Feminist, according to his sister.

Barack Obama is a dedicated feminist who "lives surrounded by women," his half-sister, Maya Soetoro-Ng, told a mostly female crowd at a Women For Obama event in downtown Tampa on Thursday.

Soetoro-Ng told the crowd that Obama helped rear her and now is rearing two daughters. "Those girls are what make him a feminist," she said. [...]

Her older brother "really was the man in our lives" after their parents divorced, when the two were growing up in Hawaii and Indonesia, she said.

She said he taught her to ride a bicycle, made her practice harder math problems and start an exercise program, took her on college visits and even gave her her first women's health book - "Our Bodies, Ourselves," a 1973 guide that came out of the women's movement and focused on female sexuality, health and hygiene.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is pretty fucking cool.

The new McCain ad:

We can reduce the struggle for power in American politics to one between the State Department and the Pentagon.

Every day around 8 a.m., foreign policy aides at Senator Barack Obama's Chicago campaign headquarters send him two e-mails: a briefing on major world developments over the previous 24 hours and a set of questions, accompanied by suggested answers, that the candidate is likely to be asked about international relations during the day.

One recent Q. & A. asked, for example, whether Obama supported the decision by Iraq's prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, to include a timetable for American troop withdrawal in any new security agreements with the United States. The answer, provided to Obama with bullet points, was yes — or "a genuine opportunity," as he put it in a speech on Iraq this week.

Behind the e-mail messages is a tight-knit group of aides supported by a huge 300-person foreign policy campaign bureaucracy, organized like a mini State Department, to assist a candidate whose limited national security experience remains a concern to many voters.

It's not because Obama is inexperienced that his campaign has established a mini State Department (300 experts) to advise him on foreign policy--no, get that notion out of your head. Stabilizing international relations for segments of American capital that were neglected by the almost decade-long energy/military regime--this is the whole meaning of his rise to power. The Pentagon has one way of dealing with the world, the State Department a completely different one. For its own survival, America is trying to transition from the former to the latter.

Postman talks a bit about the Seattle Times' handling of the Doug Sutherland "inappropriate touching" story, and then gets into the not-so-way-back machine to point out a bit of Democratic hypocrisy on this issue:

The documents were provided to The Times, the PI, horsesass and apparently others, by backers of Peter Goldmark, the Democrat running against Sutherland. The reason is obvious: They hope that the story will stain Sutherland’s reputation enough that Goldmark can unseat him after two terms as lands commissioner.

Democrats were quick to try to leverage the horsesass post to help Goldmark. Party spokesman Kelly Steele said in a press release:

These documents speak for themselves, and the facts as presented strongly suggest Republican Doug Sutherland has compromised the public trust, and owes Washingtonians an explanation for his abhorrent behavior.

There’s no doubt the Sutherland story deserved a place in the newspaper. But the Democrats have established a double standard for this behavior that rises above run of the mill campaign hypocrisy.

This is the same Democratic Party that in 2000 financed former Gov. Mike Lowry’s run against Sutherland. Lowry served one term as governor and left without running for re-election after a sexual harassment scandal.

Lowry agreed to pay $97,500 to a former press aide, who left her job after what she said was inappropriate touching and comments from Lowry. Two former Lowry aides from his years in Congress also came forward and talked to an investigator about their own experiences. The scandal began after a female State Patrol employee said Lowry inappropriately touched her...

I’ll be interested to see how the party, Goldmark and his backers continue to use this new Sutherland case as a disqualifier for high office. If this is to be a part of the campaign for lands commissioner, Democrats should explain to voters the sliding scale of abhorrent behavior.

To be clear, I don't think that "Hey, Mike Lowry did it, too!" is going to be a winning rejoinder for Republicans in this whole debacle. But Postman makes a good point in saying that the burden is on Democrats to explain whether there's some sort of difference between the two cases, and why one case should be a disqualifier for holding the Lands Commissioner post and the other... not so much.

Joining the chorus of anger at the Washington State Republicans' attack on Michelle Obama's patriotism, Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton says:

With our economy in shambles, our nation at war and our challenges mounting by the day, it is beyond sad that the Republican Party of Washington would spend its time launching shameful attacks on the wife of a candidate–attacks our current First Lady Laura Bush has decried. Michelle Obama has lived the American Dream, and it’s love of country that leads Michelle and Barack to make this race. But how does it strengthen our country to pollute our politics with false and mean-spirited attacks? John McCain promised us better. It’s up to him to curb these tactics, or take responsibility for them.

Meanwhile, Ben Smith sees, in the RNC's non-condemnation of the ad (which was modeled after a Tennessee Republican Party ad that the RNC did condemn), a signal that "attacks on Michelle's patriotism are now fair game."

In response to all of this, Gov. Gregoire just released a statement saying:

I was proud to welcome Michelle Obama, who clearly loves our country deeply, here to Washington state this morning. These shameless attacks by the state Republican Party have no place in our politics. If John McCain is serious about running a “respectful” campaign on the issues, he and Republican leaders like Dino Rossi will denounce this tasteless attack ad and tell the state Republican Party to pull the plug on it immediately. After eight years of the most divisive, fear-driven politics this country has ever seen, I agree with Senator Obama that it’s time to turn the page and bring Americans together.

And for those who've missed what's gone on below, the governor is talking about this new video from the Washington State Republican Party:

The cover of this week's paper reminded me of an old reggae tune by Blue Riddim...

I expect we'll be hearing a lot more about this, but the first reaction I've received comes from a Democratic operative who's here at the Michelle Obama fundraiser (which just finished up). I sat the operative down with my computer and played the video for him. His response:

What a pathetic, utter piece of shit.

I'm a big fan of outgoing NYT Supreme Court reporter Linda Greenhouse, so I was kind of disappointed by her lackluster retrospective piece for last weekend's Week in Review.

But her ongoing Q&A with readers this week is definitely worth checking out. For instance, Obama has been indicating he wants "people who have life experience and [who] understand what it means to be on the outside, what it means to have the system not work for them" on the Supreme Court--making it rather hard for federal court-watchers to guess who he'd nominate. Here's Greenhouse on the subject:

Q. Do you think that the justices of the Supreme Court are becoming further removed from the everyday world of the average U.S. citizen and lawyer when so many of them have spent most, if not all of their careers, as judges or academics or both? If so, what does this portend for the future of the court, its decisions and respect for the court? —Charles L. Riter, South Dakota

A. I think I'm on safe ground in saying that the current court is the first in United States history on which every member's immediate past job was as a judge on a federal appeals court. In the not-too-distant past, it was common to select justices from among leading figures in American public life—Earl Warren was a three-term governor of California who had run for vice president on the Republican ticket. Other members of the Warren Court had been senators, cabinet members, and presidential intimates.

There is general agreement that a greater diversity of background would be useful today. Some fine justices had never been judges at all (Powell, Rehnquist). Justice O'Connor had served only an intermediate state court. Being on the Supreme Court is an inherently isolating experience, so the life experiences that justices bring with them matter perhaps more than in other venues. The experience of advising clients, helping real people solve problems, or working in a different branch or level of government could perhaps help a justice insist less on doctrinal purity and more on real solutions to our legal problems. The early justices lived in boarding houses and "rode circuit,": sitting as federal trial judges in distant cities, often at great inconvenience and sometimes peril. Clearly the framers of the Constitution didn't expect justices of the Supreme Court to lead remote, isolated lives. (For a fascinating historical novel based on the lives of the early justices and their wives, see "A More Obedient Wife" by Natalie Wexler.)

I'm at the Michelle Obama fundraiser right now, listening to Gov. Christine Gregoire speak, so I can't fully listen to this video that just landed in my in-box from the Washington State Republican Party. But it looks (and sounds, after a quick listen on headphones) as if Republicans in this state are taking a cue from their counterparts in South Carolina Tennessee, who I believe made a similar video earlier this year:

UPDATE: Back in May, the chairman of the Republican National Committee repudiated the Tennessee Republican Party for making the video that the Washington State Republican Party just copied. Will he do the same now?

But close. The chow at today's Michelle Obama fundraiser for Gov. Christine Gregoire, as seen from the press riser:

How much for the fancy salad, semi-elegant strawberry schortcake, big roll 'o bread, and high-powered speechifying? $200 a person.

A couple of us were talking here in the Stranger offices yesterday, and the topic of non-voters came up, along with the perennial question: Who are these people?

But first, a different question: How many of these people are there among the Slog mob?

I have a guess at the answer, but I'm preparing to be surprised, shocked, slack-jawed, etc. (And yes, I know that by putting up a Slog poll on this subject I am delivering nothing except the percentage of people who will vote in an online Slog poll but won't vote in an actual, consequential election. Still, I kinda want to know—and I also kinda want to meet and/or slap everyone who tells this blog poll that they won't participate in what the politicians like to call "the only poll that counts.")

So, forgetting any influencing or guilt-tripping that may have occurred during the above, tell me, honest to blog:

Will you be voting on November 4?

AND THEN, if you're one of the people who says "No," please explain yourself in the comments. Seriously, I'd love to hear why.

Jesse Jackson said something else in his famous "cut his nuts out" rant against Barack Obama, according to TVNewser:

Barack...he's talking down to black people...telling n—s how to behave.

In this week of comedic concern about Barack Obama's sense of humor, Politico takes a look at John McCain's joke repertoire:

Ever hear that joke about waterboarding? How about the one about killing Iranians? And why is Chelsea Clinton so ugly?

If you aren't familiar with those witty japes, then you've missed out on John McCain's lighter side.

Last week was spent trying to find a new conventional wisdom on where Obama and McCain actually stand on Iraq and Afghanistan—with surrogates for both sides engaging in questions of whether Obama will weep under his desk as Iraq falls to Iranian troops and conjuring visions of a wild-eyed John McCain dropping from a B-52, whooping it up on a nuclear bomb bound for Tehran. Perhaps now some sanity is in order.

Way back in March, Spencer Ackerman wrote a piece in The American Prospect assessing what an Obama foreign policy would actually look like. After rolling out the brightest minds—an odd mix of creaking Mandarins (Lee Hamilton), an activist-turned-counterinsurgency-expert (Sarah Sewall), and a mix of dogooder-leftwing-policy-types (Susan Rice)—he gets to the core of the 'new' philosophy:

This ability to see the world from different perspectives informs what the Obama team hopes will replace the Iraq War mind-set: something they call dignity promotion. "I don't think anyone in the foreign-policy community has as much an appreciation of the value of dignity as Obama does," says Samantha Power, a former key aide and author of the groundbreaking study of U.S. foreign policy and genocide, A Problem From Hell. "Dignity is a way to unite a lot of different strands [of foreign-policy thinking]," she says. "If you start with that, it explains why it's not enough to spend $3 billion on refugee camps in Darfur, because the way those people are living is not the way they want to live. It's not a human way to live. It's graceless—an affront to your sense of dignity." ...

What's typically neglected in these arguments is the simple insight that democracy does not fill stomachs, alleviate malaria, or protect neighborhoods from marauding bands of militiamen. Democracy, in other words, is valuable to people insofar as it allows them first to meet their basic needs. It is much harder to provide that sense of dignity than to hold an election in Baghdad or Gaza and declare oneself shocked when illiberal forces triumph. "Look at why the baddies win these elections," Power says. "It's because [populations are] living in climates of fear." U.S. policy, she continues, should be "about meeting people where they're at. Their fears of going hungry, or of the thug on the street. That's the swamp that needs draining. If we're to compete with extremism, we have to be able to provide these things that we're not [providing]."

This is why, Obama's advisers argue, national security depends in large part on dignity promotion. Without it, the U.S. will never be able to destroy al-Qaeda. Extremists will forever be able to demagogue conditions of misery, making continued U.S. involvement in asymmetric warfare an increasingly counterproductive exercise -- because killing one terrorist creates five more in his place. "It's about attacking pools of potential terrorism around the globe," Gration says. "Look at Africa, with 900 million people, half of whom are under 18. I'm concerned that unless you start creating jobs and livelihoods we will have real big problems on our hands in ten to fifteen years."

Or, in other words: If you have a home, a job, and enough to feed your family, the chances that you'll be swayed by a man who would like you to blow up both yourself and a bus full of strangers diminish greatly. If this sounds like familiar territory, it should—it was at the core of Lyndon Johnson's Great Society program to end the social problems caused by poverty, and has been the foreign policy solution urged by the Chomsky-spectrum of the left for the better part of three decades. Isolated from their recruitment pool, extremists depend more and more on their own hardened ideologues, and become both less relevant to their home populations and easier to capture.

This is an insanely simplified version of Ackerman's essay, and it's a best case scenario that may never happen: Even since the writing of the piece, Obama has been forced into rhetoric that is far to the right of what it previously was in order to assuage fears that he's a secret Muslim terrorist. But what the piece does offer is a clear look at where Obama wants to take the world, and certainly the contrast to what a President McCain might propose.

There's been lots of talk lately about how hard it is to make fun of Barack Obama. Really? JibJab takes a decent shot at him—and everyone else involved in Campaign 2008—with its new video:

How does John McCain feel about the fact that many health insurance companies will cover Viagra but not birth control? Well, uh, he'll get back to you on that... Even though one of his top female campaign aides recently said she's hearing a lot of complaints from women on this very issue.

Planned Parenthood launched a television ad about McCain's stammering awkwardness on this topic today. And here's the original moment, a few days ago, when CNN cornered McCain on the "Straight Talk Express" about Viagra and birth control—and received a meandering, uncomfortable, non-responsive response:

It's a gracious, unpretentious, imaginative response:

Well, I know it was The New Yorker's attempt at satire. I don't think they were entirely successful with it. But you know what? It's a cartoon, Larry, and that's why we've got the First Amendment ... You know, we've--one of the things when you're running for president for almost two years is, you get a pretty thick skin. And, you know, I've seen and heard worse.

And then all the requisite details about being a Christian, etc., etc., and then this, beautifully done:

One last point I want to--I do want to make about these e-mails, though. And I think this has an impact on this New Yorker cover. You know, this is actually an insult against Muslim-Americans, something that we don't spend a lot of time talking about. And sometimes I've been derelict in pointing that out. You know, there are wonderful Muslim-Americans all across the country who are doing wonderful things. And for this to be used as sort of an insult, or to raise suspicions about me, I think is unfortunate. And it's not what America's all about.

Gay parents are better than no parents at all—but just barely.

McCain’s expressed his personal preference for children to be raised by a mother and a father wherever possible. However, as an adoptive father himself, McCain believes children deserve loving and caring home environments, and he recognizes that there are many abandoned children who have yet to find homes. McCain believes that in those situations that caring parental figures are better for the child than the alternative."—Jill Hazelbaker, Director of Communications

John McCain, however, is cool with states banning adoptions by same-sex couples, even if it means that many abandoned children will never find homes or caring parental figures to look after them. Oh, and speaking of abandoned children: McCain divorced his first wife in 1980 when their daughter, the youngest of their three children, was just 14 years old. So John McCain—who personally prefers for children to be raised by a mother and a father—abandoned three of his own children, depriving them of the kind of mother-and-father home that he believes children deserve. Except, you know, his own.

That John McCain! What a kidder!

In an appearance before the National League of Cities and Towns in Washington D.C., McCain supposedly asked the crowd if they had heard "the one about the woman who is attacked on the street by a gorilla, beaten senseless, raped repeatedly and left to die?"

The punch line: "When she finally regains consciousness and tries to speak, her doctor leans over to hear her sigh contently and to feebly ask, "Where is that marvelous ape?"

Not that you expect much more from the man who once told his wife, in front of reporters, "At least I don't plaster on the makeup like a trollop, you cunt"—and just the other day joked that exporting cigarettes to Iran might be "a way of killing them."

Incidentally, I was living in Texas when Republican--and John McCain supporter—Clayton Williams had his own rape-joke scandal, one that helped Democrat Ann Richards win her first race for governor. The "joke": "Bad weather is like rape. As long as it’s inevitable, you might as well lie back and enjoy it.”

Rape: Cracking Republicans up since 1990!

I went. I saw. I took pictures.

On the outside, this state's brand new John McCain outpost looks very much like a low-slung Bellevue office park:

Which it is. And on the inside, it looks very much like the campaign office for eastside Republican Congressman Dave Reichert:

Which it also is. (The space is being shared by the Reichert and McCain campaigns.)

A white board reminds that McCain is opening up shop in Washington State with only a relatively short time left before the election:

Barack Obama, by contrast, has been here since the beginning of the year. He had a contested Democratic caucus to deal with here in February, of course, while McCain basically had the nomination sewn up by that time, but still, the Obama campaign's earlier arrival can only be an advantage.

Here's Rick Gorka, the Western Region Communications Director for the McCain campaign.

He covers Nevada, California, Oregon, Washington, Alaska, and Hawaii as part of a McCain strategy that has the country divided up into regions, with regional directors being given a certain amount of autonomy from the mothership. (But not too much autonomy now that there's a new McCain campaign manager in town.)

I asked Gorka what he thinks of McCain's chances in Washington State.

I think McCain's chances in Washington State are excellent. He has an independent record, works on bipartisan solutions, puts those types of solutions and solving America's problems before party politics, and I think that resonates well with Washingtonians.

Really? Do you know of any polls that show McCain leading in this state?

Not that I know of. It's obviously very early in the race... But I really think that when we get the message out, that Senator McCain's history, and his past, and his experience, and leadership on these issues are really going to carry the day here.

So you really think Washington will be a red state come November?

I really hope so. We're going to work very hard. We have a great team in place. There's a lot of energy and a lot of volunteers that want to get involved.

Michelle Obama is going to be in Seattle on Thursday. When's the next time McCain is going to be here?

That I don't know... I just don't want get anybody's hopes up, but we're going to compete very heavily here in Washington State.

So what's the next step?

We're going to be opening offices state-wide... We're going to have seven I believe. We're even opening an office in Tacoma. The last time there was an office [for a Republican Presidential candidate] in Tacoma, Washington was a red state. The next step is a lot of phone banking, voter registration, voter ID, door-to-door—you know, things that the Republican Party does really well.

Looking at the electoral math, does McCain even need Washington State to win the election?

I think when we win Washington, it creates an incredible amount of problems for Senator Obama. He can't afford to lose any states like Washington or Oregon, where we expect to compete very well.

This one via Ben Smith, and created by these guys under the heading, "Rejected New Yorker Cover Art":

This one from The Nation:

The Constitution burning in the fireplace is a nice touch.

(Link)

I'm running out the door to the opening of McCain's Washington State office so I don't have time to say much about this, but here's the video of the "major foreign policy address" that Barack Obama gave today at the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center in D.C.

Please have a report on my desk—or at least in the commnets—by the time I get back.

John McCain will be opening a Washington State Campaign Headquarters today.

In Bellevue.

Michelle Obama, undoubtedly not looking like this, will be in Seattle this Thursday to headline a fundraiser for Gov. Christine Gregoire.

Why? Well, you may remember that during the primary campaign, way back when we were tallying up superdelegates and prominent state surrogates, Gov. Gregoire broke with the two other top female elected officials in this state—Sens. Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell—and announced, ahead of our Democratic caucuses on Feb. 9, that she was endorsing Barack Obama.

It was a coup for Obama and smart politics for Gregoire. If her current rematch against Dino Rossi is going to be anywhere near as close as Gregoire vs. Rossi Round 1, then Gregoire will need to up her take of votes in liberal Seattle, and what better way to do that than by throwing her arms around the candidate Seattle was swooning for long before the rest of the country?

The huge Obama rally at Key Arena on the eve of our caucuses featured Gregoire prominently, it was undoubtedly the biggest political crowd our governor has ever spoken to in this city, she gave one of the best speeches I've seen her deliver, and the audience ate it up.

It also established an IOU with the Obama campaign, one they're paying back—or beginning to pay back—this week. It may be too cynical to cast this as a purely financial transaction, but if you're wondering how much Gregoire's endorsement was worth to the Obama campaign the answer, so far, seems to be about $320,000.

That's how much Michelle Obama will raise for Gregoire if the 1,600-person venue the campaign has reserved for Thursday is filled to capacity with people paying the required $200/head.

Over at WorldNetDaily, a conservative web site, a poll on the Obama New Yorker cover reveals the breathtaking idiocy of right-wing America. As of this morning, the most popular option, with 60 percent of votes, was "the image isn't too far from the dangerous truth about the Obama family." The second most popular option? "Funny, because there's some truth in it." Only five percent chose "hilarious, it's perfect satire." The scary thing is that these people vote.

A conservative talk show host has a question:

"Where does he get his porn?"

Um... Maybe not the way to build a bridge with women who worry you're not the most enlightened guy on gender issues?

ABC News' Sunlen Miller reports that at a Chicago fundraiser last night, comedian Bernie Mac said his "little nephew came to me and he said, 'Uncle, what's the difference between a hypothetical question and a realistic question?' "I said, ‘I don't know,’ but I said, 'I'll tell you what you do. Go upstairs and ask your mother if she'd make love to the mailman for $50,000.’"

Mac's wife, in the joke, said she [would] sleep "with anyone" for $50,000, and Mac's daughter said the same.

Explained Mac: "Hypothetically speaking, we should have $100,000. But realistically speaking we live with two hos."

Obama attempted to smooth things over a few minutes later, saying the comedian needed "to clean up [his] act next time. This is a family affair." But then he explained that he was only joking: "By the way, I’m just messing with you, man.”

In fairness, Obama's campaign did later issue a statement that Obama did not condone Mac's use of the word "hos" to describe his wife and daughter. Still, compared to the campaign's outraged, instantaneous condemnation of that New Yorker cover, Obama's reaction was both mild and late.

There is, of course, a ton of predictable back-and-forth between the campaigns today about Barack Obama's New York Times Op-Ed on Iraq.

To me, it doesn't read as anything all that new—except that Obama clarifies his timeline for withdrawal from Iraq, saying it would be completed in 2010. And, naturally, there's wiggle room:

In carrying out this strategy, we would inevitably need to make tactical adjustments.

But if you're looking to catch up on where Obama is on Iraq, the surge, and a timeline for ending the war, his piece is definitely worth a read. Key section:

The differences on Iraq in this campaign are deep. Unlike Senator John McCain, I opposed the war in Iraq before it began, and would end it as president. I believed it was a grave mistake to allow ourselves to be distracted from the fight against Al Qaeda and the Taliban by invading a country that posed no imminent threat and had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks. Since then, more than 4,000 Americans have died and we have spent nearly $1 trillion. Our military is overstretched. Nearly every threat we face — from Afghanistan to Al Qaeda to Iran — has grown.

In the 18 months since President Bush announced the surge, our troops have performed heroically in bringing down the level of violence. New tactics have protected the Iraqi population, and the Sunni tribes have rejected Al Qaeda — greatly weakening its effectiveness.

But the same factors that led me to oppose the surge still hold true. The strain on our military has grown, the situation in Afghanistan has deteriorated and we’ve spent nearly $200 billion more in Iraq than we had budgeted. Iraq’s leaders have failed to invest tens of billions of dollars in oil revenues in rebuilding their own country, and they have not reached the political accommodation that was the stated purpose of the surge.

The good news is that Iraq’s leaders want to take responsibility for their country by negotiating a timetable for the removal of American troops. Meanwhile, Lt. Gen. James Dubik, the American officer in charge of training Iraq’s security forces, estimates that the Iraqi Army and police will be ready to assume responsibility for security in 2009.

Only by redeploying our troops can we press the Iraqis to reach comprehensive political accommodation and achieve a successful transition to Iraqis’ taking responsibility for the security and stability of their country. Instead of seizing the moment and encouraging Iraqis to step up, the Bush administration and Senator McCain are refusing to embrace this transition — despite their previous commitments to respect the will of Iraq’s sovereign government. They call any timetable for the removal of American troops “surrender,” even though we would be turning Iraq over to a sovereign Iraqi government.

But this is not a strategy for success — it is a strategy for staying that runs contrary to the will of the Iraqi people, the American people and the security interests of the United States. That is why, on my first day in office, I would give the military a new mission: ending this war.

The New York Times, reporting yesterday on part of a long interview it had with John McCain, dropped this stunning bit of information:

Mr. McCain, who with his wife, Cindy, has an adopted daughter, said flatly that he opposed allowing gay couples to adopt. “I think that we’ve proven that both parents are important in the success of a family so, no, I don’t believe in gay adoption,” he said.

The full exchange—which does little to explain why a man in his second marriage, this one to a former drug addict, has come to believe that hetero couples are ipso facto better for adopted kids—in the jump.

Continue reading "Maverick Moment of the Day" »

The New Yorker puts all of the worst paranoid right-wing fears about Barack and Michelle Obama into one image, calls it satire, and in doing so assures the magazine's new issue will receive a ton of attention:

What really should be getting attention is Ryan Lizza's 15,000-word exploration, in the same New Yorker, of Obama's rise in Chicago. It's a fascinating read. But, naturally, the startling image trumps the thoughtful written word—and generates an immediate response:

Responds Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton: "The New Yorker may think, as one of their staff explained to us, that their cover is a satirical lampoon of the caricature Senator Obama's right-wing critics have tried to create. But most readers will see it as tasteless and offensive. And we agree."

From McCain:

McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds quickly e-mailed: “We completely agree with the Obama campaign, it’s tasteless and offensive.”

I've been watching all this hubbub about Obama "lurching" to the center with some amusement. Sure, I was bummed about some recent developments (FISA, notably, though I would've been more vexed had the vote been even vaguely close), but overall this is much ado about nothing.

Remember, kids, according to Obama's basketball-coach brother in law, Obama's signature move is to "fake right and veer left."

The supposed issues:

1) FISA. (Let's get this one out of the way.) Yep, Obama voted for an expansion of the government's spying powers, along with an immunity provision that he had once vowed to filibuster. Lame. That said, he voted to narrow the legislation on each of the three immunity-related amendments (Dodd's to strike Title II ["Protections for Electronic Communication Service Providers"], Specter's to "limit retroactive immunity for providing assistance to the United States to instances in which a Federal court determines the assistance was provided in connection with an intelligence activity that was constitutional," and Bingaman's to "stay pending cases against certain telecommunications companies and provide that such companies may not seek retroactive immunity until 90 days after the date the final report of the Inspectors General on the President's Surveillance Program is submitted to Congress"), all of which failed decisively. On the telecom immunity portion of the bill, at least, Obama's votes weren't so much a flip-flop as a resigned capitulation. And the legislation itself passed 69-28, so let's not pretend Obama's vote would have made a difference either way.

2) Campaign finance. You know, I don't much care that Obama opted out. It's really our responsibility as voters (and as taxpayers—only 7.3% checked the box for the public campaign financing system in 2006) to demand a public financing system that's attractive to candidates. The campaign finance system is meant to be a carrot (you spend less than X, and we'll help you do it), not a stick. We can't operate the system if it's based on virtue and shaming—the decision to opt in can and should be based on rational self-interest.

3) Reproductive rights and abstinence education. I understand why people are freaking out about Obama's recent comments (to an evangelical magazine) on this issue, but there's just very little reason to worry. Obama is a cosponsor of a Senate bill with the key phrase "life or health of the mother," which is understood to encompass mental health. And he's taken plenty of shit throughout his career for supporting medically accurate sex education (with noncoercive information about the abstinence option) at all grade levels. The fact is, a president is not a legislator. A president does, however, appoint Supreme Court justices. And Obama should and will nominate people (like these contenders) who are litmus-ready on choice. McCain would do precisely the opposite.

4) Child rapists and Heller. OK, I'm fiercely pro-gun control and anti-death penalty. Particularly in the case of child rape, you don't want to disincentivize reporting of the crime—and parents don't necessarily want to be responsible for sending a family friend or relative to the gallows, even if this person raped their kid. But we really need to take everything Obama says about recent Supreme Court decisions with a gigantic spoonful of salt. Duh, Obama doesn't want to get people riled up by saying child rapists should get off easy, but again, this is really a question about what sort of thinkers he would nominate to the Supreme Court. And he would almost certainly nominate liberals who will vote exactly as the liberal justices voted on these two cases.

5) Faith-based initiatives. Yes! This is exactly the sort of centrist move on a fringe issue that could help peel away some religious voters without causing any real harm. The Christian Science Monitor did a good job of explaining how Obama's vision diverges from Bush's.

6) Hedging on the Iraq Timetable. Thank goodness. I always thought Obama had a sensible approach to withdrawal, and I strongly appreciate that he has retained close ties to Samantha ("Monster Remark") Power and her intense drive to prevent genocide in Iraq. And this doesn't really qualify as a flip-flop. Obama has always given strong signals that the pace of withdrawal would take account of circumstances on the ground ("as careful getting out as we were careless getting in"). He should not be sworn in with the public believing he is obligated to get all troops out by 2009, and he's making smart moves to avoid that now.

On all the serious issues in this campaign, Obama has not slipped an inch. He's sticking with his tax proposals, he hasn't futzed with his environmental platform, he's still for repealing DOMA, he's still for universal health care, he still mocks the notion of a gas tax holiday, he's still for reproductive rights and equal pay for equal work. I like that he's capable of generating "Obama Lurches to the Center" headlines by making minor tweaks on fringe issues and saying unexpected things about Supreme Court decisions. Obama is proving himself the ideal stealth liberal. The bloom has not faded.

And let us daily remind ourselves, the enemy is John McCain.

FiveThirtyEight has a fairly comprehensive link-happy list of all the Obama comparisons that have been made in the last few months. Obama has been compared to both Bushes, Bob Dole, John Kerry, Richard Nixon, and just about every politician ever to be involved in presidential politics except Taft.

In other news, the Barack Obama is Your New Bicycle website has been transformed into an incredibly cheap-ass book.

First (and sorry, I know this is a couple of days old) check out what John McCain has to say about insurance companies that pay for wang-stiffeners but not for birth control:

McCain (laughing nervously): I certainly do not want to discuss that issue.

The LA Times' Maeve Reston: But apparently you’ve voted against-

McCain: I don’t know what I voted.

Reston: Voted against coverage of birth control, forcing health insurance companies to cover birth control in the past. Is that still your position?

McCain: I’ll look at my voting record on it, but I have, uh, (5 second pause) , I don’t recall the vote right now. But I’ll be glad to look at it and get back to you as to why, I don’t -

Reston: I guess (McCain advisor Carly Fiorina's) statement was that it was unfair that health insurance companies cover Viagra but not birth control. Do you have an opinion on that?

McCain: (8 second pause) I don’t know enough about it to give you an informed answer because I don’t recall the vote, I’ve cast thousands of votes in the Senate. I will respond to - it’s a, it’s a-

Reston: Delicate issue?

McCain: It’s something that I had not thought much about.

Yeah, why would a presidential candidate spend much time thinking about a silly little issue like equity between men's and women's health care? And anyway, McCain's got the ladies' vote sewn up--thanks to that women-only town hall meeting he and Cindy are holding about the challenges we girls face in business! I guess he'll probably tell them the same thing he said before: They need more education and training, not fair pay.

Eastside Democrat Darcy Burner is already on the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee's Red to Blue list, which means she'll be getting an unspecified amount of financial and strategic support from D.C. Dems this year. (Last cycle the average Red to Blue candidate received about $400,000 from the DCCC.)

But here's a list I'm told Burner didn't make: The list of 31 Congressional races, complied by the Associated Press, in which the DCCC has already reserved air time for commercials set to go up in September and October.

Now, I'm also told that this list represents only an initial ad buy, so there may not be any meaning to glean from Burner being left out this time around. Or there may be.

Either way, it's worth keeping an eye on the outside ad money because the race in the 8th Congressional District, like a lot of other races around the country, has historically been heavily influenced by ad buys made in the last few months of the campaign. And every time you ask Democrats in the 8th why it didn't work for them the last time around, you always hear the same thing: Not enough help from D.C.

Will Burner and her allies be able to compete with the Republican commercials that are sure to air as the fall campaign draws to a close? Based on today's list, that's still unclear.

It's old news that John McCain divorced his first wife, a former model named Carol Shepp, after he returned from the war in Vietnam to find her disfigured by a car accident.

But some of the details of McCain's divorce and quick re-marriage to beer heiress Cindy Hensley McCain don't add up, according to today's LA Times.

In his 2002 memoir, "Worth the Fighting For," McCain wrote that he had separated from Carol before he began dating Hensley.

"I spent as much time with Cindy in Washington and Arizona as our jobs would allow," McCain wrote. "I was separated from Carol, but our divorce would not become final until February of 1980."

An examination of court documents tells a different story. McCain did not sue his wife for divorce until Feb. 19, 1980, and he wrote in his court petition that he and his wife had "cohabited" until Jan. 7 of that year -- or for the first nine months of his relationship with Hensley.

Although McCain suggested in his autobiography that months passed between his divorce and remarriage, the divorce was granted April 2, 1980, and he wed Hensley in a private ceremony five weeks later. McCain obtained an Arizona marriage license on March 6, 1980, while still legally married to his first wife.

More on the admitted "selfishness and immaturity" that led McCain to divorce his first wife in this manner, and the anger this inspired from the Reagans (among others), as the story continues.

From Slog to Gawker to a new Time.com think-piece about the cruelty of commenters:

By LEV GROSSMAN

Last month a woman who worked for the Stranger, an alternative weekly in Seattle, quit in a huff. She had been writing for the paper's blog, the Slog. The problem was the comments people were making on her posts. She couldn't stand them anymore. "The word I would use is cruel," she wrote in her sign-off.

Actually, if cruel was all they were, she got off pretty easy...

The horribleness of commenters isn't really a mystery: Internet anonymity is disinhibiting, and people are basically mean anyway. Nor is it a mystery why the people who run websites put up with commenters: the economic model for Internet content is based on advertising, which means it's based on traffic volume, and comments mean traffic. They're part of the things that make online publishing work. TIME.com enables comments on its blogs, including mine.) It's just hard to tell whether they're ruining the Web faster than they can save it.

Commenters tend to respond with surprise--they're shocked, shocked!--when people call them on being not nice. In their social universe, this kind of rhetorical slap-fighting is just how you do business, and anybody who feels otherwise is thin-skinned and humorless. As lame and self-serving as this excuse is, we can learn something from taking it at face value. Maybe commenters are just on one side of a cultural disconnect between two incompatible ideas of what the social conventions of the Internet should be. One is based on the standards of real-world, off-line politeness. The other is a kind of communal game in which whoever is cleverest and pushes the most buttons wins.

This disconnect is probably just temporary. In another decade or two, one side or the other will have won out, and then we'll all be on the same page, and we won't have this kind of misunderstanding anymore. But I know which side I'm rooting for.

Only a couple of decades? Then what's all the fuss?! I mean, that's only, like, 10,000 years in internet time...

I am of the opinion that dude just spaced out, truly just forgot to say it, but if this were an alternate universe and Hillary were the nominee and she had done this to him... well, I have to admit, I think I would be of the opinion that she "forgot."

The Los Angeles Times:

At a fundraiser Wednesday night in New York City, Barack Obama intended to ask his supporters to help pay off the campaign debt of his former rival Hillary Rodham Clinton.

But there was a problem: He forgot.

The Illinois senator delivered a fairly typical stump speech. Then he thanked the crowd and walked offstage.

A minute later, he dashed back on. "Sen. Clinton still has some debt," he said sheepishly, as the audience cracked up.