Uh oh:

This week's New Yorker cover features an image of Michelle and Barack Obama that combines every smeary right-wing stereotype imaginable: An image of Obama in a turban and robes fist-bumping his be-afro'd wife, dressed in the military fatigues of a revolutionary and packing a machine gun and some serious ammo. Oh yes, this quaint little scene takes place in the Oval Office, under a picture of Osama bin Laden above a roaring fireplace, in which burns an American flag. All that's missing is a token sprig of arugula.

So, apparently, it's "satire." Trouble is, we can count on the media not to play it that way. They will probably raise a big fuss over it, and the net effect will simply be a further spreading of the rumors the cover is pretending to "debunk." Apparently, the satirists at the New Yorker weren't prescient enough to see that it would play out that way, or didn't care.

Sam Stein reports that Obama's fundraising may be slowing a bit:

Major donors to Barack Obama's campaign were told Wednesday evening that fundraising efforts were "a little slow" and that they should help retire Hillary Clinton's campaign debt so that the New York Democrat's supporters would, in turn, give to Obama.

"There was no negativity about Hillary," said one Democrat. "In fact the opposite. Fundraising is a little slow and it is very important to ramp it up. Hillary donors are a major source of donor dollars. The message to the troops was 'Get your five checks for Hillary in so that you can ask her donors to give to Barack.'"

This while McCain reports that he and the RNC have a combined total of nearly $100 million in the bank, and expect to raise twice that amount before the convention.

On the face of it, this would seem like a strange month for Obama's fundraising to slow. Normally, the month after securing the nomination is the best month for a nominee of either party.

However, I did start to wonder about the nature of Obama's small donor funding network. While I may be proven wrong, it seems to me that the most compelling time to give, for small donors especially, would be right in the middle of a hard fought campaign with lots of media coverage. And in fact, it was during the toughest months of the primary that Obama raked in the most cash.

The problem with the general election is that it offers no such incentives, in the form of make-or-break primaries, to spur donations. Hence, Obama has to go to the network of big donors, which may be why June's numbers may not meet expectations.

And if they don't, expect a flurry of media stories over whether Obama's decision to opt out of public financing was the right one.

Maybe it's part of his anti-tax, slash-the-budget message, but John McCain apparently feels no obligation to pay taxes in the community where he owns a beach-front home:

Newsweek is set to publish a highly embarrassing report on Sen. John McCain, revealing that the McCains have failed to pay taxes on their beach-front home in La Jolla, California, for the last four years and are currently in default, The Huffington Post has learned.

Under California law, once a residential property is in default for five years, it can be sold at a tax sale to recover the unpaid taxes for the taxpayers.

The McCains own at least seven homes through a variety of trusts and corporations controlled by Cindy McCain.

I have no idea how big a story this is, but it certainly looks likely to cause at least a few days of embarassment for the McCain campaign. Between this and the more than $100,000 in credit card debt, McCain certainly doesn't have a stellar record staying on top of his finances.

Then again, with that many houses, it's quite possible the McCains simply forgot about their tax obligations.

The Obama campaign indicated today it will push an issue that was the subject of a Countdown report last week, the so-called "Enron Loophole" and it's ties to top McCain adviser, Phil Gramm. According to The Politico, the Obama campaign accused McCain campaign co-chair and economic adviser Phil Gramm of pushing the deregulations that have allowed speculators to game the system and drive up the price of oil.

The Texas Observer has a great write-up on what happened:

In the early evening of Friday, December 15, 2000, with Christmas break only hours away, the U.S. Senate rushed to pass an essential, 11,000-page government reauthorization bill. In what one legal textbook would later call "a stunning departure from normal legislative practice," the Senate tacked on a complex, 262-page amendment at the urging of Texas Sen. Phil Gramm.

There was little debate on the floor. According to the Congressional Record, Gramm promised that the amendment--also known as the Commodity Futures Modernization Act--along with other landmark legislation he had authored, would usher in a new era for the U.S. financial services industry.

"The work of this Congress will be seen as a watershed where we turned away from an outmoded Depression-era approach to financial regulation and adopted a framework that will position our financial services industry to be world leaders into the new century," Gramm said.

Watershed indeed. With the U.S. economy now battered by a tsunami of mortgage foreclosures, the $30-billion Bear Stearns Companies bailout and spiking food and energy prices, many congressional leaders and Wall Street analysts are questioning the wisdom of the radical deregulation launched by Gramm's legislative package. Financial wizard Warren Buffett has labeled the risky new investment instruments Gramm unleashed "financial weapons of mass destruction." They have fed the subprime mortgage crisis like an accelerant. While his distracted peers probably finalized their Christmas gift lists, Gramm created what Wall Street analysts now refer to as the "shadow banking system," an industry that operates outside any government oversight, but, as witnessed by the Bear Stearns debacle, requiring rescue by taxpayers to avert a national economic catastrophe.

While the nation's investment bankers are paying a heavy price for their unbridled greed (in billions of dollars of write-offs), Gramm has fared quite nicely. He currently serves as a vice president at UBS AG, a colossal, Swiss-owned investment bank, the post, no doubt, a thank you for assiduously looking out for Wall Street interests during his 23 years in public office. Now, with the aid of his longtime friend Arizona Sen. John McCain, Gramm may be looking at a quantum leap in power and influence.

But even more damning are Gramm's intimate ties, through his wife, Wendy, to Enron, whose mainpulation of the markets was made possible by Gramm's bill:

In an apparent response to a 1992 plea from Enron, Dr. Wendy Gramm, then chair of the federal Commodity Futures Trading Commission, moved to exempt the company's energy-swap operation from government oversight. By then, the Houston-based Enron was a major contributor to Senator Gramm's campaign.

A few days after she got the ball rolling on the exemption, Wendy Gramm resigned from the commission. Enron soon appointed her to its board of directors, where she served on the audit committee, which oversees the inner financial workings of the corporation. For this, the company paid her between $915,000 and $1.85 million in stocks and dividends, as much as $50,000 in annual salary, and $176,000 in attendance fees, according to a report by Public Citizen, a group that has relentlessly tracked Enron, which in turn has called the report unfair.

Meanwhile Enron had become Phil Gramm's largest corporate contributor--and according to Public Citizen, the largest across-the board donor in its industry. Between 1989 and 2001, the company tossed Gramm just under $100,000.

In 1998, Wendy Gramm cashed in her Enron stock for $276,912.

Gramm serves as co-chair of the McCain 2008 presidential campaign. As one of the candidate's chief economic advisers, he is mentioned as a possible secretary of the treasury in a McCain administration.

Gramm and McCain became friends when they worked together to defeat the original Clinton health care effort. Gramm was instrumental in helping bail out McCain when his campaign went bankrupt last July. Fortune magazine calls him McCain's "econ brain." And now, he will apparently hold huge sway on economic policy in a McCain administration.

With Obama and Hillary Clinton campaigning together for the first time next week, the press will focus on the party coming together. The endorsements of Carter and Gore, while largely expected, were also important in terms of legitimizing Obama as the party standard bearer. But it's notable that there have been no signals as of yet that the last Democratic actually elected as president, Bill Clinton, plans to explicitly endorse or campaign with Obama.

Bill's endorsement, in many ways, would symbolize a full laying down of arms between the Obama and Clinton camps. In the primary race, Bill Clinton, along with Penn, was viewed as advocating a harsher line against Obama, and was responsible for some of the most aggresive statements coming out of the Clinton camp, starting with his characterization of Obama as a "roll of the dice" in December. Even in the final days of the primary, when it was clear that it would require a small miracle for Hillary to win, Bill made his disgust with the ways things had turned out apparent, launching a parting shot at Obama for leaving his church.

So will Bill explicitly endorse Obama in the coming weeks and months, or will his endorsement be implicit in his wife's endorsement? Will that be good enough, considering he's one of the leaders of the party in his own right? Will a speech at the convention do the trick? What do you think?

I never thought it would happen to me, but I just received a new Obama smear via e-mail. Makes you wonder what this country is coming to. Full text after the jump.

Just a reminder that while McCain may have closed a handful of points in the Gallup tracking poll, Obama has a strong lead in every other poll or metric worth mentioning.

First, the Rasmussen tracking poll, remarkably, shows Obama maintaining his post-primary "bounce:"

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Sunday shows Barack Obama attracting 46% of the vote while John McCain earns 39%. When "leaners" are included, Obama holds a six-point advantage, 49% to 43%. This is the eighth straight day that Obama has enjoyed a lead of five-to-seven points.

Of course, what really matters are the state polls. One of the better analyzes out there is Nate Silver's over at FiveThirtyEight.com.

And, here's where he sees the race:

Electoral-vote is another great place to see where the state by state matchups stand. Here's where they have the race:

Obama 304   McCain 221   Ties 13

As Chris Bowers notes, Obama's lead, on average, is signficantly greater than John Kerry's was in 2004:

Kerry's lead never reached 4% nationally, and actually peaked at around 3.0-3.5% in mid-May (post-Abu Ghraib and when he started running ads), and again from mid-July through mid-August (from the selection of Edwards through the start of swiftboating). In other words, Kerry's peaks in the 2004 election were never as large as Obama's current lead.

Bowers also has some thoughts on what Obama needs to do going forward:

The Obama campaign is clearly obsessed with maintaining a tight, top-down organizational and message structure...Let's hope that this top-down messaging includes a willingness to really attack McCain during the Democratic convention (and, of course, before and after the convention as well). Kerry's focus on positive messaging back in 2004 was one of the reasons he was left vulnerable to the Republican Noise Machine. While the campaign launched a "fight the smears" operation yesterday, pushing back isn't enough. As the old saying does, one of the best defenses is a good offense. If Obama can put McCain even more on the defensive than he already is, then he has the opportunity to build a truly substantial lead over the summer.

Wow, just a week into the general election, and the McCain gaffes are flying fast and furious. Actually, this is vintage McCain, buried in a Politico article on how McCain should use Cheney.

In an interview he gave to the Weekly Standard's Stephen Hayes in 2006 for Hayes's biography, "Cheney: The Untold Story of America's Most Powerful and Controversial Vice President," McCain said: "I will strongly assert to you that he has been of enormous help to this president of the United States."

Going further, McCain even told Hayes in comments heretofore unpublished that he'd consider Cheney for an administration post.

Asked whether he'd be interested in Cheney had the vice president not already have served under Bush for two terms, McCain said: "I don't know if I would want him as vice president. He and I have the same strengths. But to serve in other capacities? Hell, yeah."

This is the same Cheney who has earned unprecedented power in Bush's White House as the most powerful vice president in history, even according to his admirers. Who seems to pop up in every Republican administration in some capacity. And who is intimately tied to Halliburton, which has an enormous stake in the future of Iraq. In other words, it's hardly a stretch to think that his influence would continue into a McCain administration.