You're watching an utterly irrelevant, shallow television celebrity [Chris Matthews] dominate everybody who claimed they want to lead the most powerful nation in the world -Newt Gingrich

Heeeeeeere's Newt!

Dismissing the GOP presidential field as a "pathetic" bunch of "pygmies," Newt Gingrich hinted Monday he might step in to beat Democrats Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama. . . ."If it becomes patently obvious, as the morning paper points out, that the Democrats have raised a hundred million more than the Republicans, and at some point people decide we are going to get Hillary unless there's a radical change, then there's space for a candidate," he added. "So you'll know by mid-October one of those two futures is real." Asked by the Examiner if he was prepared to commit to a run, Gingrich said, "I'm perfectly happy to do what I do," he said. "Whether that leads to the presidency is the country's problem, not mine."

(Emphasis supplied.) It sure as heck would be our problem if Newt became President. Thank Gawd there is no chance of that. h/t atrios.

Frank Rich in today's New York Times (reprinted and publicly available here):

Forty years late, the party establishment is finally having its own middle-aged version of the summer of love, and it’s a trip. The co-chairman of John McCain’s campaign in Florida has been charged with trying to solicit gay sex from a plainclothes police officer. Over at YouTube, viewers are flocking to a popular new mock-music video in which “Obama Girl” taunts her rival: “Giuliani Girl, you stop your fussin’/ At least Obama didn’t marry his cousin.”

As Margery Eagan, a columnist at The Boston Herald, has observed, even the front-runners’ wives are getting into the act, trying to one-up one another with displays of what she described as their “ample and aging” cleavage. The décolletage primary was kicked off early this year by the irrepressible Judith Giuliani, who posed for Harper’s Bazaar giving her husband a passionate kiss. “I’ve always liked strong, macho men,” she said. This was before we learned she had married two such men, not one, before catching the eye of America’s Mayor at Club Macanudo, an Upper East Side cigar while he was still married to someone else.

Putting it in context:

There is a NYTimes article on Rudy and how he has exploited race for political purposes in his political rise. The mendacity, flip flops, race baiting and exacerbation are all revealed in detail. But I really like Greg Sargent's piece on Rudy. Here is a highlight:

Rudy ascended to the Mayoralty on a wave of anger and raw emotion in New York. His strategy was fairly straightforward: He spoke to the (not unjustified) fears and resentments that rising crime and demographic change were causing in blue-collar outer-borough Catholics, aging Jewish voters, and even some white liberals. . . .

For instance, as today's Times notes, during his 1989 campaign against Dinkins, his "campaign ran an ad in a Jewish newspaper with a photo of Mr. Dinkins and Mr. Jackson . . . The paper adds that Rudy also began calling Dinkins "a Jesse Jackson Democrat." [Earlier that year, he criticized Ed Koch for calling Dinkins a Jackson Democrat.]Speaking to the fear and bewilderment of outer-borough white voters anxious about the changing city around them, Rudy played a subtle -- and sometimes not so subtle -- racial game to take power. Eventually, it worked.

. . . You can't understand the "bulls#$t" moment without seeing it in this larger context. It was anything but some random outburst. It isn't just some little "gotcha." It's Rudy in the raw. It's the Whole Rudy -- his rage, his overwhelming drive, his successful exploitation of the city's racial tensions to take power, his nasty and vicious streak.

People do not realize what a dangerous and unhinged man Rudy Giuliani is. There could be no worse fate for the country than Rudy becoming President in 2009.

The New York Times re-examines Rudy Giuliani's strained relations with the African-American community during his tenure as Mayor.

By 1997, Mr. Giuliani’s job approval rating in the black community stood at 42 percent, according to a New York Times poll.

But within these victories lay the seed of a problem. Even as crime dropped by 60 percent, officers with the street crime unit stopped and frisked 16 black males for every one who was arrested, according to a report by the state attorney general. Then came three terrible episodes that raised a pointed question for black New Yorkers: Was crime reduction worth any cost?

And here's Rudy in Iowa, when asked about increasing federal support for HIV medication, answering by referring to 9/11 and terrorists:

"My general experience has been that the federal government works best when it helps and assists and encourages and sets guidelines… on a state-by-state, locality-by-locality basis. It's no different from the way I look at homeland security. Maybe having been mayor of the city, I know that your first defense against terrorist attack is that local police station, or that local firehouse."

If you haven't seen the photo of Romney holding up a sign that said "Obama Osama," you can see it here. Now you can read, via Eric Kleefeld, the worst excuse of the day:

Election Central contacted Romney spokesman Kevin Madden for comment, asking if it was appropriate for the candidate to hold the sign up with the woman. "The governor stopped briefly for a picture with a supporter who just happened to be holding their own sign with an alliterative play on words," Madden said, via e-mail. "I don’t think it was equating or comparing anyone."

Say whaaaaat? So there is today's worst excuse of the day.

Chris Bowers at Open Left today writes about why progressive bloggers aren't endorsing individual candidates in the Democratic presidential primary contest.

Personally, I am not endorsing an individual candidate because there's more than one in the current race I'd be happy to see get the nomination.

I also think a few of those running for President would make good vice-presidential running mates.

That being said, I have not shied away from opining that Hillary Clinton and John Edwards are my faves so far, while Big Tent Democrat has expressed a preference for Chris Dodd.

Todd Beeton discusses John Edwards and Barack Obama's speeches on poverty:

John Edwards concludes his Road To One America poverty tour today with a major speech in Kentucky, the site where Robert F Kennedy ended a similar trek in 1968. . . [L]last night on Hardball, Chris Matthews asked a more meta question that hit on the larger ramifications of Edwards' focus on poverty:

MATTHEWS: . . . How do you get back to being the party of regular folk? EDWARDS: My party and the Democratic party that I believe in stands up for ordinary people, stands up for the little guy, stands up for people who don't have health insurance, who live in poverty and who don't go to fundraisers. That's what the heart and soul of the Democratic Party is and we can never lose that because if we lose it we lose our soul. And it's gonna require us to have a little backbone and stand up for what we believe is right regardless of who's affected by it.

Barack Obama gave a speech about poverty invoking Bobby Kennedy today as well. . . [N]o matter how you read Obama's timing, it's telling that his speech doesn't contain the word "Democrat" once.

More.

Oprah Winfrey is opening up her Santa Barbara estate to throw an exclusive, ultra high end fundraiser for Barack Obama.

A ticket in the door starts at $2,300, the most allowable under federal campaign laws. If you want to stick around for a VIP reception — mingling with a list of yet-to-be announced celebs — better be prepared to raise at least $25,000 from friends, family and a few high-class strangers. For $50,000, you can stay for dinner (and wander through the house while searching for a bathroom).

One invitee is positively giddy over the event.

More...

Salon has a long interview with Elizabeth Edwards today. She says John Edwards is a better candidate for women than Hillary.

Look, I'm sympathetic, because when I worked as a lawyer, I was the only woman in these rooms, too, and you want to reassure them you're as good as a man. And sometimes you feel you have to behave as a man and not talk about women's issues. I'm sympathetic -- she wants to be commander in chief. But she's just not as vocal a women's advocate as I want to see. John is.

And then she says, or maybe her supporters say, "Support me because I'm a woman," and I want to say to her, "Well, then support me because I'm a woman." The question is not so much how she campaigns -- that's theater. The question is, what does her campaign tell you about how she'll govern? And I'm not convinced she'd be as good an advocate for women.

I think they are both good advocates for women. But I'm more interested in them being strong advocates for all Democratic issues than on issues solely affecting women. I don't see how we could go wrong with either Hillary or John Edwards.

Update: Ana Marie Cox weighs in and notes Drudge's false headline on this.

A major trial lawyers group held its annual meeting this week. Most of the major Democratic presidential contenders were in attendance, including Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, Joe Biden and Bill Richardson. They had sharp criticism for Alberto Gonzales and recent decisions the Supreme Court. Some quotes:

Hillary called Bush an extremist:

"I would argue that his is the most radical presidency we've ever had in our country's history," she said.

Obama:

We want a president who will defend civil justice but we have one who is only listening to Alberto Gonzales justice.....People are tired of Scooter Libby justice."

Bill Richardson (the only non-lawyer amond the candidates):

"I will appoint someone who I will direct and say: 'You will be an attorney general for the people. I don't want to even see you talking to the political arm of the White House staff.'"

More...

This just in from Yearly Kos (by e-mail):

The YearlyKos Convention team is pleased to welcome Senator Hillary Clinton to the second annual, historic gathering of the netroots in Chicago this August. Clinton joins Senators Edwards, Obama, Dodd, and Governor Bill Richardson as a participant in the first ever collaborative presidential forum with both a respected blogger(Joan McCarter of DailyKos) and a leading member of the traditional media (Matt Bai of The New York Times Magazine) as moderators, with author and blogger Dr. Jeffrey Feldman facilitating questions from attendees.

Yearly Kos is taking place August 2 to 5 in Chicago. I'll be there and joining Marcy Wheeler of The Next Hurrah and Christy Hardin-Smith from Firedoglake on a panel about blogging the Scooter Libby trial. Sheldon Snook from the U.S. District Court in D.C. who herded all of us and the MSM at the trial, will also be joining us.

Registration for Yearly Kos ends tonight at midnight. You can register here.

Can things get any worse for John McCain's campaign?

Justin Rood at ABC News reports:

An official with the John McCain presidential campaign was arrested for allegedly soliciting oral sex from a policeman in Florida yesterday.

Bob Allen, a member of the Florida House of Representatives, is one of six Florida co-chairs for the Arizona Republican senator's 2008 White House bid.

The allegation is he offered an undercover cop $20 for a quickie.

This shouldn't be illegal at all, but that doesn't make it any less a hit for the McCain campaign.