A friend of mine said that with McCain's new lines of attacks, he's basically giving up on the economy.

I think that pretty much sums up the state of John McCain's campaign, so while I won't expect to see this headline in The Washington Post, I wouldn't disagree with it one bit:

Here's the two key things you need to know about the Palin-McCain campaign's cynical new line of attack:

1. Barack Obama is way ahead of John McCain in this campaign. In fact, he's at or above 50% in three of the four national tracking polls, and leading in all of them.

2. The reason for McCain's slide in the polls is simple: While Barack Obama has focused his campaign on solutions to get this country out of the ditch that Bush-McCain policies have put us in, John McCain has focused his campaign around lies about his opponent and the glorification of his own personality and that of his running mate.

To put it in blunt terms, while Barack Obama has provided answers and solutions, John McCain has provided nothing.

And now John McCain is doubling down on his failed political strategy. He is now insourcing the Swiftboating slime machine that is the hallmark of Bush-Rove-McCain politics.

John McCain thinks the only way he can win this election is by destroying Barack Obama.

But he's wrong.

The problem for John McCain is that this election isn't about Barack Obama.

This election is about what's important to America at this crucial point in our nation's history.

It's about recovering from the disastrous Bush-McCain foreign policy legacy.

It's about recovering from this economic catastrophe unleashed by eight years of Republican economics.

It's about finally doing something about our energy and environmental problems.

It's about changing direction from the past eight years, and on that essential challenge, John McCain has nothing to say.

All he has is character attacks -- character attacks that just won't work.

If we wanted to play his game, we could go after McCain's fundraiser with G. Gordon Liddy who had advocated killing federal agents by shooting them in the face. We could make as a centerpiece of the campaign John McCain's vote against the seminal 1990s legislation that protected women's health clinics from anti-choice terrorists. We could talk about Sarah Palin's involvement with the pro-secessionist Alaskan Independence Party. We could savage her extremist witch-doctor religious freak show.

We could do all that, but that's not what this campaign is about.

This campaign is about the future of our country and the world. We have so many problems that are so serious and need to be dealt with.

Barack Obama is winning because has addressed these problems head on and talks about them every day. Because what matters to him -- and to us -- is delivering the change we need to start moving in the right direction.

John McCain is losing because the only thing that he has to offer is tired, old, recycled attacks on Barack Obama. The only thing he offers is the cynical politics of division. The only thing he offers is lies and deceit.

This November, we're going to move past John McCain, and we're going to close the door on the Bush era once and for all. We're going to leave it behind, in the past, where it belongs.

It's time to get something done for America, and the world.

There's been so much going on with the campaign lately, that I hadn't paid much attention to Bob Woodward's newest book, The War Within.

Tonight he was on Real Time with Bill Maher (video below) and he relayed a couple of interesting items.

First, he said that during White House discussions on Iran, a senior military leader asked Bush what his strategy was. Bush's answer? "They're assholes." Just gives you a sense as to how crude and clueless our current president is, and how desperately we need a change.

Second -- and this was really interesting -- he maintained that the surge was not the cause of the decrease in violence in Iraq. Instead, Woodward said a covert program run by the U.S. military was the primary reason for the decrease in violence. Woodward didn't get specific, but it basically sounded like a targeted assassinations program.

According to Woodward, the administration has confirmed his account. Seems like that might be something for McCain to ponder the next time he wants to say that the surge is the defining reason he ought to be elected president.

Here's video:

The good news is that Sarah Palin can complete a sentence...the bad news is that the rest of us have to listen to it, according to Bill Maher in his opening monologue on Friday night.

Maher also had mocking words for Rich Lowry, who thought Palin was 'man straightening.'

Here's video:

Obama is now at or above 50% in three of the four tracking polls.

Hotline/Diageo has it at 48-42. Gallup has it as 50-42. Rasmussen has it as 51-45. And Daily Kos/R2000 shows the biggest lead of all: 52-40.

But with good news comes bad. Unless McCain decides to give up the campaign, he's going to go nook-yoo-ler. That will probably have a negative impact on Obama's poll numbers, and it might even dominate news coverage for a short period of time, because conflict is sexy.

The challenge for us, as supporters of Obama, is going to be simple: we can't overreact to McCain's coming attacks, and we need to see them for what they are: desperate attempts to distract attention away from the fundamental issue in this race, which is reversing course from the disastrous path charted George Bush and the GOP over the past eight years.

So even if the race gets a little closer, we can't freak out about it. The poll numbers aren't what matters. The bile behind John McCain's attacks aren't what matters. All that really matters is getting this country out of the rut that John McCain's policies has put it in. Everything else is background noise. And as long as we stay focused, we win.

Friday night on the Late Show, it was a meeting of the two most prominent media personalities spurned by the McCain campaign -- Brian Williams and David Letterman.

Neither man is terribly happy about being rejected by McCain-land, but they both manage to maintain their sense of humor. Here's video:

Just take a look at their home page, which blares "Governor Palin proved beyond any doubt that she is ready to lead as Vice President."

Consider:

1. They couldn't bring themselves to declare victory, instead settling for a highly defensive proclamation that she is ready to be VPOTUS; and

2. They couldn't bring themselves to say she was qualfied to be President of the United States.

Here's what the home page looks like, with the key part highlighted: