In a piece today titled "McCain Displays Credentials as Obama Relaxes", a New York Times' writer is shocked that Barack Obama has addressed the Georgian-Russian conflict less often than John McCain.

For the last several days, Senator Barack Obama has seemed to fade from the scene while on his secluded vacation here, as his opponent, Senator John McCain, has seized nearly every opportunity to display his foreign policy credentials on the dominant issue of the week: the conflict between Russia and Georgia.

Um...maybe because Obama is on vacation, retard.

His name is Michael Falcone, and he begins his embarrassing piece thusly:

"For the last several days, Senator Barack Obama has seemed to fade from the scene while on his secluded vacation here, as his opponent, Senator John McCain, has seized nearly every opportunity to display his foreign policy credentials on the dominant issue of the week: the conflict between Russia and Georgia."

The point of a vacation, genius, is exactly that: To fade from the scene. Yet this individual saw this fact as worthy of an entire story in the most famous newspaper.

Besides, Obama is not the president of the United States. Interrupting leisure time in the event of an emergency would be George W. Bush's responsibility. Not that the conflict constitutes an emergency anyway.

In spite of all this, Obama has indeed gone out of his way to discuss the issue with US officials, as our clueless reporter observes in the 5th paragraph:

A spokesman said that Mr. Obama had interrupted his vacation several times to get updates on the situation in the Caucasus and that he had been in “constant contact” with his national security advisers. He has spoken to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and President Mikheil Saakashvili of Georgia, as well as former Senator Sam Nunn, Democrat of Georgia; Senator Richard G. Lugar, Republican of Indiana; and former Defense Secretary William J. Perry.

The whole piece is an attempt to prove that McCain is good, and Obama is weak, when it comes to foreign policy.

Just awful.

 How can Obama possibly reduce the budget deficit while at the same time maintaining his expensive promises?

Even considering the relief that will result from the withdrawal of troops from Iraq, independent experts estimate that the deficit will actually INCREASE as a result of either McCain's or Obama's proposals, with McCain's plan being the worst in this aspect.

Two top Obama advisers, Jason Furman and Austan Goolsbee wrote today in a WSJ op-ed:

Obama is focused on cutting taxes for middle-class families and small businesses, and investing in key areas like health, innovation and education. He would do this while cutting unnecessary spending, paying for his proposals and bringing down the budget deficit" (My emphasis).

But a study conducted in June by the independent Tax Policy Center, run by the center-left Brookings Institution, in a joint effort with the progressive Urban Institute concluded that,

"McCain's plans would cut receipts by $3.72 trillion from 2009-2018 compared with current tax law. Obama's plans would cut revenues by $2.73 trillion over the same period."

I'd love to know where the spending cuts to offset these losses will come from. The Iraq War troop withdrawal would save us $80 to $90 billion a year according to Obama campaign estimates. Not enough.

Indeed, even Obama is unsure of what his advisers guarantee. He told reporters in July: "I do not make a promise that we can reduce it by 2013 because I think it is important for us to make some critical investments right now in America's families,"

Don't get me wrong. I am not saying Obama cannot reduce or balance the budget. What I'm saying is that he can do so only by breaking many of his tax/spending promises.

To the seniors and college students who expect a tax break of some sort during Obama's administration: Don't count on it.

Talk about a hit.

The new book titled, The Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality by Jerome R. Corsi, is now atop the best-seller list in Amazon.com in the non-fiction category (6th overall), as well as in the New York Times' list:

Media Matters says the book is "filled with falsehoods:"

http://mediamatters.org/items/200808040005

Amy Sullivan, who declared with no evidence other than a coincidence and loony charges of sublimity that a McCain ad titled "The One" portrays Barack Obama as the Antichrist, is a long time liberal who has worked as aide to liberal Democrat (and ardent Obama supporter) Tom Daschle,  as reported today by the website Newsbusters.org.

I am not shocked, considering the source--which harbors the likes of Obama cheerleader Joe Klein, and is the same magazine that never tires of pasting Obama's face in its cover.

In her August 8th piece titled "An Antichrist Obama in McCain Ad?", Sullivan argued that because a guy once wrote a book in which the purported Antichrist was referred to as "The One," then it follows that the ad in question painted Obama as the Antichrist.

Sullivan herself admits in her article that this may just be a coincidence, because Oprah Winfrey has referred to Obama as "The One," and Obama himself has said, "we are the ones we've been waiting for," during his events. But she was nonetheless given the o.k. to publish this "story."

It is indeed a much more likely possibility that the ad producers are alluding to these much more recent instances (Oprah and Obama using the term), uttered by two of the most famous persons in America, rather than to a book from the 90's whose author virtually nobody can recognize.

About Sullivan's charges, Newsbusters observed:

She began: "It's not easy to make the infamous Willie Horton ad from the 1988 presidential campaign seem benign. But suggesting that Barack Obama is the Antichrist might just do it." The first problem for Sullivan: The people who made the Willie Horton ad used his name and picture. Trying to locate the the Antichrist in this comedic ad is like trying to find little orange Oompa Loompas. It takes an overactive imagination.

A new McCain ad titled "Fans Club" mocks several Barack Obama supporters for making fawning remarks about their leader: A girl says he (Obama) has "soft eyes". Another man confesses: "I almost felt like crying" when Obama gave him an autograph.

The last such supporter featured in the ad says, "hot chicks dig Obama".

Predictably, TPM's young reporter Eric Kleefeld  saw this last statement as an opportunity to play the race card, composing a blog entry today in which he claimed that the McCain web ad "proclaimed" that "hot chicks dig Obama."

But as you will find out once you actually view the thing, the ad makes no such proclamation. It is the Obama supporter who proclaims, 1 minute and 1 second into the ad: "hot chicks digs Obama." Again, the ad mocks the enthusiasm displayed in these statements by Obama supporters, which are portrayed as over-the-top, including the statement in question (hot chicks dig Obama).

No, Kleefeld. That man is not a web ad. He's an Obama supporter.

But that's not all. Kleefeld could not resist the temptation to follow Marshall's lead and compare virtually everything coming from the McCain camp to the racist Harold Ford ad in Tennessee. He said,

How long until "Barack, call me" ends up in a McCain paid TV ad?

Eric Kleefeld and his boss Josh Marshall are willing to cherry-pick the tiniest soundbite and convert it into one entire story intended to smear the opposition.

I can't help but wonder: are they dumb? Or just pretending?

When we see the picture of a black columnist next to a political op-ed column in our major newspapers, we already know, without reading the first word, that it will be a pro-Obama piece.

I am a New York City resident, and Errol Louis of the NY Daily News and some other black guy whose name I can't recall from the same newspaper, are as predictable as it gets.

Outside of New York, you have the #1 most biased, pro-Obama of them all, Washington Post's Eugene Robinson, also a regular in Countdown (predictably).

Then there's Clarence Page, and perhaps you fellow TPM members can name some others.

And let's not forget the New York Times' Bob Herbert, whose bias gets in the way of his judgment to the extent that he recently said that the Leaning Tower of Pisa and the Washington Monument appeared in McCain's "celeb" ad, and that said monuments were intended to be seen as Obama's penis, which begged to be thrusted into Britney's or Paris' vagina.

It turns out none of the buildings were in the ad in question.

Maybe a couple of objective black columnists can be found who criticize Obama every once in a while, but rest assure that these will not be "mainstream" columnists.

Can black columnists be trusted to cover this pre-election cycle? I certainly do not think so, because they feel extremely attached to Barack Obama, who if elected would become the first African American president in history.