Click here to read the survey’s results yourself. Can it get any worse?

But yesterday the Missouri Democrat reached new heights. She was a clue in the New York Times’ famed crossword puzzle–Sunday’s puzzle no less—the hardest version.

Check out #21 Down: “Sen. McCaskill of Missouri.” The answer, we think, is her first name, although we haven’t done the whole puzzle to make sure that fits.
What’s next for Missouri’s junior senator?

Barack Obama has promised to defy convention in many ways and one of those ways will be at the Democratic National Convention, where he intends to deliver his acceptance speech not in the convention arena but in Denver’s huge INVESCO Field at Mile High.

The Democratic National Committee announced this morning that the entire last-day proceedings of the Democrats’ nominating shindig Aug. 25-28 will take place in the 75,000-capacity football venue, a departure from anything either major party has ever tried.

The Democrats quoted convention the co-chair, Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, as saying that the change “will allow thousands of first-time participants a chance to take part.” The rest of the convention will take place at the 21,000-seat Pepsi Center, where they basketball instead of football.

Left unsaid was the huge logistics headache it could bestow on the Secret Service, which has the task of assuring the safety of the new Democratic nominee. Security for the night could be a nightmare for Democratic Party loyalists who will have to share Obama’s shining moment with tens of thousands of regular folks who show up to see history made.

Of course, it’s sure to increase the drama of Obama’s big speech, a week before John McCain delivers his acceptance speech at the GOP gathering in St. Paul.

The decision adds more risk for the Democrats, and there are signs already of more than a few loose ends – from cost overruns to caterers refusing to heed dictates about what Democrats can be fed, and even what color the food should be.

According to reports, the Democrats’ contracts with caterers stipulates that food must come in “at least three of the following five colors: red, green, yellow blue/purple and white.” Huh?

Organically grown and locally produce foods are mandated and fried foods are forbidden.

Sounds to us that those Democrats could be mighty hungry by the time Obama starts his mile-high yacking.

What’s a tad ironic is the beneficiary of this campaign cash: John McCain,  who has spent considerable energy over the years trying to close campaign finance loopholes.

The Wall Street Journal reports today that McCain allies have identified loopholes in the contribution law that McCain helped write – cracks enabling a GOP fund set up to help governors.

The Republican Governors Association isn’t subject to contribution limits and thus is telling big donors to write checks that will be used to help elect McCain.

The Journal quotes a wealthy GOPer who wrote a check for ten times the legal limits under the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law as saying that a contribution to the governors group is “the best way to help McCain.”

This development could have a bearing on what happens locally. The association’s executive director, Nick Ayers, says his organization will target Missouri, America’s bellwether, along with two usually Republican states, North Carolina and Indiana.

Ayers freely admits that the plan is designed to help McCain and explains it in barnyard terms: “It’s like planting a lot of food out in the field for one cow; it helps that one cow, but all the other cows appreciate it, too.”

Since McCain-Feingold became law of the land in ’02, parties and contributors have figured ways to evade limits. The most popular trick was deplying so-called 527s – outside groups in both major political parties that plowed close to a half-billion bucks into the ’04 contest.

This time around, it’s no secret that the GOP has been looking for ways to match Barack Obama’s prodigious fund-raising abilities, primarily from small donors. Obama freed himself from spending limits this fall by spurning the federal matching system – after saying early on that he’d subscribe to it.

In another GOP effort that surfaced this week, the Republican National Committee set up an independent expenditure arm ostensibly to be free of the $20 million or so expenditure limit that the RNC can spend in coordination with the McCain campaign.

This device will be used principally for attack ads against Obama, according to speculation.

Reformers – McCain among them – had in mind a system under which by ’08 candidates would be spending about $85 million each for an eight-week campaign.

But when all the spending on this election is tallied up, it could total more like $1 billion.

On one hand, John McCain has the reputation as a fellow with a short fuse, something not altogether desirable for the commander of the world’s biggest nuclear arsenal.

On the other hand, more than a few voters might smile (clap?) at the prospect of McCain, who turns 72 next month, grabbing a revolutionary by his Guyabara shirt and yanking him out of his chair.

First, we must consider the source for this tale, fellow Republican Sen. Thad Cochran of Mississippi, with whom McCain isn’t close. (McCain has criticized Cochran’s penchant for earmarked pet projects in appropriation bills; Cochran has said that the prospect of McCain as the GOP nominee sends a chill down his spine.)

Anyway, Cochran says that on a congressional trip to Nicaragua in 1987, he saw McCain grab an associate of Daniel Ortega, then the leader of the lefty Sandinista National Liberation Front (and now president of Nicaragua), and lift him out of this chair.

Here is what Cochran told the Sun Herald of Biloxi (you can listen to it), a home-state paper. “McCain was down at the end of the table … and we were talking to the head of the guerrilla group here at this end of the table and I don’t know what attracted my attention, but I saw some kind of quick movement at the bottom of the table and I looked down there and John had reached over and grabbed this guy by the shirt collar and had snatched him up like he was throwing him up out of the chair to tell him what he had thought about him or whatever …

More Cochran: “I don’t know what he was telling him but I thought, ‘Good grief, everybody around here has got guns and we were there on a diplomatic mission.’ I don’t know what had happened to provoke John, but he all of a sudden got mad at the guy … ”

What did McCain have to say about Cochran’s recollections at a news conference this afternoon while on a trip to Colombia: 

“That was 21 years ago. I think that’s simply not true.

“I made many, many trips, and had many, many meetings with the Sandinistas and other leaders of central America. There is no, nothing ever — I must say I did not admire the Sandinistas very much. . .”

In a call from the road (he found a decent phone line in Islamabad), Carnahan, who serves on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said, in a nutshell, that things are as bad as they seem. The Taliban and al-Qaida forces have found a “safe haven” into the mountainous border area between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

“The strong fear almost universally here is that it’s provided time and space for the insurgents to regroup and relaunch, not just into Afghanistan but potentially beyond,” Carnahan said. After the congressional delegation’s met with top leaders in Afghanistan and Pakistan, Carnahan said it became clear that there are severe political and military limits to tackling the problem.

The U.S., he said, needs to focus more intensely on the region before things spiral even more. “We can help with better training of the Afghanistan military police,” Carnahan said. “They need more help with their drug interdiction efforts there to really get to the heart of what’s financing a large part of the terrorist [activity].”

The next stop for Carnahan and the five other lawmakers on the trip is India, although Carnahan said he could not  disclose their full itinerary for security reasons.

So when somebody seems to disparage McCain’s military record – even if it’s a four-star general talking – expect the McCain camp to call in the cavalry

That was the case this morning, when McCain loyalists came to the Arizona senator’s defense after retired Gen. Wesley Clark’s latest remarks to the effect that McCain’s background does not add up to being chief executive material.

“Well, I don’t think riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to be president,” Clark, a decorated soldier himself and a former NATO commander, said Sunday on CBS’s Face the Nation.”

Clark, who ran for the Democrats’ presidential nomination four years ago, refused to back off last night, saying that he “would never, never diss someone’s service.” He added: “I have said this about John McCain’s qualifications for a long time.”

That’s true about Clark saying similar things before, but this time they struck a chord given the McCain campaign’s furious efforts to draw distinctions between their candidate and Obama.

Obama, for his part, distanced himself from Clark’s statements, sounding his refrain about respecting McCain’s service.

This morning, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., a close ally of McCain’s, was among those taking Clark – and Obama – to task. “No matter how he sugarcoats it, (Clark) is trying to question John’s service … I just don’t think it’s going to sit well with the American voter.”

McCain adviser Orson Swindle, a fellow POW, asserted that McCain’s Navy experience commanding a squadron of fighter pilots showed the senator’s management skills.

“Gen. Clark ought to be ashamed of himself, talking about a fellow serviceman,” he said. “Gen. Clark’s ethics and his integrity are impugned and violated, even if they exist, in this criticism of John McCain.”

So it’s no wonder that this morning, when President George W. Bush signed a $162 billion supplemental appropriations bill funding the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Pelosi chose to highlight two other elements of the measure. In a statement this morning, Pelosi hailed the bill’s new GI education benefits and an extension of unemployment insurance.

Indeed, she didn’t even mention the war funds. Here’s her statement:

“This morning, President Bush signed the emergency supplemental bill into law and with it a new GI Bill for our troops, veterans and military families and an extension of unemployment benefits for millions of jobless American workers.

“Our troops have served with honor and dignity.  The GI Bill for the 21st Century is our way of thanking them for their service and honoring their sacrifice.  The GI Bill will provide our brave men and women serving in uniform a full, four-year college scholarship and ensure this new ‘Greatest Generation’ is part of our country’s economic recovery.

“This law will also help spur job creation and economic growth by extending unemployment benefits for an additional 13 weeks to more than 3 million jobless American workers who otherwise would have seen their benefits expire.  Every $1 in benefits generates $1.64 in new economic demand – a welcome stimulus for the slowing U.S. economy.”

“I am pleased that the President signed into law these two major achievements for our economy and for the American people.”