Yes, it's in a recommended diary by MLDB, but it's worth repeating here. The DNC's latest ad about how John McCain defines "rich" kicks ass:

From an email press release from the Obama campaign:

CHICAGO—Today the Obama campaign announced a new TV ad focused on the economy to air beginning Thursday in 16 battleground states. The new ad entitled Book highlights Obama's plan to break with the failing economic policies of the past eight years and put America's middle class first. The ad will run in AK, CO, FL, IA, MI, MO, MT, NM, NV, NH, NC, ND, OH, PA, VA, and WI.

Open thread yourselves away, folks.

Welcome to the McCain administration, where your foreign policy will be run by lobbyists and your president will be prepped by paid flacks for diplomatic phone calls:

While Aide Advised McCain, His Firm Lobbied for Georgia
Campaign Dismisses Timing of Phone Call, Contract

By Matthew Mosk and Jeffrey H. Birnbaum
Washington Post Staff Writers

Sen. John McCain's top foreign policy adviser prepped his boss for an April 17 phone call with the president of Georgia and then helped the presumptive Republican presidential nominee prepare a strong statement of support for the fledgling republic.

The day of the call, a lobbying firm partly owned by the adviser, Randy Scheunemann, signed a $200,000 contract to continue providing strategic advice to the Georgian government in Washington.

Thought it was hard to top the Bush-Cheney cabal's spit-in-your-face Energy Task Force, where oil company executives authored our energy policy? Think again.

John McCain and his lackeys have taken being in someone's pocket to a whole new level. Heck, look at the cross-marketing campaign they've got going, with Georgian President Saakashvilli giving their man a personal shout-out when the cameras turn his way.

And of course, when he presumes to speak for all Americans, it will be nice to know it's a cross between an advertorial and a paid endorsement!

We're not just looking at the third Bush term. This is the third Bush term on international steroids. Which country will own your president next week, hmmmmm?

Tonight's Rescue Rangers are Louisiana 1976, PaintyKat, a synthetic cubist, dopper0189, Larsstephens and drbcladd, with Got a Grip as editor du jour.

Illumination

• Johnny Venom brings us another installment of his excellent economic series, complete with charts: Manufacturing Monday: Numbers, Tesla, world trade reversal, and China overtakes US. (a synthetic cubist)
• 8ackgr0und N015e exposes criminal security weaknesses by juxtaposing complex technological systems during the Infowars: Free subway rides AND stealing elections!!!. (Larsstephens)
• Boxer7 explains the shifting geopolitical emphasis due to global warming by telling us What the Coast Guard knows: Battleground Arctic. (Larsstephens)
• gmoke attempts to productivly reframe our vociferous progressive discourse with Attitude Advertising Versus Practical Solutions. (Larsstephens)

Contemplation

• Seneca Doane ponders just how many sins modern politicians ought to confess if planning to run for public office in Secrets and Lies (and Sanctimonious Columnists). (PaintyKat)
• ScottyUrb writes a very personal 100^th diary about his Values. Why are you progressive? (drbcladd)
• Tula Connell perfectly captures the essense of the corporate elite's belief system in Chamber of Commerce Staff Gets Drunk, Blames Workers. (dopper0189)

Inspiration

• In McCain buzzkill antidote: Cullen Jones shatters stereotypes, saves lives, davidkc muses on the unique significance of one of our gold medalists. (a synthetic cubist)

jotter shares the High Impact Diaries.

asimbagirlhasTop Comments - Favorite Summer Vacation Edition.

TPM has put together a powerful video on John McCain's consistent mental fumbling. God help us all if he's elected president.

Now go forth and thread your little hearts away.

• "I wish American television would stop using Tiananmen Square as a  set. This is a freaking grave. This is a place where a really bad thing happened. We would not tolerate French television coming to New York and using Ground Zero as a backdrop for talking about how happy and merry New Yorkers are. The corporations that own and sponsor the     US coverage of the Olympics have to tap dance around the Chinese human rights record, but my lord let's not use this place as a backdrop. People died there."  Sports analyst Charlie Pierce on NPR's Only a Game.—Devilstower
• The Colorado Independent's Wendy Norris shows that the "Human Life Amendment" on the ballot in Colorado this November is backed by violent anti-abortionists whose primary goal is to make abortion illegal by granting constitutional rights to fertilized human eggs.—smintheus
• The toxic, tragic legacy of the Love Canal disaster is in the news again:

  Renee Retton carries the 1978 photo of her pregnant mother as a reminder of the baby sister who was never born. The near-term infant was delivered stillborn four days after she died in utero — just months after the family had evacuated from Love Canal, a Niagara Falls, N.Y., neighborhood that sits atop 22,000 tons of toxic waste.          Like her sister "Julie Ann" and thousands of other children, Retton was conceived during the nation's worst chemical disaster.  Her medical history is daunting: an arterial birth defect, deformed teeth, thyroid disease, pernicious anemia, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and a string of auto-immune conditions.

  And now, on the 30th anniversary of Love Canal, a preliminary New York State Department of Health study says women like Retton, whose mothers were pregnant and exposed to those chemicals, have double the risk for reproductive problems — low birth weights, pre-term deliveries and birth defects.

  —Plutonimum Page

• Bikes are considered a security risk at the Democratic National Convention.—smintheus
       
• Right-wing evangelical leaders are all about wedge issues:

  Huckabee, Family Research Council President Tony Perkins, and Lou Engle, the leader of The Call, a young adult movement, plan to hold a news conference Friday calling on Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Barack Obama (D-Ill.) to spend more time talking about issues that matter to evangelical voters...

  Engle admits that the press conference and rally on the mall are designed to counter the [Rick] Warren candidate interviews, which he predicted would be more politically correct and focus more on "what the church is for rather than what it is against."

  Engle, a vehement opponent of abortion rights, said the goal of the rally on the mall is to "drive the issue of abortion like a wedge into the soul of the nation."

  —smintheus

• The surprising and gradual renewal of acquaintance between Joe Klein and journalistic integrity continues apace, with a post at Swampland today in which he lambasts war luster extraordinaire Robert Kagan, who pulled the Nazi comparison genie out of the bottle on the pages of the Washington Post this morning when writing about Georgia and Russia. Klein:

  But it is important, yet again, to call out the endless neoconservative search for new enemies, mini-Hitlers. It is the product of an abstract over-intellectualizing of the world, the classic defect of ideologues. It is, as we have seen the last eight years, a dangerous way to behave internationally. And it has severely damaged our moral authority in the world...I mean, after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, after Abu Ghraib, after our blithe rubbishing of the Geneva Accords, why should anyone listen to us when we criticize the Russians for their aggression in the Caucasus?

More mysterious donations are being uncovered from John McCain's big-time bundler Harry Sergeant, this time for Charlie Crist in Florida:

Jihan Nassar, a homemaker in Corona, Calif., is listed as a $500 donor to the campaign of Florida Gov. Charlie Crist. But she insists she never gave a dime.

''I can't make any donations, financially,'' Nassar said Friday. "We never made any donations, sir. I have no idea what you are talking about.''

Nassar and her husband, Waleed, are among more than three dozen California donors listed as giving to Crist's campaign on June 19, 2006 -- donations bundled by a controversial Delray Beach defense contractor now under scrutiny for contributions to GOP presidential candidate John McCain.

On Thursday, the McCain campaign said it would return $50,000 in donations tied to businessman Harry Sargeant III, finance chairman of the Florida Republican Party and a college buddy of Crist's. Sargeant has said the California donors were solicited by a business partner, Mustafa Abu Naba'a, a Jordanian with an apartment in Miami-Dade, records show.

Last week, if you recall, TPM got hot on the trail of Sergeant hustling up contributions for McCain in the same Inland Empire region in California.

Funny how Crist and McCain are being talked up as a ticket, and they share the same shady bundler. And let us not waste an opportunity to re-remind the media to answer the very interesting question Marc Ambinder posed last week:

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?

From the Obama campaign, "Embrace," which will begin running on national cable tomorrow:

And from the DNC, "Job Killing John," which was scheduled to be used by surrogates in Pennsylvania yesterday in preparation for McCain's swing through the Keystone State today:

And from the Ohio Democrats, watch McCain surrogate Rick Davis dance around his lobbyist ties and responsibility for job losses in this new web ad:

(Discussion of "Embrace" ad is going on in jazmen8's recommended diary.)

Fire-Breathing Liberal: How I Learned to Survive (and Thrive) in the Contact Sport of Congress
By  Robert Wexler
St Martin's Press
New York: June 2008
264 pages, $25.95

For a Congressman who's only served in the House for a decade and a half, Robert Wexler of Florida has performed quite the feat, managing to find himself at Ground Zero for not one, but two, of the most divisive issues in America's recent political history -- Bill Clinton's impeachment trial and the Florida 2000 recount. The former occurred during his first term, when he unexpectedly found himself as one of Clinton's most passionate on-air defenders. And in-depth involvement with the 2000 recount was foisted upon him by geography and history--the counties at the heart of the controversy were those he represented.

And as Fire-Breathing Liberal shows, Wexler managed to keep a level head and sense of humor throughout it all. His tales-from-the-trenches biography juggles his appealing mix of idealism and realism, explanation and anecdote, in just the right amount. What's delivered is an insider account of politics with an appealing, self-deprecating and entertaining twist. Consider Wexler's description of a portion of his childhood that many a political geek can identify with:

Norman and I would play a game titled Mr. President. Other kids were playing All-Star Baseball or Electric Football. We played Mr. President for hours at a time, five days a week. I grew up believing this was the most phenomenal game ever devised, which in many ways describes me. The object of the game was to win the presidential election. How many nine-year-olds knew that New York State had 43 electoral votes? Norman and I did. That fact might well sum up my childhood.

This kind of lovable, earnest dorkishness seems to be a Wexler trademark; indeed, it's part of what made Stephen Colbert's infamous set-up of Wexler, getting him to admit on-air to cocaine use and frequenting prostitutes, so terribly funny. He freely admits to being loud, passionate, intense and--lucky for us--a big, big fan of the netroots, the grassroots and our allies. His condemnation of the absurd deicison of Democrats voting to disavow the MoveOn Petraeus ad is refreshing and direct:

Many Democrats voted for the resolution [against MoveOn] to distance themselves from MoveOn and the substance of the newspaper advertisement. Just imagine the furor that would have resulted had we proposed a resolution to censure the right-wing Christian Coalition or Pat Robertson for one of their more outrageous proclamations, such as blaming 9/11 on homsexuals. I voted against the resolution, but unfortunately many of my colleagues did not, and it passed. It was not our proudest day.

As the title of this book indicates, Wexler joins the emerging grassroots in being unapologetic about liberals and liberalism, and given his outspokenness, it makes sense that as a first-term Congressman, he found himself the go-to man for media quotes in defense of President Clinton during the impeachment process. His common sense insistence that the private mistakes involved did not qualify as "high crimes and misdemeanors" seems obvious in retrospect, but at a time when many, many Democrats were scattering and harumphing, Wexler stood firm and found himself thrust into the limelight because so few voices in defense could be found. His own astonishment at his very public role shines through in Fire-Breathing Liberal; even years later, he's still preserved a "gee whiz" awe at his role and subsequent prominence. His accounts of conversations with President Clinton late at night are worth the price of the book. His singularly unimpressed and level-headed wife at one point answers the phone and tells the president her husband can't come to the phone because he's doing dishes.

These moments of ordinary/extraordinary are sprinkled throughout the work. Wexler takes the time to walk readers through his growing enchantment with foreign affairs, particularly fostering ties with Turkey, and how he believes the importance of internationalism affects us all deeply. Clearly, he's had practice explaining his interests to his constituents. His district is largely elderly, strongly Democratic and heavily Jewish. He details the condo meetings, Rotary Club banquets, school auditorium meetings--the nitty gritty of retail politics--with a fondness that seems difficult to feign. The feisty give-and-take between representative and the represented is warming to the populist-leaning heart.

Perhaps he earned his true stripes with his local base when he went to bat during the nightmare of the 2000 recount. Since Palm Beach County was home of the "butterfly ballot" debacle, Wexler ended up being the ad hoc coordinator of state, federal and judicial news and complaints, being a tireless, insistent advocate for every one of his residents' votes to be counted. Even at a distance of eight years, his anger over the election still bursts off the page:

Every politician learns how to lose as well as win--and as a Democrat I had a lot of practice losing. Through most of my career I'd tried to salvage what was possible, stand up for my constituents, and use the influence I had as a member of Congress in areas where partisanship played less of a role, such as foreign relations and constituent services, where I could do some good. But this Supreme Court ruling infuriated me. I was just outraged by it. Like many of my constituents, I feel it is a wound that will never completely heal.

What made both the Clinton impeachment and the unjust awarding of the presidency to Bush even more difficult for Wexler to swallow down the line was the refusal of the Democrats to consider investigations and impeachment against the current president as it became more and more apparent that serious constitutional (and criminal) violations were continuing to be perpetuated by the administration, unobstructed by the Democratic-majority Congress. As a result, Wexler's was one of the few voices continuing to assert the unpopular view that impeachment was not just a viable option, it was the only honorable one in light of the legacy we were possibly leaving open for Congressional hands-off precedents down the road:

Certainly there were legitimate arguments made against these proceedings. Many people reasoned that we'd been through this gut-wrenching process with President Clinton and it had ripped apart the nation. I responded by suggesting that the worst possible legacy of the Clinton impeachment would be to discourage future Congresses from examining valid allegations of constitutional violations against members of the executive branch. Should that happen, the tragedy of Clinton's impeachment would be compounded.

This really is a blast of a book to read; getting the behind-the-scenes lowdown on maneuvering legislation through committees, hitting the campaign trail vicariously with a gifted and passionate pol ... these are experiences political junkies should lap up in big doses. The writing is bright and lively, more conversational than professorial, and chapters are short and focused, easy to digest in small chunks or multiple sittings, since many can stand alone without a long narrative to follow. As you read, too, keep in mind that Wexler's name has been floated as a possible candidate to take on Mel Martinez for his Senate seat in 2010 (and a July poll showed him in a dead heat with the incumbent). Imagine what it would be like to have a U.S. senator from Florida proudly proclaiming;

If Republicans govern from the right and Democrats govern from the middle, when does the left get to govern? As a progressive, I fear my party has become more docile in the majority than we were in the minority.

Coming Up on Sunday Kos ....

• Contrary to the conventional wisdom, rural America isn't a vast sea of Red. mcjoan will review two books that explore the efforts by people in the heartland to fight back, and the progressive populism that's starting to take hold out there in the middle: Joshua Frank's and Jeffrey St. Clair's Red State Rebels and Greg Lemon's Blue Man in a Red State: Montana's Governor Brian Schweitzer and the New Western Populism.
• georgia10 will explore why--contrary to traditional media reports--McCain really isn't getting this newfangled "internets" thing after all.
• SusanG will review Rep. Robert Wexler's delightful Fire-Breathing Liberal: How I Learned to Survive (and Thrive) in the Contact Sport of Congress.

• Ken Silverstein at Harper's digs into the background of NBC's vapid China expert, Joshua Cooper-Ramos, who's providing commentary for the Olympics, and finds that roads lead to ... Henry Kissinger.
• What would Orwell blog? Beginning today, we might get a glimpse as The Orwell Prize begins to post, day by day, Orwell's diary from 1938 onwards. Today's entry appropriately begins the journey, seventy years to the day after the original was made.
• In dueling Saturday radio addresses, the two presidential candidates go at it. Obama focuses on our record deficits and Iraq's oil profit-driven surplus, and McCain focuses on ... Obama. And his celebrity. And that people like him. And that he gives good speeches.
• David Gregory is determined to prove that even when it's not about Barack Obama, it's all about Barack Obama.
• A total of 1500 killed in battle as chaos unfolds and Georgia and Russia get their war on.
• Nate Silver (a/k/a DK's poblano) from fivethirtyeight.com appeared on Countdown with Keith Olbermann last night to discuss his polling data which suggests an Obama victory in November. --Scout Finch
• Good headline in Newsweek as it runs a piece by factcheck.org: "More Tax Deceptions: McCain misrepresents Obama's tax proposals again. And again, and again."
• The FBI admits it improperly obtained records of phone calls by NYT and WaPo reporters in 2004. This is another case of the FBI using "exigent" letters to demand records without a warrant. Director Robert Mueller says whoopsie, we broke the law again.

  F.B.I. officials said the incident came to light as part of the continuing review by the Justice Department inspector general’s office into the bureau’s improper collection of telephone records through “emergency” records demands issued to phone providers.

  The records were apparently sought as part of a terrorism investigation, but the F.B.I. did not explain what was being investigated or why the reporters’ phone records were considered relevant.

  - smintheus

An ad from the Obama campaign that will begin running Monday in Reno and Las Vegas media markets:

The most recent Rasmussen poll, from 7/16, showed Obama leading McCain in the state by a razor-thin two points, 47 to 45, well within the 4.5% MOE.

Hillary Clinton hit the trail in Nevada Friday on behalf of Obama, adding to the push for Democrats to take the Silver State:

"Anyone who voted for me or caucused for me has so much more in common with Sen. Obama than Sen. McCain," Clinton told her cheering audience in the Las Vegas suburb of Henderson. "Remember who we were fighting for in my campaign."

Coming Up on Sunday Kos ....

• Contrary to the conventional wisdom, rural America isn't a vast sea of Red. mcjoan will review two books that explore the efforts by people in the heartland to fight back, and the progressive populism that's starting to take hold out there in the middle: Joshua Frank's and Jeffrey St. Clair's Red State Rebels and Greg Lemon's Blue Man in a Red State: Montana's Governor Brian Schweitzer and the New Western Populism.
• georgia10 will explore why--contrary to traditional media reports--McCain really isn't getting this newfangled "internets" thing after all.
• SusanG will review Rep. Robert Wexler's delightful Fire-Breathing Liberal: How I Learned to Survive (and Thrive) in the Contact Sport of Congress.

Mostly outrage is being expressed here about John Edwards' admission of having an affair. A sampling from the previous thread:

georgia10:

Fuck John Edwards.  I have zero respect for his self-serving ass.

I don’t really care what he does in his private life.  If he wants to screw around, fine.  I don’t agree with it, obviously, but it’s ultimately between him and Elizabeth.

But he chose to be a presidential candidate, cheating on a wife with cancer, and then running for the Democratic nomination with that fact tucked away waiting to break out as an October surprise.  Not only is that an incredibly selfish act, but he could have single-handedly given us another 8 years of Republican rule if he won the primaries.

His hubris makes my blood boil.  To think that he ran with this thinking he wouldn't endanger not just the presidency but this country too is just repulsive.

hekebolos:

I'm not going to listen to anyone who says "oh, this is just between him and Elizabeth" because that's not how we treat Newt Gingrich.

And second: what if he had become the nominee and this came out?  He would have basically handed the presidency to the Republican nominee.

Self-serving egomaniac with a distinct lack of moral fiber.

pat 208:

He had an affair, THEN asked us to nominate him.

He's not getting any more invitations to my Christmas parties, that's for sure.

I am SO glad he's not our nominee. But he put us all at risk by asking running.

And some objections to the expressed outrage:

RNinNC

WELL over 50% of married people have affairs. Especially men. McCain as well, but there's no massive MSM shock over that one. We can judge and throw rocks all we want, but dismissing someone for an affair is way overblown.

I'm stunned to see this place explode like this.

MrHinkyDink:

Jesus, you'd think JE was the first politician to have an affair, when they've been doing it for thousands of years.

Is it wrong? Yes. Does it erase all the good things about JE? No.

He's not evil. He just made a huge mistake. It's one he should have to pay consequences for, but it's certainly not an unforgivable sin.

And, of course, the top recommended diary right now by David Mizner:

This is none of our business.

This is an American sickness, this need to know--the belief that we're entitled to know--about the sexual lives of politicians.

But but but, you don't have a problem with the sex, you say, you have a problem with his lying about it. Yeah, that's what Ken Starr said too.

And a counter-argument to the recommended diary, this comeback by Meteor Blades:

You’re an asshole, John Edwards. Adultery is a private offense, of course, a matter to be resolved between you and your wife. How she chooses to deal with this ought not to be something that holier-than-thou pundits argue she should behave the way so many did in the case of Hillary Clinton in regards to Bill’s philandering. If she forgives you, as millions have done for their straying spouses, then count yourself lucky.

But I don’t forgive you. And I suspect many of your long-time supporters will not either. How can we? Your betrayal of us and the Democratic Party was not a private matter.

The latest from the DNC, "Maverick No More."

The only thing predictable about politics is that nothing is predictable. When I first decided to run for elective office I had no idea where it would take me. No politician does. But one place I never could have imagined being was in the back of my clothes closet, late at night, talking on the telephone to the president of the United States.

-- Robert Wexler, Fire-Breathing Liberal: How I Learned to Survive (and Thrive) in the Contact Sport of Congress

This thread is declared officially wide open.

Right on the heels of Monday's revelations from TPM about maxed-out, five-digit donations to John McCain from low-level energy company employees, comes news this morning of another nest of suspiciously generous working class donors, this one in Southern California, according to the Washington Post:

The bundle of $2,300 and $4,600 checks that poured into Sen. John McCain's presidential campaign on March 12 came from an unlikely group of California donors: a mechanic from D&D Auto Repair in Whittier, the manager of Rite Aid Pharmacy No. 5727, the 30-something owners of the Twilight Hookah Lounge in Fullerton....

Some of the most prolific givers in Sargeant's network live in modest homes in Southern California's Inland Empire. Most had never given a political contribution before being contacted by Sargeant or his associates. Most said they have never voiced much interest in politics. And in several instances, they had never registered to vote. And yet, records show, some families have ponied up as much as $18,400 for various candidates between December and March.....

Donors reached by phone or interviewed in person declined to explain who asked them to make the contributions.

Ibrahim Marabeh, who is listed in public records as a Rite Aid manager, at first denied that he wrote any political checks. He then said he was asked by "a local person. But I would like not to talk about it anymore." Neither he nor his wife is registered to vote, but the two donated $4,600 to Clinton and $4,600 to Giuliani in December.

Funny how McCain's donors seem as confused about their campaign contributions as their candidate is on ... well, just about everything else. This is going to be fun to watch unfold.

(Discussion also underway in smash artist's recommended diary.)