Expected out of the McCain camp this afternoon, The Obama Iraq Documentary: Whatever Politics Demand:

ARLINGTON, VA -- U.S. Senator John McCain's presidential campaign today announced that U.S. Senator Richard Burr (R-NC), U.S. Senator Jon Kyl (R-AZ), U.S. Senator John Thune (R-SD), U.S. Representative Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), and U.S. Representative Eric Cantor (R-VA), will participate in a press conference to unveil a new campaign video entitled, "The Obama Iraq Documentary: Whatever the Politics Demand" on Thursday, July 17th at 3:30 p.m. EDT at the Capitol Hill Club in Washington, DC.

Four years ago...

By Jwilkes from Eyes on Obama:

With his commanding recapture of Michigan earlier this month, Barack Obama has successfully lined up all of the states won by Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry in 2004. Obviously, those states weren't enough for Kerry. But this time around, Obama has added a few potential big state victories that should be enough to put him over the top.

In a post titled "The baseless, and failed, 'move to the center' cliche" Glenn Greenwald argues that centrist Democratic presidential campaigns are "just an unexamined relic from past times, the immovable, uncritical assumption of Beltway strategists and pundits who can't accept that it isn't 1972 anymore -- or even 2002." Basically, his argument is that the reason Democratic candidates have lost in recent presidential elections is that they have run centrist campaigns: "What makes Democrats look weak is their patent fear of standing by their own views." Greenwald has consistently been one of the best sources of analysis on issues like wiretapping, torture, and civil liberties - but on this one, he's 100% wrong.

i'm an amateur with something bothering me....

A call to action for McCain to sign SF-180 and release his full military records so he can be properly vetted. The MSM must stop giving McCain their blessing. Please stay with me.

Thomas Lipscomb works himself into a cut and paste frenzy with his latest screechfest over at Huffington Post:

Why "Running on the Record" is Harder Than You Think

Lipscomb long ago lost any semblance of credibility he might ever - in the far far past - have had.   Now, too lazy to even make up new lies, he simply cuts and pastes old lies that have been debunked for years.  You’d think he’d read some of those sarcastic comments at the old pieces he links to.

Where to start on such a breathtakingly dishonest display?  Well, how about some of the more obvious lies?

According to AP, Chuck Hagel says he'd consider the VP spot on the Obama ticket. Hagel has been pretty much in line with Bush with the exception of the war in Iraq where he has been clanging the warning bell for a long time.

In the AP report, Hagel admits that he and Obama have their differences, but he is clearly committed to bringing the country together, and he adds that he's had his share of differences with McCain as well.  Hagel, along with Jim Webb and John Kerry, is one of the four Vietnam combat vets in the Senate.  The fourth, is, of course, McCain. Hagel, who served as a Sargent in the Army, is the only enlisted vet among the group; the others were commissioned officers.  

This is a very short diary and my apologies for it. But there's been something weighing rather heavily on my mind and I just have to ask it. Please correct me if I am wrong -- I will be happy to correct anything that is incorrect in  this diary.  There is a lot of anger towards Clinton about her vote to authorize the war in Iraq. I am against the war in Iraq. I want the troops home TODAY, whether that is a reasonable or logical solution to the mess over there or not. But unless I am mistaken, Kerry also voted for the war. And to make matters worse, during his campaign for President in 2004 (during which I worked my ass off for him) didn't he say something along the lines of (and I am paraphrasing here because I don't remember exact words "if I knew that Iraq did not have WMD, and if I knew that Iraq was not a threat to the US, I still would have voted to authorize the war". Again, I'm paraphrasing. Correct me if I am wrong. Please.

I was watching CNN today and Sanjay was talking to Arlen Specter, so that got me thinking?  Who is going to interview Ted Kennedy?

First I don't even know if there is going to be an interview, his health may be such that it is out of the question, but if there is one I want KO.

I just came across this data put together by the gallup polling organization. http://www.gallup.com/...

Here's a synopsis of the data:
-Kerry lost whites by 17 points to Bush, Obama loses them by 16 to McCain.
-Kerry won hispanics by 9, Obama wins them by 10
-Kerry lost non college grads by 6 points, Obama loses them by 4
-Kerry lost weekly churchgoers by 22, Obama loses them by 19
-Kerry lost men by 11 points, Obama loses them by 5
-Kerry won women by 3, Obama wins them by 4

These are polls taken from May 1-5 a bad time for Obama during Rev Wright II, and when he was expected to lose Indiana big, and maybe even lose NC. This shows that Obama can get the same amount of support among those demographic groups as Kerry did. This comes as a sign of relief to me, and is really good news for a number of reasons.

When this primary season began, I, like many Democrats, would often say that I would proudly vote for whoever the ultimate Democratic nominee turned out to be. At the time, I was undecided, shifting between Edwards and Obama, eventually staying with Obama after Edwards dropped out, but not at all averse to a Clinton candidacy. As the primary wore on, and as the Clinton campaign employed the most disgusting Rovian tactics with all the deftness of Bob Shrum, the prospect of Clinton actually winning through some backroom deal at the convention amidst a Democratic civil war has changed that word "proudly" to "begrudgingly". This is not to say that I would still not vote for her in this hypothetical scenario, because I realize that she would still be infinitely better than the ill-tempered torture apologist who wants to bomb bomb bomb Iran, despite not knowing the difference between Sunni and Shia Islam; however, this does mean that I would vote for her painfully, and with absolutely no realistic expectation that she could win the general election.

Over the past few weeks, one of the strongest and most disingenuous moves by the Clinton campaign has been to re-frame John Kerry's loss to George W. Bush in the 2004 election cycle as a problem with elitism.  Of course, the Obama campaign can't correct the record without alienating his support from the junior Senator from Massachusetts, as well as John Kerry's most ardent constituency.  So the job was left up to the media; the results, no surprise.

Here we go again. In this week's Newsweek Michael Hirsch has an article titled The Democrats’ Wimp Factor: As Obama's patriotism is questioned, he's starting to look more and more like John Kerry in '04.

Hirsch then uses the time-honored self-fulfilling prophecy of adopting the right-wing attack as being effective merely because the question is raised.

Between the questions about Obama's meager association with William Ayers, a former Weatherman, and the suspicions raised by his lack of a flag lapel pin, the likely nominee is slowly being turned into John Kerry.

Hirsch seems oblivious to the idiocy of those questions and the backlash against them.  Let this guy know in his comments or his email: [webeditors@newsweek.com] that this year he's wrong -- We and Obama will not let this crap stand.

Just a thought. We keep spending time talking about Obama's VP. Markos' recent top picks include:

Richardson
Dodd
Sebelius

All reasonable picks, along with Webb, Clark & Zinni. But, what if Obama's best pick was (drumroll):

Hillary Clinton supporter Eliot Spitzer has been linked to prostitution ring and the NY governor may be facing criminal charges for transporting a person across state lines for the purposes of prostitution.

I am eagerly awaiting the Clinton campaign's statement regarding their supporter Eliot Spitzer, but IMO I may be waiting until hell freezes over. What? Rank hypocrisy in the Clinton campaign. Why I never!

Most know that it's over if Obama wins OH and/or TX Tuesday and we have to be prepared, in the best interest of the party to respectfully start really arguing for a HRC withdrawal from the race.

We always knew when we did this we'd have to fight the Clinton campaign with its ever moving goalposts but the writing is on the wall that Fox News and the rest of the Right will also be pushing for the Dems to go all the way to August cause they know it's in their best interest.

We must be prepared for this fight...

Yesterday, Stroszek posted an excellent diary examining the possible VP choices for Obama.  S/he divided the choices into categories:  Change, Competence, Reform, and Unity/Consensus.  Altogether there were 39 individuals described or mentioned.  It even had pictures!

Looking over the list of possible running mates, I realized there was one name missing:  Senator John Kerry.  In a subsequent search of diaries for the past three months, I did not immediately find any other diaries suggesting that Obama pick Kerry.  (Of course, the assumption that he would be in a position to pick a running mate is not three months old – but I like to be thorough.)

Let me just briefly explain after the jump why I think he would be an excellent choice.  Then I would love to hear your thoughts.

They'll come over day now, I guess.

I wish I could post the video here directly, but on UN Dispatch I embedded the video of Bono's tribute to Congressman Tom Lantos. (You can read my account of the service here.)  

I encourage folks to watch Bono's tribute. He sings a very heartfelt version of "All You Need is Love," and when the camera pans out to the crowd you can see congressman Kucinich and John Kerry, among others, singing along.