Spin Cycle

Barack Obama this morning pounced on comments by his rival John McCain, who couldn't remember how many homes he owns.

"I think - I'll have my staff get to you," McCain responded to a question posed by Politico, according to a story Thursday on the publication's Web site. "It's condominiums where - I'll have them get to you."

McCain’s memory lapse – which came days after McCain joked that being rich meant a $5 million income -- made it into Obama's stump speech here this morning.

"Somebody asked John McCain, 'How many houses do you have?' And he said, I'm not sure. . . .

Nia-Malika Henderson in Chester, Va.

Sen. Barack Obama and Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine met for about 15 minutes privately at the Omni hotel in Richmond today, just before heading to an economics town hall, where Kaine introduced Obama.

Asked whether Obama has asked him to be his running mate, Kaine said "I'm going to let the campaign speak for the campaign."

For now, the campaign is mum on the who and when of the VP selection.

But for the last few days, Kaine has been mentioned . . .

Nia-Malika Henderson in Chester, Va.

Hillary Clinton's staffers have organized an unusual 40-member "whip team" to quell embarrassing displays by her supporters on the convention floor at next week's Democratic convention in Denver, blasts brother Thrush at Politico.

They're planning to hand out placards to wave in front of any troublesome delegates.

Darragh Murphy, founder of the anti-Obama group PUMA (Party Unity My A--), which is planning a candle-lit "Beautiful Protest and Rise" at Denver's Cheesman Park Monday, says she has heard from a lot of Hillary's delegates and doubts anyone can prevent them from making a ruckus. "I think they'll try to do what she wants, but the delegates at this point have a mind of their own," she said.

Liz Moore

If Evan Bayh becomes the Democrats' VP nominee, you might at best start hearing about how he's a son-of-a-Birch (sorry). But selection of that other "Joe," Biden, would instantly prompt the word "plagiarism" for his clean lift of British Labor Party Leader Neil Kinnock's speech and that, in turn, would kick off a recycling of the stories about Obama having snagged portions of speeches used by Massachussetts Gov. Deval Patrick, as described here.

Update: Some are reviving speculation that John McCain lifted a story from Solzhenitsyn.

Shockingly, the major drug companies don’t seem to have gotten word that Barack Obama is a disguised left-of-Lenin agitator with a radical program bent on nationalizing their holdings -- rather than what the evidence would tell you: that he’s someone with whom many of those Washington oligarchs and their financiers might in the final analysis feel quite safe. After all, there must be some reason these companies are pouring three times as much into the campaign coffers of the Illinois senator, as told here by Justin Blum of Bloomberg News, than they are to Sen. John McCain.

Oh, right - maybe it's the fact that McCain teamed up with Sen. Charles Schumer in 2000 looking to make it easier to bring low-cost generic drugs to the market. That brought opposition from makers of brand-name pharmaceuticals. The news agency quotes a Princeton economist as saying “the betting would be that if McCain were in the White House the drug industry would not have the receptive ear” that they have had from George W. Bush.

How's this for some reverse spin: "McCain: Change from Bush we can believe in?"

(Photo from U.S. Department of Justice Web site, warning of oxycodone diversion)

With polls tight, the Dems are counting on a Kumbaya windup to the contentious primary season a week from Thursday with Obama, his former rivals, and 76,000 adoring voters at Denver's Invesco Stadium. We'll be looking for that love this week. Not a lot of it out there at the moment, from what we can see.

On the Obama side, even a really nice guy like Jon Cooper, his Long Island chairman, is irritated by the deal to allow Hillary's name to be placed in nomination, a move he calls "a distraction."

"If this is what the die-hard Clinton supporters need to get past this and allow them to get behind Sen. Obama, then so be it," he said Friday. On the plus side, the drama....

Liz Moore

Obama meets on energy issues with T. Boone Pickens, who backed the "Swiftboating" of John Kerrry.

In California, McCain sticks to stock answers against an evangelical pastor's admonishment.

But a partisan commentator puts the appearance in the McCain column for the "gravity and poignancy" of his answers.

Close race intensifies, heading into the final two-and-a-half months.

Obama beats McCain in fundraising for the last month, $51 million to $27 million.

Evan Bayh, center of some VP speculation, slams McCain as too war-hungry, dissecting the candidate's "We are all Georgians" impulse.

McCain calls for greater volunteerism and sacrifice.

Sen. Clinton visits south Florida later in the week -- and Sen. Cardin urges her supporters to get on board with Obama.

Democratic keynoter Mark Warner, who's running for Virginia's open U.S. Senate seat, has been collecting big-time funds from Beltway lobbyists, leading one blogger to ask if this is "change we can believe in."

Minnesota's Pawlenty would have to "watch his tongue" as an attack dog if he becomes McCain's running mate, warns this analyst.

Obama ad whacks McCain on the economy. Video below:

Some rightward commentators and fans are in a tizzy over this piece on Newsday's op-ed page by Jenna Kern-Rugile. A member of the Unitarian church herself, she speculated on a causal link between radio talkers like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, Long Island-raised Bill O'Reilly, and Mike Savage (never mind that Savage refers to Limbaugh as 'Hush Bimbo') and an attack by 58-year-old Jim D. Adkisson, who walked into the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church in Knoxville and opened fire, killing two people and seriously wounding seven others. The man was quoted by police as saying he'd gone after the Unitarians "because of its liberal teachings and his belief that all liberals should be killed because they were ruining the country, and that ... the Democrats had tied his country's hands in the war on terror and had ruined every institution in America with the aid of media outlets."

Kern-Rugile, a frequent contributor, expressed this opinion: "Might the shooter have heard talk-show host Rush Limbaugh say that "liberalism is the greatest threat this country faces" and "the Islamofascists are actually campaigning for the election of Democrats" and that riots at the Democratic Convention would be 'the best damn thing that can happen to this country'? Might the shooter have heard talk-show host Sean Hannity say in 2006, 'There are things in life worth fighting and dying for, and one of them is making sure Nancy Pelosi doesn't become the speaker'?"

This struck a nerve, generating many hundreds of e-mails to the newspaper. Brent Bozell III, president of an organization called the Media Research Center, fires back with a letter to Newsday Publisher Tim Knight demanding an apology for the August 13 column. "She inexplicably and noxiously links the contemptible July 27 murders... to Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilly," Bozell said.

Bozell also demanded "that Ms. Rugile never again appear on the pages of Newsday." His Web site posting is here.

As you can surmise from the CBS report embedded below, the pro-Obama forces now write this as a story of party unity and strength under his aegis rather than his having jerked the knee to rid himself of a certain annoying reality, and the Clintonistas go with the narrative that she perseveres and will not be denied, at least totally, the place to which she's purportedly entitled based on the primaries. Meanwhile the Republican fuglemen lead that popular musical chorus number, "Democrats in Disarray, Disarray, Disarray..." with this year's version subtitled "The Clintons Have Hijacked the Convention." The beauty part: All three have a bit of truth, though the question is how you cut up the shares.

In a lengthy interview with Essence magazine linked here, "old guard" African-American candidate Jesse Jackson -- recently in the news for his caught-on-camera call-out of Barack Obama -- addresses generational division and calls the Iraq war "the premier issue of our time. The war is costing money, almost a trillion dollars. It’s costing lives. The war has alienated America in the world community."   AP File Photo

Glenn Thrush, who now hangs his hat(s) at Politico, reports: "The Obama campaign is denying House Ways and Means Chairman Charles B. Rangel a speaking role at this month’s Democratic National Convention — a move those close to the powerhouse Harlem congressman view as a spiteful snub. "

"Rangel surrogates approached Obama staffers this week about the possibility of securing him a slot at the podium, making the case that it would showcase reconciliation between the nominee and Hillary Rodham Clinton’s African-American supporters. "

"But they were told that the 78-year-old congressman’s support for Clinton earned him a place at the end of the line behind Barack Obama’s loyalists — even if Rangel played a crucial part in prodding Clinton to abandon her presidential bid in June. "

Here is the rest of it. Seems Rangel has been a lightning rod of late on a lot of fronts -- any theories?

For those watching the horse race in the Northeast, a lot of the attention focuses on the prospect that John McCain can peel off Democrats to win key states, most likely from those who preferred Hillary Clinton in the primary. But in the Midwest today, Jim Leach, a former Republican Congressman from Iowa, endorsed Barack Obama -- and specifically cited foreign policy, calling for "a new approach to our interaction with the world." That could play among centrist Democrats, but it's more damaging to McCain if members of the GOP out in America defect or stay home on Election Day. In this wire-service account, Leach says he's never known a time when the "American brand" was in worse repair. (Photo's from Princeton University, where Leach teaches).

Sen. John McCain told a campaign crowd that he had spoken with Georgia President Mikheil Saakashvili and told him that "the thoughts, prayers and support of the American people are with that great little nation as it struggles today." Report is here.

Obama, in Hawaii, told reporters that -- like McCain-- he wants to see a multinational approach to dealing with the crisis but according to the AP "added that U.N. Security Council should play a major role in helping end the crisis."

McCain declared that Russia's aggression shows a will to restore the old Russian empire (not the Soviet one). With the predictability of a hometown crowd at a ballpark, the emotional domestic noise will be -- depending on your partisan team -- either that McCain never met a potential military involvement he didn't like (per the Obamites) or Obama is removed and ineffectual (per the McCainites). And here, we are told Obama has moved into a more critical position against Russia's invasion.

Be your own judge. McCain's latest speech from Pennsylvania is below:

Obama makes what seems to be a fairly proportional comeback here against the flat 'celebrity' charge by McCain. The point of the McCain commercial, though, seemed to be to hit first. This Obama comeback takes a "so's your old man" approach and is a bit reminiscent of his "brush the dirt off" gesture when he was drawing flak from the Clinton camp during the primary. Take a look:

On page 19 of the August issue of "Yankees" magazine, which is published by the ball club and sold for $7 at the doomed Stadium, we find "quotes of the month" from both major-party presidential candidates.

This is magnanimously bipartisan, especially when you consider George Steinbrenner got in criminal trouble all those years ago involving campaign funds for President Richard Nixon, and in the modern age, Rudy Giuliani's ex-deputy Randy Levine runs the organization.

So the spread quotes Barack Obama, saying on July 9: "I'm a White Sox fan, but I believe in tradition, and there is no tradition greater than Yankee Stadium."

Then it quotes John McCain, saying on July 20: "Yankee Stadium is one of the remarkable places in America. It has a special place in history. The good news is that the new Stadium is basically just an updated version. It is not a radical departure, and some of the aspects of the old Yankee Stadium will be there, as well. I was here for every game of the 2001 World Series. In my opinion, that was the most poignant time to be here."

And so a new ballpark where tickets are less affordable is going up with major help from taxpayers in the form of land, infrastructure, transit, foregone taxes, tax-exempt bonds, and maintenance funds because.....?

First-hand sources tell us that what was first reported in the Wall Street Journal (that bastion of left-wing media bias), is quite true -- that Wal-Mart supervisors and managers on Long Island have been spoken to in spiels strongly suggesting a Democratic victory in the fall would be bad, bad, bad for them because of presumably pro-union legislation Obama backs. Wal-Mart denies anything improper, as reported by the AP here. We hear supervisors and managers at Wal-Mart are more likely to desire a union than employees they oversee, who are generally a younger and more transient group.

Responding to GOP jeering over his suggestion people help cut gasoline consumption by keeping their car tires properly inflated -- replete with McCain campaign tire gauges -- Barack Obama said:

"It’s like these guys take pride in being ignorant. They think it is funny that they are making fun of something that is actually true... Instead of running ads about Paris Hilton and Britney Spears, they should go talk to some energy experts. They need to do their homework."

An fuller account of Obama's remarks is here.

At least they didn't say he was playing the 'tire card.' But wait...How about this: "OBAMA IS PRO-INFLATION!" "HE USED THE I WORD!"

After all, it's the season to say absolutely anything.

Our major-party presidential candidates seem bent on out-flipping each other on energy issues. Their positions may continue to change as quickly as the Nasdaq.

That said, McCain dropped his prior opposition to offshore drilling first, which leads up to a very interesting report by Greg Sargent at TPM about a Flushing couple of evidently modest means who -- in the immediate wake of McCain's come-to-Hesses moment -- were listed as donating a whopping $28,500 as part of the Hess corporation personnel's timely donations to the McCain campaign.

Former President Bill Clinton, on his foundation's trip to Liberia, tells ABC News that Sen. Hillary Clinton "has always been a great public servant but she became a great political leader in this campaign..."

He denies he's angry, and with a bit of the trademark finger-wag style, says he was never angry at Sen. Obama, and "I'd be the last person to ever begrudge anybody their ambition...It's a contact sport..." He angrily protested any suggestion that racism had a role in his controversial South Carolina remarks during the primrary fight.

When he was asked about complaints from "supporters" that he brought her down, he challenged the premise, and said: "Go get yourself a map, look where I went and look what the vote was, in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Kentucky...not just rural places, cities..."

“I got bad press. Why? Because I told the truth, that there was a different standard applied to the finest candidate I ever supported...”

(Flashback: We won't have Dick Nixon to kick around any more...)

Regrets? "Yes," says the former first lady's spouse, "but not the ones you say. It would be counterproductive for me to talk about it." He indicated he'd elaborate in January.

Full video clip is here.

In the end, it would make little sense to push a symbolic roll-call vote for Sen. Hillary Clinton at the Democratic National Convention in three weeks as some suggested — especially since she’s now due to deliver the keynote address, several of her home-state supporters said last week.

“It would be unnecesary and distasteful,” said one New York Democratic operative. “It would backfire. She’d be seen as dividing the convention. She’s very much been taking the high road on unity.”

A veteran Clinton-campaign aide added Friday: “From what I can tell, the Hillary world is pretty resigned to her not being the vice-presidential candidate. An interesting question, in retrospect: Why would she have made a deal with [Barack] Obama to help relieve her campaign debt if she was going for VP?”

“Now you’ll probably see her be overtly and hyperactively supportive, being the visible good soldier, trying to squash negativity or disunity and make up with the left, the African-American world, and other places she’s got making up to do,” the backer said. “And you’d presume Obama makes it, but if he doesn’t, that might mean she could come back there in the future.”

Some dissent from hard-core Hillary supporters has been voiced, and any demonstration in her favor at the convention site in Denver would draw media attention. Her prime-time speech on day two is expected to paste over the hard-fought differences of the primary fight that divided the presumptive nominee and the runner-up over Iraq, health insurance, and “change.”

“I don’t think it was ever a realistic option to place her name in nomination,” added a Long Islander on the Clinton team. “Ultimately, it was a matter of how she’d repackage the brand.”

(Photo of Hillary among some NY supporters, previously published in Newsday. That's Manhattan Democratic activist Trudy Mason with her at right.)

Dan Janison

Several Clinton-turned-Obama New Yorkers privately express distaste for the prospect of Obama tapping for running-mate Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine, whom they consider light on national-security credentials.

Here's Kaine's official bio, which emphasizes business and education.

Forget about Republican John McCain’s attack ad deriding Barack Obama as “the biggest celebrity in the world.” The Hamptons fundraising season has taken off, with the famous and the near-famous leading the way in raking in dough for the Democrat.

Star Jones, the formerly fat co-host on “The View” — she lost 160 pounds after gastric bypass surgery and then was fired by Barbara Walters from the daytime TV gig — is hosting an Obama shindig at her Hamptons home Saturday that's dubbed “Under Star’s Tuscan Sun.”

But Jones, who filed for divorce in March and has been spotted this summer with NBA star Dwyane Wade, looks like a C-lister compared to the roster of boldfaced names hosting a brunch Aug. 17.

Billy Joel, Alec Baldwin, Russell Simmons, Barry Sonnenfeld and Gwyneth Paltrow are among 40 co-hosts for the Sagaponack event that features Caroline Kennedy as the star attraction. (Also listed: painter Ross Bleckner, Nassau public-relations guru Robert Zimmerman).

Obama won't be at either event — nor will he be at a Fire Island brunch next Sunday with Democratic National Committee chair Howard Dean. But the fundraisers are talking of a hefty haul.

Reid J. Epstein

Barack Obama's reaction to John McCain's playing of the race-card-allegation card and of the Moses card commands attention today in the mainstream, estuary and side-trickle media. Here, we see Obama insisting on the term cynical rather than racial, while here, the NYT's Michael Powell temperately describes the strategic landscape. Looks like Obama is playing the caution card. Remember: Both candidates are vying now for the palpably non-partisan American middle. And just how audacious Obama truly is, has always been a question.

The latest Gallup tracking poll for the period of Tuesday through Thursday shows McCain and Obama in a tie -- which could mean any number of things, including:

1. The poll is too early to be meaningful.
2. McCain is right where he wants to be.
3. Obama is right where he wants to be.
4. Clinton will say 'Shoulda been me.'
5. Giuliani will say 'Shoulda been me.'

The data is posted here.

John McCain has launched the most derisive ad of the campaign so far, and some in blogland, forgetting race, are even reading it as anti-religious -- forcing an interesting tweaking of the purported major-party roles. The video spot, embedded below, charges that Obama "has anointed himself" as "The One" and says sarcastically "he can do no wrong." It has a snippet of an interview in which he is asked if he ever has doubt (context unclear) and a speech in which he predicts gospel style "you will have an epiphany" and see a light shine down and tell you to vote for Barack Obama. It even has a brief clip of Charlton Heston as Moses parting the Red Sea, which led some to think it was a "Saturday Night Live" spoof.

Camp McCain gets points for interest, unpredictability, political guile and audacity. Especially since, if the same type of production had been made using some of President George W. Bush's more God-invoking comments years ago, Bush supporters would have bewailed the ad as a disrespectful attack on Judeo-Christian imagery and an effort to marshal the secular forces of Mammon for political reasons. Of course, you can't accuse McCain himself of ever having been a preachy Bible thumper -- at worst, he sucked up to same as widely reported during the Republican primary.

Despite a secular focus, McCain has a long-established public persona as something of a martyr -- politically. Having legitimately suffered ...

In St. Petersburg Fla., Sen. Barack Obama faced banner-bearing hecklers complaining that he has not paid enough attention to issues of particular concern to African-Americans, and he responded. One account of the evidently impromptu exchange is here.

Below is a full video from CNN, worth following....

Now we have the McCain camp accusing Obama of "playing the race card... from the bottom of the deck," in response to Obama's most recent statement about not looking like past presidents. But that's presumably only one card in said deck, that could have by implication been played from the top of the deck. We have yet to identify the other cards in the deck. Maybe these include the religion card, the security card, the reverse-racism card, the earmark card, the soft-on-terrorism card, the pandering-card, the health-care-for-all card....Pick a card! Any card! Bring back the New Deal as a slogan.

If the point is that Obama is seeking advantage because his father was black -- or that he'd become the first African-American president even though he's really Paris Hilton -- that raises a whole bunch of questions about how much there is in the pot and who is bidding how much.

Context, from the Washington Post:

"So nobody really thinks that Bush or McCain have a real answer for the challenges we face, so what they're going to try to do is make you scared of me," Obama told voters in Springfield. "You know, he's not patriotic enough. He's got a funny name. You know, he doesn't look like all those other Presidents on those dollar bills, you know. He's risky. That's essentially the argument they're making."

McCain campaign manager Rick Davis countered this morning with a terse but harsh statement: "Barack Obama has played the race card, and he played it from the bottom of the deck. It's divisive, negative, shameful and wrong."

Fuller accounts are here, here, and here.

AFP / Getty Images Photo

The focus of debate may be shifting on illegal immigration. Some of the undocumented are said to be leaving the U.S. as a sagging economy offers fewer jobs. Reports from Florida attribute that state’s exodus to downturns in agriculture, construction, food processing, and the service industry.

Numbers are elusive. But if the population of illegals shrink significantly, some politicians would tout the success of their enforcement drives. Caution: When crime plunged nationally in the 1990’s, elected officials congratulated their police strategies, but some experts saw bottom-up social changes, like a decline in crack use, as also key.

Dan Janison

Party unity means never having to say you're sorry - or that you even remember what you might have been sorry about.

John Edwards, the former North Carolina senator who ran to the left of Barack Obama in the Democratic primary and landed third, toured a soup kitchen in East Harlem the other day as part of his campaign to address poverty.

He was asked about Senator Obama's recent tacking to the right. Edwards alertly stayed on message for his party's nominee, saying Obama "gave me his word that he will make economic fairness, equality and ending poverty central both to his campaign and to his presidency, and I believe him."

At that moment, Obama was preparing to vote in Washington in favor of controversial legislation expanding the government's surveillance powers as requested by President George W. Bush. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton voted against it. One sharp observer remarked: "Now Hillary Clinton is moving left and becoming Barack Obama, and Barack Obama is moving right and becoming Bill Clinton."

Do some of the leftier Democrats now feel they invested extravagant hopes in Obama? Maybe. Others are so intent on ending the Bush-GOP years that they applaud Obama's transparent tactics, given how toxic the "liberal" label has proved in the swing states.

The mix of complaints and cheers could be heard after Obama spoke up for the Second Amendment when Justice Antonin Scalia led the Supreme Court's voiding of a Washington, D.C., gun ban.

Similar fallout from his base greeted Obama's admonishment of African-American men on Father's Day to be responsible parents - which led to the Rev. Jesse Jackson's anatomically-salted outburst about Obama "talking down to black people."

We heard it when Obama retooled his war stance...

Dan Janison

Upon winning a top political post, you start taking for granted your base — the people who first put you there.

Next, you try to butter up those who come from outside that base, in order to expand your power.

So goes the unwritten rule.

This month, in his first legislative session as governor, David A. Paterson — who in 2006 was representing a Manhattan Senate district — touted a property-tax cap, a measure to help homeowners outside his city.

As the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, Barack Obama clearly is trying something similar with his message to win Hillary Clinton backers.

As state Senate majority leader, lifelong upstater Joseph Bruno last year made a high-profile stand against Gov. Eliot Spitzer to boost Long Island school aid.

Now, Bruno’s successor Dean Skelos (R-Rockville Centre) — who surpassed upstaters Thomas Libous and George Maziarz for the top job — reaches out to the north and west.

With his majority facing a fight for its life in November, Skelos plans to travel this week and next to Buffalo, Rochester, Binghamton, Syracuse and Utica to meet with community groups, editorial boards and others.

John Durso, president of the Long Island Federation of Labor, who counts Skelos as an ally, noted during an interview Friday: “Dean makes sure Long Island gets its fair share. Now he has to worry about the entire state.”

That will mean staying in the majority past December, of course.

Dan Janison

If Sen. Barack Obama is an agent for change, his rivals old and new might want to ask him to spare some.

Today Obama plows ahead with the title of front-runner-flush-with-funds while the vacationing Sen. Hillary Clinton settles into her Democratic Party status as proud-runner-up-in-the-red.
Their financial role reversal from less than a year ago remains a stunning force in the presidential race.

Last week, Clinton e-mailed a poignant and colorful campaign “photo album” to her supporters that includes her key concession quote: “Although we weren't able to shatter that highest, hardest glass ceiling this time, thanks to you, it's got about 18 million cracks in it.”

This was as much a pitch as a consolation. Below the album a big “Contribute” button links the supporter to the Web site of her campaign, which ended millions of dollars in debt beyond the $11 million in loans from her personal funds. Clinton’s backers tell Newsday that as long as she remains a New York Senator she should have little trouble eventually raising the funds.

All this served as an ironic backdrop last week as Obama decided to blatantly break a public promise he made last November to “aggressively pursue an agreement” with the Republican nominee “to preserve a publicly-financed general election.” Obama, who it turns out vastly out-raised John McCain, clearly calculated that this advantage, derived from donations modest and large, will offset the moral blowback from, among others, a foe who waved the flag of campaign-finance reform long before Obama joined the Senate — even as the GOP didn’t.

Dan Janison

Since the presidential campaign began, Suffolk Legis. Jon Cooper has been Barack Obama's most prominent Long Island backer. Now, two days after the Legislature passed a Cooper-sponsored bill to launch a pilot program to require contractors doing county work to submit new employees to the federal E-Verify system to check their legal working status, New York's largest Spanish-language paper is taking the Lloyd Harbor lawmaker to task with the headline: No Se Puede.

The El Diario story tries to tie Cooper's bill to the Obama campaign, citing analysts who suggest Cooper could become a problem for Obama, who throughout the primary season ran well behind Hillary Clinton among Hispanic voters.

Cooper, who is hosting an Obama fundraiser at his home tonight, brushed off the story, saying he's fielded calls all day from Long Island Hispanic leaders offering to publicly support him.