I'm pretty disappointed in John Edwards at the moment, Elizabeth rocks.  I'm glad that we dodged a bullet, Obama really is the right nominee.

All over the tv they are talking about Edward's political career being over because of this affair.  Sad stuff, I had dreamed of him being AG.  

With all this talk about how this has ruined his career and all, what about John McCain?

What's wrong with Clinton, Edwards, Spitzer, etc.?

[cross posted at E Pluribus Unum]

There's a new meme in town and Peggy Noonan is here to tell you about it:

Despite the much-hyped "parity" between the candidates in national polls, myself and many others are expecting an Obama landslide come November. Why? One huge reason is the "ground game," a term used to signify get-out-the-vote (GOTV) efforts in the final days of campaigning and on election day.

I hold no illusions, this is a republican state and has been for years. I live in one of the most republican districts in the state, Lexington County and it is represented by Joe Wilson R SC02, he is a retired reserve Army Colonel.  His Congressional biography can be read here.

He has been less than helpful in my personal dealings with the Veterans Administration on my claims for the exposures at Edgewood Arsenal. He is being opposed by Rob Miller as the Democratic nominee, if he wins it will have to be with the votes from outside the Lexington County area, he is from Beaufort, where he runs a small business with his wife. Hopefully with a large turnout for Obama, there will be enough down ticket momentum that Rob can unseat Joe Wilson.

Please Rec this diary.

We've had a running battle for the last couple of hours with some other freepers (RedStaters?) Bad Dad started an effort to freep a poll at AOL that showed McCain in the lead at 100% of the States.

Even though we all know that's total BS, it could ultimately have some impact if we let it stand. We've been playing Whack a Mole with these Right Wing freepers but the previous diary just did not get enough attention to have an impact.

How come all the cool YouTube grassroots political activity is coming from our side alone?

Let's assume that the media advisers and producers who make a living, periodically, turning out advertising for political campaigns are imitative, like their peers who are employed full-time by the various media conglomerates, but not as talented.

This would explain, for example, why the soap opera that was the Clinton Administration, scripted by the Thomasons, was less successful than, for example, the longer-running "Friends."

I'm not trying to be snide, but have been struck for some time by the inferior quality of the output of the Wallywood transplants, as opposed to those who "make it" in Hollywood.

With all of the hubub about Obama and the Antichrist, it is especially ironic that the next issue of the End Times Journal will apparently have an article about the possibility of John McCain being the Antichrist.

Some Excerpts from the Nation on this development for Evangelicals in the 2008 election.

Biblical scholars in Colorado Springs have uncovered startling evidence that Senator John McCain may be the Antichrist. Their conclusions, while highly controversial, may have a dramatic impact on the 2008 elections, since many Bible-believing Christians have already expressed doubts about McCain's fealty to Christianity.

Note: I'm the author of the book, Barack Obama: This Improbable Quest, but I'm not part of the Obama campaign.

David Freddoso's new book, The Case Against Barack Obama: The Unlikely Rise and Unexamined Agenda of the Media's Favorite Candidate is a badly-written hatchet job, full of errors and distortions and smears. The author, who works for the right-wing National Review and published his book with Regnery (which printed Unfit for Command, one of the Swiftboating attacks on John Kerry in 2004), simply fails to prove his key assertions, preferring to rely upon a bunch of false attacks, McCarthyist-style denunciations of Obama's associations, and extreme conservative attacks on abortion rights, all of it padded with lengthy digressions on topics unrelated to Obama and his record.

Since diaries today seem to be about the disgusting, negative ads John McCain is airing on Barack Obama, I'm joining the fray.

I just saw a piece on MSNBC that features McCain's newest ad, followed by some commentary.  Not only is it lying - the visuals it uses are nothing short of subliminal.

I'll get into it over the fold.  This is an action diary folks - we can make a statement about this ad with very little investment of time.

Calling it a "precautionary effort," John McCain's campaign said yesterday:

...that it would return all the contributions solicited for it by the Jordanian business partner of a prominent Florida fund-raiser for Mr. McCain.

For the McCain camp, the decision caps a queasy two days in which news accounts scrutinized a cluster of more than $50,000 in unusual contributions from a single extended family of Californians, the Abdullahs, and several of their friends.  [...]

The donations came under scrutiny because of their large size and the fact that for the most part, the Abdullahs do not appear wealthy. In addition, several of them interviewed expressed indifference or even hostility to Mr. McCain’s candidacy.

All this taken together has raised the question of whether at least some of the family and their friends may have been donors in name only who were reimbursed by someone trying to skirt individual contribution limits.

It raised the question? It seems pretty clear that there is no question about the fact that a $9,200 donation from a Taco Bell manager, or another $9,200 from a man who, after first denying the donation, said of McCain:

He’s like a worse copy than Bush. I’m still not going to vote for him."

...does more than raise a question. And while the McCain campaign is still feeling queasy, perhaps they could look at the donation from the Hess Corporation office manager who decided to hang onto her 15 year old car so she could give McCain $57,000.

Update by SusanG: Marc Ambinder asks his own very interesting question about these donations:

If there were a group of questionable donations all with the name Abdullah
that were funneled through a guy in Jordan
who is a Jordanian national
who is under investigation for war profiteering
and it were Barack Obama
instead of John McCain
would this be a bigger deal?

Second update by SusanG: And another great question posed by our own Zackpunk:

So wait a minute

Does that mean this Taco Bell manager gets to keep the money being "returned" to him?

Wouldn't that be a hoot?

According to First Read, the McCain campaign says the new ad called "Painful" will be run in Colorado, Iowa, Michigan, Missouri, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia (Northern Virginia), and Wisconsin.

It lies about Obama's economic policies, and the Obama campaign is calling McCain out on it:

This ad is a lie, and it's part of the old, tired politics of a party in Washington that has run out of ideas and run out of steam.

Obama Campaign Statement on TPM

Msnbc's First Read did some fact checking and backs Obama on this.  That, and more, after the fold

Seems like McCain is looking for reason to invade Russia. So I wanted to include some warm-up thoughts and then a great piece by David Ignatius written February 24, 2008. Temperament has been a key issue and Obama is starting to show he has the presidential restraint.

Now take McCain's lack of restraint with is cold-war vision and philosophy and we could have some major problems on our hands if he gets elected. Please recommend, and spread the word!

Maybe if McCain pisses Russia off enough, Russia will start giving surface to air missles to Afgans or even Iraq Sunni's and they can start taking out our choppers. Just like we did to Russia in the 80s in Afganistan.

As the conflict over the breakaway region of South Ossetia threatens to explode into all-out war between Georgia and Russia, Republican presidential nominee John McCain weighed in.  "What's most critical now," McCain said, "is to avoid further confrontation between Russian and Georgian military forces."  But given his confused and contradictory statements about expelling Russia from the G8, what may be most critical to American voters is whether John McCain understands what he's talking about.

According to CNN,

The campaign camp of GOP presidential candidate John McCain has invited Vice President Dick Cheney to speak at the Republican National Convention, a spokeswoman said.

I do hope there is ample opportunity for photos of the vice president and nominee!

Has Barack Obama become drill happy? MSM headline writers seem to think so: "Obama, In New Stand, Proposes Use Of Oil Reserve" claims the New York Times; "Obama Urges Opening Up Oil Reserves: Policy Shift Is His Second In A Week On Energy Issue" sez the Washington Post. The content of the Times is more nuanced than the headline, but an actual reading of both stories make it clear that what Obama proposes is something less than a "stand" and by no means a "shift." The Illinois senator wants to replace light oil in the strategic reserve with heavy oil. What neither paper bothers to do is to explain what that means and whether the proposal amounts to much. (I certainly don't know.) John McCain, meanwhile, wants to "drill here and drill now." (It's unclear if by "here" McCain means directly beneath wherever he happens to be standing.)

Today's front page piece from Politico is a classic shell game for moral from the GOP.  McCain's campaign is widely considered a media creation with little or no actually ground game, such as Rove's vaunted 72-hour project.  Enter today's campaign sourced article on the McCain field operation with its exact figures trying to show some level of competence and growth.  This is lipstick on a pig...

A month ago, McCain’s campaign made a combined 20,000 phone calls and door-knocks. Last week, they made 324,000 — a sixteen-fold increase.

McCain’s political operation is also now building at the precinct-level. DuHaime said they have “a few thousand” precinct captains and would have “thousands more” soon.

DuHaime said that, along with the RNC’s Victory operation, they had 130 offices in their targeted states and 300 paid staffers in the field between the campaign and party committee.

What is the best part of this article is the coy response provided by the Obama campaign after Martin's inquiry... that below the fold.