[Recycled from four years ago, with some minor changes, for your Friday afternoon reading pleasure:]

A McCain campaign spokesperson responded today to presumed Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama's surprise announcement of Jesus Christ, a carpenter from Nazareth, as his running mate:

A Public Policy Polling Michigan poll released this morning shows Obama with what I think we can call a comfortable lead in Michigan, 48 to 39.  As regulars here know, MI has been discussed as one of McCain's best hopes of stealing a Kerry state, and the lack of a Democratic primary (and Obama campaigning) there had been cited as potential disadvantages for Obama.

Although it is only June (standard necessary caveat), that is looking increasingly unlikely.

(Full results in pdf format here.)

573 LV, +/-4.1%, poll taken 6/21-6/22.

Rasmussen has just posted his most recent Pennsylvania poll, which has Obama widening his lead ever so slightly, to 46-42 (45-43, 5/21/08).

Interestingly

Obama’s gains have come primarily among men—Obama now leads by eight among males. Last month the candidates were essentially even.

1000 LV, +/- 3%, 6/22/08.

Contradicting yesterday's FL polls from Quinnipiac and ARG, which showed Obama up +4 and +5 respectively, Rasmussen has a new poll out this morning that shows McCain up 47-39.  This shows only minor movement from his previous poll (5/19) that had McCain up 50-40.

This poll, conducted 6/18/08, was of 500 LV and is +/- 4%.

As expected the Wyoming Add-On selected at the state Democratic convention in Jackson went to Barack Obama today:

The Florida Democratic Party is soliciting input from Florida Democrats today and today only on the proposal for a revote; as most folks here probably know, the plan drawn up by Karen Thurman and others would be a mail-in primary supplemented with 50 regional centers where voters could vote in person.  The process would be completed on June 3rd, the date that the final states have set their primary.

I urge all Florida Democrats to go to the website today to register your thoughts and opinions.

You can read the state Party memo to leading Democrats here (pdf).

There is a summary press release here.

Below the fold is a summary of the comments I submitted.

Politically, this would not have hit my radar screen; in fact, it doesn't appear to have hit the DKos radar screen, judging by a quick diary search.  However, it has affected me personally (in a very minor way), for reasons I will get to in a moment, and it does involve the always important issue of television broadcast rights and fighting over who controls the public airwaves.  It is not clear that either side is blameless, but it is clear that satellite subscribers, and in particular those living in rural areas, will be affected first.

What am I talking about?  The legal scuffle between Echostar, provider of Dish Network, and the National Association of Broadcasters, which represents the interests of major broadcasters, over Dish Network's providing "distant local networks" to its consumers.

A quick glance through the diaries does not uncover a recent, dkosspecific election prediction thread (let me know and I'll delete if there's been one), so I thought I'd throw one up for those, like me, who aren't anticipating getting a hell of a lot of work done between now and Nov. 7th.

I'll keep it simple -- only two questions on this exam:

What do you think the Senate balance of power will be?
What do you think the House balance of power will be?

[I think we can count by caucus here -- i.e. Bernie Sanders counts as a Dem for purposes of this quick survey, and if you think Joe L. is gonna pull a Zell if he wins, let us know that, too.]

Via Atrios, there is this very good news

The first nonpartisan poll conducted in the 7th Congressional District shows U.S  Rep. Curt Weldon and Democrat Joseph Sesta  locked in a statistical dead heat, with less than 40 percent of registered voters believing the Republican incumbent deserves re-election, a cording to politica

Sestak is leading Weldon 44-43 in a Franklin & Marshall College Keystone Poll that will be released today, falling well within the 4.7-percent margin of error. The poll of 430 voters refutes a recent Republican poll that showed Weldon leading by 19 points.

Democrats greeted the numbers as proof that Sestak has begun to have an impact on the electorate through nonstop campaigning and his first TV ad that hit the district two weeks ago.

"No one campaigns harder than Joe Sestak," said his senior campaign adviser, David Landau. "I just don't know when he sleeps. He has more energy and more drive than any candidate I have ever worked for."

As all you happy Kossacks head to the airport today to jet off to Vegas, I will be trying to find various ways to avoid grading the stack of papers I've just downloaded (with a stack of exams to follow next week -- stupid quarter system).  I had tried to convince myself over the past weeks and months that I would find a way to go, but with the end of the academic year, a cross country move coming up in less than a month, and a down payment on a house (first time buyers!) that makes any kind of extra expenditure such as this weekend would have been very difficult to justify, I find myself still here, regretting already not going to what I am convinced will be an historic gathering.

So I will purchase the AirAmerica stream, and I will cram as much of the C-SPAN coverage as I can fit onto a videotape (TiVo ... hopefully after the move), and I will stare at all the folks whose nyms are so familiar (and many who aren't) and marvel at the thought of Kos and Atrios and Jane Hamsher all in the same location with Howard Dean and Harry Reid and Barbara Boxer, etc.

[Originally posted at Political Cortex]

The local news came on after the college football games yesterday, and I happened to catch those precious three and a half minutes (between the fire in Bumbleville and the Dumblefoolers Convention and could a missing white girl happen here? and the weather and the sports) during which the AnchorFigure recites in her/his Most Serious Voice the Extremely Condensed version of the important national/international news that the producer has determined must fill the gaps between fires, weather, sports, and missing white people.

At any rate, yesterday must have featured a dearth of missing fire sports convention human weathers, because they included a several minute CNN feed of Nic Robertson reporting on the Saddam Hussein trial in Iraq. The story, transcript here (scroll down), featured a lawyer whose two brothers were killed by Saddam Hussein in 1979. It also mentions that a primary reason for the initial delay in the trial were "the charges that accuse Hussein and seven former regime allies of brutally repressing a 1982 assassination attempt."  Both of which, of course, took place before ...

The LA Times has a piece up in Tuesday's paper that rounds up the initial reaction around the journalistic world to this weekend's New York Times stories (one by several reporters, and the other by Miller herself).  At best, folks are unimpressed, and most seem to be tipping toward a mixture of disappointment in the pieces themselves and being aghast at how freely she was allowed to stomp on her editors (and the rest of the newsroom).

A story published by the New York Times on Sunday to clarify its coverage of the Valerie Plame leak case has instead raised a series of new questions and complaints about veteran reporter Judith Miller and her supervisors in the long-running controversy.

Critics inside the paper and in the wider journalism community said Monday that they found particularly disturbing the revelation that the newspaper's editors seemed unable to control Miller and that the reporter agreed to use a misleading identification to shield the identity of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff.

The other day Hunter took a torch to all of the laughable misdirection that is accepted as debatable points by the head up its ass about the whole thing media in the outing of Valerie Plame Wilson.

In the face of the breathtaking ignorance of those like Richard Cohen who still fail to fathom that a crime has taken place beyond ANY doubt, tonight, former CIA officer and TPM Cafe regular Larry Johnson again explains those things that should not be a matter of debate:

Here are some of the facts that will come out when Fitzgerald ends his investigation:

 Valerie Plame was still a non-official cover officer in July 2003 when her identity was revealed by colostomy bag Bob Novak.  

 Valerie Plame had traveled overseas on secret missions using that cover as required under the statute in question.

 Valerie Plame's exposure also almost compromised the identity of other non-official cover officers.

 Valerie Plame did not have the authority to send her husband on the Niger mission and in fact did not make the decision.

Does it need to be said any more plainly?

[The usual apologies and I'll delete if this has already been posted, but a quick search did not turn up anything.]

A new Quinnipiac poll is out this morning:

Pennsylvania Treasurer Bob Casey Jr.'s already big lead over Sen. Rick Santorum has grown, according to a poll released Thursday.

The Quinnipiac University poll of 1,530 Pennsylvania voters showed Casey leading the two-term Republican incumbent by 52 to 34 percent - an 18 point lead - in his 2006 bid. That compares to a 50-to-39 percent lead in July by the same pollster.

I'll delete this if it's already up, but I didn't see it.

From the just released AP story:

WASHINGTON - President Bush said Wednesday that he will withhold judgment about top aide Karl Rove's involvement in leaking the identity of a CIA agent until a federal criminal investigation into the matter is complete.

"This is a serious investigation," Bush said at the end of a meeting with his Cabinet, with Rove sitting just behind him. "I will be more than happy to comment on this matter once this investigation is complete.

"I also will not prejudge the investigation based on media reports," he said, when asked whether Rove acted improperly in discussing CIA officer Valerie Plame with a reporter.

But of course their couldn't be an article, even one quoting the President directly, without a few "unnamed White House officials." [see below the flip]

The AP already has a story up on today's press gaggle (diary at top of recommended list here), and they drill Scotty (and his masters) something good:

WASHINGTON - For two years, the White House has insisted that presidential adviser Karl Rove had nothing to do with the leak of a CIA officer's identity. And President Bush said the leaker would be fired.

But Bush's spokesman wouldn't repeat any of those assertions Monday in the face of Rove's own lawyer saying his client spoke with at least one reporter about Valerie Plame's role at the CIA before she was identified in a newspaper column.

This is the critical point to be taken from today's gaggle, and for once the first MSM story out there nails it:  today's refusal to speak about the "ongoing criminal investigation" represents a major change in the administration approach, and it must be identified as such.

[Cross Posted from Political Strategy.  I hesitated putting it up here, since it covers achingly familiar ground, but wanted to add my thoughts on the Politics of Demonization ...]

Awfully presumptuous, I know, to claim to identify Bush's biggest lie when there are so many to choose from (see also the American Progress Action Fund's searchable database of Bush lies, the DNC's top ten Bush lies, and Tom Ball's compendium of Bush's Iraq lies).

Better, perhaps, to call this the lie that under,um,lies all of the other lies.

This lie has been exposed so many times that it may seem utterly redundant to those who frequent the liberal blogosphere to examine it again, but in the light of Rove's suggestion last week that liberals are more interested in therapying than punishing America's enemies, that liberals are just not quite American, I'm going to revisit the Politics of Division.

In a speech to the Cheeto Munching Basement Dwelling Fighting Keyboarders Association (CMBDFKA) this morning, Bush adviser Karl Rove made the following remarks: