Funny headline:

Target: Barack Obama. Strategy: What Day Is It?

The McCain campaign's shotgun attack strategy would be more effective if the campaign had any ammunition with which to load the gun. Today's attack:

On Thursday McCain aides and the Republican National Committee pounced on a comment by Mr. Obama that he would be willing to “refine” his long-held plan to withdraw all combat troops from Iraq within his first 16 months in office.

Because an inflexible unwillingness to respond to changing conditions, even at risk of further endangering lives, is principled? Obama's response:

Here's Obama reaching out to the evangelical right. The Associated Press reports:

In an interview this week with "Relevant," a Christian magazine, Obama said prohibitions on late-term abortions must contain "a strict, well defined exception for the health of the mother."

Obama then added: "Now, I don't think that 'mental distress' qualifies as the health of the mother. I think it has to be a serious physical issue that arises in pregnancy, where there are real, significant problems to the mother carrying that child to term."

Obama made no such distinction last year:

Last year, after the Supreme Court upheld a federal ban on late-term abortions, Obama said he "strongly disagreed" with the ruling because it "dramatically departs form previous precedents safeguarding the health of pregnant women."

NARAL leaders ought to feel like idiots. [More...]

Link:

I want to take this opportunity to speak directly to those of you who oppose my decision to support the FISA compromise.

This was not an easy call for me. I know that the FISA bill that passed the House is far from perfect. I wouldn't have drafted the legislation like this, and it does not resolve all of the concerns that we have about President Bush's abuse of executive power. It grants retroactive immunity to telecommunications companies that may have violated the law by cooperating with the Bush Administration's program of warrantless wiretapping. This potentially weakens the deterrent effect of the law and removes an important tool for the American people to demand accountability for past abuses. That's why I support striking Title II from the bill, and will work with Chris Dodd, Jeff Bingaman and others in an effort to remove this provision in the Senate. [MORE . . . ]

Sen. Barack Obama today wrote a letter to stating he opposed a ban on gay marriage.

In a letter to San Francisco's Alice B. Toklas Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Democratic Club, the presumptive presidential nominee said he opposed "the divisive and discriminatory efforts to amend the California Constitution" and similar efforts in other states.

Good on Obama. He's not afraid to change his mind.

Obama is skating gingerly past his previous position on the issue.

The Illinois senator has said repeatedly that he believes marriage should be only between man and a woman. When the California Supreme Court overturned the state's ban on same-sex marriage in May, Obama released a carefully nuanced statement saying he respected the court's decision, believed states should make their own decisions on marriage and "will continue to fight for civil unions as president."

We're behind Obama on this one, all the way.

So now we know, McCain is soft on Communism:

Sen. John McCain has denied the allegation made by Sen. Thad Cochran that he grabbed a Sandinista by the shirt collar in a confrontation that reportedly happened 21 years ago. Sen. Thad Cochran told the story to the Sun Herald this week, saying McCain grabbed an associate of Nicaraguan president Daniel Ortega and pulled him from a chair during a 1987 diplomatic mission.

I am snarking, for those who do not get it.

By Big Tent Democrat, speaking for me only

The only chance, imo, McCain has to win this election is to go nasty, via third parties if possible, on Barack Obama. Eric Boehlert reports on one of the planned assaults:

The notorious [Swift Boaters'] group also remains a hot topic because the same publisher of the anti-Kerry Swift Boat book, Regnery Publishing, is planning to release an August book on Sen. Barack Obama called, The Case Against Barack Obama. The book's roll-out will be pushed by the same well-connected conservative public relations firm, Creative Response Concepts, that was behind the Swift Boat blitz. Conservatives hope to catch lightning in a bottle again and derail the Democratic nominee with the release of this sensational book, but in order to disrupt Obama, the publisher will have to do more than lob all sorts of wild accusations. It will have to enlist the help of the Beltway media.

(Emphasis supplied.) After using the Beltway Media to whine about General Clark, McCain has boxed himself in on the necessary dirty attacks that he would need to be made on Barack Obama for McCain to win in November. And for what? For three days of early July coverage? More . . .

Ed Kilgore writes:

And those who accuse [Obama] of cynicism for expressing heretical thoughts on FISA . . . now are perhaps the real cynics, who somehow thought he didn't really mean all his early talk about transpartisan politics or overcoming the stale debates of past decades.

The problem with this is that Obama is not being "heretical" on FISA, he is totally flip flopping on FISA. He said he would filibuster any FISA bill that included telecom immunity. Now he acts as if he never said that. As Glenn Greenwald points out:

The issue is not . . . [as] Obama-cheering Ed Kilgore put it -- that Obama is "stray[ing] from Democratic Party orthodoxy or from strict down-the-line partisanship" by "expressing heretical thoughts on FISA" . . . [t]he issue is that Obama has repeatedly, over the course of the last year, made emphatic commitments and clear statements about his own core political values that are completely irreconcilable with his support for the FISA bill.

And Ed STILL does not understand that the fundamental reason John Kerry lost in 2004 was because the American People did not believe he would stand for something:

February 2008:

"The thought of his being president sends a cold chill down my spine," Sen. Thad Cochran (R-Miss.), also a senior member of the Appropriations panel, told the Boston Globe recently. "He is erratic. He is hotheaded. He loses his temper and he worries me."

But in the last 5 months, apparently McCain has matured:

. . . Though Sen. Cochran saw the incident he described to you, decades have passed since then and he wanted to make the point that over the years he has seen Sen. McCain mature . .

Must be dog years Cochran is talking about.

By Big Tent Democrat, speaking for me only

A story in yesterday's Washington Post seems to imply that there is something nefarious (or at least newsworthy) about the fact that Barack Obama financed the purchase of his Chicago home with a mortgage loan that Northern Trust extended at an interest rate that was "below the average" interest rate offered at the time for 30 year fixed rate loans. He paid 5.625 percent while the average was 5.93 percent.

As this response points out, interest rates are determined in part by creditworthiness. Senator Obama, with a good job, the recent sale of a condo, a recently signed book deal that promised to give him more than the price he paid for the house, little debt, and (presumably) a strong credit history, was extraordinarily creditworthy. So where's the story?

Former (my bad, Lott is the former MS Senator) GOP Senator Thad Cochran, who hates John McCain, knows that McCain has a reputation as a hothead. So here he is telling an uncomplimentary story that plays to the idea McCain is a hothead who has no control of his temper:

Sen. Thad Cochran, R-Miss., said he saw McCain, who has a reputation for being hot tempered, rough up an Ortega associate during a trip to Nicaragua led by former Sen. Bob Dole, R-Kan. . . .

"I looked down there and John had reached over and grabbed this guy by the shirt collar and had snatched him up like he was throwing him up out of the chair to tell him what he thought about him or whatever . . . I don't know what he was telling him but I thought, 'Good grief, everybody around here has got guns and we were there on a diplomatic mission.' I don't know what had happened to provoke John, but he obviously got mad at the guy ... and he just reached over there and snatched ... him."

Time for the GOP to cut Cochran loose. More . ..

Yesterday, the AP erroneously reported that Barack Obama would permit faith based discrimination in hiring with non-taxpayers funds for organizations that would participate in his faith based initiative. Subsequently, the NYTimes erroneously reported that there was a legal basis for this position based on theDale Boy Scouts case. Apparently, the Obama campaign made clear that Obama says no to faith based discrimination:

Mr. Obama’s position that religious organizations would not be able to consider religion in their hiring for such programs would constitute a deal-breaker for many evangelicals, said several evangelical leaders, who represent a political constituency Mr. Obama has been trying to court. “For those of who us who believe in protecting the integrity of our religious institutions, this is a fundamental right,” said Richard Cizik, vice president for governmental affairs for the National Association of Evangelicals. “He’s rolling back the Bush protections. That’s extremely disappointing.”

(Emphasis supplied.) To me, that is extremely heartening. Indeed, it would have been a deal breaker for me if Obama endorsed religious discrimination. I am happy to see that Obama opposes and will not countenance religious discrimination. John McCain endorses religious discrimination -- "Mr. McCain “disagrees with Senator Obama that hiring at faith-based groups should be subject to government oversight.” McCain is simply not an option for those voters who believe in separation of church and state.

By Big Tent Democrat, speaking for me only

The CNN poll, Gallup tracking poll and the latest Ras poll demonstrate a static race - Obama has held a steady 5 point lead now for about a week.

Ras writes:

Those results have been identical for three straight days as the campaign has entered a period of amazing stability. With leaners, Obama has been at 49% for eleven straight days and at either 48% or 49% for twenty straight days.

This looks like a 5 point race to me, all the way to November.

By Big Tent Democrat, speaking for me only