From TPM Reader KB …

Josh, I guess Phil Gramm was right. There are more than a few whiners in this country. Unfortunately for John McCain most of them seem to be working on his campaign. Right now his campaign’s message seems to have devolved into a pathetic meta critique of the media. Are they running for the White House or for best commenter on Gawker? This focus on the media seems so pointless that, as an Obama supporter, I hope they stick with it to the neglect of a real message such as something on the economy, health care, border security, or anything that might actually move voters.

In truth, the nonsense is even thicker than KB can conjure. As you may know, the McCain campaign has just put out a web video called ‘Obama Love’ a mash-up of clips of various TV commentators gushing over Obama. But let’s remember we’ve all seen the McCain Love video. It’s called watching the last dozen years of political television. Indeed, the political press’s reckless and giddy love for McCain is so universally acknowledged that McCain himself has often joked about the press as his “base.” So what do we have here but a candidate who can’t brook the idea of not campaigning on a wave of press adulation? And now he’s framing his whole candidacy around a campaign of strategic whining about the claim that the political press is treating his younger opponent like he’s been treated for over a decade. He’s got the preening and envy of a sore losing runner-up for prom queen.

A minor GOP attack line of the day on Obama’s Iraq trip fails under the weight of its own hypocrisy.

The Houston Chronicle has posted some video by the local ABC affiliate down there from inside a fundraiser President Bush attended there last week. Apparently Bush asked that cameras be turned off before saying, “Wall Street got drunk —that’s one of the reasons I asked you to turn off the TV cameras — it got drunk and now it’s got a hangover.” But not everyone turned off their cameras:

A number of readers flagged George Stephanopoulos’ appearance on World News Tonight last night, in which he seemed to suggest that Obama had moved toward McCain’s position on more troops for Afghanistan, when in fact as we all know it was McCain who last week changed positions and basically adopted the Obama policy prescription. Now I see that Media Matters is calling out ABC on it, too.

Maybe I come at this from a slightly different angle because the initial reports from readers were that Stephanopoulos claimed Obama had taken McCain’s position on Afghanistan. So when I first saw the video myself, it fell short of being as egregious an error as I had expected:

It’s a terribly awkward and essentially misleading construction that Stephanopoulos uses three times there to describe the Bush-McCain collapse on key policies toward Afghanistan, Iraq and Iran. But it’s also clear that the underlying point he’s trying to make is accurate: that so long as the lines between Obama and McCain are blurred, then McCain has lost what he believe to be his own signature issue.

Then again, maybe George is so brainwashed by GOP foreign policy dominance that he may simply think it’s great for Obama that he’s now in lockstep with the Republicans, even though the Republicans came to him.

It appears that the whininess virus may be spreading out from the McCain campaign to various pro-McCain journalists. You may have noticed that Robert Novak caused a stir yesterday by floating word that the McCain campaign was on the brink of choosing a vice presidential nominee. Now Novak suspects that the McCain folks tricked him into floating the now-allegedly-bogus story to pull a little attention from the Eurasian Obamathon. And now Novak says bamboozling him for a few cheap news hits was “reprehensible” …

Just to add more confirmation to the painfully obvious, it turns out that not only did Prime Minister Maliki say what he said. According to Der Spiegel, his office signed off on this specific quote before the article went to press. In other words, the entire misunderstanding, misstatement, mistranslation, miswhatever meme is utter nonsense. You knew that. But just to remove any doubt.

Also, as long as we’re on the subject, and not to get too Frantz Fanon on anyone, but Sunday and Monday there was a meme circulating through a lot of the Maliki reportage that Maliki frequently misspeaks or says things that later need to be corrected. Well, sure. I guess that’s one way of putting it. Maybe, this incident aside, Maliki is terribly gaffe-prone. Who knows? But this little circus puts that idea in a particular sort of light.

The White House’s reaction to Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s embrace of Sen. Barack Obama’s 16-month withdrawal timetable is the like the five stages of grief.

When a guy you more or less install in power and keep there on a very short leash starts going off the reservation, you first claim there was some sort of translation error. Then you claim that what he says is not what he means. When he continues to reiterate the point, you assert that he knows not of what he speaks.

And when he becomes adamant on the point, you do what White House press secretary Dana Perino tried to do today, just pretend that nothing Maliki has said trumps the earlier joint statement issued by the U.S. and Iraqi governments last week: “It is no small thing for two leaders to issue a statement; it is one that was taken with care and with seriousness.”

Fun times in the White House briefing room:

What happens to political minorities in communities with large political majorities?

According to author Bill Bishop, they shut up.

We caught up with San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom at Netroots Nation, where he introduced the closing keynote speaker, environmental and social justice activist Van Jones. In a wide-ranging conversation, we talked about green policy measures he’s implemented in his city, his possible candidacy for governor of California, and his wedding coming up this weekend …

High-res version at Veracifier.com.

This a screen capture of the Times video on the Mitt-McCain rapprochement.

I think they should choose this as the official McCain-Romney campaign photograph.