Everyone continues to be terribly impressed by John McCain's awesome ability to bullshit. The man is beloved by the press corps (or, at least, he used to be) because he will say any damn thing that comes to his mind, and what usually comes to his mind is whatever you want to hear. So Slate's Jacob Weisberg sat down with McCain in August of '07, when McCain's campaign was a mess and he was losing. Weisberg asked him how things were going, and McCain answered frankly that everything sucked. How Maverick-y of him not to lie! Then he said Weisberg didn't even have to read McCain's book if he didn't want to. Then McCain criticized the President and his handling of Iraq!

Reggie Love is Senator Barack Obama's amusingly named "body man." He's a 26-year-old former college football and basketball player. Also he's really cool! The Times has a total crush on him, and they tell us all about how Mr. Love is totally good at sports and got Obama into hip-hop and fist-bumps reporters. (Or, as they put it, he "offers closed-fist high-fives to members of the news media.") He's with Barry all the time, and has pens and Sharpies and nicotine gum and stuff. He also makes sure no one ever tries to give the senator mayo or a second beer. And they play basketball! Soooo cool! No, seriously, he's really really cool.

John McCain is in mostly good health. He's had melanoma three times but now "appears cancer-free." He's arthritic and takes cholesterol meds and has precancerous lesions removed periodically, but his heart is super-strong! He also has vertigo. The cancer probably won't come back within the next 8 years, though there's a chance of it. Also, "aides said McCain has had no mental evaluations in the past eight years and none was included in the documents." Meanwhile, have you heard that Barack Obama is terribly unhealthy? It's true, some guy at HuffPo says the Senator is totally unfit for duty.

John McCain, who is running for president, will release his medical records to the media. To a select group of reporters, anyway. Only two print journos. It's 400 pages, and no one can make copies. And it will happen on the afternoon before a three-day weekend. Hah. An amazing example of the Friday Night Newsdump. But we've all become sooo media savvy that it just looks pathetic and worrying. What the hell is in there? For that matter, what's up with his wife's tax returns? She won't say, though she will pose for Vogue looking all saucy on a couch. Click to enlarge! Surely if McCain is healthy enough for that fox, he's healthy enough to lead the nation! [Radar, WT]

Jews! They hate Obama! That's according to today's Times, in which we learn that Florida's Jews are almost as misinformed as West Virginia's everyone. Anyway—old Jewish retirees all think Obama is against Israel, even though he's just as solidly pro-whatever Israel wants as every other major American politician from either side of the aisle. What can Obama do to win them over?

Remember Barack Obama's mysterious Abercrombie posse? The sticker cultists behind the Clintons? Doesn't anyone screen the people who sit behind candidates anymore? Our esteemed videographers put together this collection of all the loonies mugging for the camera and distracting from the candidate. Just one more thing we'll miss about the primary season, until it begins again in 2010. (If this one actually ends. Kentucky and Oregon were last night. Obama won Oregon, as predicted. Clinton scored a ridiculously large victory in tiny Kentucky, as predicted. Clinton didn't drop out, as predicted. John McCain did something quasi-unethical with some lobbyists too, probably.)

What will be John McCain's greateast challenge in his race for the presidency? His many and varied unethical relationships? Or the fact that he looks like a terrible monster on high-definition TV? Slate's Timothy Noah argues the latter. No one cares about ethics, but many people are buying fancy new flat-screens. And John McCain, who looks grandfatherly and dignified on, like, a YouTube box, looks like a mythological monster in crisp HD. Seriously! Above, a screenshot of McCain in regular definition. After the jump, the clip that's taken from in glorious HD.

The White House sent a FURIOUS letter to NBC news. They claim they're mad at how NBC edited Richard Engel's interview with the president last week. It's all bullshit, obv. The details, transcript, letter, and video—after the jump!

In two days, the New York Times published three pieces—by Kate Zernike, Peggy Orenstein, and Jodi Kantor—on Hillary Clinton, misogyny, and the first woman president. Orenstein, writing from Berkeley, does not "consider Senator Clinton a victim." She doesn't like Hillary, in other words, but the senator is maybe a useful lesson for her daughter in how the world will shit on her if she's ambitious. There is a long way left to go! In the meantime, we shall distract our daughters with cookies. In the Week in Review, Zernike, writing more practically, asked who the first lady president will be. Answer: kinda like a male president, but more so.

Now that he's the presumptive nominee, Barack Obama no longer has to attract voters with meaningless pleasantries and promises of ponies. No, now he's free to switch to real talk. No bullshit. At his Saturday rally in Oregon, Obama told the United States to stop whining and go on a goddamn diet: "We can't drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times ... and then just expect that other countries are going to say OK," he said. But we want to drive around eating corn all day! Can we at least continue criticizing your wife for hating America? Apparently not, as we learned on Good Morning America. Clip of that attached.

So. Obama has a bit of a problem with the Jews. Some suspect he doesn't support Israel. Or support it enough. Some suspect he might have sympathies for certain antisemitic Black leaders. Some are worried that he will make Mahmoud Ahmadinejad his Vice President. And basically, the Jews who think these things think them because Obama's black. Is that unfair? Yes. To everyone. But seriously, the man has never said a discouraging word about Israel and his demeanor and political style is notable in its opposition to older, more radical Black leaders. Still. Jews are paranoid people! And it doesn't help that they're all being encouraged to be scared of Obama.

Old Man John McCain will appear on Saturday Night Live this weekend. Just a cameo, of course. Though he hosted in 2002, back when was still a maverick beloved by liberals and elite coastal types. Details of the sketch he'll appear in are scarce, though it will probably be toothless and unfunny, as all SNL political material tends to be. McCain might be funny, though! Presumably less wooden than Obama and Clinton were in their toothless, unfunny cameos. McCain's a natural comic (have you heard the one about how Chelsea Clinton is ugly?). Which, as we all know, is utterly unpresidential.

Recount, the HBO film about the 2000 presidential election mess in Florida, premiers on HBO soon. It looks fiendishly entertaining if you are a nerd, like some of us. Primarily because OMG Laura Dern as Katherine Harris. The make-up! They even recreated the horse photos. Some people, though, are not so excited about this movie. Because they are characters in it. Specifically Warren Christopher, a respected elder of the Democratic party, who is portrayed as a spineless pussy. He is played by John Hurt in goofy (but accurate) prosthetics. Christopher was the "public face of the Gore team" and the film basically shows how he played fair while Bush's fixer, James Baker, waged war. All of this is public record, but Christopher's pissed anyway, saying the filmmakers distort the story. Baker, on the other hand, is hosting a damn screening of the film at his think tank. He says the film makes him out to be "a little more like Don Corleone" than he really is, but that is actually a dark and depressing joke. He's worse than Don fucking Corleone, because Don Corleone was pretend. Oh hey, the trailer's after the jump.

The problem with exit poll data that shows that Clinton voters won't back Obama in November (or vice versa) is that the voters are being polled seconds after voting for someone some pollster tells them is a loser. So it should always be taken with a grain of salt. Except in West Virginia, obviously, where we're pretty sure everyone willing to vote for Obama did so yesterday.

Drug-stealing charity-defrauder Cindy McCain, the lady John McCain left his other wife for and is now forced to stay with because she's fantastically wealthy, is not particularly well-known by the American public. The McCain campaign insists they're trying to change this but obviously they'd be fools to. The less people know about the biography of either McCain—besides the torture thing!—the more likely they'll be able to pull off a victory against Barack Obama, whose biography Americans are largely content to make up themselves out of things they find around the house, like suspicion of people who are different from them and racism. After the jump, John McCain refuses to even deny that he called his wife a cunt. (Which he did, in 1992.)

How many times have you gazed out on the subway tracks during your daily commute, wishing only for the sweet release that hurling yourself upon them would provide? Plenty of times; you're reading this site, so we know your job sucks. Some people do throw themselves in front of trains, which represents not only a wasted life, but also a hugely inconvenient municipal clean-up job. So Washington, DC has ordered up some stuff to keep your mind occupied while you're on the platform—games like Hopscotch and "I Spy." The slogan on the games reads "Life is fun. Keep on living. Use caution around the tracks." Perhaps hopscotch was not the wisest choice, then? And let's be honest—the slogan of this campaign should really be, "Anything to Momentarily Distract You From Suicidal Thoughts." After the jump (ha), one of the "I Spy" games. This would only cure a very minimal level of depression:

Do you hate everyone around you? If so, you may wish to download one of Slate's political ringtones. No, seriously. This is what they're doing. Ringtones made of soundbytes taken from the never-ending 2008 primary elections. Like Hillary's odd laugh, John McCain calling someone a jerk, and "Yes We Can!" If you download these to your phone, you will get beaten up. But! They forgot a couple! Like, all the good ones, basically. Allow us: