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Thanks for reading these last 6 months.

And thanks to all who e-mailed or commented.

Whether you agreed or disagreed, I enjoyed talking to you.

James Garner should sue John McCain

for this ad.

Following McCain's negative barrage last week, Obama hit back with an ad tying McCain to Bush and his policies.

Whether it successfully counters the GOP blitz is uncertain, but Obama does have McCain on defense, at least for now.

Nick Rahall relaunches Web site

News on your Congressman from a press release:

“I am excited to announce the launch of my new web site,” said Rahall. “I encourage everyone to go to www.rahall.house.gov and discover the new and upgraded features we’ve included to make many of my office’s services available to Third District residents from the comfort of their own homes.”

Obama kicks off week focusing on energy

By unveiling his plan.

UPI lists some of his proposals:

-- Providing short-term relief to American families facing pain at the pump

-- Helping create 5 million new jobs by investing $150 billion in the private sector during the next 10 years to build a clean energy future.

-- Putting 1 million plug-in hybrid cars in the road by 2015.

-- Ensuring 10 percent of the nation's electricity comes from renewable sources by 2012, increasing to 25 percent by 2025.

Photo: AP

Is coal the new oil?

WVa Blue and Daily Kos regular Faithfull looks at the recent spike in coal prices and asks, "Are we on the verge of seeing electricity rates pull a "gas-prices?"

A great, informative post on DailyKos that you can read here.

Going down that low road

So the GOP tried the "Obama thinks he's God" ad with Moses.

And they tried the "Obama is Britney" approach.

And the easily discredited "Obama won't see wounded troops" ad.

Now it's time for the "Obama wants to kill newborn babies" campaign.

Sadly, that's not a joke.

Or even a bit of Jonathan Swift-style cleverness.

They really want voters to think Barack Obama is in favor of allowing parents to kill their kids after they're born.

From FOX News' "Hannity's America"

CORSI: Exactly, even extensively looking back at his record when he was in the state legislature in Illinois. His completely pro-abortion position, his --

HANNITY: Even if a child was born.

CORSI: Even if a child was born, he said the woman still had the right to kill the child in an abortion.

HANNITY: Unbelievable.

Q: How you can tell when you shouldn't believe something on Hannity's show?

A: Whenever he does his canned, going-to-get-the-vapors bit and says something is "unbelievable."

Media Matters gives you the the real story:

In making the false assertion about Obama's position -- Obama has of course never supported giving people the right to kill their children -- Corsi was also misrepresenting the legislation to which he was referring, a bill amending the Illinois Abortion Law of 1975. Opponents of the bill said the legislation was unnecessary as the Illinois criminal code unequivocally prohibits killing children, and said that it posed a threat to abortion rights.

So who is this Mr. Corsi?

Jerome Corsi is a longtime GOP operative, brought up under the dirty tricks of Charles Colson from the Nixon era. He's the guy who wrote the anti-Kerry smear book "Unfit for Command," in 2004, which was loaded with factual errors. He's got a new one out, called "The Obama Nation," which seeks to do the same to this year's Democratic candidate. No surprise that's it's also loaded with falsehoods.

In addition he's a member of controversial conservative Web site Free Republic, where he posts under the name "jrlc." As Media Matters reports, his posts there are filled with racist and sexist rants.

So, obviously, he's another one of Hannity's many friends of character.

McCain promised us a "respectful" campaign about the issues. Will he address this segment and Hannity's tactics when he inevitably shows up on the show to again court the rightwing vote?

Don't hold your breath.

How about frequent Hannity guest and McSurrogate Joe Lieberman?

He did, after all, hint that he was going to address the Republican National Convention for McCain and denounce "partisan mudslinging." Surely, this qualifies as such in Joe's eyes.

And, if any Democratic voters think this kind of strategy is so over-the-top that voters won't take it seriously, they should look at the latest polls.

Obama's lead in the Gallup survey has all-but-evaporated and McCain is now leading by one point in Rasmussen's latest.

All thanks to McCain's kitchen sink campaign of the last week.

Sandy Goodman, a retired producer for NBC News, writes about the negative turn in the campaign at HuffPo:

Obama has his work cut out for him. He must find a way to combat McCain's so far successful campaign of character assassination or risk losing the election. This is a year the Democrats should win everything, after eight years of the disasters Republicans have foisted on this country and the world.

[...]

In politics as elsewhere in life, truth, justice and virtue too often don't triumph. Neither will Obama if he doesn't figure out how to combat McCain's gutter campaign.

Voters say they oppose negative campaigns, but the reason politicians keep running them is because, quite simply, they work.

Portrait of Hannity by me

Quickies

- Gloria Steinem, one of Hillary Clinton's biggest supporters gets on record supporting the Democratic candidate:

Steinem is supporting Obama in the general race. “Women are more than smart enough to see that McCain’s policies are a disaster ... He is anti every reproductive issue we’ve ever fought for.”

She believes women will vote for Obama even if Clinton doesn’t get the much-mooted consolation prize of the vice-president’s spot on the Democratic ticket – a job Steinem doesn’t think is good enough for her anyway. Why? “It’s not an independent position, to put it mildly. I would rather see her as the president of the Senate.”

- John McCain is vetting Virginia Congressman Eric Cantor as a possible V-P.

- At WVaBlue: Anne Barth goes mud bogging.

Did McCain play the race card? Gergen thinks so

Political veteran David Gergen, who served in the White House with Presidents Nixon, Ford, Reagan and Clinton, says McCain's new attack ad uses racial codewords.

"I think the McCain campaign has been scrupulous about not directly saying it, but it's the subtext of this campaign. Everybody knows that. There are certain kinds of signals. As a native of the south, I can tell you, when you see this Charlton Heston ad, 'The One,' that's code for, 'he's uppity, he ought to stay in his place.' Everybody gets that who is from a southern background. We all understand that. When McCain comes out and starts talking about affirmative action, 'I'm against quotas,' we get what that's about."

Recommended reading: John Helleman

Josh Marshall of TPM picked this one as a must-read and I'm passing it on.

John Helleman of New York magazine (not to be confused with The New Yorker of Barack and Michelle cartoon cover fame) analyzes the McCain attack strategy, the rationale behind it and its chances:

...the motor behind his operation now is Steve Schmidt, the shaven-headed strategist who earned his bones running Karl Rove’s war room in 2004, Frenchifying and de-war-heroizing John Kerry. What Schmidt and his associates have apparen tly concluded is that McCain’s weaknesses—on the election’s most salient issues and as a candidate—are so pronounced and Obama’s vulnerabilities so glaring that the low road is their guy’s best, and maybe only, route to the White House.

Sunday morning poll (a few hours early)

Which candidate do you feel the media favors?
	Barack Obama
	John McCain
	neither
pollcode.com free polls

Results for last week (as of 8/2):
Who is the greatest president we never had?
Top 3 answers (out of 20 choices):
Robert F. Kennedy 19%
Al Gore 14%
Ralph Nader 8%

"Tiananmen Square," "Tibet"

Those are the keywords.

Sadly, if, by improbable chance, a reporter covering the Olympics in China tries to access this post, it would be blocked by filters.

AP:

BEIJING - Olympic organizers unblocked some Internet sites at the main press center and media venues Friday while others remained off limits for journalists covering the Beijing games.

The move falls short of the "free and unfettered access" the organizers and Chinese officials had promised for months. However, it was an improvement from earlier in the week when sites for the likes of Amnesty International or Tiananmen Square could not be opened.

Here's some more of that scary, scary stuff:

Amnesty International

Also:

Today, The U.S. House of Representatives called upon President Bush to make a statement on the Chinese human rights atrocities and to request a visit to Chinese-occupied Tibet when he goes to the opening ceremonies to cozy up to the totalitarian rulers.

Chinese paramilitary police officers wait for instructions, inside the National Aquatics Center, known as the Water Cube, in Beijing Wednesday, July 30, 2008. (AP Photo/Oded Balilty)

In case you're feeling left out

Nothing to do with politics-I just like running photos of an eclipse of the sun.

As usual with total eclipses, we didn't get to enjoy it in the U.S..

But hang in there for 9 more years. On Aug. 21, 2017, we'll have the first total solar eclipse visible from the continental U.S. since 1979.

We'll see it nicely from here, but the location and time of "greatest eclipse" will be in our region - on the western edge of Christian County, Kentucky - which is only 4-5 hours away from Huntington.

Start planning your road trips now.

The total solar eclipse is observed at 7:21 pm (1121 GMT) on Friday, Aug. 1, 2008 in north of Xi'an, capital of northwest China's Shaanxi Province. The total solar eclipse, the first that can be viewed in China in the new century, occured on Friday. (AP)

Double standards: The "Arrogant and Cocky" edition

Following some cropped quotes and bad reporting by Dana Milbank of The Washington Post and a blatantly dishonest ad from Sen. John McCain, the punditocracy has been endlessly echoing the charge that Obama is presumptuous and getting too full of himself.

This is the same beltway media that had no problem with ego and couldn't stop fawning over George W. Bush's most over-the-top moment — the carrier landing stunt five years ago.

Never mind that a large segment of the country found it tasteless:

MSNBC's Chris Matthews:

And that's the president looking very much like a jet, you know, a high-flying jet star

Ann Coulter (to Matthews):

It's tremendous. It's hard to imagine any Democrat being able to do that. And it doesn't matter if Democrats try to ridicule it. It's stunning, and it speaks for itself.

NBC's Brian Williams:

He's a youthful guy. He looked terrific and full of energy in a flight suit.

The New York Times, sounding like a bad dime store novel:

He hopped out of the plane with a helmet tucked under his arm and walked across the flight deck with a swagger that seemed to suggest he had seen Top Gun. Clearly in his element, he was swarmed by cheering members of the Lincoln's crew.

CBS' Bob Schieffer:

As far as I'm concerned, that was one of the great pictures of all time.

Margaret Carlson:

It was so well done, and even though we knew that everything was choreographed down to, you know, catching that fourth hook on the ship, it was still a pretty stirring tableau. Cecil B. DeMille couldn't have been done better. And even though you know there's no Santa Claus, Christmas is still great, as it was with that particular moment.

I don't think I need to mention that the charges against Obama are baseless and just the latest in the attempt by the GOP to turn the race away from issues and to personality-based voting.

Still, it's interesting how the talking heads are suddenly big fans of the humble approach to politics.

Barr still working on W.Va.

Though the state is one of the hardest for him to obtain ballot access, Libertarian presidential candidate Bob Barr's campaign is still collecting signatures for W.Va.

As the H-D reported on the 31:

Party spokesperson Andrew Davis said they are shooting for 22,000 signatures, although just more than 15,000 are needed to pass the initiative.

In ballot access efforts, campaigns generally try to collect a great deal more signatures than the required number, as many are thrown out when officials review them. I worked for a third party in 2000 and our goal was to get 50% more than we needed, so that we had a cushion when they got reviewed.

Off-topic Thursday

Superchunk - "Watery Hands," featuring David Cross and Janeane Garofalo.