Once in a while, I’ll hear some of Barack Obama’s detractors — from both sides — argue that he’s been lax in offering detailing policy proposals. I’ve never entirely understood the line of attack — both the Obama and Clinton campaigns have been extremely forthcoming when it comes to presenting a detailed platform, filled with all kinds of specifics, especially compared to Mr. Vague Generalities.

The real problem, of course, is that it’s the McCain campaign that avoids substance like the plague. We saw this just yesterday when McCain unveiled his healthcare proposal. Asked about those who either can’t afford or can’t qualify for private insurance, McCain proposed that the federal government “work with” states to cover those who would get left behind. What does “work with” mean? No one knows.

This is part of a conspicuous trend. Tyler Cowen, hardly a partisan Dem, noted today:

Trade aside, so far I’ve yet to see many actual policy proposals from the McCain camp. Mostly I’ve seen attempts to signal that they won’t do anything too offensive to the party’s right wing. Very few of these trial balloons seem to be ideas that McCain had expressed much previous loyalty to. I don’t even think we should be analyzing these statements as policy proposals. We should be wondering why the Republican Party has given up on the idea of policy proposals.

Yglesias noted, “[T]he GOP seems to have decided to blow a not-very-appealing idiosyncratic element of George W. Bush’s personality into some kind of principled objection to policy proposals.”

True, but how did we get to this point?

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Michael Moore appeared on Larry King Live Wednesday to talk about his support for Barack Obama, his views on Hillary Clinton's campaign, the Rev. Wright distraction and as expected, spoke some serious truth about John McCain and how he's wrong for America.

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While Moore hasn't been shy about his dismay with Hillary Clinton's campaign, he talks about party reconciliation after the Democratic primary is over and acknowledges that he hears from a lot of women, many of them older women, who support Hillary and rightfully so. Larry King tries to get Moore to praise McCain, as all elite media pundits do, but Michael hits him hard on vowing to run a third Bush term with disastrous policies that as an "elderly American" would hurt him, were he not a U.S. Senator:

"...And we've seen him angry. And as a senior citizen maybe he's experiencing things now, as an elderly American where it's not the same as if he were a young person in this country. Certainly, if he wanted to go and get a job other than U.S. Senator, at his age, he'd have a pretty hard time, wouldn't he?"

Howard Kurtz covered the Military General propaganda story that the NY Times story uncovered last Sunday morning and did a very good job with it. (I'm usually fairly critical of him) Colonel Ken Allard, a former military analyst for NBC, said that there certainly were conflicts of interest that these former Generals held when they went on TV as pundits selling the positive side of the Iraq war. Lawrence DiRita, the former Pentagon spokesman under Secretary Don Rumsfeld, was on to offer the "other side" of the issue. Sure thing, LDR. Kurtz did call him out:

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" It sounds like you were kind of manipulating these folks."

DiRita had a good laugh at our expense over the fact that the Times called the propaganda manipulation war machine a "sophisticated program." That's really hysterical. This is a horrible affair that has led to so much destruction and broken lives that I don't know how DiRita can even show up on the set of CNN and sit there and still peddle his destructive talking point garbage. But Allard levied the real charges against the Generals and the Pentagon when he admitted:

KURTZ: Do you think it was a conflict of interest of some of your fellow former officers to be in that kind of a...

ALLARD: I absolutely do, because the reason why you're there is to offer the public, for whatever the reason you have, however good you are, whatever your opinion matters, is an honest opinion. You offer that without any hope of remuneration, without any hope of reward. That's basically -- the reward you're getting is what CNN, Fox or NBC News pays you to be there. That's it.

KURTZ: Fox analyst Tim Eads was quoting as saying that when he talked about the war or terrorism on television, he held his tongue for fear that "... some four-star could call up and say, 'Kill that contract.'" He was involved in military contracts.

Glenn Greenwald has a great piece posted which typifies that MSM's non-response to this story on Salon called: Brian Williams' "response" to the military analyst story

After I wrote about Williams' blog item yesterday, his blog was deluged with commenters angrily demanding to know why he has failed to address the NYT expose. In response, Williams wrote a new blog item last night in which he purports -- finally -- to respond to the story, and I can't recommend highly enough that it be read by anyone wanting to understand how our establishment journalist class thinks and acts. The essence of Williams' response: he did absolutely nothing wrong. Nor did any of the military analysts used by NBC News. Nor did his network. These are all honest, patriotic men whose integrity is beyond reproach. Here's but a sampling of Williams' defense...read on

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Facing South: Who is Women's Voices Women Vote, and why are they making shadowy and legally-questionable calls that are causing voters in North Carolina and other states so many headaches?

The OpenHelix Blog: GINA passes the Senate. Kudos to Rep. Louise Slaughter.

The Rude Pundit live from Eschacon08 on disrespecting John McCain

Robert Reich's Blog: The best thing to have occurred during the Bush administration is something that didn't happen.

Politico: Why am I not surprised that the Republicans oppose a bill allowing recounts?

Crackpot Press: LSD, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld

The Hill:

Along with Iraq war veterans and concerned citizens, Iraq Campaign 2008 says it will unfurl a 50-foot replica "Mission Accomplished" banner at the White House tomorrow, marking the five-year anniversary of President Bush's now-infamous speech...The unfurling is slated to occur at 10:30 a.m. on Pennsylvania Ave.

In related news, the aircraft carrier where Bush made his speech five years ago, the USS Abraham Lincoln, departed early April for a seven-month deployment in the Persian Gulf.

A couple of weeks ago, John McCain talked about the importance of increasing the size of the U.S. military. To entice more volunteers, he said, the government should focus on incentives: “[O]ne of the things we ought to do is provide [the troops with] significant educational benefits in return for serving.”

A few days later, McCain announced that he’ll oppose a bipartisan measure to renew and expand the GI Bill for a new generation of veterans.

Sen. Jim Webb (D-Va.), the leading proponent of the modernized GI Bill, is calling McCain out and creating an interesting battle.

From Annapolis to Vietnam and back to the Pentagon, John McCain and Jim Webb trod the same paths before coming to the Senate. Iraq divides them today, but there’s also the new kinship of being anxious fathers watching their sons come and go with Marine units in the war.

So what does it say about Washington that two such men, with so much in common, are locked in an increasingly intense debate over a shared value: education benefits for veterans? [...]

McCain has all but locked up the Republican presidential nomination and is preparing for a fall campaign in which his support of the Iraq war is sure to be a major issue. Yet the former Navy pilot and Vietnam POW makes himself a target by refusing to endorse Webb’s new GI education bill and instead signing on to a Republican alternative that focuses more on career soldiers than on the great majority who leave after their first four years.

McCain concedes he hasn’t tended to his day job in a while, but said his Senate office staff told him that Webb “has not been eager to negotiate.”

“He’s so full of it,” Webb said in response. “I have personally talked to John three times. I made a personal call to [McCain aide] Mark Salter months ago asking that they look at this.”

For Webb, this seems to have far less to do with campaign politics, and far more to do with a deep desire to get a bill through the chamber: “I don’t want this to become a political issue. I want to get a bill done.”

For the troops' sake, it'd be great if McCain agreed.

Roger Waters lost his pig.

Open thread below...

UPDATE: The pig has come home.

This snip of the Cowboy Junkies' "This Street, That Man, This Life" was what the creators of "Homicide: Life on the Street" chose to highlight the return of the mighty Frank Pembleton after he was leveled by a stroke. I always thought it was one of the finest match-ups of theme and song I have ever seen/heard on the teevee.

In his latest Wall Street Journal op-ed, Karl Rove, who swears he’s not formally advising John McCain on his presidential campaign, suggests the Republican presidential nominee needs to do more to let people know about his personal story.

It came to me while I was having dinner with Doris Day. No, not that Doris Day. The Doris Day who is married to Col. Bud Day, Congressional Medal of Honor recipient, fighter pilot, Vietnam POW and roommate of John McCain at the Hanoi Hilton.

As we ate near the Days’ home in Florida recently, I heard things about Sen. McCain that were deeply moving and politically troubling. Moving because they told me things about him the American people need to know. And troubling because it is clear that Mr. McCain is one of the most private individuals to run for president in history.

When it comes to choosing a president, the American people want to know more about a candidate than policy positions. They want to know about character, the values ingrained in his heart. For Mr. McCain, that means they will want to know more about him personally than he has been willing to reveal.

In this case, Rove isn’t talking about McCain’s rocky history in his personal life, but rather, his military experiences, most notably McCain’s time as a prisoner of war.

In all sincerity, my first thought that Rove was being ironic, perhaps even sarcastic. McCain has been reluctant to talk about his past? He’s been too “private” to highlight his military experiences?

I know Rove tries to keep up on current events, but what race has he been watching?

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Turns out the Rhodes Scholars over at "Fox and Friends" think Abraham Lincoln debated Frederick Douglass in the famous Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858. Of course it was Stephen Douglas. Something tells me Frederick would have had a tough time winning a Senate seat back then. Just a thought.

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"Ha. Ha. Rather than spending time mocking their intern, Clayton might have recognized that was Frederick Douglass, the 19th-century African abolitionist leader who certainly wasn't running for any Senate seat."