Obama leads McCain in November match: Reuters poll  —  WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democrat Barack Obama has opened an 8-point national lead on Republican John McCain as the U.S. presidential rivals turn their focus to a general election race, according to a Reuters/Zogby poll released on Wednesday.

Money shocker!  Hillary Clinton's campaign debt soars*  —  (*UPDATE: Due to a mathematical error, Hillary Clinton's loans to herself were added twice in the calculation of this item.  Her total debts are about $20 million, not $31 million.  A corrected item will be published shortly.)

More than just financing Bush Wars...  The Chinese are apparently taking a supervisory role in overseeing their investment. … Ms. Manning are you forgetting who the President and Vice-President are?  Sadly, it's par for the course.  —  This occurred during the period …

Chuck Hagel Takes On McCain, Repeatedly Praises Obama  —  Chuck Hagel is quickly becoming Barack Obama's answer to Joe Lieberman.  —  The Republican Senator from Nebraska was a political thorn in McCain's side on Tuesday night, repeatedly lavishing praise on the presumptive Democratic candidate …

Democrats and Our Enemies  —  How did the Democratic Party get here?  How did the party of Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman and John F. Kennedy drift so far from the foreign policy and national security principles and policies that were at the core of its identity and its purpose?

AWESOME NEW CLINTONIAN BULLS**T- BREAKING FAST  —  Lisa Caputo, one of the Clinton hacks on MSNBC tonight, just claimed (fraudulently) that Hillary had the popular vote but was behind in the delegate math, and that this felt like “Al Gore in 2000 when it had to go to the Supreme Court.”

We've Been Had  —  This was Obama's rally in Oregon over the weekend, which saw 75,000 people gather on the waterfront, on a sunny summer day, to hear the great one speak.  Or did they?  The headline in the New York Times was “Obama Draws Huge Crowd in Oregon.”  So they must have been there to see Obama, right?

THE REAL BUSH RECORD  —  The Democrats were never able to beat George Bush when he was on the ballot, but they seem to think that the third time's a charm.  To hear Barack Obama talk, you might think he is running against Bush.  And the conventional wisdom is that Republican candidates …

Flying RC Penis Disrupts Garry Kasparov Speech  —  We had to double check that this wasn't a story about Second Life, but rather is an actual event in actual meatspace occurring this past weekend in Moscow.  As former chess champion Garry Kasparov was giving a speech to unite opposition political forces …

Operation in Sadr City Is an Iraqi Success, So Far  —  BAGHDAD — Iraqi forces rolled unopposed through the huge Shiite enclave of Sadr City on Tuesday, a dramatic turnaround from the bitter fighting that has plagued the Baghdad neighborhood for two months, and a qualified success for Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki.

Barack Gaffes  —  All it takes is one gaffe to taint a Republican for life.  The political establishment never let Dan Quayle live down his fateful misspelling of “potatoe.”  The New York Times distorted and misreported the first President Bush's questions about new scanner technology …