Richard Cohen jumps waaaaaaaaaay off the tire swing.

I mean, this is betrayed lover counter-tire-swingism. Must read.

The Obama camp quickly turns John McCain’s remark yesterday that “the fundamentals of our economy are strong” into a TV ad. That and the day’s other political news in the TPM Election Central Morning Roundup.

Watch as CNN’s Candy Crowley struggles mightily to maintain balance at the expense of accuracy:

As Josh noted yesterday, Crowley is not alone in relying on the comfort of false equivalencies to avoid having to make professional judgments.

Late Update: Greg Sargent has more.

George Saunders’ New Yorker piece had me shooting coffee out of my nose this morning. Very, very funny.

From Jonathan Martin:

Asked what work John McCain did as Chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee that helped him understand the financial markets, the candidate’s top economic adviser wielded visual evidence: his BlackBerry.

“He did this,” Douglas Holtz-Eakin told reporters this morning, holding up his BlackBerry. “Telecommunications of the United States is a premier innovation in the past 15 years, comes right through the Commerce committee so you’re looking at the miracle John McCain helped create and that’s what he did.”

Al Gore, call your office.

Isn’t Research in Motion, the maker of the Blackberry, a Canadian company?

Late Update: TPMCafe contributor and former FCC Chairman Reed Hundt sends this along: “John McCain is so out of touch that his economics adviser thinks he deserves credit for creating a Canadian company.”

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.

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.

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

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).

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