more nitpicking from the liberal media - the kind of thing only an effete latte-sipping snob would give a squirrel's ass about

McCain Transition Chief Aided Saddam In Lobbying Effort

William Timmons, the Washington lobbyist who John McCain has named to head his presidential transition team, aided an influence effort on behalf of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein to ease international sanctions against his regime... Timmons worked closely with the two lobbyists, Samir Vincent and Tongsun Park, on a previously unreported prospective deal with the Iraqis in which they hoped to be awarded a contract to purchase and resell Iraqi oil.

This was ahead-of-the-paradigm-shifting-curve forward thinking -- he was the first to be able to conceive of it as "our oil." If Bush is still in the giving-out-medals business... just sayin'... Ed.

Timmons declined to comment for this story. An office manager who works for him said that he has made it his practice during his public career to never speak to the press.

That's exactly what you look for in a head of a presidential transition team -- what a mavericky choice! Ed.

Note if you will the felt cultural security of this 72-year-old rich white male son of a Navy admiral

NYT's Alessandra Stanley:

[Mr. Obama] wore a dark suit and a flag lapel pin, and chose to focus on appearing steady and serious-minded and so ready to be president that he at one point sounded as if he already were: “I reserve the right as president of the United States to — to meet with anybody at a time and place of my choosing if I think it’s going to keep America safe.”

Mr. McCain felt secure enough not to wear a flag pin on his lapel, and comfortable enough to make jokes. “I’m not going to set the White House visitors’ schedule before I’m president of the United States,” he said. “I don’t even have a seal yet.”

Smiff writing for Huffington?

...one of the main reasons why the nation appears to be lining up against Senator McCain's insanely obvious lack of integrity could be because his very serious and mavericky campaign strategy can be described in four simple words:

Blurt Out Random Crap.

Wall Street Journal - liberal, elite, and against Main Street values

A few days ago I talked politics with Donn Teske, the president of the Kansas Farmers Union and a former Republican. Barack Obama may come from a big city, he admits, but the Farmers Union gives him a 100% rating for his votes in Congress. John McCain gets a 0%. "If any farmer in the Plains States looked at McCain's voting record on ag issues," Mr. Teske says, "no one would vote for him."

Now, Mr. McCain is known for his straight talk with industrial workers, telling them their jobs are never coming back, that the almighty market took them away for good, and that retraining is their only hope.

But he seems to think that small-town people can be easily played. (He's right... Ed.) Just choose a running mate who knows how to skin a moose and all will be forgiven. Drive them off the land, shutter their towns, toss their life chances into the grinders of big agriculture . . . and praise their values. The TV eminences will coo in appreciation of your in-touch authenticity, and the carnival will move on.

Only a maverick would make such a maverick move!

McCain chooses polar bear from Alaska for V.P.
~

McCain campaign theme?

Buying up homes is good for the economy - he's just being patriotic.

Home buyers hold fate of U.S. economy

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The willingness and ability of Americans to come back into the housing market over the next few months will determine whether the U.S. economy experiences a mild downturn or the deepest recession in 30 years.

Many economists say that home prices have another 10 percent to fall to bring them into balance with rents and incomes. A fall of that magnitude would elicit a huge sigh of relief from Wall Street and Washington.

But it wouldn't take much -- a further clampdown by private lenders or a meltdown at mortgage finance companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- to push home prices down much more severely, perhaps more than 20 percent.

"That's how you could quickly get into this darker scenario," said Mark Zandi, chief economist with Moody's Economy.com.