Defending her remarks that Sarah Palin is not qualified to run a Fortune 500 company, top McCain adviser and former HP CEO Carly Fiorina says she doesn’t think John McCain (or Obama or Biden) could run a major corporation either.

Just a quick word on the alleged push polling of Jewish voters that’s being reported in various quarters.

First let me say that we’ve been as vigilant as anyone over the years in tracking these kinds of subterranean campaign tactics, so we like a good push poll story as much as the next guy.

But the reports that have come in so far suggest that these are not push polls but actual public opinion surveys that are testing negative messages. There’s a difference, not the least of which is that push polls target large numbers of potential voters, just like any other campaign phone bank effort. On the other hand, field testing negative messaging requires only obtaining a representative sample of voters, like any other public opinion survey.

The easiest way to tell which is which is by how long the call lasts. If you’re trying to reach a large number of voters, you keep the calls short and dirty: plant the seed of the smear and move on; otherwise, the costs of phone calls becomes prohibitive. The accounts so far are of calls that last upwards of 15 minutes.

Someone is testing the effect of fear-mongering about Obama on Jewish voters. But it just doesn’t have the markings of a push poll, as that term is usually understood.

ProPublica sums up John McCain’s record of being for more regulation of Wall Street, and the bottom line is that before this presidential campaign McCain had no such record.

It’s no accident that McCain runs with the deregulation crowd.

Jake Tapper observes that Sarah Palin has Karl Rove-like email habits.

Carly Fiorina: Sarah Palin is qualified to be VP, but not a Fortune 500 CEO.

The St. Paul Pioneer Press can’t help but chortle about the young outspoken GOP lawyer who thought he was gettin’ lucky at the GOP convention but ended up gettin’ robbed.

(Thanks to longtime TPM Reader BK for the catch.)

Late Update: I initially missed the video interview with the alleged victim that accompanied the story, which in and of itself is a commentary on the state of the modern GOP:

(Special thanks to TPM Reader RG).

TPMCafé contributor Todd Gitlin on the McCain men and their will to bomb.

You may have seen the kerfuffle yesterday that arose when the New York Post published an opinion piece by Amer Taheri in which he reported that Barack Obama was secretly negotiating with the Iraqi government to delay the withdrawal of U.S. troops.

The McCain camp (which is, remember, opposed to the quick withdrawal of U.S. troops) seized on this report, issuing a statement by Randy Scheunemann, McCain’s top foreign policy adviser:

If news reports are accurate, this is an egregious act of political interference by a presidential candidate seeking political advantage overseas. … The charge that he sought to delay the withdrawal of Americans from Iraq raises serious questions about Senator Obama’s judgment and it demands an explanation.

If the news reports are accurate, and therein lies the rub. We’ll have more on what exactly Obama has said on this issue, publicly, in a bit. But you need to know a bit more about Taheri, who runs in the same neocon circles as Scheunemann.

Taheri was the guy who back in 2006 fabricated the story that the Iranian government was requiring Jewish citizens to wear yellow badges to identify them as such. That story, which also ran in the Post, was completely discredited.

As we reported at TPMmuckraker at the time, Taheri has a long history of such bamboozlement, although it hasn’t kept him from advising the White House on Middle East issues.

More soon …

Late Update: Zachary Roth has the details.

The DSCC goes hard at Sen. Norm Coleman (R-MN) on Iraq in its latest ad. Eric Kleefeld has the details in his twice daily rundown of the congressional races.