Observation

It's hard to watch a hockey game while simultaneously monitoring the various cable-news types (who are currently muted, and making a determined effort to silently out-terrible each other). It's very hard to do those two things while focusing any significant portion of one's brain on thinking coherent thoughts about cap-and-trade.

Incidentally, the official Purple State prediction (a tradition unlike any other): Clinton 54-46.

Everything that is wrong with the world:

Bob Gates doesn't support the troops.

If you're looking for a good way to waste some time...

I don't really have anything useful to say about the New York Times' Pulitzer-baiting Pentagon-media-training piece -- mostly because I haven't actually read it yet (7,500 words? I've read shorter Harry Potter books) -- but based on what I have read, I tend to agree with Glenn Greenwald: "to the extent there are new revelations here, they are a far greater indictment of our leading news organizations than the government officials on whom [the article] focuses."

Uneasy news, this:

Although John McCain's candidacy is still viewed with suspicion by many conservative leaders, polling suggests he has overcome the concerns of rank-and-file conservatives: McCain isn't viewed more unfavorably by conservative voters today than George W. Bush was at this point in the 2000 election cycle.

Meet the Press. Obama chief strategist David Axelrod, to recently-promoted recently-hired Clinton chief strategist Geoff Garin:

Axelrod: You know, as long as we're on the subject -- and I don't want to dwell on this -- did you not put a negative ad on this weekend in Philadelphia? A 100% negative ad attacking Senator Obama?
Garin: No, I don't believe we did.
Axelrod: Yeah, you did. Go back and check with your people. It's an ad on lobbying. And it's circulating...
Garin: It's not. It ends up, I believe, with...
Axelrod: No, no, it's a 100% negative ad, Geoff. Go back and ask your people. I understand you're new, in the campaign, and I love you, man, you're a good friend of mine, I know you to be a good, positive person, but I think there are some vestiges of the old regime still in play.

Oh no he didn't!

[Incidentally, was it just me, or was Russert particularly bad-journalisty this morning?]

Also funny: on Face the Nation, Clinton supporter Ed Rendell mentioned the Tomb-of-the-Unknown-Soldier debacle (Tomb-gate?), to which Obama supporter Bob Casey responded, paraphrasally, "Yes, that was despicable, but the Clinton campaign does it, too." To which Rendell responded, with a straight face, "Well, yeah, but we're not hypocritical about it." So apparently the problem is not the despicability, per se; it's the despicability in combination with the fact that Obama pretends he doesn't like despicability. That hypocrite!