Halperin:

Two Republicans close to the situation say McCain has apparently settled on Mitt Romney as his running mate.

Two additional GOP sources say McCain had not offered the slot to anyone as of Thursday night, and that he could still change his mind.

Mittens has what, three houses?

Talk about a reinforcing pick, if it pans out.

Since huckleberry is desperate for a diary, I thought I would oblige by sharing Obama's new Indiana ad which smacks down McSame on the economy. The ad uses real Hoosiers (including a vet) and of course McSame's own stupid statements to hit home.

Take a look.

Mark Halperin claims he has the inside info that Romney is McCain's VP choice. I for one hope Halperin is actually right for once. But right under that, he says that Gen. Petraeus is also being considered, as McCain's darkhorse, I suppose.

People close to the campaign also floated a wild-card choice, Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top American commander in Iraq. They said it was not beyond the realm of possibility that Mr. McCain would ask him to join the ticket, although General Petraeus has no experience in elective government and has said repeatedly that he is not interested in the vice presidency.

Now, I for one found this pretty hard to believe. Is it even possible for him to just pack up and leave Iraq all the sudden and hit the trail? I doubt it.

Naturally, this has to be seen as nothing more than a desperate cry for attention, when all eyes are on Obama and his potential picks. And if McCain's choice is really leaking out a full week before the announcement, he'll have an especially hard time getting any attention in the next week.

Well, it turns out McCain is doing it for attention and his own advisors admit it.

Houston, we have LIFT-OFF!!  Wall to Wall coverage and the reviews are in - ahem, not so good:

►  "A field day for Obama"

►  "Explosive"

►  "This will break through.  This will become Late Nite material"

►  "Looks like McSame can't count that high"

►  "McSame's Supermarket scanner moment"

►  "Blood in the water"

►  "These words will haunt him"

►  "A seminal moment"

Plus, lots of Candy below.

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Just following up on joeyess's brilliant rec'd diary... the DNC may or may not adopt a formal handout of key rings with seven keys on it to every attendee, but there's no reason why you can't bring your own and shake 'em at the convention.  Others will have there's too, even if they didn't plan on it, and it just may catch on.

I'm in Saint Paul, MN and I'll be bringing my keys where ever I may end up.

Of course, be cool everyone, this about the economy and how out of touch Senator McMansion is.

John McCain to George W. Bush, in 2000:

In other words your position is you believe there’s an exemption for rape, incest, and life of the mother, but you want the platform that you’re supposed to be leading to have no exemption...

It doesn’t have the exemptions in it and you know that very well...

Read the platform. It has no exceptions...

In 2007:

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., told ABC News Saturday that he still wants to change the GOP's abortion platform to explicitly recognize exceptions for rape, incest, and the life of the mother.

McCain reaffirmed his difference with party doctrine on permissible abortion exceptions after speaking to the Iowa Republican Party's Lincoln Day Dinner in Des Moines.

And today:

But now that he is the presumptive Republican nominee, the McCain camp is making it clear that he has no plans to push for changes to the platform.

McCain's decision to leave the platform untouched follows a warning from a prominent social conservative.

"If he were to change the party platform," to account for exceptions such as rape, incest or risk to the mother's life, "I think that would be political suicide," Tony Perkins, the president of the conservative Family Research Council, told ABC News in May. "I think he would be aborting his own campaign because that is such a critical issue to so many Republican voters and the Republican brand is already in trouble."

Gosh, it's almost like the man will say anything to get elected.

Was just at securingamerica.com and listened to the audio of Clark's most recent interview on the Georgia/Russia problem.  Hearing the host of the radio show say how much he wanted to see him as VP or something else important in the Obama administration and hearing the disheartened sound of Clark's reply.

Cue country music --- "he cheated on his wife, will he cheat on his country?"
(don't groan too loud-- I could have spelled it cuntry :-)

The McCain campaign has spent weeks trying to portray Obama as out of touch with the concerns of ordinary Americans. Today, an interviewer at Politico.com asked McCain how many homes he and his wife owned, to which he responded that he was not sure but would get someone from his staff to answer.

Contrary to what many will tell you, this does not make McCain out of touch with ordinary Americans, as many families today are in trouble with their banks and trying to figure out how many homes they have - zero or one.

Still, it's the campaign's defense we find deeply troubling:

"This is a guy who lived in one house for five and a half years -- in prison."

This makes sense.

If Obama's campaign had planned to roll out their vice presidential pick at any point today, that announcement is likely to be put on hold. Why? The campaign believes the story about McCain's many houses is political gold and they won't want to step on it with a veep announcement that would immediately change the day's storyline.

(Via MyDD.)

Is there any doubt that the handwringing thorughout the blogosphere was unwarranted? I've argued in comments that the hard work would begin just after the convention in comments in other diaries.

I've Had It McCain!  All you keep using in your run for President is your "POW Card".

    McCain Uses The POW Card Again

Well, if that's the case, then I'm going to run for President too!!

Lets see...

I had a breach birth.
My parents were told at my birth that I would never walk.

I fooled the doctors when I took a patient's walker in the hospital and walked with it at age two.

Full leg braces were immediately ordered to get built.

Therapy was ordered to get me use to walking with the heavy metal braces.

After the cut: yesterday's animation, of Obama's appearance with Rick Warren...

Welcome back for more speculation! Today continues the new final series of possibilities for Obama's v.p.

This series began with a new top 14 list of names I considered most likely to be named Obama's v.p. running mate, and we'll eliminate the bottom vote-getter each day until there is a winner, or a real-life winner is named by Obama. Starting today, candidates will be listed in order of votes from the previous poll, from most to least, so we'll have some idea of preference in this thread's voting should Obama decide before there is a series winner. Sen. Russ Feingold (WI) was eliminated in the previous round.

Please discuss any v.p. candidates in the comments. The most correct format would be to state their name, unless you have further comments. I'm happy to hear all ideas in this open thread, and I'm no official gatekeeper, so play nice.

(continued below the fold)

Friends, with apologies to the Poorman Institute, these here rats aren't going to fuck themselves.

Barack Obama needs your help to drive home the point about just how rich and out-of-touch John McCain is. I'm interrupting my vacation to tell you one thing you can do to make sure those rats get good and fucked.

Remember last week, when I mocked the PUMA jokers, how they claimed they had raised $10 million for Clinton in July?

We PUMAs have generated a lot of income to help pay down Hillary’s debt. We have it on good authority that our push, our July 4th push, generated from as little as six million and up to ten million dollars to pay off her debt.

Neal Cavuto even gave them a big slot on his show, with the chyron shouting:

BOWER: RAISED MORE THAN $10M FOR CLINTON’S DEBT

All the while, PUMA head Will Bower boasted on the show that thanks to their efforts, Clinton's debt would be "finished".

Like everything that has ever come out of those closet Republicans' mouths, that claim was laughable. For a group of people who claim to speak for millions, they've proven utterly inept at delivering anything of tangible benefit. Poor Hillary Clinton herself has rejected their efforts, yet the PUMAs continue embarrassing themselves in her name.

Well, today brings more of that embarrassment:

Hillary Clinton whittled down her presidential campaign debt by $1.3 million in July, and presumptive nominee Barack Obama chipped in to help [...]

Despite suspending her campaign in June, Clinton raised $2 million in July.

Oops. That's far short of $6-10 million. But it gets worse:

Via Nashville 21 we tracked down the Hillary Clinton for President FEC filing for July contributions.  Check out the "contributions by date" info for the beginning of the month, when the PUMA/Just Say No Deal coalition was allegedly pulling in six to ten million dollars for Hillary.  I’ve included the entire July 4th weekend:

DATE	SUM
July 01, 2008	30,979.56
July 02, 2008	19,624.72
July 03, 2008	9,839.16
July 04, 2008	6,446.36
July 05, 2008	15,919.73
July 06, 2008	2,792.90

That’s a grand total of $85,602.43 for July 1st through July 6th, not even remotely close to the PUMAs’ "conservative" estimate of $6 million dollars (it’s 1.4% of that claim, 0.86% of the $10 million figure) and that’s not even accounting for the fact that all of the donations during that time period didn’t come from self-identified PUMAs.

The PUMAs are a bunch of attention whoring cranks. Unfortunately, the traditional media will continue giving them attention because there's nothing more exciting than a "Democrats divided" story.

In 2004, when the real Democrats who supported Howard Dean were defeated, we didn't sulk and embarrass Howard Dean with this kind of crap. No, we continued organizing. We got Dean elected chair of the Democratic Party, while Democracy for America continued its organizing efforts around the country. Heck, even the Kucinich crowd, as mocked as they were in more mainstream party circles, focused on organizing and created Progressive Democrats of America.

If the PUMAs actually cared about their party and about Hillary Clinton, they would honor her by creating a grassroots organization designed to promote her agenda like DFA or PDA. But they don't care about their party, and they clearly don't give a shit about what Clinton wants.

Which is all fine and dandy, but to the traditional media who will eagerly give them a platform next week, they should know that all they're merely doing is paying heed to a group of delusional cranks.

From the cowards at the AP, which still hasn't sued me for pasting portions of their articles:

Obama reported spending $55 million in July, his highest in a single month, spending about $33 million on producing and airing commercials. McCain reported spending $32 million in July, with nearly $2 of every $3 devoted to advertising.

Documents filed with the Federal Election Commission Wednesday show Obama raised $50 million and had about $66 million in the bank at the start of August. McCain reported raising more than $26 million during the month. He began August with more than $21 million in the bank.

The two candidates spent aggressively on advertising. McCain targeted about 11 traditional battleground states and Obama ran ads in 18 states, expanding his sights to states that have voted Republican in the past.

$55 million in one month ... that was more than John Edwards would've been allowed to spend entirely between January 2007 through the convention. Regardless of how efficiently Obama may or may not be spending that money, fact is that without dramatic changes in the law, no presidential candidate can take public financing in the primary and hope to be competitive in this day and age.

McCain wanted this scummy fight.

Now he is perceiving that Obama is attacking Cindy McCain because of her lavish spending and the homes.

This house, thingy is a bombshell.  It is called, "peeling the onion" on McCain.

Now, they are shaking and the gloves are off.

Rezko and Reverend Wright ads are now being made.