This diary is partly a reply to all the worryworts and handwringers who are screaming "We're doomed" every time Obama does soemthing (or, more often, doesn't do something) we think he should be doing on the campaign trail.

Obama knows what he's doing, guys. Accept it.

And, I think I have an idea what he's doing, and why.

Barack Obama came to San Francisco tonight for a fundraiser, probably his last visit here until the election. So I scraped together the price of admission and went to see him. And had a few words with him. Again.

First, let me say that the event raised a record $7.8 million, the most ever raised at a single San Francisco event.

Second, he made it clear in his speech that he knows what he's up against ("The Republicans are meeeeean" was the way he put it), and he is going to be fighting back HARD. He's heard the hand-wringers and the doomsayers (gosh, d'you think he reads dKos?) and in so many words he was telling them not to worry, he knows how to fight. The GOP knows they can't win on the issues, he said, so they have to fight dirty. And he is ready for them.

For the rest of it, come below the fold.

A blogger posted this headline on the Reuters website:

Obama takes shirt off again, goes body surfing in Hawaii Reuters blog

So the McCain campaign just had to make a deal of it:

...prompting this immediate media email from the McCain campaign:

You know you may just be a global celebrity when you get this headline in Reuters, "Obama Takes Shirt Off Again, Goes Body Surfing In Hawaii." Guardian blog (Oliver Burkeman)

While we've all been focusing on the Russia-Georgia conflict, another Bush foreign policy failure is about to leave a nuclear power in a very unstable state:

Faced with desertions by his political supporters and the neutrality of the Pakistani military, President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan, an important ally of the United States, is expected to resign in the next few days rather than face impeachment charges, Pakistani politicians and Western diplomats said Thursday.

His departure from office would be likely to unleash new instability in the country as the two main parties in the civilian government jockeyed for the division of power. New York Times today

John McCain has taken a bellicose stand on the Georgian mess:

"He knows that the thoughts and the prayers and support of the American people are with that brave little nation as they struggle today for their freedom and independence. And he wanted me to say thank you to you, to give you his heartfelt thanks for the support of the American people for this tiny little democracy far away from the United States of America. And I told him that I know I speak for every American when I say to him, ' Today, we are all Georgians,' " McCain declared. Boston Globe

Well, now Saakashvili is calling him on it.

With the Russia-Georgia conflict heating up heating up by the minute, both Obama and McCain have now condemned Russia's actions. But they propose different solutions:

Obama: As I have said for many months, aggressive diplomatic action must be taken to reach a political resolution to this crisis, and to assure that Georgia's sovereignty is protected.

McCain: We should immediately call a meeting of the North Atlantic Council to assess Georgia’s security and review measures NATO can take to contribute to stabilizing this very dangerous situation.

There is a BIG problem with McCain's approach. Follow me below the fold.

I've been reading a lot of gloom and doom here about how McCain is making all kinds of low road (low as in "the ninth circle of hell" low) attacks on Obama, including suggesting he's "too qualified" to be president, and how Obama is mostly letting them slide, or giving tepid responses. We're wringing our hands so much over this it's amazing some of us can still type.

So this is a hopefully hopeful counter-diary: Wait a week, guys. Come the Olympics, it'll be show time!

Short (but hopefully meaningful) diary:

I watched Obama on Meet the Press a little while ago. Brokaw started out trying to get Obama to say the surge worked, or to explain why he still feels it didn't. Obama (admittedly perhaps not at the top of his game after that 9-day whirlwind) dodged the issue, talking about all the other factors, but he never came out with the obvious answer:

A surge is temporary!

is what the UK Independent called Barack Obama today:

Gordon Brown's political nightmare will continue to haunt him today when he welcomes to Downing Street the man who is arguably the world's most popular politician.

That famous lime green backdrop McCain used is starting to make more sense: The green of jealousy is McCain's natural color.

And Bush must be feeling even worse when he reads things like this LA Times headline:

"Obama's popularity as anti-Bush is telling"

This is the headline from the Sunday Independent

Brown plans to withdraw troops as he backs Obama over 'war on terror'

Big as Mailiki's endorsement (subsequently modified) of Obama's 16-month timetable (a/k/a time horizon) is, this is bigger. Bush's favorite ally has turned on him.

It's no secret that GOP leaders have not been happy with the way the McCain has been run (if "run" is even the right word here):

Four months have passed since John McCain effectively captured the party nomination, and the insiders are getting restless. Top GOP officials, frustrated by what they view as inconsistent messaging, sluggish fundraising and an organization that is too slow to take shape, are growing increasingly uneasy about the direction of the McCain presidential campaign. Politico 1 July 08

Now there's a new legal analysis suggesting that McCain may be ineligible to run for president because he could not have been a natural-born citizen when he was born in the Canal Zone.

Could this be good news for the GOP?

Yes, he actually said that. Not as a complaint or an admission, but as a boast:

President George Bush signed off with a defiant farewell over his refusal to accept global climate change targets at his last G8 summit.

As he prepared to fly out from Japan, he told his fellow leaders: "Goodbye from the world's biggest polluter." UK Independent 10 Jul 2008

is this:

Power passes.

I've been thinking about this topic for several days now, and it seems a perfect essay for Independence Day week, the day we published our declaration of what democracy means:

Goverments ... deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, [and] whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it....

Rather than require a revolution to effect a change of government (though Jefferson thought it might be a good idea every 20 years or so), We the People crafted a Constitution which provided a mechanism for the peaceful determination of who shall hold power in our name. And the "consent of the governed" ensures that all power is temporary and held on good behavior, for the people will, at some point, give that power to someone else. Power passes.

Unless, perhaps, if you're a Republican.

An AP story displayed on Huffington Post today reports on McCain's "campaign missteps" such as criticizing Obama for proposing a windfall oil profits tax when he, McCain had once done the same thing. Then there is the trip to Ottawa, where he attacked Obama, though not by name (here is McCain imitating Bush by making political attacks while in another country), and the "non-fundraiser" he hosted afterwards.

AP quotes McCain aides making light of the problems. And the AP story talks about how all presidential campaigns can expect some "self-inflicted wounds." But then, at the bottom of the article, this caught my eye:

Arguably, McCain has yet to make that kind of gaffe [as Obama did with his "biiter" comment] despite enduring a candidacy of remarkable adversity in which he went from front-runner to the campaign cellar and back again.

Huh?

Barack Obama is now citing the Nuremberg trials as an example of the power of law:

Obama, a former senior lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School, cited "that principle of habeas corpus, that a state can't just hold you for any reason without charging you and without giving you any kind of due process -- that’s the essence of who we are. I mean, you remember during the Nuremberg trials, part of what made us different was even after these Nazis had performed atrocities that no one had ever seen before, we still gave them a day in court...." ABC Political Punch

Typically, John McCain isn't having any of it:

Senator Obama refuses to clarify whether he believes habeas should be granted to Osama bin Laden, and instead cites the precedent of the Nuremburg war trials. Unfortunately, it is clear Senator Obama does not understand what happened at the Nuremburg trials and what procedures were followed. Boston Globe

As usual, it's McCain who does not understand.

McCain throws in the towel on Hagee:

In the face of mounting controversy over headline-grabbing statements from Pastor John Hagee, CNN has learned presumptive Republican nominee John McCain has decided to reject his endorsement. CNN Politics 3:45 PM EDT

Seems the Hitler business finally got to him.

There is evidence that the Saudis have been helping out John McCain:

Last week, an aide to Mr. McCain acknowledged that Mr. Loeffler [a lobbyist for Saudi Arabia] was working full-time on the campaign, though he did not draw a salary. New York Sun 19 May 2008

But I have a suggestion for the Saudis: They should back Barack Obama instead.

Both TPM and HuffPo have links to this WaPo this morning, and we should also be looking at it:

[T]he reality is that both sides have declared an effective cease-fire as they prepare to bring the party together for a general-election campaign against Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.).