The McCain campaign got Robert Novak to do their dirty work, trying to steal headlines from Obama's trip, which McCain dare his opponent into taking:

"I got a suggestion from a very senior McCain aide late yesterday afternoon that he was going to announce it this week,'' Novak told Fox News Tuesday. "They didn't want it to come out the way it was going to come out, and they suggested I put it out.

"I then called another senior person who said, 'I can't talk about that, but wouldn't this be a terrific week to announce it, that is with Obama getting the headlines?' So I just put something on the Internet."

"I've since have been told by certain people that this was a dodge, they were trying to get a little publicity to rain on Obama's campaign,'' Novak told Fox. "That's pretty reprehensible if it's true, but we'll find out in a few days. "

Gee, he doesn't sound too happy. Novak has always been happy to pass on the GOP spin from his friends like Karl Rove. But he doesn't like to be manipulated like that. Wonder how that's going to play going forward.

UPDATE: After Novak does a hit-and-run job on Obama, he allegedly commits a real hit-and-run on K Street in Washington.

John McCain seems to think Czechoslovakia is still a country. Sorry, but that country split up and changed names 15 years ago.

Now, I don't think the next president should have to keep track of every name change of every little nation on the planet. But if you are going to talk about a country, you damn well better know its name.

McCain surrogate South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford can't think of any differences between McCain and Bush's economic policies:

Meanwhile, Washington Post says McCain's economic plan isn't credible.

I've often heard in the past that if you didn't bother to vote, then you have no right to complain. And I generally agree with that statement.

Too bad John McCain doesn't. Here he complains about "partisanship" in the Medicare bill that he didn't bother to show up to vote on. In fact, McCain has made a habit of missing big votes in the Senate. He missed voting on the FISA bill, the new G.I. Bill (which he took credit for after opposing it from the start), and he's missed 10 of the last 14 votes on the Iraq War. McCain even criticized Barack Obama for missing the vote on the Kyl-Lieberman amendments on Iran, when he himself missed that very same vote.

To be fair, Obama has missed 45 percent of the votes this session. But McCain has missed 61 percent. And while Obama shows up for important votes, McCain doesn't, preferring to complain and attack from afar.

If he's not going to vote on these issues, maybe he should do what Bob Dole did in 1996 and resign from the Senate, since it's obviously not a priority for him. The people of Arizona deserve to have full representation in the Senate.

And Sen. McCain, if you aren't going to bother to show up for these votes, you have no right to complain.

John McCain and his chief economic advisor Phil Gramm think that the bad economy is all in our heads:

"You've heard of mental depression; this is a mental recession," Gramm tells the Washington Times, adding that despite all the bad news out there US economic growth continues at a rate of approximately 1 percent. "We may have a recession; we haven't had one yet."

Adds Gramm: "We have sort of become a nation of whiners. You just hear this constant whining, complaining about a loss of competitiveness, America in decline...We've never been more dominant; we've never had more natural advantages than we have today...Misery sells newspapers. Thank God the economy is not as bad as you read in the newspaper every day."

This comes on the heels of McCain himself saying of economic distress, "a lot of this is psychological. Because I agree the fundamentals of our economy is still strong.”

I smell a great attack ad coming out of these remarks.

Picture a guy pumping gas, and a narrator's voice saying "John McCain thinks the problems with the economy are all in your head." And the guy answers back, "If that's so, then would John McCain like to pay for my $4 gas?"

Picture a woman buying groceries, and the narrator says "John McCain says a lot of our problems with the economy are psychological." The woman replies, "There's nothing psychological about my grocery bill."

Then picture a family standing outside of a house with a foreclosure sign, and the narrator says "John McCain says the fundamentals of our economy are still strong." And the father replies "Have him tell that to my banker."

Then close with something like "John McCain doesn't understand America's problems, so how can he solve them?"

People who are watching their bank accounts bleed and their property values plummet don't like to be told it's all in their heads.

If the Obama campaign or its allies would run a bunch of ads like that right now, this race would be over.

I knew there were a lot of McCain flip-flops, but I didn't think it was this many. Here's a few:

39. McCain supported the moratorium on coastal drilling ; now he’s against it.

40. McCain recently announced his strong opposition to a windfall-tax on oil company profits. Three weeks earlier, he was perfectly comfortable with the idea.

41. McCain endorsed a cap-and-trade policy with a mandatory emissions cap. In mid-June, McCain announced he wants the caps to voluntary.

42. McCain explained his belief that a temporary suspension of the federal gas tax would provide an immediate economic stimulus. Shortly thereafter, he argued the exact opposite.

43. McCain supported the Lieberman/Warner legislation to combat global warming. Now he doesn’t.

Does this sound the like the kind of guy who can manage a country?

Senator John McCain’s campaigns have long been defined by internal squabbling and power plays, zigzagging lines of command and a penchant by the candidate for consulting with former advisers without alerting current ones, always a recipe for disquiet.

After a period of relative calm on that score, it is becoming clear that his campaign is once again a swirl of competing spheres of influence, clusters of friends, consultants and media advisers who represent a matrix of clashing ambitions and festering feuds. The cast includes the surviving members of Mr. McCain’s 2000 campaign, led by Rick Davis and Mark Salter; a new camp out of the world of Karl Rove, led by the recently ascendant Steve Schmidt; and on the periphery, the ever-present Mike Murphy, Mr. McCain’s strategist in the 2000 presidential race who has been dispensing advice to the candidate to the annoyance of the other camps, and is the subject of intensifying rumors in Republican circles that he is about to re-enter the campaign.

I thought it was instructive during the primaries to look at how Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton managed their campaigns, as neither of them had experience managing large organizations before. Despite having gone through the process with he husband Bill twice before, Clinton's campaign was a mess, a disaster on several levels. Obama's was -- and remains -- a smooth-running machine.

John McCain also has little experience running a large organization. And his campaign so far has been a mess. Who does this remind you of:

Mr. McCain is uncomfortable firing people or banishing them entirely. His orbit remains filled with people who have been demoted without being told they are being demoted, like Mr. Davis, who continues to hold the title of campaign manager even as Mr. Schmidt manages the campaign. Yet, Mr. McCain inspires uncommon loyalty in those who serve with him — hence the willingness of Mr. Murphy to consider coming back into the McCain campaign, despite his own rather brutal history of enmity with Mr. Davis.

If he can't do a simple thing like changing his staff, how can he run a country?

Sounds like our puppet leader in Iraq wants to fly solo:

"Today, we are looking at the necessity of terminating the foreign presence on Iraqi lands and restoring full sovereignty," [Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al] Maliki told Arab ambassadors in blunt remarks during an official visit to Abu Dhabi, capital of the United Arab Emirates.

"One of the two basic topics is either to have a memorandum of understanding for the departure of forces or a memorandum of understanding to set a timetable for the presence of the forces, so that we know (their presence) will end in a specific time."

Gee, this timetable thing is catching on. Maybe George Bush will catch the fever next.

Yes, you heard it here. John McCain now plans for a four-year timetable to bring troops home from Iraq and Afghanistan/ It's all part of his promise to balance budget in his first term:

“The McCain administration would reserve all savings from victory in the Iraq and Afghanistan operations in the fight against Islamic extremists for reducing the deficit. Since all their costs were financed with deficit spending, all their savings must go to deficit reduction.”

So there won't be 100 years in Iraq after all.

Let's see, John McCain's wife is worth $100 million, and the couple own so many houses and condos that they forgot to pay the taxes on one of them for four years. Cindy McCain runs up half-million dollar credit card bills (that she swears she pays off each month) and wears $3,000 suits. And John hasn't pumped his own gas since Reagan was president, and used his wife's jet for campaign travel.

But Obama is the elitist?