John McCain

Earlier this year, at the Arab League Summit in Damascus, when Muammar Qaddafi’s turn came at the lectern, he launched into a spirited and fiery criticism, a rant, really, directed at his fellow Arabs, specifically on the issue of Palestine and Israel. “Whatever happened to the cause (Palestinian) we had before 1967?” he asked his audience. “Were we lying to ourselves or to the world?” he continued. “How can you say that Israel must return to the pre-1967 borders? Does Palestine consist only of the West Bank and Gaza? If so,” he added with a air of disgust, “it means that the Israelis did not occupy it in 1948.  read more »

Who would look best in a black rubber suit? The candidates will have to duke it out after Entertainment Weekly asked both John McCain and Barack Obama about their pop culture favorites. No surprise that they'd want to take a spin on the Bat bike...

McCain:

He does justice sometimes against insurmountable odds. And he doesn't make his good works known to a lot of people, so a lot of people think he's just a rich playboy.

Obama:

I was always into the Spider-Man/Batman model. The guys who have too many powers, like Superman, that always made me think they weren't really earning their superhero status.

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Appearing on WNYC's Brian Lehrer Show (hosted today by Amy Eddings), Chuck Schumer praised Barack Obama and said he isn't worried about Obama's lack of progress in the general election polls because he's still an unknown figure to voters.

Schumer said the polls will swing to the Democat "as people get to know Obama--and particularly if he campaigns on issues. " Then he added, "With one caveat: they do have to hit back."

The message behind McCain's "Celeb" ad, Schumer said, was, "He's not one of us, he's a celebrity, he's an elitist".

"That's what they did with John Kerry," Schumer said, adding, "I would have been a little tougher."

Asked if he had any suggestions for Obama's V.P. pick Schumer replied, "Not publicly."

It was pretty clear back when Hillary Clinton first used the line, "I know Senator McCain has a lifetime of experience he will bring to the White House. And Senator Obama has a speech he gave in 2002," that no matter who won the Democratic primary, her praise for McCain would return at some point in the general election.

Here's McCain's new Web ad.

Democrats are frustrated and Republicans are amazed: Barack Obama is not running away with the presidential race.

This is the presidential election, we have been told, that a Democrat can’t lose. The economy is in decline, with unemployment on the rise, President Bush’s approval ratings in the basement and virtually everyone convinced that America is “on the wrong track.” But the race remains tight, at least according to the polls.

The McCain camp would no doubt like to keep the focus of the coverage where it was for most of last week, on story lines far from the economy. The narratives were the ones they dictated: Obama’s presumptuousness, the success of the surge and the Democrats’ opposition to offshore drilling (which has popularity ratings approximately double that of Bush and Congress combined.  read more »

Conventional wisdom holds that members of the House of Representatives, many of them elected by just a sliver of their home state's electorate, are too anonymous, too untested, and just too risky to warrant serious vice-presidential consideration. A running mate, especially with the suffocating media scrutiny that defines politics these days, needs to bring a higher profile and deeper resume to the table.

In many ways, this is true. As anyone who's spent more than a few minutes in the Speaker's Lobby of the U.S. House can attest, the average House backbencher is less suited to and equipped for the national stage than even Dan Quayle was in 1988.  read more »

In bleak news, the three-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina is approaching, which might have you feeling a bit concerned about the future of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. But don’t worry. The commercial alternative rock bands of the mid-1990s have it covered! Pitchfork reports that a slew of musicians, including R.E.M., Nine Inch Nails, Pearl Jam, the Indigo Girls and—wait for it—311, have signed a letter calling upon Barack Obama and John McCain to attend a Google- and YouTube-sponsored presidential forum in New Orleans on Sept. 18.

"Due to the nation's need for energy and dependable shipping lanes, we are losing a football field's worth of wetlands every 45 minutes to erosion.  read more »

Barack Obama's fund-raising and registration drive has caught the attention of the Republican opposition.

The R.N.C. is sending mail soliciting donations of $100 for a "Two-Month Emergency Pledge" to help John McCain. Saying the next two months will determine the winner of the election, the mail comes with a letter from McCain, who writes "The Obama Democrats have launched a massive 50-state registration drive which will result directly in dramatically increasing Democrat voter turnout on November 4th."

"With enormous fundraising resources at their disposal – including wealthy special interests, Big Labor, and unregulated "527" soft-money groups – they have already registered more than 200,000 new Democrats in Pennsylvania, more than 165,000 in North Carolina, and more than 150,000 in Indiana.  read more »

The Democrats are supposed to own the issue of energy, if only because they've mastered the art of tarring Republicans as the party of Big Oil. It's a caricature that the G.O.P., with its mocking scorn for conservation, addiction to corporate tax cuts and unkickable habit of nominating oil men for national office, has done nothing to refute.

Of course, the Democrats are also (supposedly) the masters of the blown political save, experts at devising new and ever more elaborate means of snatching electoral defeat from the jaws of victory. So it's only fitting that now, just as energy assumes unprecedented prominence in a presidential campaign, they've gone and adopted a maddeningly incomprehensible message that threatens to forfeit the powerful emotional advantage they've enjoyed on the subject for decades.  read more »

Paris Hilton has filmed a mock campaign ad responding to John McCain's references to her in his latest campaign ad. In it, she calls the Republican candidate "the oldest celebrity in the world. [NY Daily News]

Writer Jay McInerney says John Edwards's reported mistress, Rielle Hunter, is "a nice girl"; she was the inspiration for the character of Alison Poole in Mr. McInerney's 1988 novel Story of My Life. [P6]  read more »