As you must know by now, Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki has publicly endorsed Obama’s plan for the withdrawal of U.S. troops. How is that playing in Republican circles? Er, not well… Allahpundit at Hot Air: “So discombobulated is Team Maverick that they seem to be spinning in two different directions (while partially redeeming themselves by the pointed use of the term ‘inartful’ to describe Maliki’s comments). Even so, McCain starts off well here by turning the discussion...

It’s all part of the Republican Smear Machine’s ongoing efforts to brand/label Obama. Hillary helped out during the primaries, desperately trying to make the case that he isn’t ready to be president, but the Republicans are on to the next stage of the game. The Rev. Wright story had some staying power, though Obama diffused it both with his brilliant speech on race and by effectively distancing himself from his former pastor. With McCain running on his experience, as if being around...

As if it weren’t enough that some in the media are turning the election into a referendum on Obama, thereby sparing McCain anything resembling serious scrutiny, and that the media are generally: – holding Obama to a much higher standard than they are McCain, emphasizing Obama’s nuanced policy shifts (and calling them opportunistic flip-flops) while letting McCain get away with flipping and flopping all over the place, pandering to different audiences, on issues like Iraq and immigration,...

Well, not quite. He was a small-time investor, not a mogul, but, if nothing else, as Max Blumenthal recounted at HuffPo the other day, Gramm’s forays into the porn industry in the ’70s were rather amusing. Back in 1973, he tried to invest $15,000 in a soft-core movie called Truck Stop Women (“No Rig Was Too Big For Them To Handle”). With that oversold, he eventually put his money in Beauty Queens (about pageant judges and contestants). When that fell through, he “contributed...

I have asserted on numerous occasions that Hillary will not be Obama’s running mate. And yet… It’s not like any of the other apparent contenders are obvious choices (or would be perfect picks). One can make compelling, if not convincing, cases for the likes of Biden, Dodd, and Nunn, for example, but one can also make compelling cases against pretty much all of them. Even, I suppose, against Gore and Edwards — the former was my preference for the top spot all along, the former...

Syrian President Bashar Assad is in Paris to meet with French President Nicolas Sarkozy. And, as the BBC is reporting, the two are getting along rather well. Sarkozy is set to host a meeting between Assad and Lebanese President Michel Suleiman, a meeting that could lead to renewed diplomatic ties between Syria and Lebanon. Meanwhile, Sarkozy has announced that he will visit Syria later this year. All in all, “[t]he Paris visit is a big boost for [Assad], helping Syria to break out of its diplomatic...

Because both Russia and China can use their veto power as permanent members of the Security Council to block anything and everything they want, even overriding decisive majorities. And they’ve both vetoed U.S.- and U.K.-backed sanctions on Mugabe’s illegitimate regime in Zimbabwe. And why did they do that? Because China, for one, does business with Mugabe, and because neither Russia nor China wants the U.N. to challenge undemocratic regimes. Here’s how the Russian ambassador put...

It’s so funny because it could be true. From The Plank’s Jason Zengerle: As if expectations for Obama’s convention speech weren’t already ludicrously high, it now looks like he’s going to give it in a 75,000-seat football stadium (as opposed to a 20,000-seat basketball arena). Meanwhile, in a bid to further lower expectations, McCain is expected to announce that he’s moving the site of his convention speech from Minneapolis’s Xcel Energy Center to the lounge...

So says Weekly Standard editor and Fox News host Fred Barnes, who argued today on the latter that McCain should win over the right by bashing gays: In particular, gays in the military for one. We know Barack Obama is for allowing gays in the military, and Bill Clinton tried to do, but backed off. This is not a popular issue. Gay marriage is another one. These are both issues that I think McCain’s going to have to use. You can’t ignore the right. If he does, he’ll lose. Beautiful. Playing on...

As Biloxi’s Sun Herald is reporting, Mississippi Senator Thad Cochran, a Republican, has told the story of how his colleague John McCain once got into “a physical confrontation” on a diplomatic mission in Central America: Cochran said he observed McCain engage in a physical confrontation with a Sandinista while participating in a diplomatic mission led by Sen. Bob Dole and others in the fall of 1987. Cochran, McCain — who had won election to the Senate that year — and...

Remember back during the primaries when Hillary was pretty much trouncing Obama among Hispanic voters and there was all that talk about how Hillary’s success among Hispanics contributed to her so-called “electability” and how doing so poorly among Hispanics would be a big problem for Obama come general election time? Yeah, well… here’s Gallup: Hispanic registered voters’ support for Barack Obama for president remained consistent and strong in June, with Obama leading...

From yesterday’s WaPo: A Win by McCain Could Push a Split Court to Right Huh, you think? ********** It’s obvious, yes, but it needs to be said. Many people still seem to regard McCain as some sort of moderate, a maverick moderate who isn’t like most Republicans. While he’s broken with his party in the past, though, he isn’t nearly the maverick or moderate his media image would suggest he is, along with his various detractors on the far right and some of his admirers...

This was Obama on Friday, speaking in Jacksonville (via Reuters): It is going to be very difficult for Republicans to run on their stewardship of the economy or their outstanding foreign policy. We know what kind of campaign they’re going to run. They’re going to try to make you afraid. They’re going to try to make you afraid of me. He’s young and inexperienced and he’s got a funny name. And did I mention he’s black? ***** We know the strategy because they’ve...

These two headlines from Think Progress sum it all up: – Kristol: Bush Might Bomb Iran If He ‘Thinks Senator Obama’s Going To Win’ – Bolton: Israel Will Attack Iran After U.S. Election But Before Inauguration, Arab States Will Be ‘Delighted’ So they both said on Fox News yesterday morning. (Of course.) They and the warmongering neocons of their ilk have said much the same thing before, of course: There will be military action undertaken against Iran. What...

ABC News’s Jake Tapper suggests that Obama’s 6-point lead over McCain (48-42) in a recent poll is actually “a surprisingly small lead considering that the incumbent Republican president George Bush is at record lows and public opinion overwhelmingly feels the country is on the ‘wrong track’.” He argues that Obama has not received much of a “bounce” from his victory over Hillary and that there is still “resistance from Clinton supporters.” I...

“Curveball” — the Iraqi exile who, through German’s Federal Intelligence Service (BND), provided disinformation (i.e., lies) that served as one of the key planks in Bush’s pre-Iraq War case against Saddam on alleged WMDs — has finally spoken publicly (h/t: TPM). Largely discredited and living in Germany, where he hardly lives like a king, Rafid Ahmed Alwan now claims that he is “not guilty,” that “[e]verything that’s been written about [him]...

In case you missed it — and, well, most of us did — President Bush gave an interview to The Times (U.K.) in Slovenia the other day during which he admitted that, well, things haven’t all gone well during his presidency: President Bush has admitted to The Times that his gun-slinging rhetoric made the world believe that he was a “guy really anxious for war” in Iraq. He said that his aim now was to leave his successor a legacy of international diplomacy for tackling Iran. In...

Actually, I like golf. I used to play it from time to time and enjoyed it immensely. It’s just not as easy to do when you live in Toronto (as I do) and have other, more pressing priorities. ********** Regardless, the truth is that a lot of golfers are really stupid, at least if global warming denial is any indication (and I think it is): NPR commentator Frank Deford had a segment this morning about golf courses, in which he cited a Golf Digest poll showing that 41 percent of golfers believe...

John McCain is yet again calling for a gas-tax holiday. Remember that terrible idea that surfaced a while back? (He and Hillary were for it, Obama was against it.) It’s nothing but pandering populism, and it’s been thoroughly criticized by everyone know who knows anything about it. Here’s how I put it last month: “Obama is right not to sign on to this madness. And why is it madness? Because it’s ‘a crass ploy for votes’ that would stuff the coffers of the...

AMERICAblog’s John Aravosis has a fantastic (and invaluable) post up today examining some of the bigotry that can be found at McCain’s website — and it’s pretty revealing. Entering search terms like “fag,” “bitch,” and “Jew,” he found a discussion thread on whether or not Obama is the anti-Christ (including a comment suggesting that the anti-Christ is “an apostate Jew”), comments calling Obama “a Muslim fag” and the...