Huckabee issued an apologyfor his craptastic joke about Obama ducking gunfire:

“During my speech at the N.R.A., a loud noise backstage, that sounded like a chair falling, distracted the crowd and interrupted my speech. I made an off hand remark that was in no way intended to offend or disparage Sen. Obama. I apologize that my comments were offensive. That was never my intention.” 

Bad comedy always deserves an apology.

Yeah Barack, it’s everyone’s fault but your own that you’ll lose Kentucky. Not that you give a hoot what those people think anyway. It’s great that the excuse parade is starting before the primary, and that it’s coming from Obama himself. It saves the Obamamaniacsthe time and trouble.

“When we’re able to campaign in a place like Iowa for several months and I can visit and talk to people individually, I do very well. That’s harder to do at this stage in the campaign,” Obama said in a brief telephone interview Friday. “And once we get past the primary, we’ll ble to focus more on those states where we need to make sure people know my track record.”

…

“What it says is that I’m not very well known in that part of the country,” Obama said. “Sen. Clinton, I think, is much better known, coming from a nearby state of Arkansas. So it’s not surprising that she would have an advantage in some of those states in the middle.”

…

“Part of it is because there have been these e-mails that have been sent out very systematically, presumably by various political opponents, although I don’t know who,” he said. “And there are a lot of voters who get their news from Fox News. Fox has been pumping up rumors about my religious beliefs or my patriotism or what have you since the beginning of the campaign.”

Is he going to whine this much if he makes to to the White House?

Um, yeah, this isn’t a good joke.

During a speech before the National Rifle Association convention Friday afternoon in Louisville, Kentucky, former Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee — who has endorsed presumptive GOP nominee John McCain — joked that an unexpected offstage noise was Democrat Barack Obama looking to avoid a gunman.

“That was Barack Obama, he just tripped off a chair, he’s getting ready to speak,” said the former Arkansas governor, to audience laughter. “Somebody aimed a gun at him and he dove for the floor.”

Um, what? Huckabee should keep his day job, comedy isn’t for him.

Now I’ve been watching the Lefty blogosphere go nuts since yesterday over this supposed McCain flip-flop on having talks with Hamas. At the center of the fracas is a Jamie Rubin op-ed that claims that McCain has changed his mind on the topic since 2006, when during an interview with Rubin McCain said that talks with Hamas were going to be a necessary evil:

“They’re the government; sooner or later we are going to have to deal with them, one way or another, and I understand why this administration and previous administrations had such antipathy towards Hamas because of their dedication to violence and the things that they not only espouse but practice, so . . . but it’s a new reality in the Middle East. I think the lesson is people want security and a decent life and decent future, that they want democracy. Fatah was not giving them that.”

Here’s the YouTube video of the comment in question.

Now from that video and comment you can tell that McCain is less than enthused by the prospect of talking to Hamas. Note he also doesn’t say that the talks need to be unconditional as Obama has said.

So a day goes by, and another YouTube video pops up from the same day that McCain spoke to Rubin that clearly defines the terms in which McCain would be willing to talk to Hamas.

That certainly paints a different picture than the one Rubin is trying to portray. McCain puts specific riders on when/if it would be appropriate to speak to Hamas. So the Left tries once again to advance a certain idea based on faulty intel while forgetting that YouTube and the political blogosphere exists. Whoops.

H/T to HotAir

McCain had to cut loose another adviser, Craig Shirley, because Shirley was moonlighting for the 527 group StopHerNow.com(soon to be StopHimNow.com). And because it apparently not self-evident to McCain’s advisers that moonlighting for a 527 is a no-no, the McCain camp has released a conflict of interest policy saying so.

For those who don’t get what the big whoop is, 527 can’t collude with any candidate or political party. As far as 527’s go, Stop Her/Him New is pretty harmless and is actually pretty funny. Go check it out.

UPDATE - A little bit of balance from RedState, who wants to know why they weren’t mentioned as being an employer of Shirley:

Actually, Craig was asked by the McCain campaign if he wanted to continue working with the campaign or with Stop-Him-Now. Craig chose, not the campaign.

Likewise, Stop-Him-Now is not one of those shadowy 527 organizations, but an internet website that FEC regulations do not apply to. Stop Her Now was a 527, but certainly not shadowy. It only existed on the net and largely went unnoticed by the press until the guns turned on JesusObama.

Oh yeah, he went there. He went there, took pictures, and came back already.

During the May 14 edition of Fox News’ The O’Reilly Factor, host Bill O’Reilly compared Markos Moulitsas, founder of the progressive Daily Kos blog, to white supremacist David Duke and criticized Newsweekfor its decision to hire Moulitsas as a regular contributor, stating: “And Newsweekmagazine, by the way, has legitimized him by giving him a columnist position. I talked to the editor by email, and I said I can’t believe that you’re — that’s like hiring David Duke. Again, I use Duke too much, but I have to — the level of hatred coming out of that website is unprecedented.” O’Reilly later claimed that Newsweek’sdecision caused him to “cancel[] my subscription.” O’Reilly stated: “I canceled my subscription — I still get it at work — to Newsweekmagazine because of that. And I think everybody else should, as well,” explaining: “[O]nce you start to hire a guy like this Kos guy and you’re legitimizing that, then I’m out. I’m completely out. I don’t want anything to do with you or your publication.”

Wow. By the way, it’s not only O’Reilly Newsweek just lost, but likely a large portion of Clinton supporters as well. The Great Orange Satan hasn’t been kind to the Hillary supporters.

PS - Normally I think O’Reilly is a pompous windbag, but I agree with him on this one. Someone who owns and runs a site that spews as much hate as Daily Kos does without his doing anything to moderate the hate doesn’t deserve to be legitimized in this way.

What is it this year, nobody seems to want the VP nod on either side.

But Edwards flatly said Friday, as he had before he endorsed a candidate, that he’s not interested in making a second run for vice president.

“No,” Edwards said in no uncertain terms on NBC’s the Today show when asked about the possibility. “Won’t happen.…It’s just not something I am interested in.”

Hey John, what about that AG spot?

As for another position in an Obama administration, specifically Attorney General, Edwards was decidedly more coy.

“I don’t really want to get involved in that speculation,” he said. “Right now we have to focus on getting Barack Obama elected to President of the United States, then we’ll worry about those things.”

Yeah, Silky wants a job where he actually gets to influence something.

Here’s Hillary’s response to Bush’s comment:

President Bush’s comparison of any Democrat to Nazi appeasers is both offensive and outrageous on the face of it, especially in light of his failures in foreign policy. This is the kind of statement that has no place in any presidential address and certainly to use an important moment like the 60th anniversary celebration of Israel to make a political point seems terribly misplaced. Unfortunately, this is what we’ve come to expect from President Bush.

“There is a very clear difference between Democrats and Republicans on foreign policy and that difference will be evident once we take back the White House.

Of course both Dem contenders had statements about McCain’s statement about Bush’s statement, but it’s all getting a bit convoluted at this point and there’s really no difference between the two statements. I would like to note that nobody has answered McCain’s question; what is there to talk about?

For everyone who isn’t thrilled with McCain’s ideas on immigration reform, check out Obama’s:

Sen. Barack Obama easily won the African American vote in South Carolina, but to woo California Latinos, where he is running 3-to-1 behind rival Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, he is taking a giant risk: spotlighting his support for the red-hot issue of granting driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants.

It’s a huge issue for Latinos, who want them. It’s also a huge issue for the general electorate, which most vehemently does not. Obama’s stand could come back to haunt him not only in a general election, but with other voters in California, where driver’s licenses for illegal immigrants helped undo former Gov. Gray Davis.

Clinton stumbled into that minefield in a debate last fall and quickly backed off. First she suggested a New York proposal for driver’s licenses for illegal immigrants might be reasonable. Then she denied endorsing the idea, and later came out against them.

…

“Barack Obama has not backed down” on driver’s licenses for undocumented people, said Federico Peña, a former Clinton administration Cabinet member and Denver mayor now supporting Obama. “I think when the Latino community hears Barack’s position on such an important and controversial issue, they’ll understand that his heart and his intellect is with Latino community.”

Wow. Obama manages to latch on to the one immigration reform platform that’s sure to tick off both his detractors and his supporters. This isn’t going to help him with the white working class vote, and it isn’t going to sit well with his African-American base. The only people happy about this are Latinos and John McCain, Latinos for obvious reasons and McCain because now his immigration plan looks downright  draconian in comparison.

H/T to RedState

Keith was allowed to have another one of his unhinged “Special Comment” segments last night, which he used to unload his Bush rage. He hits his usual anti-Bush topics (Iraq war, Dick Cheney, etc.) but his biggest issue is with Bush’s statement that he stopped playing golf so as not to offend those who have lost family members in Iraq.

Then came Mr. Bush’s final blow to our nation’s solar plexus, his last reopening of our common wounds, his last remark that makes the rest of us question not merely his leadership or his judgement but his very suitability to remain in office. “Mr. President,” he was asked, “you haven’t been golfing in recent years. Is that related to Iraq?”

“Yes,” began perhaps the most startling reply of this nightmarish blight on our lives as Americans in our history. “It really is. I don’t want some mom whose son may have recently died, to see the Commander in Chief playing golf. I feel I owe it to the families to be as, to be in solidarity as best as I can with them. And I think playing golf during a war just sends the wrong signal.”

Golf, sir? Golf sends the wrong signal to the grieving families of our men and women butchered in Iraq? Do you think these families, Mr. Bush, their lives blighted forever, care about you playing golf? Do you think, sir, they care about you?

You, Mr. Bush, you who let their sons and daughters be killed. Sir, to show your solidarity with them you gave up golf? Sir, to show your solidarity with them you didn’t give up your pursuit of this insurance-scam, profiteering, morally and financially bankrupting war. Sir, to show your solidarity with them you didn’t even give up talking about Iraq, a subject about which you have incessantly proved without pause or backwards glance, that you may literally be the least informed person in the world? Sir, to show your solidarity with them, you didn’t give up your presidency? In your own words  “solidarity as best as I can” is to stop a game? That is the “best” you can? Four thousand Americans give up their lives and your sacrifice was to give up golf! Golf. Not “Gulf,” golf.

And still it gets worse. Because it proves that the President’s unendurable sacrifice, his unbearable pain, the suspension of getting to hit a stick and a ball together, was not even his own damned idea.

“Mr. President, was there a particular moment or incident that brought you to that decision, or how did you come to that?”

“I remember when de Mello, who was at the U.N., got killed in Baghdad as a result of these murderers taking this good man’s life. And I was playing golf, I think I was in central Texas, and they pulled me off the golf course, and I said, it’s just not worth it any more to do.”

He then proceeds to tell W to “shut the hell up.” Keith’s head will explode any day now from the massive amount of rage in him.

McCain doesn’t see what the big whoop is:

But the presumptive Republican nominee himself defended the remarks, said he intended to make Barack Obama’s willingness to consider dialogue with Iran an issue in the fall campaign, calling on the Illinois senator to “explain [that decision] to the American people.”

“It is a serious error on the part of Senator Obama that shows naiveté and inexperience and lack of judgment — to say that he wants to sit down across the table from an individual who leads a country who says that Israel is a stinking corpse, that is dedicated to the extinction of Israel,” said McCain Thursday. “My question is, what does he want to talk about?”

It is a good question: What do they want to talk about?

Actually, Biden’s reaction to Bush’s appeasement comment is much more violent than Obama’s:

“This is bullshit. This is malarkey. This is outrageous. Outrageous for the president of the United States to go to a foreign country, sit in the Knesset…and make this kind of ridiculous statement,” Biden said angrily in a brief interview just off the Senate floor.

“He’s the guy who’s weakened us. He’s the guy that’s increased the number of terrorists in the world. His policies have produced this vulnerability the United States has. His intelligence community pointed that out not me. The NIE has pointed that out and what are you talking about, is he going to fire Condi Rice? Condi Rice has talked about the need to sit down. So his first two appeasers are Rice and Gates. I hope he comes home and does something.”

Damn, Biden is pissed. Settle down Joe, it’ll all be OK.

Believe it or not, not everything is about Barack Obama. Obama is taking offense to a comment Bush made during a speech in Israel. Here’s the comment:

In a speech to Israel’s Knesset, Bush said that “some seem to believe we should negotiate with terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along … We have an obligation to call this what it is — the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history.”

Of course. That comment could only be about Obama. Nobody else. Yep.

Or maybe it’s a vision. Or a delusion.

McCain, running in the November election to succeed Bush in 2009, described a scenario he thought he could achieve within his first four-year term.

“By January 2013, America has welcomed home most of the servicemen and women who have sacrificed terribly so that America might be secure in her freedom,” McCain said in prepared remarks he was to deliver in Columbus, Ohio.

“The Iraq war has been won. Iraq is a functioning democracy, although still suffering from the lingering effects of decades of tyranny and centuries of sectarian tension. Violence still occurs, but it is spasmodic and much reduced,” McCain said.

…

McCain also predicted that al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden would be captured or killed within four years and the militant group’s presence in Afghanistan would be reduced to remnants.

It’s good to have dreams.

And in the process avoids being the butt of a little joke:

On a sun-baked tour Thursday of an ancient Israeli fortress overlooking the Dead Sea, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert took a sip of water from a silver cup, then handed it to President Bush.

Bush looked into the cup, then quickly set it down. He wasn’t sure he should wet his lips with water from an unknown source.

“Where’s the doctor?” Bush asked and then chuckled.

Not wanting to offend his Israeli host, Bush gave Olmert a big hug for the cameras.

Later, their tour guide at Masada explained that the water wasn’t meant for drinking anyway.

The guide told them to pour the water on a model of Masada’s massive system of dams, channels and cisterns that could hold 40,000 cubic meters of water. When they poured it on the model, they could watch as it flowed through the system.

Oh, that’s what the water was for.

Photo-op success!

Nice. That’d been a pretty funny joke if Bush would have drank the water though.