Arianna Huffington via Political Wire:

“Should Barack Obama end up winning his party’s nomination, he will
give his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention in
Denver on August 28 — 45 years to the day Martin Luther King delivered
his ‘I Have a Dream’ speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.”

No, that’s not a headline from The Onion, but it is John McCain’s fault.

Boeing has lost a $40 billion refueling tanker contract to France’s Airbus.

The Boeing loss means that the 767 assembly line in Everett will wind to a close around 2012 when the current commercial orders run out.

No layoffs are likely as workers will transfer to other programs. But Washington State has lost out on the chance to add as many as 9,000 jobs.

Until now, Boeing has had a monopoly on the supply of large air tankers to the U.S. military. But Northrop Grumman, in partnership with Airbus parent EADS, will build the next generation tankers using a modified Airbus A330 instead of the Everett-built 767 Boeing had put forward.

The deal, worth about $40 billion over two decades, is for the supply and maintenance of 179 tankers replacing old Boeing-built KC-135 airplanes.

Now if that didn’t suck enough, Goldy at Horse’s Ass tells us not just to blame George Bush for this Freedom Fries moment, but the presumptive GOP Presidential Nominee as well.

In its quest for new tankers, the Air Force in 2002 negotiated a $23 billion deal with Boeing for a hundred 767 tankers, but it quickly came under fire in Congress as a financial handout for Boeing. The critics were led by Sen. John McCain of Arizona, who was on the Senate Armed Services Committee at the time and is now the likely Republican presidential nominee.

So let’s add that up, shall we.  Six years ago John McCain put the brakes on a deal that now cost almost twice as much, and the money isn’t going to 9,000 US workers but to another country.  Not just any other country, but the one the wingnuts insisted we boycott — France.  That’s a double whammy. 

I guess it’s okay to buy their wine and cheese again.

There’s every reason to believe that John Sydney McCain III will win zero States come November.  The left has no reason to like him, the right justifiably hates him, and the middle will be hearing from both sides just what a loser the Reverse Ace is.  It’s almost like the GOP wants to throw the race.

USA Today’s story about problems the experts see coming due to unbelievable turnout for this cycle’s election is only a backdrop for the nightmare expected election night this Tuesday in Ohio and Texas, and possibly nationwide come November.

“The biggest problem during the primary season has been too many voters,” says Doug Chapin, director of electionline.org, which tracks voting issues. “Time and time again, the problem has been turnout being up higher than even the most optimistic projection.”

Right on cue, Ohio Daily Blog reports that turnout will be huge.

Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner had a conference call with reporters today (reported on Openers , The Daily Briefing, and Politics Extra) in which she forecast a 52% voter turnout. That is vastly greater to turnout in the 30% to 35% range for the last three presidential primaries (when Ohio’s vote was not nearly so important). It is about the same as the 53.2% turnout in the 2006 general election and about 19% less than the record-breaking 2004 general election turnout.

The USA Today article tells us where the trouble spots should be, including:

In Ohio, which has faced myriad ballot-box problems in recent years, the Cleveland area will test new optical-scan paper ballots in next Tuesday’s primary; officials may not finish counting until midday Wednesday.

So, how’s that going?  If you guessed badly, you win.

Cleveland: Test Of New Ballot Scanners Fails

(HT: DU)

Bob Geldof finds Bush a nice guy with some good programs to help people in Africa:

It was, for example, Bush who initiated the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) with cross-party support led by Senators John Kerry and Bill Frist. In 2003, only 50,000 Africans were on HIV antiretroviral drugs — and they had to pay for their own medicine. Today, 1.3 million are receiving medicines free of charge. The U.S. also contributes one-third of the money for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria — which treats another 1.5 million. It contributes 50% of all food aid (though some critics find the mechanism of contribution controversial). On a seven-day trip through Africa, Bush announced a fantastic new $350 million fund for other neglected tropical diseases that can be easily eradicated; a program to distribute 5.2 million mosquito nets to Tanzanian kids; and contracts worth around $1.2 billion in Tanzania and Ghana from the Millennium Challenge Account, another initiative of the Bush Administration.

But Geldof cannot agree with him about Iraq:

I don’t know how, but eventually we arrive at the great unspoken. “See, I believe we’re in an ideological struggle with extremism,” says