Even Karl Rove now admits that John McCain’s campaign has taken a sharp right-hand turn and straight into a mud pit.

Or maybe its’ a sewage pond.

There’s no other plausible explanation for the recent flurry of blatantly false, vicious and patently absurd commercials that misstate, twist and otherwise distort Barack Obama’s policy statements, speeches and legislative voting record.

McCain stands behind these commercials, which have been thoroughly discredited by every valid fact-checking campaign watchdog.

His only excuse? Well, he said Friday on “The View,” if only Obama had accepted his plan for a series of 10 Town Hall meetings with voters between now and Election Day, the “tenor of the campaign” would be different.

Clearly, McCain has now signed off on a political guerrilla-style campaign style that seeks to achieve victory at any cost.

It wasn’t so long ago that McCain was insisting he would wage a fall runoff campaign that would be positive in nature.

It is — it’s positively sickening.

He promised a campaign that would focus on issues.

It is — it’s fabricated issues.

He promised a campaign that the American public would be proud of.

Uh, no way to sugarcoat this one (After all, he can put lipstick on his mudslinging…)

Perhaps McCain learned a hard lesson from the 2000 primary season, where the Bush campaign knocked him from front-runner status in the South Carolina primary with a savage, unfounded flurry of accusations.

So, it seems, McCain DOES put victory over valor. And his speeches notwithstanding, he’d rather win an election than lose his dignity.

His much-heralded Straight Talk Express? Just more political barnyard bullshit.

The  most significant thing about Gov. Sarah Palin’s address Wednesday night at the GOP convention wasn’t what she said.
It’s what she failed to say.
If Palin used the speech to introduce herself to the American people, what we received was an incomplete picture.
Palin’s brief foray into political life has revealed some troubling, extremist political views that are out of step with the majority of Americans.
So, since she failed to mention them in the 30-plus minute address written by President Bush’s chief speechwriter, here’s a couple of concerns that come to mind:
–She’s opposed to teaching sex education in Alaska’s schools, and instead advocates the principle of abstinence before marriage.
–She’s vehemently opposed to all abortions, including pregnancies triggered by rape or incest.
–Her fervent religious briefs carry over into the policy arena, suggesting at one point that a new natural gas pipeline through Alaska would be “God’s will” and that U.S. involvement in Iraq represents “God’s task.”
–She contacted Alaskan librarians for their views on, ”hypothetically,” banning certain books from library shelves because of language she considers offensive.
–She has a past affiliation with an offbeat Alaskan third-party political group which advocates the need for a vote to consider secession from the U.S. — and her husband was, for years, registered to vote as a member of that Alaskan Independence Party. (Her husband and oldest son, by the way, were not registered Republicans at the time she was selected to be the GOP nominee for vice president).

–She refuses to accept scientific, internationally accepted findings about the threat of global warming and the man-made factors the have contributed to climate change — putting her directly at odds with McCain, who knows what we’ve been doing to destroy the atmosphere.

–She professes to oppose so-called congressional budget “earmarks” but aggressively sought special congressional one-time earmarked grants for her town (to the point of hiring a Washington lobbyist to get federal funds flowing to her town) when she was mayor of Wasilla, Alaska (population 9,700).
–Sen. John McCain specifically cited earmarked grants sought by Palin while mayor of Wasilla as examples of wasteful federal spending that result in bloated spending and rising deficits.
–She cited her opposition as governor to the well-publicized “Bridge to Nowhere,” a huge federal project that would have served an island with only 50 inhabitants and which already has an airstrip — yet as a candidate for governor she campaigned in favor of the project.
–She and her husband attend an Assemblies of God church — a fundamentalist wing of the Pentecostal movement — which recently hosted a sermon from David Brickner, executive director of “Jews for Jesus,” who described terrorist attacks on Israels as being God’s “judgment of unbelief” of Jews who haven’t embraced Christianity.
–She is under investigation in Alaska for possibility exerting undue political influence to force the firing of a state trooper who was married to her sister-in-law and who has been locked in a bitter divorce battle.
–She strongly supports oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge — an idea that even John McCain opposes.
Is Palin really the perfect, highly qualified, ready to serve on Day One running mate for McCain? Will they be “of one voice” on the campaign trail? Given that McCain only met her once before deciding to make her his running mate, and given that his vetting team had only 24 hours to look into her background, you’ve gotta wonder.

For once, Democratic strategist/media opportunist Paul Begala got it right with his initial response to John McCain’s selection of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate:

“What was McCain thinking?” was the headline on Begala’s first-day blog.

I’ve spent this weekend reading, listening, researching, and thinking about the selection. I still can’t figure out what he was thinking.

For certain, this ought to neutralize the “Too inexperienced to lead” campaign slogan we’ve been hearing for months. McCain can’t talk about Barack Obama and raise that issue without raising the same doubts about his vice presidential running mate. And Democrats would be foolish to raise the experience issue when talking about Palin for fear of reviving the lingering concerns about Obama.

McCain’s selection DOES raise questions about judgment, about whether the best person has been selected for the ticket, and whether he forgot his pledge of just a few months ago that the person he picks for vice president would be able to step in on Day One and take over, if need be.

Clearly, the only criteria McCain cared about in the end was finding a running mate acceptable to the right-wing activists in the GOP.

The fanatics who threatened to “tear apart” the convention if McCain had picked a pro-choice supporter like Joe Lieberman or Tom Ridge are today flooding the blogosphere with laughable arguments about Palin being the absolutely best choice for vice president.

It’s troubling to me, and I hope to others, that McCain has only known Palin for about six months, and that they only had one brief phone conversation before selecting her to be his running mate.  Does she know where he stands on top issues of the day? Does he know her position on major issues? Does he really care?

More than anything, this should raise new concerns about whether John McCain should be answering that 3 a.m. phone call.

It’s hard to believe Sen. John McCain’s campaign can deny a conflict-of-interest involving his chief foreign policy adviser, Randy Scheunemann.

It’s Scheunemann whio has been advising McCain to take a get-tough approach toward Russia, and to strongly affirm U.S. ties to Georgia.

Oh, and it’s also Scheunemann whose two-man lobbying firm, has since 2004 been paid $800,000 by the government of Georgia to lobby members of Congress.

Scheunemann sure earned his money: He reported lobbying McCain or his staff on 49 separate occasions during the time he was a paid representative for the former Soviet republic.

He also lobbied McCain or his staff nearly 50 times on behalf of the governments of Taiwan and Macedonia, each of which paid Scheunemann’s company, Orion Strategies, over a half-million dollars, and Romania, which paid Orion over $400,000, and Latvia, which paid Orion nearly $250,000.

And how can the McCain campiagn say there’s no conflict? Because for the past three months Scheunemann has taken a leave of absence from the lobbying firm and is only collecting a consulting fee from the McCain campaign for his foreign policy expertise.

Between Jan. 1, 2007, and May 15, 2008, Scheunemann has been paid nearly $70,000 for his work on the McCain campaign.

The mainstream media is starting to take a closer look at Scheunemann and his cozy working relationships with McCain and the government of Georgia.

They would do well to take a closer look at Scheunemann’s politics.

Scheunemann, who also was a foreign policy adviser in McCain’s 2000 presidential campaign, is one of the group of hardliners who pushed hard for the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Scheunemann operated a group known as the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, which was set up in late 2002 to bolster U.S. public support for the invasion of Iraq — an invasion predicated on fabricated evidence about Saddam Hussein, weapons of mass destruction and the “threat” he posed to the West.

Earlier, Scheunemann was a signatory on the report from the Project for the New American Century which suggested just days after the attack on the World Trade Center that Iraq had ties to the Sept. 11 terrorists.

Who else besides Scheunemann signed the PNAC letter? There were about three dozen well-known neocon fanatics, including William Kristol and Richard Perle, who lobbied President Bush into a war we never had to start.

In the 1990s he also was an aide to then-GOP Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott.

Scheunemann’s politics are downright scary. That McCain is listening to, and following, his advice in formulating foreign policy positions — and in his saber-ratting threats toward Russia — is even more frightening.

John Edwards…is a sleaze.

John Edwards … is a liar.

John Edwards … is a disgrace, to his family, to his supporters, to the Democratic Party.

And, I regret to say, John Edwards is one of the few contemporary politicians I used to respect.

Where is the outrage from feminists, or anyone with a sense of decency, after watching John McCain literally pimping out his wife this week to bikers at the huge motorcycle rally in Sturgis, S.D.?

How could McCain not have known what he was saying when he told the crowd he had encouraged Cindy McCain to enter the “Miss Buffalo Chip” pageant?

Some pageant. Sort of a cross between a wet T-shirt contest and an episode of “Girls Gone Wild.” Film clips of last year’s contest show competitors willing to bare their chests — or even bare it all — to move up into the finals. And how about the “talent competition” as the women show off their skills with a banana, pickles and other phallic menu selections?

Maybe he didn’t know. Maybe it was just an innocent yet insensitive comment while his wife was onstage at the Sturgis event, watching her husband acting like an ass.

But it’s not the first time McCain has publicly humiliated his wife.  Author Cliff Schechter’s book, “The Real McCain,” recalls a nasty exchange between McCain and his wife back in 1992 — witnessed by others — when he referred to her as “a c*nt” and suggested she “plastered on the makeup like a trollop.”

He makes Obama look better and better every day.

I’ve never been a fan of right-wing commentator Robert Novak. Still, you can’t help but be saddened by the veteran political analyst’s retirement today as he focuses on battling a malignant brain tumor.

Published report say Novak has described his prognosis as “dire.”

I’ve watched — and disagreed with — Novak’s outspoken conservative views ever since he was paired with liberal commentator Roland Evans back in the 1970s.

I enjoyed watching his daily appearances on CNN “Crossfire” — especially when his arguments were effectively shredded by the deft comments of Bill Press, Michael Kinsley and others.

But I cringed when his journalistic standards came into question by cooperating with the White House efforts to “out” covert CIA operative Valerie Plame, all in an apparent retaliatory campaign against her husband, former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson, who had the courage to speak up and challenge the Bush administration’s run-up to war in Iraq.

Saddam Hussein shopping for “yellow cake” in Niger to develop nuclear weapons that he could use against the West? Sheer folly.

And yet, there’s a degree of sadness in knowing that Novak has made his last appearance on TV as a political pundit, written his last newspaper column, and probably waged his last effort to tear down Barak Obama in his presidential election season.

I didn’t care much for what he said; I’ll always defend his right to say it. My thoughts and prayers go out to Robert Novak and his family.

In a presidential campaign that has now stretched on for more than a year, in which candidates are making anywhere from three to five public appearances each day, some flubbed lines and twisted facts are likely to slip into their normal stump speeches.

That would explain Obama’s reference to campaigning in 57 states, or misstating the German concentration camp where his grandfather was part of the Allied liberating forces at the end of World War II, or even his declaration last week that “Israel is a strong friend of Israel’s.”

One could easily excuse Sen. John McCain for an occasional blown line.

But the number of recent gaffes uttered by McCain on the campaign trail could be more than simple slip-ups.

It’s occurred during his repeated inability to distinguish between Sunni and Shiites in Iraq, in misstating the history surrounding the  troop surge in Iraq, in misidentifying the Czech Republic as Czechoslovakia (this coming some 15 years after Czechoslovakia split into two separate, independent nations), in referring to Vladimir Putin as the president of Germany, in his suggestions that Iraq and Pakistan share a common border (when, in fact, it is Afghanistan and Pakistan), when he misidentified Sudan as Somalia in discussing the humanitarian crisis in Darfur, and when he misstated a well-publicized antedote about his captivity as a POW in Vietnam.

We already have a president who habitually misstates the facts and mangles the English language.

Four more years of this? I don’t think so.

It’s pretty clear that John McCain was outmaneuvered domestically and abroad this week by Barack Obama.

It left McCain grasping for a way to spin Obama’s successful visit to Afghanistan, the Middle East and Europe, all while trying to deflect criticism that his campaign lacks focus or a unified message.

McCain previously criticized Obama for not visiting Iraq and Afghanistan. This week he criticized Obama for visiting Iraq and Afghanistan.

He previously criticized Obama for supporting a timeline for withdrawing combat forces from Iraq. But after Iraqi Prime Minister Miliki endorsed Obama’s timeline, and after McCain himself spoke of a timeline for removing combat troops from Iraq, McCain this week was strangely silent about timelines.

Instead, his campaign wildly tossed around sought other verbal assaults on his Democratic opponent.

McCain faulted everything about Obama’s whirlwind visit across Europe. He has claimed Obama is not ready for the presidency, but also says Obama acted too presidential in his speeches and visits with heads of state.

McCain was clearly outflanked by Obama’s unprecedented visit to Germany. McCain’s response? Visiting a German sausage factory. Obama delivered a major address before a crowd of 200,000. McCain spoke in front of a supermarket cheese display case.

His campaign’s talking heads ripped Obama for canceling a visit to wounded troops at Rammstein and Landstuhl Air Force Base hospitals. In fact, the campaign rushed a new TV commercial seeking to exploit the issue by accusing Obama of slighting the wounded soldiers.

(But here’s what CNN Pentagon correspondent Barbara Starr wrote back in April 2008 about the politically delicate issue of presidential candidates appearing at military installations:

(“Candidates for office have long been prohibited from engaging in political activities at U.S. military installations or using U.S. military personnel in their political appearances. Presidential campaign staffs generally are very familiar with these military rules.
(“DoD officials have privately noted for some weeks that the whole matter of drawing the line between Senate business and campaigning is sensitive.

In TV commercials and in speeches, McCain blames the media for having a “love affair” with the Obama candidacy. Where were the network anchors, he asked, on his recent visit to Iraq?

Turns out the McCain campaign never invited the media to come along.

We ought to expect more from someone who travels aboard “the Straight Talk Express.”

It’s amazing to see how many of Barack Obama’s campaign messages are being echoed by his political opponents, too.

The fanatical right immediately jumped all over Obama for his pledge to remove U.S. combat troops from Iraq during the first 16 months of his administration.

Setting a timetable for withdrawal simply emboldens the enemy, according to some of the talking heads on Faux News and far-right talk radio.

I wonder how they’ll react today after learning Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki said he supported Obama’s 16-month timetable. Maliki says he wants U.S. troops out of Iraq, too; the White House insists it hasn’t embraced the notion of a withdrawal timetable but has agreed with Maliki on “a general time horizon for meeting aspirational goals” (whatever the hell that means) that pledges to have the U.S. forces leave Iraq at some unspecified date.

Obama also was criticized by the right-wing scream machine when he said the real war on terror should be taking place in Afghanistan, and his call to add an additional 10,000 to 15,000 U.S. troops to the Afghan front.

McCain immediately criticized the suggestion — he said it was up to the United Nations to beef up troop levels. But now McCain’s singing a different tune. He’s echoed the call for more U.S. troops in Afghanistan.

Funny, but that’s the same position being taken by U.S. military commanders, too.

It’s unconscionable that we’ve allowed the Taliban to regroup. It’s unconscionable that we’ve allowed the poppy crop to return to pre-2001 levels. And it’s unconscionable that Osama bin Laden and his band of killers remain free.

Remember it was Bush who said at a news conference a couple of years back that he didn’t spend much time thinking about bin Laden.

With Obama speaking out forcefully about our failed war on terrorism in Afghanistan, suddenly the White House is starting to pay attention, too.

Who’s ready to lead now? Who’s ready for that 3 a.m. phone call?

It’s not McCain.