If McCain thought he’d get the week all to himself while the Obamas are on vacation, he can think again: …as Washington embraced him, John McCain hugged right back. The lobbyists – running his low road campaign. The money – billions in tax breaks for oil and drug companies, but almost nothing for families like yours….

McCain’s ad tells us not just what McCain wants us to think of Obama, but what he knows is true of himself. The man of honor I and many others admired; that John McCain, is dead. With each compromise he made, with each degrading vote, with each violation of his personal honor and beliefs, he killed himself in inches before our very eyes. And as with most such degraded men, now he tries to clutch the broken shards of his honor to him, and lashes out at others, imagining that they too must have made his Faustian bargain.

96 GOP House members wrote The New York Times protesting the Op-Ed Page Editor’s decision to reject John McCain’s exhortation to victory in Iraq.

Liddy Dole is trying the “What party? I don’t know this Republican party of which you speak.” tap dance regarding the NCGOP. Chock full o’ empty, eh, Liddy? Pam has the scoop: …What I did receive this afternoon was a fax from Communications Director Hogan Gidley of the Elizabeth Dole campaign regarding the petition that I delivered last Friday on behalf of 1265 readers of Firedoglake, Pam’s House Blend, and BlueNC who signed the petition. The petition requested that the North Carolina senator ask Linda Daves of the NC Republican party to stop running the color-aroused anti-Obama ad called “Extreme,” which tries to draw some sort of connection between Dem gubernatorial candidates Bev Perdue and Richard Moore (both endorsed Obama) and Reverend Jeremiah Wright….

In his new ad touting his health-care plan, John McCain dubs himself “President McCain” at the ad’s outset. In big block letters. I guess the formality of that quaint anachronism we used to call an election isn’t really much to worry about for Republicans anymore. After all, there’s now the Roberts Court waiting in the wings to take care of it for them if the voters refuse to play along.

Nothing seems to upset the GOPs more than when they see actual proof that John McCain believes American troops should be in Iraq for 100 years.

Is John McCain powerless? Is he impotent? Can he really not get the ad pulled? Or does he relish the controversy, sailing above the argument on the media-defined high-road? Impotent? Or a sleazebag? Or both?

Now here’s an export from China I’d honestly love: Manufacturers who produce sub-standard food could be jailed for life under a new draft law unveiled by Chinese authorities. Coming to a market near me? Not so fast: China’s leaders still haven’t served it up for their own people.

On the heels of Hillary’s gutty victory last night, I read this in my morning paper:

Even before the results from New Hampshire came in Tuesday, Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Hillary Clinton was already retooling her campaign, looking ahead to later contests in the primary process. Several new faces are expected to come aboard, including Maggie Williams, a longtime confidante to the former first lady, and Doug Sosnik, who

Candidates have spent upwards of $40 million dollars just on ads in Iowa. Via CNN: Iowa’s 2.3 million eligible voters have been bombarded with close to $40 million worth of political ads on television this cycle — more than three times the amount spent there in 2004….

That works out roughly to about $17 per voter, between $150 and $200 per expected caucus-goer, and nearly $500,000 per each of the