Lies. Temper tantrums. Willful ignorance of complexity.

McCain’s not 72 going on 73. He’s 7.

I must remind myself whenever I feel a pang of remorse over denigrating the man I supported in 2000, “He was so much older then, he’s younger than that now.”

McCain’s disastrous economic policies are imprinted with George W. Bush’s legacy and thrown in his face with this new ad from the Obama campaign.

The ad will hopefully remind voters that unless they change who’s in charge economically, they’ll keep getting what they’re getting economically.

But loud and clear, it states Obama’s for the middle class - a tune he should trumpet as much as possible.

Cranky Woman often tells me that McCain is alarmingly old, and I reply that I’m more concerned about his lies than his age. This video makes it a frighteningly close contest:

Readers, copy this text link and e-mail it to your friends to watch:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWX5u69hmzY

These are the kinds of lapses of judgment and memory that we need to remember.

Crown Prince of Gonzo Journalism, Matt Taibbi, has published a piece in Rolling Stone that demands reading. It offers a ruthless, raw perspective on the kind of campaign McCain is running, and how it resonates with the tortures he - and America, collectively - endured in the Vietnam era.

Then as now, the crime of the Obama class in the eyes of a wronged veteran like McCain wasn’t that they caused these wartime sufferings; it was that they didn’t cheer them as righteous and necessary, and unhesitatingly support the sending of more soldiers to the same fate. In the present day, it is George Bush who got us into this new Vietnam-like mess and revived the specter of tortured prisoners, but McCain’s anger isn’t focused in that direction. He’s not mad that it’s happening again, not looking to blame the people who actually started the fire. Instead he seems re-energized by the fact that we are all back in that same hell, back to living the PTSD-inducing nightmare that McCain himself never got to leave — and if it takes dumbing down his act and playing to the Rush and Hannity crowd to give his story a happy ending this time around, he won’t hesitate. So if you thought Hillary was bad, buckle your seat belts: The really dumb stuff is just beginning.

It also presents the blood-chilling notion that the same demons of willful ignorance, vanity born of desperate fear, and anger born of spiteful pain have their chains around the necks of the American voter. If Matt Taibbi’s America - McCain’s America - is the America that will be pulling the poll levers this November, expect the worst.

Expect another victory for those too scared, too spiteful or too spineless to accept certain bitter truths about their country - chief among them being that it is time for change.

McCain shot a sneering smear the Obama camp’s way with his ‘Celeb’ ad and hit Paris Hilton in the process. Now the young debutante with the media savvy to have transformed a sex-tape revenge scheme against her into a nine-digit cult of personality is firing back.

“That wrinkly white-haired guy” is probably rueing the day. For though Paris’ ad is, as he insists attack on Obama was, “all good fun,” she pokes right at his principal weakness:

Not that he’s venal. Not that he has no integrity. Not that he lies. Not that he’s mean. Not that he’s Dubya in adult diapers.

It’s that he’s old.

That is probably the factor that has the least actual effect on his potential conduct as President, and one he can do nothing about - just as with Obama’s African-American heritage.

And like Obama’s heritage, it’s the factor that probably has the most sway over a nation that, by and large, may wear the frippery of intellectual justifications, but at its core votes with its over-larded gut.

Obama fired off the closest he’s come to a flat-out attack ad today. Levelled at McCain, it packs in a bit of positivity at the end.

Tragically, it’s true. A piece from the Washington Independent is a good account of my feelings on the McCain candidacy, “Maverick McCain Turns Mean“.

Worse yet, as Obama’s ad points out, you can put “Mendacious” and “Moronic” up there too.

In the latest in my increasingly repetitive complaints about media bias, I present you a sigh of relief on my part and the statistical study that inspired it.

This study, released today from The Center for Media and Public Affairs at George Mason University, one of the leading statistical analysts of media, has been reviewing the the recent content of the three major networks. Its findings were no surprise to me:

…when network news people ventured opinions in recent weeks, 28% of the statements were positive for Obama and 72% negative.

Network reporting also tilted against McCain, but far less dramatically, with 43% of the statements positive and 57% negative, according to the Washington-based media center.

This, when combined with the recent Tyndall report that many McCain supporters have been using as foundation for their gripe of media bias, is what troubles me. Tyndall’s numbers suggested Obama was getting vastly more air time than McCain. Confidants of mine consoled me that the greater air time meant that McCain’s lack of exposure would fatally atrophy his campaign over time.

I was unconvinced, and this study makes me further unconvinced, for if you’re hearing for 72% of a vast amount of time how much a snobby, out-of-touch, vulnerable, presumptuous, you-name-it bum someone is, how does that help their image? It would seem given that kind of content, more air time would hurt, not help, a candidate.

As Obama roams, gathering glory for the Presidential race and the American nation, McCain is at home bringing shame to our political process.

Harsh words, but that is the point, and if I had any alternative than to write them, I would. But this week, McCain has sunk lower into the mud pit, slinging slime without a sense of moral or intellectual compass. We will begin by reviewing what things that might pass as substantial that he’s said:

Zilch. That’s what. Short list of things. Everything was an attack on Obama.

And folks, even if you’re a McCain supporter or GOP loyalist, you have to admit a candidate should provide a more substantial platform than, “The other guy sucks.”

Problems with this struck McCain directly this weekend, as the New York Times refused to publish his Op-Ed piece “on Iraq.”

This rejection spawned all manner of partisan bickering, but the reason the Times rejected it was because the piece had no plan for Iraq or Afghanistan - it was only an attack on Obama.

[NYT op-ed editor, David] Shipley wrote that McCain’s article would “have to lay out a clear plan for achieving victory — with troops levels, timetables and measures for compelling the Iraqis to cooperate. And it would need to describe the senator’s Afghanistan strategy, spelling out how it meshes with his Iraq plan.”

Why a man seeking to be Commander-in-Chief might need to have a plan to resolve the two debilitating wars we’re in is apparently beyond most of the media, who painted the event like a partisan snub. Any who looked closer than the flicker of the idiot box saw better, noting that McCain’s only “plan for victory” so far - attack Obama as defeatist or wrong on The Surge - probably won’t bring peace to the Middle East. Even Ann Coulter bashed the article as moronic.

Speaking of the Surge, we’re brought to McCain’s next blunder: His citing that it was the Surge that led to the Sunni Awakening, not the Awakening that led to the “success” of the Surge. That is just dead wrong. If you turn the most significant source of our casualties and direct it against the enemy, that is the critical factor - not increasing troop strength.

From there, McCain’s comments only get worse. And again, dear reader, I wish there was something else to say about the guy, but after scouring WorldNetDaily, RealClearPolitics and Human Events all morning, this is what I got:

First was his ad linking Obama with Castro. This is in the same vein as his ad linking Obama with Ahmadinejad.

To both, I note two things: One, nothing is dumber than equating talking to the enemy with weakness or sympathy; sooner or later, before a war or after, you’ve got to talk. And two, if you consider this just part of politics, why should we not hope for better?

Ask why the other side isn’t running ads featuring McCain with the North Vietnamese generals, Saudi extremists or Pakistani dictators.

A quick answer is brought to light by the other ad highlight from the McCain camp this week - namely, that the Press has McCain’s back anyway. McCain’s second ad portrays the media’s “love affair” with Obama - yes, the same guy who they kicked in the ribs for putting his kids on a 10-minute interview and hide positive polls about.

It is McCain, not Obama, who the media is in love with. I will enumerate for those shaking their heads and thinking about Chris Matthews’ “leg thrill.”

First, McCain has continuously been able to say he stands “for victory” in Iraq - supposedly unlike his opponent - while never being asked to define what that means. On the most critical question of our age, a matter we’re investing hundreds of billions-with-a-b dollars and hundreds of thousands of military lives into, he has not been asked to answer when and how we’re going to get a pay off. If you had cancer and went to your doctor, and he wrote a perscription that said, “Get well soon,” wouldn’t you feel a bit slighted? Apparently the press is okay with that.

After all, they love endless war - it means soaring ratings; endless bitching.

But secondly, McCain has more skeletons in his closet than the Addams Family, and the Press is touching on none of them. Obama’s already had his time through the ringer on Rezko and Wright. Pundits still cluck doubtfully as to whether he’ll win without Hillary on the ticket. We hear nothing of McCain’s past.

We don’t hear how he denounced his country when in captivity. We don’t hear how he opposed the POW committee he served on. We don’t hear about the Keating Five. And I’m not saying we necessarily should - I find those things about as irrelevant as Obama’s past - but I do want to point out whose negatives the press is obsessed with and who they’re giving a pass.

So to reiterate, this week McCain shamed the Presidential campaigning process by moronic and harmful guilt-by-association, and he shamed it by masking his attack piece as an op-ed on a critical issue, and he shamed it by complaining about a problem that probably is the opposite of what’s actually the case. He topped it off with downright namecalling:

He ran an ad directly blaming Obama for rising gas prices. The problems with this abound:

It’s dumb, first of all. Even if you support domestic drilling, you have to recognize that those vast domestic reserves here at home will, first of all, not have much effect on gas prices. The USA is a small factor in global gas prices, having 1.8% of the global share. ANWR’s cumulative amount would increase that to 2.2%. And that would take years to develop.

Second of all, it’s a distortion. Obama’s opposition to gas tax suspension and domestic drilling was hardly to blame for soaring gas prices.

But third of all, it could work, because people don’t know any better. And that, in my opinion, is the worst sin of all - exploiting the ignorance of the people rather than helping them understand things better.

Of course, McCain’s campaign depends on that. Every incident above is invested wholly in ignorance. Not in hope, not in knowledge of a better way, not in leadership.

And that is a shame - a shame on McCain and a shame for a country that expects and gets no better.

These last three days, I have been busy writing about the climax of another war, while a war just as riddled with tribal loyalties and imperial interests reeled out of balance. I refer, of course, to the events in Afghanistan.

Barack Obama, with typical foresight, wrote this Monday about the critical status of Afghanistan. In an Op-Ed piece describing his strategic vision for America’s ongoing conflicts, Obama repeated his belief that forces in Iraq must be reduced and our efforts in Afghanistan bolstered.

Senator Barack Obama is proposing that the United States deploy about 10,000 more troops to battle resurgent forces in Afghanistan, a plan intended to shift the American military focus from the Iraq war to the marked rise in violence from the Taliban.

As if underscoring his point, events in Afghanistan turned gruesome that day, as a vicious Taliban assault hit a US Army outpost in the east of the war zone. The attack not only killed nine Americans and wounded over a dozen more, we lost the ground. For the first time in recent memory, we had to withdraw from the outpost.

That wasn’t the most of it.

Elsewhere in the frontier region, NATO launched artillery and helicopter strikes in Pakistan after coming under insurgent rocket fire, officials said.

To clarify that statement, yes, you read it right: Insurgent rocket fire from Pakistan. If ever there was proof that McCain’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy toward counter-insurgency operations in Pakistan was intellectually and morally bankrupt, you have it right there. Something has to be done about the fact that our enemy’s base is in a nominal ally’s country, whether that ally likes it or not.

In order to overcome a dumb media, ignorant of anything beyond magazine covers this week, Obama then gave a speech on global security, emphasizing the dire circumstances our troops are all too conscious of abroad.

It was typical Obama: The vision thing, with guts and insight.

The response from the other side was typical McCain. Rather than explaining how on earth he would take the fight to the enemy, McCain took the fight to Obama. He criticized him for everything from inflexibility to inexperience, apparently missing the irony that despite all his considerable experience, he is, unlike his opponent, yet to propose any actual solutions.

Joe Biden laid into McCain in reply.

The speech was a bravura delivery of Biden tour de force, calling the idiocy of the ignorant Iraq-centric strategy to task. As soon as it’s posted in video format, it’s going up on the blog. For now, here’s a small cup of Joe, no cream, certainly no sugar:

President Bush and Sen. McCain lump all the threats together,” said Biden. “Al Qaeda, the Shia militia, listen to them speak. Listen to my friend Joe Lieberman, and he really is a friend, listen to them speak. Find me a distinction that they make. As a consequence of this profound confusion they make profound mistakes. The idea that al Qaeda will cooperate with the philistine, a guy who in fact used to run the country in Iraq, the guy who did away with the caliphate… is completely contrary to anything that the now-dead leader of Iraq had in mind. It’s dangerous. How can we run a sound foreign policy without understanding these decisions? How can we talk about a Shiite-dominated nation cooperating with a Sunni dominated Wahabi sect of Islam as if they had anything in common? Yet listen to my friends, listen to the president, listen to Joe Lieberman, listen to John McCain. Ladies and gentlemen, if they can’t define the enemy we are fighting it is very difficult to define whether we have won or lost.”

It certainly gets the blood going. I can only hope “No Drama Obama” signs on this firebreather.

With a briar patch like Afghanistan waiting us over the horizon past the Iraq mire, we’ll need all the truth to power we can get.

Recently, McCain took a bold and ambiguous stance on Social Security, stating that the current tax-based system was a “disgrace.”

I was not quite sure what he meant, really. Beyond treating me to a really fetching photo of the Senator, McCain’s Web site didn’t help much. It has no entry on Social Security.

So I resort to the latest comments he made to CNN, quoted by the LA Times, just recently:

“I want young workers to be able to, if they choose, to take part of their own money, which is their taxes, and put it in an account which has their name on it…”

As with much of his economic policy, it is not quite clear how McCain intends to use this idea to make Social Security solvent. Would it be tied to the market via the accounts? Would it be another form of government 401k?

There is no telling. No doubt, as with the Clinton campaign before him, McCain’s campaign thinks it’s better that way.

In case there was any question, let me immediately clarify that this is my Saturday morning puff piece.

First, the sad news. I nearly didn’t report on this, but since it involves NASCAR and so defines “puff piece,” I had to throw it up here.

Obama will not, apparently, be sponsoring a NASCAR racing team.

BAM’s choice of drivers and car brands might have been a little too sticky politically for the Obama camp.

I think he missed one hell of a checkered flag by doing this. Nothing dispels the specter of elitism like sponsoring a group of men driving a machine around and around in a circle at reckless speeds - the Roman emperors knew it; Obama should have wised to it. But so be it.

See if I care.

But next up, McCain released a new commercial. I watched it and, I must say, I really like it.

My enjoyment has three aspects. First, it reminds me of the “old warhorse McCain” that I favored in 2000 - a guy who was genuinely distressed by sleazy politics and attack ads, rather than reliant on them. Second, it will offend some of the anti-immigration crowd; at least the ones who are in it for largely racial reasons.

Lastly, I love when the Hispanic-American military tradition is highlighted.

In my ongoing - potentially life-long - diatribe against the media’s unforgiveable mishandling of news, I present the latest installment of stories that should have been sources of shock and dismay at the McCain candidacy, were it not for the almost total lack of coverage.

If you have been tuning in to the news this week, you would know that squeamishness over Obama abounds. From criticism over his allowing his children to be interviewed, to criticism over his regreting interview given the media’s take on it, to the incessant handwringing about the fragility of his public support, to at last the prattling about Jesse Jackson’s off-color, on-mic comments, it’s all bad Obama, all the time.

Meanwhile, McCain is talking about things that actually matter - insofar as they should put anybody with any sense in a position of anxious dread over the possibility of his election.

Credit to the compilation of this list of alarming statements from McCain goes to Max Bergmann, whose excellent piece covers ten of them in detail.

In Bergmann’s order, the incidents are:

* McCain calls social security an “absolute disgrace.” Not the threat to social security; social security:

“Americans have got to understand that we are paying present-day retirees with the taxes paid by young workers in America today. And that’s a disgrace. It’s an absolute disgrace and it’s got to be fixed.”

That should take care of the senior vote … if anyone was listening.

* Top McCain campaign economic advisor Phil Gramm said the effects of the recession were all “mental,” and that Americans are complaining because we’ve become a nation of “whiners.”

“We have sort of become a nation of whiners,” he said. “You just hear this constant whining, complaining about a loss of competitiveness, America in decline” despite a major export boom that is the primary reason that growth continues in the economy.

So gas prices, food prices, foreclosure problems; they’re all just mental. Good to hear Gramm’s got solutions for them: Namely, “cheer up.”

This should be a big wake-up call to the illusion that typifies recent GOP economic policies: Economic growth does not necessarily mean everybody profits, only that the rich profit.

* McCain on Iraq: First, permanent bases are the way to go. Next, he claims Maliki didn’t really say what he said. Then, he admits to it, but says dismissively, “Prime Minister Maliki is a politician.”

Meaning, I suppose, that Maliki was just telling the Iraqi people what they want to hear. Well, if the Iraqi people want to hear we’re going to leave, and Iraq is a democracy, and we will respect Iraq’s wishes, what’s McCain’s support for permanent bases and dismissal of a timetable about?

This should bankrupt McCain’s claim to moral foreign policy, but hey, what’s so important about that? Let’s talk about Obama flip-flopping on interviewing his kids.

* McCain claims he’s going to eliminate the defecit within his Presidency. The media transmits this obediently. They do not call this into question by pointing out that other parts of his economic proposals include:

“…a) cut individual and corporate taxes even further, b) extend the Bush tax cuts and c) massively increase defense spending on manpower (200,000 more troops) and d) maintain a long-term sizable military presence in Iraq.”

Nobody asks how he intends to pull off this magic trick. Why worry? More importantly, Obama is losing a little support among Progressives, so he is expected to not kick McCain’s ass as badly in fundraising this month - now there’s a story.

* McCain made a hallmark of his defecit reduction plan “achieving victory in Iraq” - he’s going to use the money we are borrowing for the war to pay down the money we are borrowing.

This should have raised questions about either his honesty or his sanity. Oh well. Got to be objective!

* Speaking of utter mendacity, McCain announced 300 economists had signed a letter supporting his economic agenda, save that they really didn’t.

“…good many of those economists don’t actually support the whole of McCain’s economic agenda. And at least one doesn’t even support McCain for president.”

This goes virtually unmentioned in the mainstream. McCain may lie, but Obama has apologized - what’s more important?

* McCain then implies he wants to kill Iranians by making a joke about how we should export more cigarettes to them. The press reports this as a moment of humor.

* McCain denies he said he was no expert on economics, when in fact it’s well-documented.

* McCain then distorts his record on Vet benefits, and gets upbraided for it by a Vietnam vet. This takes place, like the previous clip, on the only network approaching responsibility in reporting - MSNBC.

* McCain says there’s a glimmer of hope in improving relations between Pakistan and Afghanistan lately. Blogger Pat Barry points out how incorrect this is:

Just what “glimmer” is McCain talking about?? Maybe he’s referring to President Karzai’s remarks last month, which threatened military action in Pakistan if cross-border attacks persisted? Or maybe McCain is talking about Afghanistan’s allegations that Pakistan’s ISI was involved in a recent assassination attempt on Karzai? Maybe in McCain’s world you could call that a silver-lining, but in reality-land I’d call it something else.

This is so out of touch, so false-confident, it’s downright insulting. And considering the parties involved, it is dangerous - dangerous to believe it and let that situation continue to spiral, and dangerous to act like it and use it as an excuse to underfund and ignore the troops we send in there.

* The coup de grace comes today from a blog on ABC, mentioning that McCain lied to people in Pittsburgh about having resisted NVA interrogation by telling them the names of the Steelers offensive line rather than his squadron’s names. It was actually the Packers, as he’s written about before.

Maybe this story will stick. It has all the elements of a Hillary-in-Bosnia story: It’s basically lying about human interest fluff; it is contradicted by public record; it sounds dumb enough to be interesting.

I doubt it, though.

And that’s the tragedy of our times: Not that we want for political leadership, or that we’re divided as a nation, or that it’s so hard to figure out the truth.

There are good political leaders. We can come together over common ground. The truth is available with a few key strokes.

The tragedy is that the people who control the information we exchange - who literally decide what most people hear and what they do not - feed on the contrary.

They tear down, they foment division, they obscure the notion of truth, they prop up weak liars like McCain has made himself out to be and ignore actual issues for the sake of tabloid, fast-food news service.

They do this, and if our politicians pander to it, it is because the media not only lets them, but demands it of them.

After reading all of the above, I am certain McCain would be a disaster if elected. Yet I am even more worried, more despondent, given that no matter which candidate is elected, we will never truly be able to change the channel.

Iran conducted a highly visible test of mid-range and long-range ballistic missiles today; many reacted by declaring it proof that they’re crazy, when in fact it’s proof that they’re not.

…even as Ahmadinejad and other Iranian officials have dismissed the possibility of attack, Tehran has stepped up its warnings of retaliation if the Americans—or Israelis—do launch military action, including threats to hit Israel and U.S. Gulf bases with missiles and stop oil traffic from the Gulf.

Think about it: For the last five years, Iran has literally had a gun pressed into its guts - a gun in the form of the most powerful military in the world. And over the last year or so, the person pressing that gun into their guts has been yelling about “obliterating” them or “eliminating” them, while another assailant - Israel - makes similar demonstrations of force.

So there you are, you’re Iran; you’re the guy in the dark alley with someone pointing a potential murder weapon at your head and promising your days are numbered … and you have a gun too.

And today, Iran just showed its gun. After having Israel conduct war games and John Bolton suggest that Bush would make sure we’re good and entangled in a military solution to Iran’s nuclear program before he left office, Iran has responded by saying, “I can hurt you too. Back off.”

It doesn’t make it look any safer. Hopefully, it makes it look saner.

Obama’s response has been to urge the President to actually address this with direct talks with Iran, just like in the good old Cold War days, rather than getting half-hearted Europeans and State Department water carriers to handle it.

McCain urged for a missile shield. I think that is completely without merit if it’s done like the Bush administration has handled the shield - namely, breaking all treaties pertaining to it and sparking an arms race before the thing is even able to protect us. Considering I expect no less from McCain, and that his plan doesn’t even begin to address the root of the problem of Iran, it’s no shock I think Obama has the better solution.

Iran needs to be talked to; convinced to put the gun down and back away from the podium of scary talk. Not threatened further by a gun that, in the case of our missile shield program, isn’t even loaded.

That, after all, would be crazy.

McCain has a glaringly stupid idea to balance the budget. The analysis of it, cogent and thorough, is here.

I will just synopsize here:

He’s going to take the borrowed money used on the war - which we’ll “win” in his first term, somehow maintaining an indefinite presence overseas while not spending any money on it - and use it to pay off the defecit. Yes, the borrowed money will be paying off our borrowed money.

Now here’s our favorite bi-partisan commentator, James Kotecki, to make that idea sound even funnier than it is:

The Presidential candidates have staked out their terrain on the war issue, and so much of America’s White House future depends on the course of events overseas.

For John McCain, a lot of his vaunted war cred requires things to continue to go well in Iraq, while Afghanistan remains a foul-tasting afterthought. For Obama, proof of his claim that being right is more important than being experienced at making mistakes has to be borne out by continued fumbling in Iraq coupled with growing military interest in Afghanistan.

It’s no shocker that I find McCain’s position the less tenable. The news is, however, giving him some notches on his belt. Tactically, Iraq’s not the crucible of chaos it was a year ago, and major efforts are being made by those Iraqis that stood up - the factious but currently firm coalition of government forces and the Awakening - to garotte what’s left of al-Qaeda.

[Al-Qaeda in Iraq] has been reduced to hit-and-run attacks, including one that killed two off-duty policemen yesterday, and sporadic bombings aimed at killing large numbers of officials and civilians.

This is big news. Al-Q with its spine broken is still a mean and desperate creature, but nullifying its effects on the map of Iraq seems a possibility. But bigger news is happening in the big picture, and could spell things seriously souring for McCain’s soaring talk of a “Korea-like” presence in the fertile crescent.

Namely, Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki said definitely today that he wanted just what the Democrats consistently call for - a timetable for withdrawal.

“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.”

Meaning, short of an official entry in his dayplanner, Maliki wants at least two things: One, for Americans to put it in writing that they’ll leave. And two, that critical elements of American operations in Iraq be manacled to Iraqi governance: Legal culpability and detentions.

This is not sunny news for the old soldier, McCain. He could, and rightly, note that the Iraqis are only able to flex such sovereignty because the US ignored the Congressional bleating for a timetable and surged instead. But voters will want this debacle over, and chances are they’ll hear a disparity between McCain’s line and what Baghdad will soon be banging its gavel for.

What’s more, the fewer bombs go off in Baghdad, the more the barrage in Afghanistan will be heard. Considering that’s Obama’s pole of concern, voters may hear prescience in his constant insistence that while sewing up the suppurating wound of Iraq is key to America’s future, Afghanistan needs to be cauterized - not just stuck under a band-aid and ignored by the administration and McCain.

Escalating events - from the Taliban assault last month to the horrific bombing in the capitol, Kabul today - bear this urgency out.

A car bomb ripped through the front wall of the Indian Embassy in central Kabul on Monday, killing 40 people in the deadliest attack in Afghanistan’s capital since the fall of the Taliban, officials said.

Voters will - media allowing - begin to take notice. If they do, they’ll ask questions along the lines of the one that comes immediately to mind when a hard look is taken at today’s bombing: “Why India’s embassy?”

The answer is, because India is the enemy of Pakistan. Quick math follows for those who know the integers involved: An enemy of Pakistan means an enemy of the Taliban, because Pakistan is the private friend of the Taliban. Pakistan is also the country that the US has given sole authority to go after the Taliban and al-Qaeda in their mountainous tribal area.

This all adds up to a typical Central Asian beartrap for the US. It also means points for Obama - not because it’s another Bush war circling the drain; or not just because - but because he’s long insisted that we not only need more forces in Afghanistan, but the will to use them across Pakistan’s border as well.

The final geometry of the Presidential battle lines over the war is coming clear:

McCain is the guy with good tactical ideas - simple, surge-theory stuff; the kind of problems that can be solved by sledgehammers. But for all his bang, he’s weak on the buck - from crosstalk on the big picture in Iraq, to sweeping the toxic stain of Afghanistan under the carpet, McCain’s showing himself a nimwit when it comes to strategic investment of military force. That, or a namby-pamby, poll-driven double-talker who just talks the talk of permanent bases to sound like his pair swings lower than Obama’s.

Obama, on the other hand, knows there’s no sense in keeping one hand tied behind your back in a fight. If we’re putting blood and money into Afghanistan, we best see a return of peace, Pakistani borders be damned.

If proper reporting applies, the American voting public will see their military choices defined clearly: Between the guy who keeps focused on the daily polls and PAC reports, and the man who has his eyes on the grand scheme of our global war.

UPDATE:

Throughout my post, I repeatedly intoned statements along the line of “media willing,” “media wiling,” as though it were my version of “inshallah” (the ubiquitous “God willing” of devout Muslims).

The reason why comes from no respect for the media. Rather, a furious disrespect. Today’s news media has been catastrophically insipid when it comes to covering anything political. A new video on the media’s treatment of Obama’s war stance by stranahan.com amusingly points this out: