It's a pretty nice city. I've barely explored it, but had a lot of fun exploring the State Capitol and the Hyde Park Area. If you're ever anywhere near Avenue B Grocery Store, you should definitely go there. The guy sells Mexican cokes, my favorite soda, and they're the kind that doesn't have high fructose syrup in them.

I was researching McCain's past position on the war in Afghanistan, and came across this very interesting Meet The Press transcript from October 21st, 2001. This transcript reveals a very intriguing blunder by John McCain that should be discussed in the press today.

He said that he thought the war in Afghanistan should be settled first before going to war with Iraq. This simply puts to lie his arguments on the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. He used to think that it was important to have everything in Afghanistan settled first, Osama bin Laden caught, and the Taliban regime extinguished before going to war with Iraq. Senator Joe Lieberman also makes a cameo in this transcript.

Planned Parenthood just released a new ad that'll play in the fall battleground states of Colorada, Iowa, Minnesota, New Mexico, Ohio, Wisconsin, and Washington, D.C.

I'm tired of how largely reactive the Obama campaign has been in controlling the media narrative of this race. I noticed the ineffectual nature of the Obama press shop during the primary season with Senator Hillary Clinton, particularly with Bill Burton, who remains the press secretary out of Chicago since the reported communications team revamp.

The responses were a bit slow, tepid, and poorly worded. Today, the responses continue to be tepid and poorly worded, which muddles the message they're trying to get it out.

Let me introduce the acronym, KISS, to the Obama campaign press shop. Keep It Simple, Stupid. Long missives do not an effective response make.

Ben Smith at Politico notes that Carly Fiorina, McCain's top surrogate, has stepped in the proverbial mud again with her recent comments in Bloomberg.com
on McCain's tax policies.

Senator Barack Obama, in front of the National Council of La Raza, just unveiled a $6 billion health tax credit for small businesses as an incentive for them to provide health care coverage for their employees. I've posted the text of the plan below for those who are interested in reading about the specifics:

See this guy? I love him. He proposed to me, so he's stuck with me for the next fifty years of his life :-) I sure hope he knows what he's getting into with me.

The Wall Street Journal has reported this morning that Senator Barack Obama has only raised $30 million in June, about $20 million short of where he needs to be in order to beat the Republican's $400 million machine in November.

Here's the lightning-quick response from the Obama campaign on the incendiary comments by Phil Gramm, the top McCain economic advisor, calling Americans a bunch of "whiners" on the economy:

The Obama campaign is pushing the issue now: "One of Senator McCain’s top economic advisors may think that when people are struggling with lost jobs, stagnant wages, and the rising costs of everything from gas to groceries, it’s merely a ‘mental recession’. And Senator McCain may think it’s sufficient to offer energy proposals that he admits will have mainly ‘psychological’ benefits. But the American people know that our economic problems aren’t just in their heads. They don’t need psychological relief -- they need real relief -- and that’s what Barack Obama will provide as President," Obama spokesman Bill Burton writes.

It was with an amused grin when I read this story over at Feministing about Carly Fiorina, the ever prominent McCain surrogate, opining on women's issues regarding health care coverage, especially on birth control.

The best way to putting pressure on our elected officials to vote against a bill is by mass-calling all your Representatives or Senators on an important bill, like FISA. Right now, the vote on FISA will be held today, and you know what that means, Kossacks. It's time to hit the phone lines!

CALL YOUR SENATORS RIGHT AWAY

As a part of John McCain's economic turnaround, and a "re-packaging" of his economic policies, he's going to claim balancing the federal budget by the end of his first term by overhauling entitlement programs like Social Security.

We all know what one word that boils down to: privatization.

That's the third rail of American politics that John McCain is going to do a little electrifyin' jig on according to his 15 page economic plan.

This video pretty much encapsulates all the feelings I have at the purity bloggers on this site who claim that donating money won't matter since Obama is bound to win in November, or that Obama is worse than John McCain, or that this specific hill is the one that Obama should die on. Or, even that elections don't matter in the face of this single specific issue.

Today, John McCain is in Colombia to press his full-throated support for free trade deals that will send more American jobs over to Colombia and Mexico without environmental and labor protections. That's our boy, John McCain! Now comes the breaking news that one of John McCain's top fundraisers helped fund a terrorist group in Colombia.

Obama, in a major speech on religion today, is set to announce an expansion of faith-based programs, and one provision may start off a controversy here on Dailykos, which is the ability of these organizations to hire and fire based upon faith. Obama supports that.

The Obama campaign just finished their conference call on the New York Times story about Al-Qaeda flourishing in Pakistan, and hit McCain several times during their conference call for supporting the Iraq war.

As we all know by now, the facts matter very little much anymore, and that it is the perception of whatever reality there is that drives the current media narrative that matters.