Naturally, in leaving McCain's campaign, Phil Gramm had to blame Democrats. He's such a victim.

It is clear to me that Democrats want to attack me rather than debate Senator McCain on important economic issues facing the country," Mr. Gramm said in a statement issued by the campaign. "That kind of distraction hurts not only Senator McCain’s ability to present concrete programs to deal with the country’s problems, it hurts the country."

Mr. Gramm, a multimillionaire banker, has been under fire since last week, when he dismissed concerns about the troubled economy by referring to "a mental recession." He also said the United States had become "a nation of whiners," a remark providing fodder for Democrats to portray Republicans as out of touch with the concerns of ordinary Americans.

The Obama campaign declined to apologize for thinking the economic issues needing discussion are not purely psychological.

"The question for John McCain isn’t whether Phil Gramm will continue as chairman of his campaign, but whether he will continue to keep the economic plan that Gramm authored and that represents a continuation of the polices that have failed American families for the last eight years," said Hari Sevugan, a spokesman for the campaign of Senator Barack Obama.

Talking to candidates and staffers at Netroots Nation, you can't possibly miss the sense of optimism. And we as Democrats should be optimistic -- there are races out there that you would never have predicted to be competitive, but here we are, looking at possible victory.

But there's something else, too. Even as longshot races are looking good, people on top-tier races know they can't take anything for granted. In her Senate race in New Hampshire, Jeanne Shaheen has had consistent leads in polling for months now. But when I talked to her daughter Molly (who is blogging her mother's race), she emphasized that they know they have a fight. They know that, in a rematch of the race that saw the blatant lawbreaking of phone jamming in 2002, they face an opponent who will go somewhere below dirty. So no matter what the polls say, the Shaheen team knows they need to keep fighting every day for this victory.

Talking to Orange to Blue candidate Dan Seals I got the same message: It's not just that he knows he's facing a tough race. It's that he doesn't want to see Democrats screw up. Seals clearly feels the optimism of the year, but also the sense of urgency that this election is so important for the future of the country and the world. The stakes are too high to give anything less than the best.

We can't take anything for granted. And we're lucky to have great candidates who know that and are putting in the hard work to win it.

Race tracker wiki: NH-Sen IL-10

At noon (central time) today, Howard Dean's Register for Change bus tour came to Austin. This was after hitting Crawford earlier in the day, where Dean reported that about 100 people attended the rally.

A couple pictures for you.

Dean's response to the crowd chanting "four more years" (i.e. of Dean as DNC chair) as he began to speak:

Register for Change isn't in Austin only because Netroots Nation is here. This tour is part of the voter registration effort that will aim to get new voters all around the country, even in traditionally red areas. In other words, this is the fifty state strategy in action.

Because I know you're still out there, a note to people who think the mortgage crisis is a personal responsibility issue:

On a recent week, the Douglas County Public Trustee received six new filings for $1 million-plus homes entering the foreclosure process.

And it's not just homes.

Senior centers, office buildings and even churches have been forced to deal with the threat of losing their million- dollar real estate to the lenders, forcing them to scramble to escape foreclosure auctions.

For example, the biggest health club in the metro area, the Lakeshore Athletic Club - Flatiron, was in foreclosure for about six months last year, before the $19 million foreclosure was withdrawn, according to public records. - Rocky Mountain News

Nationally, RealtyTrac shows 261,255 properties received foreclosure notices during May -- a 7 percent increase from the previous month and a 48 percent boost from May 2007.

The report also states one in every 483 U.S. households received a foreclosure filing during the month, the highest monthly foreclosure rate since RealtyTrac began issuing the report in January 2005. - mlive.com

To convince any reasonable person this is a personal responsibility issue, you're going to have to come up with a reason why all of a sudden, in the United States, rich people and poor people and people in between and churches and senior centers and health clubs just all spontaneously became  really irresponsible, on a historic level. Was it in the air, or the water?

Or was it in the lending practices? New rules approved by the Fed offer a few reminders of shady practices widespread enough to be worth banning:

For all mortgages, prime and subprime, the new rules will:

— Prohibit seven misleading advertising practices, including representing that a rate or payment is "fixed" if it will change over the course of the loan.

— Prohibit advertising in which different loans are compared unless all payments and rates are also disclosed.

— Prohibit foreign-language mortgage ads in which required disclosures are presented in English.

— Prohibit a lender from encouraging or coercing an appraiser to misrepresent a home's assessed value.

Misleading advertising, bullshit appraisals...all things mortgage-holders did to themselves, no doubt.

The AFL-CIO is running an ad, featuring Vietnam veteran and retired International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers member Jim Wasser, in Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin.

Every vet respects John McCain’s war record. It’s his record in the Senate that I have a problem with.

He wants us to keep spending $10 billion a month in Iraq, just like Bush. That’s money we could use to build schools and roads and create needed jobs here at home. He even took sides with Bush against increasing health care benefits for veterans.

People should let John McCain know. His agenda is not what we need. Not now.

The ad is part of a broader campaign focusing on McCain's poor record on veterans' issues. Last week, unions held kick-off events  in several states, from rallies to roundtable discussions. The media may be willing to keep giving McCain a pass on his opposition to Webb's 21st Century GI Bill and his votes against healthcare for veterans, but America's labor movement, and the millions of veterans it represents, will not be following suit.

Dean Barker at Blue Hampshire:

If the elitist snobs at NHPR and other arugula eating MSM outlets who stole the election for Barack Obama are going to cover fringe movements like PUMA, then I demand they stop censoring the real presidential election conspiracy, encapsulated by my own group, DOPEY:

Dodd, Our President, Every Year

And I won't stop until the MY PERSONAL FAVORITE CANDIDATE gets into the White House, or else! Otherwise, it's McCain for me.

Kinda gets you thinking, doesn't it? What other former-candidate fringe groups are out there?

Brownsox doesn't just cover House and Senate races, he has his finger on the pulse of these groups, and wants us to know about:

My Own Richardson American Nation

Democrats United behind Maximizing Biden's All-Star Status

Clinton Loyalists Overly Distraught

Jacksonian Action Crew for Kucinich's Astonishing Song Stylings

The Perennially Obsessed with Obama Party.

Meanwhile, DavidNYC has had run-ins with members of a different Kucinich group:

Kucinich Running Unites Slackers This Year

And Adam B alerts us to a candidate from the 2004 cycle whose supporters are still loyal to his governing vision:

Graham's Rebels Ordering Additional Notebooks

Democrats certainly are facing a divided party this year. What other highly threatening challenges to party unity have you come across?

Candidates Are Slow to Identify 'Bundlers', by Michael Luo and Christopher Drew.

Fair and balanced opening paragraphs:

Senators Barack Obama and John McCain have long been among the most outspoken critics of the influence of money in politics.

Yet records show that in their presidential campaigns, neither has lived up to his promise to fully disclose the identities of his top money collectors who bundle millions of dollars in campaign contributions.

Total paragraphs: 25

Number of names already on Obama's bundler list: 326
Number of names the Obama campaign added to their list prior to this article's publication: 181

Number of paragraphs devoted solely to Obama's failure to provide all bundler names: 16

Number of names already on McCain's bundler list: "Just over 100"
Number the McCain campaign added to their list prior to publication: 0

Number of paragraphs devoted solely to McCain's failure to provide all bundler names: 4

Rough probability this article was conceived and executed as a hit job on Obama: 99%

Most holidays (the meaningful ones, anyway) end up centered around a meal. A holiday meal isn't just food, of course. It's a chance to come together and share, to join in a fellowship that echoes the holy rituals of many religions. Thanksgiving has its turkey, Easter its ham -- and those meals are often eaten with an eye to the meaning of the day.

The Fourth of July meal tends to be a little more raucous. And, be it a picnic or a barbecue, a lot more outdoorsy. But that doesn't mean we don't all have our own traditions around what you eat and how you eat it. Given the nature of the holiday, it seems like what you eat should be somehow American, since that is after all what's being celebrated here. (You could also go for a freedom theme and grill only free-range meats, I guess.) But what's even American? I once went to a party thrown by an Australian woman who asked guests to bring food they considered typically American, and the menu ranged from pancakes to takeout Chinese food.

I'll be honest: my family doesn't do the Fourth. My parents are not holiday people, and when I was a kid, I usually hoped someone would invite me to their family's barbecue. For the last several years, I've usually been at a Sacred Harp singing in Alabama on the Fourth, eating southern picnic food off a thirty-foot concrete table. Fried green tomatoes, pecan pie, all sorts of food like I never grew up on. This year I'm not going to Alabama, but I will be singing on Saturday, so I'm cooking picnic food a day late. I'll be making a pasta salad with a dressing that looks bland and white, but has a zing of garlic and wine. I was going to make my mother's slaw, but the grocery store was sold out of bags of shredded cabbage, so I'm making a taco salad recipe I learned in Alabama. For dessert, those awesome chewy peanut buttery chocolate topped rice krispy treats. And I'll be bringing a gluten-free black forest cake I got at Trader Joe's.

So what about you? What are your traditions -- either the ones you grew up with or the ones you happened into as an adult? Will you be cooking, and will it be outdoors over an open flame? Burgers or barbecue? What's your potato salad recipe? (Seriously, I need a potato salad recipe.) What's your favorite patriotic-themed recipe, and does it match the flag of red, white, and blue jello shooters one Daily Kos contributing editor once created? For once on this site, recipes are welcomed by the diarist.

• Swing State Project has been gathering 2Q fundraising reports as they come out.
• Florida Governor Charlie Crist is engaged. For the fifth time. (He was married once, for 6 months.) Obviously it's not like this could have anything at all to do with his vice-presidential aspirations.
• Matthew Yglesias explains how Cindy McCain's designer suits equip the McCains to understand the struggles of ordinary Americans. Jed Report's Google Earth tour of the McCains' 10 or so houses is another valuable reminder of how absolutely non-elitist they are.
• Al Giordano unravels the links between a McCain visit and a major hostage  release in Colombia.
• Ezra points to an article on Utah moving to a four-day work week due to energy use concerns.
• For most congressional candidates, the Fourth of July is a big day to gain visibility in local celebrations. For obvious reasons, Darcy Burner won't have that chance this year. We can't give her back the Fourth, but we can buy her some respite on the 20th and 21st and all the days until then by relieving her of the necessity to fundraise.
• The Bush administration extended the tours of 2,200 Marines in Afghanistan fighting in the bloody Helmand province because there are no troops available to send as reinforcements. Mike Mullen, Chairman of the JCIS, said on Wednesday that more troops are necessary but "I don't have troops I can reach for...to send into Afghanistan until I have a reduced requirement in Iraq." - smintheus

Via Ben Smith at Politico:

"I guess my question is why, given all the vast numbers of things that we’ve got to work on, that that would be a top priority of mine?" Obama said, responding to a reporter who asked the candidate why he hadn’t called on Wesley Clark to apologize for his remarks yesterday. "I’m happy to have all sorts of conversations about how we deal with Iraq and what happens with Iran, but the fact that somebody on a cable show or on a news show like Gen. Clark said something that was inartful about Sen. McCain I don’t think is probably the thing that is keeping Ohioans up at night."

That's the sort of thing I wanted to hear from Obama's campaign Monday. Obama didn't need to repeat or explicitly cheer what Wes Clark said about McCain's qualifications for the presidency. But this rejection of the fuss the McCain campaign and the cable news channels have made over Clark's (accurate) statement is a welcome sign that, as Greg Sargent writes,

Obama -- having already rejected Clark's statements yesterday -- just isn't prepared to allow himself to fall further back on defense and won't cede McCain any moral high ground.

John McCain's campaign went looking today to gin up false outrage against Wes Clark's apt observation that being shot down is not a qualification for president. And who did they use to advance the idea that Clark used some kind of appalling slur?

Colonel Bud Day, a man who actually appeared in 2004's "Swiftboat Veterans for Truth" ads against John Kerry -- ads which McCain denounced at the time.

The Politico's Ben Smith asked the relevant question:

I asked Day whether how he'd compare the attacks he was saying McCain faces today -- from Wes Clark and other Democrats -- to the attacks on John Kerry's war record from the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth in 2004.

"The Swift Boat 'attacks' were simply revelation of the truth," said Day, a former prisoner of war and Medal of Honor recipient who served i the Air Force. "The similarity does not exist here."

So let's review: John McCain wants to discredit the notion -- coming from a general who served in Vietnam -- that being shot down does not automatically qualify you for the presidency. For this, he trots out someone whose claim to fame is lying about a previous presidential candidate's Vietnam service, lies that McCain himself denounced just four years ago. And said surrogate uses the platform McCain has given him to affirm his previous attacks. That is some mavericky straight talk right there.

John Kerry responds:

"Colonel Day's comments today only further highlight the McCain campaign's disregard for a new kind of politics.  John McCain condemned these kinds of attacks in 2004 when he called the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth 'dishonest and dishonorable.'  Senator McCain should condemn these remarks and cut ties with the Colonel and anyone else connected to SBVT.  Day's comments only serve to disparage all those who served on swift boats in Vietnam."

What Josh Marshall said:

The McCain campaign is now launching an attack with its 'truth squad' about the Clark 'controversy' and pushing Obama to "denounce" Clark, etc. It'll be interesting to watch what happens here. The McCain campaign's angle here is to not to prevent attacks on the integrity of McCain's war record (which Clark explicitly did not do) but to make it off limits for anyone to question that his war-time experience means he has the temperament and experience which make him the better qualified candidate to be president.

The McCain campaign's claim that there's any attack here on McCain's war record is simply a lie -- a simple attempt to fool people. This is an essential point to this entire campaign -- does McCain's military record mean that even the Democrats have to concede the point that he's more qualified to be commander-in-chief of the US armed forces, that his foreign and national security policy judgment is superior to Obama's? It's simply a fact that McCain has a record of really poor judgment on a whole list of key foreign policy and national security questions.

McCain's favored strategy is to link not just national security and foreign policy issues to his military record, but all issues on which he is challenged. Remember that this is a man who linked healthcare to his POW experience not too long ago. Many things can be said about McCain's military service. That it automatically qualifies him for the presidency is not one.

• Must-read of the day: James L at Swing State Project has created the ultimate compendium of Republican catastrophe. It's shadenfreuderrific.
• So openthread woke up this morning and decided to shoot for the moon by trying for 500 contributions per candidate. That means you people better get to work. Remember that this quarter's filings represent a big chance for some of these candidates to show the DSCC, the DCCC, and the major donors that they can raise enough to defeat battle-tested Republican incumbents.
• A new shape of gallon milk jug save money, water, and fuel. Will American consumers consider this a good trade-off for having to learn to pour differently?
• According to Politico, Mitt Romney is at the top of John McCain's VP list.
• One of Senator "Big John" Cornyn's staffers has been caught astroturfing at Burnt Orange Report, assailing Orange to Blue candidate Rick Noriega. Turns out that our friend has also shown up at Swing State Project...and at Daily Kos.
• 

Update by kos: I just got home from Chicago, feeling wiped from getting up at 4:30 a.m. two nights in a row (and 4:30 a.m. Chicago time is 2:30 a.m. my time). But of course, I had to check in, and I can't believe we are two contributions from hitting our updated goal of 1,250. I honestly thought I was being ambitious.

So since ambition is paying off for our great candidates at the moment, the new goal is 1,500. It took us 2-3 days to get 250 contributions when we first started this fundraising push, so perhaps I'm pushing it asking for 250 contributions in less than 12 hours. But no guts, no glory, right?

You know what happens Monday night, right? The fundraising quarter ends for candidates, and our Orange to Blue fundraising push also ends...for now. We're hoping it ends with 1,000 total contributions, with 350 to each candidate. The 1,000 is going to happen. Nine of the fifteen Orange to Blue candidates are already over 350: Barack Obama, Joe Garcia, Gary Trauner, Charlie Brown, Mark Begich, Dan Seals, Rick Noriega, Al Franken, and Darcy Burner.

So this is a challenge to the late-Saturday night crowd to help us hit the goal for some more candidates. Here's where they stand:

I'm certain we can get Eric Massa there. That's only nine contributions -- no question in my mind we're up for it. I'm betting we can also scrape together the 16 contributions to push Bob Lord over 350, leaving just four candidates for the morning people to get. To sweeten the pot, if you guys step up and we get three candidates (any three) over 350, I will post a cat picture in a comment, probably my first ever.

Update: Eric Massa just hit 350. Lord is now at 340. Maffei and Rice are in the 330s.

Final update:

That's some serious progress. Thanks, guys!

Politico perpetuates one of the traditional media's favorite myths about John McCain:

McCain, who rarely discusses what is perhaps the most compelling element of his biography, used the new language twice on Tuesday to bring up his refusal to take early release in Vietnam.

"When I was offered a chance to go home early from prison camp in Vietnam, I put my country first," McCain said on a conference call Tuesday night with independent and Democratic voters in South Florida. "And I’ve been doing that ever since."

He said much the same later that night at a fundraiser in Newport Beach, Calif.

Right. He said it twice on Tuesday, and that was really rare. Because he didn't mention his POW experience in his first election to Congress, or five primary ads, or his first general election ad this year, or in a campaign email last year marking the anniversary of his 1973 release, or in his response to Tim Russert's death. Nope, he just doesn't talk about it.

(Given that we're dealing here with reporters who apparently believe McCain when he says he doesn't talk about this, despite hearing him talk about it all the time, perhaps I should note for the record that the "didn't" and "doesn't" and "nope" in that paragraph were sarcastic.)

(h/t Brendan Nyhan via Yglesias via Atrios.)

The AFL-CIO endorsed Obama today:

The AFL-CIO today endorsed Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) for president.

The AFL-CIO General Board, which voted to endorse Obama, includes presidents of all 56 unions in the AFL-CIO, as well as Executive Council members and representatives of state and local federations, trade departments and constituency groups. The General Board votes by per capita membership. In conjunction with the endorsement, the AFL-CIO launched a new website: Meet Barack Obama.

In its endorsement statement, the General Board noted that Sen. Barack Obama "secured the nomination of his party in a campaign that has energized millions of Americans and spoken to the hopes and dreams of people from every corner of our nation."

His leadership can re-engage disenfranchised Americans and bring our country together. Sen. Obama has advocated a change of direction for our nation that mirrors the priorities of the labor movement.

In announcing the endorsement today, AFL-CIO President John Sweeney said, "Barack Obama has proven from his days as an organizer, to his time in the Senate and his historic run for the presidency, that he’s leading the fight to turn around America." Saying, as a champion for working families, Obama

knows what it’s going to take to create an economy that works for everyone, not just Big Oil, Big Pharma, the insurance companies, the giant mortgage lenders, speculators and the very wealthy. We’re proud to stand with Sen. Obama to help our nation chart a course that will improve life for generations of working people and our children.

Obama has vowed to fight for working families and for an economy that works for all—and he has the record to prove it. As a church-based community organizer, Obama assisted those affected by closing steel mills. As a state senator in Illinois, he sponsored legislation to expand health care and protect overtime pay. As a U.S. senator, Obama has earned a 98 percent lifetime rating from the AFL-CIO. And all along, he’s marched on picket lines and rallied with striking workers.

The AFL-CIO also launched its Meet Barack Obama website to join the McCain Revealed site started in March, when it announced plans for $53.4 million in election expenditures.  The two largest affiliates of the AFL-CIO--AFSCME and the American Federation of Teachers--supported Hillary Clinton in the primary.  This endorsement and commitment to educating and mobilizing their members demonstrates that they wasted no time in unifying in support of Barack Obama and getting to work contributing to a Democratic win in November.

Just days after the Alaska AFL-CIO endorsed Orange to Blue candidate Mark Begich, fellow Orange to Blue candidate Jim Himes has been endorsed by the Connecticut AFL-CIO:

"Jim really understands the issues facing working families," said James Parent, Connecticut State Council of Machinists President and AFL-CIO Vice President. "Jim knows that we need to create good jobs and fight for the manufacturing jobs that we still have, to find real answers on healthcare and education, and to get out of Iraq. I'm convinced Jim will be a tremendous ally for working families, and we look forward to doing all we can to get him elected."

Connecticut's union density is lower than Alaska's, but this is an especially significant endorsement given his opponent. As DavidNYC's introductory post on Himes laid out, a number of Democrats and progressive groups have been giving protective cover to Republican incumbent Chris Shays. The League of Conservation Voters and the Human Rights Campaign have endorsed Shays. They would argue that he's a moderate Republican -- but should an LCV-endorsed candidate turn around and support coastal oil drilling? What kind of moderation is that?

The LCV and HRC might have gotten played on this one thanks to their desire to appear non-partisan damaging the causes they exist to support, but the Connecticut AFL-CIO obviously knows better and won't be supporting someone like Shays just because he only pisses on them 57% of the time (PDF) instead of 90% of the time.

Jim Himes is fighting a tough battle to take out the last House Republican in New England, and unfortunately, he's having to fight against people who should be on his side. But organized labor has his back, and, through the Orange to Blue list, so can you.

Race tracker wiki: CT-04

John and Cindy McCain's financial and business arrangements have been a goldmine of mini-scandal for the past few months. (Even if they've only garnered half the traditional media coverage that Democrats in the same position would have.)

There was his unethical-but-not-quite-illegal use of her corporate jet. Her refusal to release her tax records. The credit card debt.

But until now, the ramifications of her ownership of a beer distributorship haven't gotten much scrutiny. Ralph Vartabedian at the LA Times lays out the issues, which will deserve further scrutiny. Like the lobbying:

The company has opposed such groups as Mothers Against Drunk Driving in fighting proposed federal rules requiring alcohol content information on every package of beer, wine and liquor.

Its executives, including John McCain's son Andrew, have written at least 10 letters in recent years to the Treasury Department, have contributed tens of thousands of dollars to a beer industry political action committee, and hold a seat on the board of the politically powerful National Beer Wholesalers Assn.

Hensley has run afoul of health advocacy groups that have tried to rein in appeals to young drinkers. For example, the company distributes caffeinated alcoholic drinks that public health groups say put young and underage consumers at risk by disguising the effects of intoxication.

The involvement of McCain's family in federal regulatory issues could create a conflict of interest for a future McCain administration, according to advocacy groups and political analysts. McCain has recused himself for many years on alcohol issues in the Senate. As president, however, McCain would face far more difficulty distancing himself from an issue with such broad scope.

Cindy McCain does not just profit from this activity. She actively oversees it, and has not indicated that she would cease to do so as First Lady.

Political analysts said they were astounded that the presumptive Republican nominee had not already addressed the issue.

"You can't run a beer company out of the White House," said Samuel L. Popkin, a political science professor at UC San Diego. "You can't run any company from the White House. McCain is leaving a live hand grenade on the table, a major embarrassment."

Seriously. Imagine the White House dinners, complete with guests' choice of Budweiser, Bacardi Silver Mango Mojito, or Hurricane Malt Liquor. (And imagine all the "John McCain is a man of the people" stories his base the traditional media would roll out as a result.)

Then there's the religion question. The LA Times article notes that 1/3 of Americans abstain from alcohol altogether, and that for many (including members of the Southern Baptist Convention and of course the LDS), that's a religious issue. This ties into the lobbying Cindy McCain's company engages in, because so much of that lobbying has been to keep regulation of beer at the absolute minimum. I know Southern Baptists who, when their town went wet a few years ago, boycotted any store that started selling beer, even if that meant going twice as far for a gallon of milk. Imagine those people's feelings about voting for a man whose eight (or so) houses are paid for by his wife and children marketing caffeinated, fruit-flavored malt liquor to teens.

But apparently that's an issue of less interest to the pundits than Barack Obama drinking orange juice rather than coffee.