZER: Why do you think [Maliki] said that 16 months is basically a pretty good timetable?

MCCAIN: He said it's a pretty good timetable based on conditions on the ground. I think it's a pretty good timetable, as we should -- or horizons for withdrawal. But they have to be based on conditions on the ground.

May 16:

MCCAIN: For him [Obama] to talk about dates for withdrawal, which basically is surrender in Iraq after we're succeeding so well is, I think, really inexcusable.

So would it be fair to conclude from this that in McCain's own terms, he would rather a lose a war than lose an election?

Update (3:23PM): In funny bit of understatement, NBC's First Read notes that McCain's embrace of a 16-month timetable is something he "probably never would have said a week ago."

And here's video:

Yesterday, Chuck Hagel urges John McCain to stop squabbling over the surge. "Get out of that. We're done with that. How are we going to project forward?"

Today, in a newly released statement, Bob Kerrey echoes Hagel's message: "Let's not re-fight the past."

John McCain is sticking to his "I was against the war before I was for it" line of argument. Now I will concede that he had some tactical differences with the administration on how to fight the war in Iraq -- but only in certain parts of the country.

But that isn't the point. The point is that he was 100% behind the strategy of preemptive war with Iraq. That is what the big disaster was. That is where the huge failure of judgment was. And that is why he is trying to rewrite history.

Perhaps he should watch "John McCain's Neverending War." Maybe then he'd finally understand why he'll never get away with it.

John Aravosis at AMERICAblog sent over a tip that John McCain had needed a crib sheet to talk about milk prices during his photo opportunity Wednesdayyesterday at a Bethlehem, Pennsylvania supermarket.

Sure enough...

Good morning...or afternoon if you're out east. This was a pretty hilarious segment from The Daily Show last night...especially Stewart's complete dismantling of the tool idiot from FOX News.

Don't hold me responsible if anything they say turns out to be wrong:

• Alan Abramowitz cautions against getting hung up on daily swings in tracking polls.
• He also thinks the idea that Obama has a problem with whites is hooey.
• Abramowitz joins with Thomas Mann and Larry Sabato to challenge the idea that this election is a toss-up. (I think they make good points but ignore the enduring benefits of McCain's maverick image honed in 2000.)
• Josh Marshall suggests taking a long-term view of Obama's trip, the fundamentals of which he thinks went very well. (He also challenges wingers who think the President's central focus should be on the military.)
• Nate Silver offers an interesting model for interpreting how things might play out over the long-term. (The most important implication of his model is that the short-term horserace numbers can be very misleading.)

Related to all this, earlier this month I took a look at the road ahead in the campaign -- which is now 102 days away from finally being over. My short-take on the state of things: everything is going pretty well, except I think that that too many independents still think McCain could represent a change of direction for the country.

And in totally unrelated news, I just had to repimp this newspaper front page with McCain's VP Tim Pawlenty (am I allowed to change my Romney prediction?):

I first posted this video on June 15. Since that time we've had: Iraq-Pakistan border, Czechoslovakia, Somalia-Sudan, Packers-Steelers, Birth control/Viagra, and $4 dollar a barrel oil. Not to mention the more serious surge timeline stuff. (Edit: I forgot the Iraq is the first major war thing...DOH!)

I like his gaffe's / I cannot lie / You Rethuglicans can't deny... (Anthony Ray is going to have to take over from there.)

So John McCain writes an op-ed in the St. Petersburg Times slamming Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Without wading into the merits of his position, McCain is channeling Phil Gramm in this op-ed. (Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if he wrote it, or at least reviewed it.)

But the point is that McCain was sending a subtle -- but public -- signal to hard core economic conservatives that he is still with them, and that Gramm still has his ear.

Found this on reddit:

Idea: Just as violent felons lose the right to own a gun, white-collar criminals should lose the right to own stock or investments.

There's a certain amount of logic to that.

Brian Williams talks with Barack Obama immediately after the speech and offers a behind-the-scenes view of the speech, and Keith Olbermann delivers his report on the speech in Countdown's first segment.

Here's the full interview. I'm watching it now, though I caught excerpts on Countdown. From what I saw, it was outstanding. My favorite moment was when Williams asked him about why he gave the speech, what he hoped to get out of it. Obama's answer: the response to the speech demonstrated that there is hunger in the world for America's leadership. Edit: I think that part of the interview came in a behind-the-scenes moment (which I'll post soon) before the sit-down part of the interview.

Could anyone other than Teflon John McCain get away with these hypocritical attacks?

He yells at Obama for speaking in Germany...but forgets that he had a campaign event in Canada and held a fundraiser in London, hosted by a wealthy British businessman (edit: and a British Lord).

Apparently, wingnuts are batty for getting their hands on Barack Obama's "missing" senior thesis, which was on Soviet nuclear disarmament. I guess they think that if they can find proof that Barack Obama opposed nuclear weapons, that he is unqualified to be president?

Even their the reasons for their search are plain ol' stupid, I did find one thing interesting in NBC's writeup of the caper (emphasis added):

His former professor, Michael Baron, recalled in an interview with NBC News that Obama easily aced the year-long class. Baron described the paper as a “thesis” or “senior thesis” in several interviews, and said that Obama spent a year working on it. Baron recalls that the topic was nuclear negotiations with the Soviet Union.

“...As I remember it, the paper was about those negotiations, their tactics and chances for success. Barack got an A.”

Baron said that, even if he could find a copy of the paper, it would likely disappoint Obama’s critics. “The course was not a polemical course, it was a course in decision making and how decisions got made,” he said. “None of the papers in the class were controversial.”

Above: one of the many images of Barack Obama in Berlin, Germany from Al Rodgers' photo diary at Daily Kos. Also, I've posted the full video here and full text here.

So John McCain is (predictably, perhaps) attacking Barack Obama for speaking at a political gathering outside the country.

This, of course, is the same John McCain who held a political event in Ottawa at the Economic Club of Canada just one month ago.

This is the same John McCain who held a campaign fundraiser in London in March.

This is the same John McCain who is quoting Fidel Castro in an attack on Barack Obama.

This is the same John McCain who has quoted Hamas on the campaign trail in another attack on Barack Obama.

This is the same John McCain who has repeatedly used the words of Osama bin Laden to attack not just Barack Obama, but also Hillary Clinton and the entire Democratic Party.

This is a sad, desperate, and pathetic John McCain.

Update: Oh, and lest I forget, this is a bitter, lonely John McCain:

Duh, what about Afghanistan, dude?

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MoveOn.org is ">launching a petition drive to let CBS know that we think their decision to "remix" John McCain's interview with Katie Couric -- letting him off the hook for telling a flat-out falsehood -- was wrong, and that CBS should correct the record.

(On a personal note, MoveOn's ">petition page features my video of the CBS original interview, which I've reposted below. It's cool to see it being put to good use.)

One the questions in yesterday's new NBC/WSJ poll was how closely voters thought McCain would follow Bush's policies. 32% said very closely and 45% said somewhat closely. 16% said not too closely and 5% said not at all.

On the surface, these seems good -- 77% of voters think McCain will follow Bush's policies very closely or somewhat closely. But I think there may be some trouble signs in these numbers.

Nearly three-fifths of those who think McCain will follow Bush's policies only think he will do so "somewhat" closely. Not to be greedy, but I'm not convinced "somewhat" is good enough, especially in light of other polling data (see below). Moreover, it's almost certain that if you just look at independent voters, the "very" closely numbers would drop, probably significantly.

Remarks of Senator Barack Obama (as prepared for delivery)
“A World that Stands as One”
July 24th, 2008
Berlin, Germany

Thank you to the citizens of Berlin and to the people of Germany. Let me thank Chancellor Merkel and Foreign Minister Steinmeier for welcoming me earlier today. Thank you Mayor Wowereit, the Berlin Senate, the police, and most of all thank you for this welcome.

I come to Berlin as so many of my countrymen have come before.  Tonight, I speak to you not as a candidate for President, but as a citizen – a proud citizen of the United States, and a fellow citizen of the world. 

I know that I don’t look like the Americans who’ve previously spoken in this great city. The journey that led me here is improbable. My mother was born in the heartland of America, but my father grew up herding goats in Kenya. His father – my grandfather – was a cook, a domestic servant to the British. 

At the height of the Cold War, my father decided, like so many others in the forgotten corners of the world, that his yearning – his dream – required the freedom and opportunity promised by the West. And so he wrote letter after letter to universities all across America until somebody, somewhere answered his prayer for a better life.

That is why I’m here. And you are here because you too know that yearning. This city, of all cities, knows the dream of freedom. And you know that the only reason we stand here tonight is because men and women from both of our nations came together to work, and struggle, and sacrifice for that better life.

Ours is a partnership that truly began sixty years ago this summer, on the day when the first American plane touched down at Templehof.

On that day, much of this continent still lay in ruin.  The rubble of this city had yet to be built into a wall. The Soviet shadow had swept across Eastern Europe, while in the West, America, Britain, and France took stock of their losses, and pondered how the world might be remade. 

This is where the two sides met.  And on the twenty-fourth of June, 1948, the Communists chose to blockade the western part of the city.  They cut off food and supplies to more than two million Germans in an effort to extinguish the last flame of freedom in Berlin.

The size of our forces was no match for the much larger Soviet Army. And yet retreat would have allowed Communism to march across Europe. Where the last war had ended, another World War could have easily begun. All that stood in the way was Berlin.

And that’s when the airlift began – when the largest and most unlikely rescue in history brought food and hope to the people of this city. 

The odds were stacked against success.  In the winter, a heavy fog filled the sky above, and many planes were forced to turn back without dropping off the needed supplies. The streets where we stand were filled with hungry families who had no comfort from the cold. 

But in the darkest hours, the people of Berlin kept the flame of hope burning. The people of Berlin refused to give up. And on one fall day, hundreds of thousands of Berliners came here, to the Tiergarten, and heard the city’s mayor implore the world not to give up on freedom. “There is only one possibility,” he said.  “For us to stand together united until this battle is won…The people of Berlin have spoken.  We have done our duty, and we will keep on doing our duty. People of the world: now do your duty…People of the world, look at Berlin!”

People of the world – look at Berlin!

Look at Berlin, where Germans and Americans learned to work together and trust each other less than three years after facing each other on the field of battle.

Look at Berlin, where the determination of a people met the generosity of the Marshall Plan and created a German miracle; where a victory over tyranny gave rise to NATO, the greatest alliance ever formed to defend our common security. 

Look at Berlin, where the bullet holes in the buildings and the somber stones and pillars near the Brandenburg Gate insist that we never forget our common humanity. 

People of the world – look at Berlin, where a wall came down, a continent came together, and history proved that there is no challenge too great for a world that stands as one.   

Sixty years after the airlift, we are called upon again. History has led us to a new crossroad, with new promise and new peril. When you, the German people, tore down that wall – a wall that divided East and West; freedom and tyranny; fear and hope – walls came tumbling down around the world. From Kiev to Cape Town, prison camps were closed, and the doors of democracy were opened. Markets opened too, and the spread of information and technology reduced barriers to opportunity and prosperity. While the 20th century taught us that we share a common destiny, the 21st has revealed a world more intertwined than at any time in human history.

The fall of the Berlin Wall brought new hope. But that very closeness has given rise to new dangers – dangers that cannot be contained within the borders of a country or by the distance of an ocean.   

The terrorists of September 11th plotted in Hamburg and trained in Kandahar and Karachi before killing thousands from all over the globe on American soil. 

As we speak, cars in Boston and factories in Beijing are melting the ice caps in the Arctic, shrinking coastlines in the Atlantic, and bringing drought to farms from Kansas to Kenya.

Poorly secured nuclear material in the former Soviet Union, or secrets from a scientist in Pakistan could help build a bomb that detonates in Paris. The poppies in Afghanistan become the heroin in Berlin. The poverty and violence in Somalia breeds the terror of tomorrow. The genocide in Darfur shames the conscience of us all.

In this new world, such dangerous currents have swept along faster than our efforts to contain them. That is why we cannot afford to be divided. No one nation, no matter how large or powerful, can defeat such challenges alone.  None of us can deny these threats, or escape responsibility in meeting them. Yet, in the absence of Soviet tanks and a terrible wall, it has become easy to forget this truth. And if we’re honest with each other, we know that sometimes, on both sides of the Atlantic, we have drifted apart, and forgotten our shared destiny.

In Europe, the view that America is part of what has gone wrong in our world, rather than a force to help make it right, has become all too common. In America, there are voices that deride and deny the importance of Europe’s role in our security and our future. Both views miss the truth – that Europeans today are bearing new burdens and taking more responsibility in critical parts of the world; and that just as American bases built in the last century still help to defend the security of this continent, so does our country still sacrifice greatly for freedom around the globe.

Yes, there have been differences between America and Europe. No doubt, there will be differences in the future. But the burdens of global citizenship continue to bind us together. A change of leadership in Washington will not lift this burden. In this new century, Americans and Europeans alike will be required to do more – not less. Partnership and cooperation among nations is not a choice; it is the one way, the only way, to protect our common security and advance our common humanity. 

That is why the greatest danger of all is to allow new walls to divide us from one another.
The walls between old allies on either side of the Atlantic cannot stand.  The walls between the countries with the most and those with the least cannot stand.  The walls between races and tribes; natives and immigrants; Christian and Muslim and Jew cannot stand.  These now are the walls we must tear down. 

We know they have fallen before. After centuries of strife, the people of Europe have formed a Union of promise and prosperity. Here, at the base of a column built to mark victory in war, we meet in the center of a Europe at peace. Not only have walls come down in Berlin, but they have come down in Belfast, where Protestant and Catholic found a way to live together; in the Balkans, where our Atlantic alliance ended wars and brought savage war criminals to justice; and in South Africa, where the struggle of a courageous people defeated apartheid.

So history reminds us that walls can be torn down. But the task is never easy.  True partnership and true progress requires constant work and sustained sacrifice.  They require sharing the burdens of development and diplomacy; of progress and peace. They require allies who will listen to each other, learn from each other and, most of all, trust each other. 

That is why America cannot turn inward.  That is why Europe cannot turn inward.  America has no better partner than Europe. Now is the time to build new bridges across the globe as strong as the one that bound us across the Atlantic.  Now is the time to join together, through constant cooperation, strong institutions, shared sacrifice, and a global commitment to progress, to meet the challenges of the 21st century. It was this spirit that led airlift planes to appear in the sky above our heads, and people to assemble where we stand today.  And this is the moment when our nations – and all nations – must summon that spirit anew. 

This is the moment when we must defeat terror and dry up the well of extremism that supports it.  This threat is real and we cannot shrink from our responsibility to combat it. If we could create NATO to face down the Soviet Union, we can join in a new and global partnership to dismantle the networks that have struck in Madrid and Amman; in London and Bali; in Washington and New York.  If we could win a battle of ideas against the communists, we can stand with the vast majority of Muslims who reject the extremism that leads to hate instead of hope.

This is the moment when we must renew our resolve to rout the terrorists who threaten our security in Afghanistan, and the traffickers who sell drugs on your streets.  No one welcomes war. I recognize the enormous difficulties in Afghanistan.  But my country and yours have a stake in seeing that NATO’s first mission beyond Europe’s borders is a success. For the people of Afghanistan, and for our shared security, the work must be done.  America cannot do this alone.  The Afghan people need our troops and your troops; our support and your support to defeat the Taliban and al Qaeda, to develop their economy, and to help them rebuild their nation.  We have too much at stake to turn back now. 

This is the moment when we must renew the goal of a world without nuclear weapons.  The two superpowers that faced each other across the wall of this city came too close too often to destroying all we have built and all that we love.  With that wall gone, we need not stand idly by and watch the further spread of the deadly atom. It is time to secure all loose nuclear materials; to stop the spread of nuclear weapons; and to reduce the arsenals from another era. This is the moment to begin the work of seeking the peace of a world without nuclear weapons. 

This is the moment when every nation in Europe must have the chance to choose its own tomorrow free from the shadows of yesterday.  In this century, we need a strong European Union that deepens the security and prosperity of this continent, while extending a hand abroad.  In this century – in this city of all cities – we must reject the Cold War mind-set of the past, and resolve to work with Russia when we can, to stand up for our values when we must, and to seek a partnership that extends across this entire continent.

This is the moment when we must build on the wealth that open markets have created, and share its benefits more equitably.  Trade has been a cornerstone of our growth and global development.  But we will not be able to sustain this growth if it favors the few, and not the many.  Together, we must forge trade that truly rewards the work that creates wealth, with meaningful protections for our people and our planet.  This is the moment for trade that is free and fair for all.

This is the moment we must help answer the call for a new dawn in the Middle East. My country must stand with yours and with Europe in sending a direct message to Iran that it must abandon its nuclear ambitions. We must support the Lebanese who have marched and bled for democracy, and the Israelis and Palestinians who seek a secure and lasting peace. And despite past differences, this is the moment when the world should support the millions of Iraqis who seek to rebuild their lives, even as we pass responsibility to the Iraqi government and finally bring this war to a close.

This is the moment when we must come together to save this planet.  Let us resolve that we will not leave our children a world where the oceans rise and famine spreads and terrible storms devastate our lands.  Let us resolve that all nations – including my own – will act with the same seriousness of purpose as has your nation, and reduce the carbon we send into our atmosphere.  This is the moment to give our children back their future. This is the moment to stand as one.

And this is the moment when we must give hope to those left behind in a globalized world. We must remember that the Cold War born in this city was not a battle for land or treasure. Sixty years ago, the planes that flew over Berlin did not drop bombs; instead they delivered food, and coal, and candy to grateful children. And in that show of solidarity, those pilots won more than a military victory. They won hearts and minds; love and loyalty and trust – not just from the people in this city, but from all those who heard the story of what they did here. 

Now the world will watch and remember what we do here – what we do with this moment.  Will we extend our hand to the people in the forgotten corners of this world who yearn for lives marked by dignity and opportunity; by security and justice? Will we lift the child in Bangladesh from poverty, shelter the refugee in Chad, and banish the scourge of AIDS in our time? 

Will we stand for the human rights of the dissident in Burma, the blogger in Iran, or the voter in Zimbabwe?  Will we give meaning to the words “never again” in Darfur? 

Will we acknowledge that there is no more powerful example than the one each of our nations projects to the world?  Will we reject torture and stand for the rule of law?  Will we welcome immigrants from different lands, and shun discrimination against those who don’t look like us or worship like we do, and keep the promise of equality and opportunity for all of our people?

People of Berlin – people of the world – this is our moment.  This is our time. 

I know my country has not perfected itself.  At times, we’ve struggled to keep the promise of liberty and equality for all of our people.  We’ve made our share of mistakes, and there are times when our actions around the world have not lived up to our best intentions. 

But I also know how much I love America. I know that for more than two centuries, we have strived – at great cost and great sacrifice – to form a more perfect union; to seek, with other nations, a more hopeful world.  Our allegiance has never been to any particular tribe or kingdom – indeed, every language is spoken in our country; every culture has left its imprint on ours; every point of view is expressed in our public squares. What has always united us – what has always driven our people; what drew my father to America’s shores – is a set of ideals that speak to aspirations shared by all people: that we can live free from fear and free from want; that we can speak our minds and assemble with whomever we choose and worship as we please.   

These are the aspirations that joined the fates of all nations in this city. These aspirations are bigger than anything that drives us apart. It is because of these aspirations that the airlift began. It is because of these aspirations that all free people – everywhere – became citizens of Berlin. It is in pursuit of these aspirations that a new generation – our generation – must make our mark on the world.   

People of Berlin – and people of the world – the scale of our challenge is great.  The road ahead will be long. But I come before you to say that we are heirs to a struggle for freedom. We are a people of improbable hope.  With an eye toward the future, with resolve in our hearts, let us remember this history, and answer our destiny, and remake the world once again.

If you have any troubles with this embed (below), visit BarackObama.com which has the same feed.

Update: The video doesn't seem to be working for me as of 10:15am Pacific, but then again, Barack hasn't started speaking yet. CNN reports that hundreds of thousands have showed up for the speech.

Update 2: CNN.com has a live stream as well -- it's working perfectly for me. (It's also on live TV.) I'll leave the embed up just in case it starts working.

Update 3: Full text of the speech. The speech is now over -- I've removed the embed, which started to work about half-way through. Whenever the full video is posted, I'll post it here.

Update 4: Here's the full video:

debrazza points out that Jake Tapper is flipping out (with the headline "Just Hours Later, Obama Campaign Uses Berlin Speech to Raise Campaign Cash") because Barack Obama's e-mails all have a red donate button on them, and he didn't remove the donate button for his most recent e-mail on his Berlin speech.

Which raises the question of whether or not Tapper will note the fact that a British Lord hosted a fundraiser for John McCain last March.

Meanwhile, how much money is Mickey Mouse making in ad dollars on his silly post? Compare all those ads to that lonely little donate button at the buttom of the page that I might not have noticed if it weren't for Tapper.

John McCain finally gets his mug on the front page of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune...and of all the headlines in the world that could have been below the picture of him and Pawlenty. (h/t: Jonathan Martin)

(Movie buffs: Here's the IMDB page for Desperado, released in 1995.)

John McCain planned to visit a New Orleans area offshore oil rig...but suddenly canceled, blaming the weather. But it turns out that today it is 85 degrees and sunnypartly cloudly.

Perhaps the fact that a huge oil spill has contaminated the New Orleans water supply and closed the Mississippi River has more to do with McCain's quick turnabout?

One can only hope this mistake is the start of a beautiful trend of McBush mixups.

Thanks to all of you who helped overcome the McCainiacs who attempted to bury my video, "John McCain's Neverending War." Because of your efforts, the video is already the most dugg item of the past week, and it's only been "popular" for a little under 14 hours.

Thanks again to everybody. And if you haven't yet watched the video...what are you waiting for? :) Grab some popcorn, and set aside nine minutes and thirty seconds for some of the scariest film you've ever seen.

Update: For those of you who are new to the "digg" thing, digg is the most popular recommendation site on the web. If you get something made "popular" it means that it goes onto the front page of the site, where tens of thousands of people will click on it and follow it. So being the most dugg item over any given period of time isn't really about bragging rights, rather its about letting other people know about something.

This ABCNews.com ad showed up today on my gmail account. Given that the story it links to is from March 10, I've got no idea why they are still advertising it. It might be just an innocent mistake, but it sure seems like an attempt to drive a wedge...

So Michael Goldfarb of the McCain campaign is apoplectic because Barack Obama mistakenly said "my committee" when referring to the Senate Banking Committee (on which he does not sit).

Clearly, Barack meant to say "my bill" because he was talking about the fact that last week the banking committee passed the key provisions of his Iranian divestment legislation as part of a larger Iranian sanctions bill. In other words, he misspoke on a trivial detail, and immediately made sure the record was corrected. Compare that to John McCain's stubborn reluctance to admit error on the surge timeline.

In order to defend his claim that the surge is responsible for the Anbar Awakening, John McCain now says that the surge actually started in 2006.

But that not only completely contradicts the universally accepted historical record, it also contradicts his own words, delivered on January 5, 2007, when he declared his support for the surge, which Bush announced five days later. Moreover, in McCain explicitly noted that there was already good progress taking place in Anbar province, and that the primary goal of the surge was to improve security in Baghdad.

McCain's new claim that the surge started before the surge is part of his effort to spin his way out of his misstatement on CBS yesterday evening. He'd have been far better of just admitting a mistake. Instead, he's now lying -- and his own words have caught up to him.

According to a video report posted by Scranton, Pennsylvania's Times-Leader, John McCain's town hall event in Wilkes-Barre earlier today featured an underwhelming turnout -- more than half the seats were empty. About seven hundred folks showed up -- a decent sized crowd, perhaps, but it left nineeleven hundred seats empty.

Meanwhile, when Barack Obama visited Wilkes-Barre on April 1, more than two thousand people attended -- not including the line of people that were turned away by fire department officials.

Pictures below:

Gallup (whose tracker shows a 4 point lead for the good guys) reports that Barack Obama has gained the most ground in the states that matter the most, at least as far as the electoral college goes:

Does John McCain think Americans are losers because most of them support Barack Obama's timetable to end the war (by a 60% to 30% margin)?

On what factual basis was the WaPo operating when it falsely claimed that Iraqis oppose a timetable?

Will CBS ever fully explain itself?

Why didn't Mark Halperin note the oil spill in his explanation of McCain's oil rig cancellation?

Will John "canceled my first media availability ever" McCain ever answer these questions?

How did John McCain's policies towards Iraq change after his trip there in March? And since we all know they didn't change at all, does that mean it wasn't a fact-finding mission?

Probably the most impressive difference between Barack Obama's campaign and those of past Democratic nominees is that he refuses to accept the opposition's framing.

So today when the RNC launched a small ad buy campaign claiming he was opposed to troop funding, instead of adopting a defensive posture ("he is too for the troops"), the Obama campaign effectively said "bullshit."

There are honest differences between Senator Obama’s position on Iraq and Senator McCain’s, but there’s no question that both support our troops. Under the RNC’s definition, John McCain would have also chosen politics over our military when he urged George Bush to veto funding for the troops, and we know that’s not the case.

Update: He's not going, blaming the weather. Yeah, right. Smells like an oil spill to me.

So McCain is going to NOLA tomorrow to do an event to tout off-shore oil drilling, flying out to a rig on a helicopter, trying to be all Jack Bauer the oil man. His agenda: demonstrate how easy, safe, and important more offshore drilling is.

But there's a problem: today, on the eve of this stunt, there was a huge oil spill in NOLA:

Anytime some jackass makes a messiah crack, just point them to this freaky poster of John McCain (h/t: Ambinder)

Michael Goldfarb -- official blogger for The McCain Report and a key part of the campaign's message operation -- goes after Barack Obama on genocide.

This, of course, on the very same day that Barack is visiting a Holocaust memorial site.

It is utterly detestable.

This, by the way, is not the first time Goldfarb has gone after Barack on a similar issue. Back in June, he invoked the Nazis in a misleading attack.

There's a reason that Barack Obama is far more popular among American Jews than Joe Lieberman. Speaking as one of them, and as the great grandson of a Holocaust victim, I'd urge Michael Goldfarb to spend some time pondering why that might be.

Well, I guess the second-time was the charm for digg -- my new video is now on the front-page over there. Thanks to everybody for helping it get there so quickly!

And more importantly, what a crazy morning of campaign news. I'm just getting started for the day, and it looks like there's a ton of stuff to sort my way through. My favorite story so far?

McCain cancels press avail. When was the last time you've heard of that happening for the McMaverick Straight Talk Express McSame?

I figured my new video on John McCain would make the front page of digg fairly quickly after it generated 200 diggs in just a few hours, but when it didn't, I got suspicious. Sure enough, it seems to have been buried.

So it is has now been resubmitted. If you use digg, please digg it, shout it, etc. -- don't let McCain's bury brigade keep this video from getting out. Here's the new digg:

digg_url = 'http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ieHwOm4ljA&eurl=http://www.jedreport.com/'; digg_bgcolor = '#ffffff'; digg_skin = 'compact'; digg_window = 'new';

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