Leaving aside the idea that illegal immigrants are enjoying the best medical care that this country can offer, this is a shocking admission from John McCain...from a town hall meeting earlier today:

AUDIENCE MEMBER:  Senator McCain I truly hope you get the opportunity to chase Bin Laden right to the gates of hell and push him in as you stated on your forum. I do have a question though. Disabled veterans, especially in this state, have horrible conditions [...] My son is an officer in the Air Force, and I am a vet and I was raised in a military family. I think it is a sad state of affairs when we have illegal aliens having a Medicaid card that can access specialist top physicians, the best of medical and our vets can't even get to a doctor. These are the people that we tied yellow ribbons for and Bush patted on the back. If we don't reenact the draft I don't think we will have anyone to chase Bin Laden to the gates of hell.

JOHN MCCAIN: Ma'am let me say that I don't disagree with anything you said and thank you and I am grateful for your support of all of our veterans.

These days you can't swing a dead cat without hitting an article speculating about potential vice presidential running mates for Barack Obama or John McCain. But today's entry from the New York Times does include one line that's worth noting, when the concerns of social conservatives about the possibility of McCain choosing the pro-choice Tom Ridge is dismissed by other conservatives who said:

...that Mr. McCain’s recent public flirtation with Tom Ridge, a former Pennsylvania governor who supports abortion rights, was as much to give the appearance that Mr. McCain had an open mind on the issue as it was an embrace of Mr. Ridge.

So, these anonymous conservatives cheerfully admit that McCain willingly misled people about a possible running mate to "give the appearance" of an open mind. There's some straight talk for you.

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David Brooks sadly explains that John McCain doesn't really want to run a campaign based on vicious lies and  accusations of treason, really he doesn't. But what choice does he have when he's battling both the media and the system?

Richard Cohen wonders:

...who among us is willing to fight to bring South Ossetia back into the Georgian fold?

Eugene Robinson says that, in the wake of China's spectacular Olympics and Russia's invasion of Georgia, Barack Obama and John McCain need to acknowledge that:

Our future is being decided not just in Washington but in Beijing and Moscow -- and in Riyadh, Islamabad, New Delhi, Dubai, Caracas, Abuja, Brasilia. . . .

We still have the wherewithal to lead. But we're deluding ourselves if we believe we won't have to adapt to the new reality.

Bob Herbert laughs at the idea of John McCain or any Republican invoking the name of Teddy Roosevelt.

John Boehner says that:

The House Republicans' unprecedented nationwide gas-prices protest is now in its third full week. My Republican colleagues and I have vowed to continue the historic uprising - in Washington and in communities across the country - until the House returns to session for a vote on the American Energy Act...

And America should feel lucky that Boehner was able to take time from his busy golf schedule to write his stinging op-ed.

Frank J. Gaffney Jr. thinks that Barack Obama is making a big mistake in his campaign to prove he's not a Muslim.

Donald Lambro says that Barack Obama's inspiring words only sound good to the unthinking mind and that an Obama presidency would be bad for the economy. That would be versus another four years of George Bush's economic policies.

Derrick Z. Jackson believes that:

Holding one's breath while waiting for presidential candidates to address the gap between rich and poor is a sure way to asphyxiate.

On a slow news day, Politico's Ben Smith and Glenn Thrush really go out on a limb:

Barack Obama is expected to choose his running mate this week in a key decision about the direction and narrative of his bid for the White House.

Given that the convention starts in one week, yes, Obama will be picking his running mate, but Smith and Thrush had a lot more column space to fill, so they follow up with the usual predictions; Kaine? Bayh? Richardson? Is it time to trot out Kerry, is Nunn too anti-gay, is Biden too much of a Biden, would a Republican be the ultimate post-partisan pick, and hey, what about Clinton?

The only thing we know for sure is that the pick will be made and that there will be at least 30 BREAKING diaries about it.

There's no other way to describe the latest complaint from the McCain campaign except to say, what a bunch of WATB:

McCain's campaign manager Rick Davis asked Sunday for a meeting with Steve Capus, the president of NBC News, to protest what the campaign called signs that the network is "abandoning non-partisan coverage of the Presidential race."  [...]

In this case, the campaign is objecting to a statement by NBC's Andrea Mitchell on "Meet the Press" questioning whether McCain might have gotten a heads-up on some of the questions that were asked of Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), who was the first candidate to be interviewed Saturday night by Pastor Rick Warren at a presidential forum on faith. [...]

Mitchell reported that some "Obama people" were suggesting "that McCain may not have been in the cone of silence and may have had some ability to overhear what the questions were to Obama. He seemed so well prepared."

Never mind about the "cone of silence" issue. Obama went in front of a fundamentalist audience and said he was pro-choice...did anyone really expect that one to be a winner? So let's just stick with the fact that the McCain camp is not only full of a bunch of whiners, but they're hypocrites as well. McCain & Company had no problem with newscasters across the country repeating their bullshit claims about Obama's cancelled visit with wounded troops and now they're going to complain because Mitchell reported on what Obama's people were saying? Shut. Up.

From John McCain's speech today to the Veterans of Foreign Wars:

Even in retrospect, he would choose the path of retreat and failure for America over the path of success and victory. [...]

Behind all of these claims and positions by Senator Obama lies the ambition to be president.

More thinly veiled accusations of treason? It's time for the Obama campaign to stop "respecting" John McCain's service to this country more than 40 years ago and start pounding him for his repeated failures in judgement over the past seven years.

There was a lengthly article in yesterday's New York Times titled, "Response to 9/11 Offers Outline of McCain Doctrine."

Now, as Mr. McCain prepares to accept the Republican presidential nomination, his response to the attacks of Sept. 11 opens a window onto how he might approach the gravest responsibilities of a potential commander in chief.

What follows is 2,800+ words about John McCain advocating taking out Saddam Hussein on September 12, 2001, praising the performance of Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney, his support for Ahmed Chalabi and the Iraqi National Congress, tying Iraq to 9/11 and the anthrax attacks, praise for Bill Kristol and David Brook's vision, and of course, WMD, WMD, WMD. In other words, the McCain Doctrine is to be rash, a poor judge of character, hyperbolic, and of course, wrong, wrong, wrong.  

The article finishes with McCain saying:  

I believe voters elect their leaders based on their experience and judgment — their ability to make hard calls, for instance, on matters of war and peace. It’s important to get them right.

The New York Times buried the lede.

Via Think Progress, it seems like John McCain forgot about a crisis or two or three.

Given that McCain has been using the situation in Georgia to pretend he's the president (speaking of presumptuous), it's not surprising that he wants to present this as the biggest crisis ever. And he's right, assuming you forget the Gulf War, and Somalia, and the Rwandan Genocide, and the earlier war in Georgia, and the breakup of Yugoslavia and all the wars that spawned, and 9/11, and Afghanistan, and Iraq and North Korean nuclear testing, and the war in Lebanon, and Darfur -- then this is the first serious international crisis since the end of the Cold War.

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Gail Collins seems oddly obsessed with the story of Lin Miaoke and Yang Peiyi.

Timothy Egan points out that John McCain is no Teddy Roosevelt, and that:

McCain has attacked Barack Obama for his popularity, on the advice of Karl Rove acolytes in his camp who think that being a global celebrity is a bad thing.

You want celebrity? As the most popular American in the dawning decade of the American Century, Teddy Roosevelt was a global superstar — "the most popular human being that has ever existed in the United States," as Mark Twain wrote.

Buzz Bissinger thinks that women's gymnastics is child abuse.

Paul M. Weyrich applauds George Bush's decision to attend the Beijing Olympics and thinks that if it wasn't for a couple of pesky foreign policy disasters, Bush would "go down in history as perhaps the greatest president since George Washington."

Thomas Sowell must have been napping because he is way behind on his Republican talking points on Barack Obama, forgetting to mention celebrity or attacking his patriotism. But Sowell still may have earned a McCain Point or two for the condescension in calling Obama's candidacy a "novelty."

John McCain shows some comedic talent with this opening in his Wall Street Journal op-ed:

For anyone who thought that stark international aggression was a thing of the past, the last week must have come as a startling wake-up call.

With more than 150,000 U.S. troops still in Iraq, yeah, that was quite a wake-up call.

Karl Rove, while representing all that is evil in the world, still manages to write a dull column on the upcoming election.

Dan Payne looks at presidential elections and the "Master Narrative."

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Thomas Friedman decided that he can't let John McCain's claim of being a friend to renewable energy go unchallenged.

He has missed all eight votes over the last year — which effectively counts as a no vote each time. Once, he was even in the Senate and wouldn’t leave his office to vote.

Maureen Dowd does not like the Clintons.

Craig Shirley says that the only function of a VP pick is to unify a party, and he has the perfect running mate for McCain...hypothetically.

Thomas Frank on what Barack Obama must do to win:

Mr. Obama cannot allow the right to profit from the discontent stirred up by their own misbehavior...He should not recoil from the bitterness that's out there. He should speak to it.  [...]

That's why this election must be a referendum on Republican rule and the destructive doctrines behind it. It is a contest to put the blame where it belongs.

Peter Beinart says that Barack Obama needs to embrace the race issue and confront white fears by "calling for the replacement of race-based preferences with class-based ones."

Robert J. Samuelson doesn't think the presidential candidates should be indulging the fantasy of low gas prices and energy independence.

Thomas Meany and Harris Mylonas discuss the danger of selectively supporting independence movements:

Like every great power, the U.S. favors self-determination movements that destabilize its competitors -- Russia, China, Iran -- and opposes (or ignores) ones that might upset our allies. That's the code of realism in foreign policy. But it's also a Pandora's box. If America opts not to respect the principle of national sovereignty, it discourages other world powers from doing so and undermines state sovereignty the world over.

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Richard Cohen thinks Russia "always fights dirty," and that their own little shock and awe campaign in Georgia is:

...a way to show the world that the old Russia is reasserting itself. This is the Russia that looks at Georgia no differently from the way the czars did or, for that matter, the way of that most infamous of Georgians, Stalin himself.

But hey, we need Russia on our side, and we'd probably do the same thing, so...

Mikhail Gorbachev says that the current hostilities between Russia and Georgia is all Georgia's fault. Well, except the part where the U.S. and NATO encouraged them.

Bob Herbert is angry that:

...the latest smoke screen in the presidential election, the bogus contention that lifting restrictions on offshore oil drilling would somehow, in the foreseeable future, bring down the price of gasoline for American motorists.

This absurd contention is now one of the main issues of the campaign...How pathetic that in the midst of a presidential campaign the loudest voices we are hearing on this subject are crying: "Drill! Drill! Drill!"

David Brooks compares the individualist versus the collectivist mentality.

Bruce Fein weighs in on the Salim Ahmed Hamdan verdict, and the "precedent that threatens to militarize justice and cripple due process."

Nat Hentoff has a few questions ready in case a President Obama or McCain decide to participate in regular Q&A sessions with Congress.

Bing West says, praise be, the war in Iraq is over and we won...dammit.

Randall J. Larsen is worried that the FBI theory Bruce Ivins is correct, because if it is:

...we could be living now in a world where a single individual -- with no prior training in weaponization of pathogens -- can convert anthrax spores into a dry-powdered weaponized form that was of a quality equal to (some would say better) than that produced in the not-too-distant past in billion-dollar, superpower arsenals.

Glenn Thrush of Politico has identified seven areas of concern for Barack Obama.

• He’s black. And Peter King (R-NY) vows to make his life a living hell.
• Virginia may be over-hyped even though he’ll probably win it.
• Michigan is in play, especially if Romney is added to the ticket. No word on what having Romney on the ticket would do in other states.
• Much like a terrorist attack, if the economy gets worse it might be good for McCain since Obama only leads by 17 points on economic issues.
• Bob Barr isn’t much of a factor.
• Not only is Obama black, but he’s not white. Or from the south.
• Some say that people might want a divided government.

So there you have it. Things are looking pretty grim for Obama.

There's just 84 days until the election, but more and more, John McCain's campaign is doing everything they can to shield their candidate from the press. Apparently fed up with foreign policy blunder, after blunder, after blunder, and mixed messages on exactly who speaks for John McCain, along with his habit of being known:

...to sign off on big campaign decisions and then to march off his own reservation.

...the McCain campaign decided to clamp down. After all, they don't want McCain ruining another great GOP tire gauge give-away. So they cut off access to the traveling press, and now are trying:

...to cut down on Mr. McCain’s use of his cellphone and limit the people who have regular access to Mr. McCain in an effort to keep him more focused, advisers said.

Yes, this wannabe leader of the free world is on friend and phone restriction so he doesn't get distracted. But you can't really blame the campaign when McCain continues to serve up gems like this:

I think the thing that helps me, I probably -- I don't know if you like this much detail -- if I can sleep in to about 7:30 or 8, then it really helps me. When I get up real early, like 5:30 or 6, then, you know, you don't go to bed until 10, 10:30 or 11 -- it seems to help me to get up a little later in the morning. [...]

I just get a little more tired. Never cranky, or testy. I just think I do better. I kinda can tell, and I think [my staff] can tell you, if I put in three or four 18-hour, 20-hour days in a row, then I'm not sharp. It's just a fact. I can be sharp if I get a little more rest.

Yes, there's an image you want to project...a president who won't be too sharp when that 3:00 a.m. call comes, and won't be up to speed without a solid eight hours.  

So, it looks like the McCain campaign's strategy for the duration is going to be to try and keep screw-ups to a minimum and the press at a distance. Which is quite a change from the vow McCain made about press access in the days after he was implicated in the Keating Five scandal:

I would henceforth accept every single request for an interview from any source, prominent or obscure, and answer every question as completely and straightforwardly as I could...It is a public relations strategy that I have followed to this day, and while it has gotten me in trouble from time to time, it has on the whole served both my interest and that of the public well. [Worth Fighting For - page 192]

Apparently John McCain has decided that public interest is going to have to take a back seat to self interest.

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Mikheil Saakashvili, president of Georgia, says the war is not of their choice or making, and that:

If Georgia falls, this will also mean the fall of the West in the entire former Soviet Union and beyond. Leaders in neighboring states -- whether in Ukraine, in other Caucasian states or in Central Asia -- will have to consider whether the price of freedom and independence is indeed too high.

Ronald D. Asmus and Richard Holbrooke believe that:

We have arrived at a watershed moment in the West's post-Cold War relations with Russia. [...]

Weak Western diplomacy and lack of transatlantic unity failed to prevent an avoidable war. Only strong transatlantic unity can stop this war and begin to repair the immense damage done. Otherwise, we can add one more issue to the growing list of this administration's foreign policy failures.

Paul Krugman hopes we're on the verge guaranteed health care for all.

David Limbaugh, proving that Rush isn't the only crazy Limbaugh, rants about terrorist-enabling, country-hating, communist-loving, and Barack Obama.

Arthur M. Borden knows that there are some people who think the war in Iraq was a bad idea, but they're wrong. And he thinks we really need to settle the question so we'll be ready to confront Iran, because he doesn't want to give anti-war people a reason to crow like they did when it turned out Saddam Hussein didn't have WMD.

Ronald Bailey, in a review of Geoffrey Kabat's Hyping Health Risks, blames activists, regulators and scientists for scaring the bejeebus out of the public for no reason,
although he does admit they were right about tobacco and asbestos.

Indur Goklany says that:

... gasoline is still more affordable today than it was during the Kennedy administration.

That doesn't make me feel any better.

Timothy Shriver reviews a movie he hasn't seen. Granted, the excerpts sound pretty offensive, but still...

Yesterday it was pointed out that when it came time for John McCain to introduce himself to the huge, non-political Olympic audience, he chose to go negative, continuing with his latest campaign theme:

Vote for the old mean nasty guy you thought you admired eight years ago. I'm John McCain and I approved this message.

Compare that to the ad the Obama campaign went with:

And so an audience of millions, many just starting to pay attention to the presidential campaign, have met the candidate with a vision for the future and the "wrinkly white-haired dude". All around, that's advertising money well spent.

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Terry Box isn't going to feel guilty about his car, and says that:

...despite the growing drumbeat against them, the allegations that they're melting glaciers and maiming thousands, the claim that we're choking on them, the fear that they're our worst national addiction, I love them dearly.

They are my "carma." And I refuse to go on the national guilt trip about them.

Peter Mansoor, David Petraeus' former boy Friday, makes a thinly veiled pitch for John McCain's plans for Iraq.

Ed Feulner says that Barack Obama wants to stick it to the rich and is apparently one of the few people on the planet who wants to return to the '70's. Key scary word: Carter.

Jeffrey T. Kuhner thinks that:

President Bush's decision to attend the opening ceremony of the Olympics in Beijing was a disgrace - both to the United States and to China's long-suffering people. Mr. Bush's appearance has given political legitimacy and moral credibility to Beijing's murderous regime.

Kuhner also hopes the U.S. kicks commie neo-fascist empire ass and brings home the gold.

Nicholas Kristof says that there's a cancer on our foreign policy and that:

In short, the United States is hugely overinvesting in military tools and underinvesting in diplomatic tools. The result is a lopsided foreign policy that antagonizes the rest of the world and is ineffective in tackling many modern problems.

After all, you can’t bomb global warming.

Maureen Dowd continues to waste space, using 800 or so words to tell us that John Edwards is a narcissist.

Joseph L. Galloway says that more troops won't make a difference and that we can't "shoot our way out of Afghanistan."

Thomas Friedman thinks we need to take a page out of Denmark's book when it comes to dealing with an energy crisis.

Leaving aside the pollution and the politics, the opening ceremonies at the Beijing Olympics, from the more than 2000 drummers that started the show, to gymnastic gold medalist Li Ning soaring around the top of the stadium before lighting the torch, were nothing short of spectacular. Simply unbelievable pagentry.

And throughout the coverage, the advertisements were positive and upbeat, and often playing on the theme of the Olympics, "One World, One Dream." And then, on a break during the Parade of Nations, there was John McCain introducing himself to a huge, non-political audience by running an attack ad on Barack Obama. Proving once again that he is willing to do or say anything to win, McCain chose to inject politics into the Olympics with a negative ad. Unfortunately for McCain, the unspoken and unintended message was:

Vote for the old mean nasty guy you thought you admired eight years ago. I'm John McCain and I approved this message.

Let the games...continue.

Yesterday John McCain said that he doesn't begrudge Barack Obama his vacation and that he could use a little more shut-eye himself:

If I put in three or four 18-hour, 20-hour days in a row, I'm not sharp. It's just a fact. I'm more sharp if I get a little rest.

Isn't it comforting to know that the man running for the most powerful job in the world isn't too sharp when he's tired?