Here’s LA Times blogger Andrew Malcolm, who was Laura Bush’s press secretary in 1999-2000, trying to make something out of nothing and playing John McCain’s POW card for him:

As part of its effort to show the 72-year-old Republican Sen. John McCain as old and out of touch, the Democratic Party’s hip campaign of Sen. Barack Obama, which frequently says it honors the former POW’s military service to his country, Friday released a new ad.

As noted Friday by our blogging colleagues over at the Technology blog here, the ad says, among other things: “1982, John McCain goes to Washington. Things have changed in the last 26 years, but McCain hasn’t.

“He admits he doesn’t know how to use a computer, can’t send an e-mail.”

Like many of his generation, McCain does not like to talk details a lot about his wartime experiences, certainly not about any lingering physical symptoms. To be honest, it could sound like complaining and, as he’s ruefully noted, unlike many others, McCain did come home […]

Here’s a passage from a lengthy Boston Globe profile on McCain that was published the last time he ran for president. It was headlined “McCain character loyal to a fault.” It was written by Mary Leonard.

And it was printed more than eight years ago, on March 4, 2000.

It is available online, where Jonah Goldberg of The Corner blog at the National Review found it.

“McCain gets emotional at the mention of military families needing food stamps or veterans lacking health care. The outrage comes from inside: McCain’s severe war injuries prevent him from combing his hair, typing on a keyboard, or tying his shoes. Friends marvel at McCain’s encyclopedic knowledge of sports. He’s an avid fan — Ted Williams is his hero — but he can’t raise his arm above his shoulder to throw a baseball.”

OK, it’s a nice story, but here’s John McCain using a Blackberry.

Here’s an article from HuffPo about his learning to use Internet:

BRZEZINSKI: Does John McCain, does he use the internet? Does he use email? […]

DAVIS: He actually is, he always is grabbing people’s Blackberrys on the bus. In fact, no reporter’s Blackberry is safe from his prying eyes. He loves to tool around on the internet, he especially loves the videos that get produced that usually poke fun at him. I think that’s his most entertaining part of the internet.

Now, maybe his thumbs work and his fingers don’t, but considering that he said in the same article that he’s learning to get on the Internet by himself, I highly doubt the veracity of this.  Oh, and here’s Tucker Bounds claiming he travels with a laptop:

“John McCain travels with a laptop,” said McCain campaign spokesman Tucker Bounds. “This is a senseless tactic from Obama’s campaign because they’re struggling with the realization that the American people understand he is not equipped to deliver change because his record has no bipartisanship or significant legislative accomplishment in it.”

This had the makings of another hissy fit, but it’s transparent nonsense.

I hate the stupid season.

For our economy to be strong, we must have a strong work force, and for our work force to be strong, we must have strong organized labor.  Marta Jorgensen believes this, and it shows in her support for legislation like the increase in the federal minimum wage and the major union organization bill that were passed into law last year.  

The union organization bill amended the National Labor Relations Act to allow workers to choose to organize a labor union and outline a time frame for bargaining without requiring a vote if they so wish, as well as to penalize employers who attempt to influence the formation of a union.  As a result, labor unions can fight for their workers’ rights more efficiently and more effectively.  Marta Jorgensen is a firm supporter of this law.

A living minimum wage and more efficient union organization are two important pieces in Jorgensen’s comprehensive platform, called E-Revolution.  Along with calls to change energy, environmental, and education policy, E-Revolution demands reform in American economic policy to secure a better, more stable economic future.  Aside from working to make wages more livable and labor unions more effective, Jorgensen proposes the creation of millions of new jobs in fields like alternative energy as well as plans to safeguard our future from the perils of global warming.  

By contrast, longtime Republican incumbent Elton Gallegly voted against both the minimum wage increase and the union organization bill.  With his votes last year and his long history of opposition to minimum wage increases and other labor issues, Gallegly has repeatedly demonstrated that his priorities do not lie with the nation’s working men and women.  While there were enough voices of reason in Congress to pass the federal minimum wage increase and the union organization bill despite Gallegly’s opposition, we cannot trust that this will remain the case in the future.

Marta Jorgensen knows that American workers must be able not just to work, but to live  She knows that they must be able to organize and orchestrate their power, and that when they work together they can achieve anything.  She understands that American workers must be able to work in our economy and, at the same time, that the American economy must also work for our workers.  We must have Marta Jorgensen’s sensible pro-labor voice in Congress next year.

To learn more about Marta Jorgensen’s plans and her ambitious E-Revolution platform, visit her website at JorgensenForCongress.com today.

David Graham, supporter

A mini-report:

• CA-04: I love this video from the Charlie Brown campaign.  They traveled 412 miles down to Thousand Oaks to talk to constituents of California’s Alan Keyes, State Senator and professional office-chaser Tom McClintock.  It’s really funny and drives the point home that McClintock is a do-nothing at best and a dangerous radical at worst:

And get this, McClintock is now running on the state budget, the Republican version of which has a 19% approval rating.  That’s like putting Nixon, Bush and Cheney in your campaign ad.

• CA-26, CA-45: Not one but two!  Both Russ Warner AND Julie Bornstein have been added to the DCCC “Races To Watch” list.  This is a prelude to being listed as Red To Blue candidates.  If the D-Trip comes through with some money, maybe threatened incumbents like Dreier will have to stop mouthing off about other GOP races and start paying attention to their own. UPDATE: Mike Lumpkin (CA-52) is on that list now too, which is a pleasant surprise.

• CA-46: When John Fund tries to target a Dem challenger, you know something’s going wrong.  Fund is sounding the alarm on Debbie Cook, as Dana Rohrabacher tries to greenwash himself with a scheme to build solar-power plants on federal land without environmental impact studies.  Fund says that Cook called this “an extreme position,” but he chopped the quote:

Democratic challenger and Mayor of Huntington Beach Debbie Cook agrees that the process of approving solar power plants is sluggish and needs to be sped up, but not at the expense of the environment.

“This is just another extreme position by Dana Rohrabacher. What we need to do is come up with a balanced approach that streamlines these projects, because they’re critically important to our energy future, but at the same time recognizes the impacts to the environment,” Cook said.

Rohrabacher’s doing the equivalent of saying he’ll grow jobs by hiring 10,000 federally funded serial killers, and then wondering why everyone’s worried about the mass death (“You wanted jobs, didn’t you?”).  There’s a sensible way to free up the bottlenecks and a rash one.  Rohrabacher chose door #2.

• CA-42: The internal poll results released by Ed Chau are intriguing (showing him up 44-38 after a mix of positive and negative information released on the candidates), but I don’t think candidates who have minimal bank accounts should do polls stating the numbers after a mix of information if they don’t have the money to get that information out.  But if Gary Miller truly has a 28% re-elect number as the poll states, he could be in trouble.