ations and the most affluent. Sen. McCain would implement these cuts without proposing any meaningful steps to simplify taxes or eliminate distortions and loopholes. In addition, Sen. McCain has floated over $1 trillion in new spending increases but barely any specific spending cuts."Okay, presumably unlike Obama, Furman, and Goolsbee, I would support McCain's proposed cut in the corporate tax rate to 25% if it were fully financed and accompanied by measures shifting more tax collection to owners and especially owner-employees. (See here, for example.)But the most interesting bit for me in the above paragraph was the $1 trillion figure they offer concerning spending increases that McCain has floated. I am sure they have something specific in mind to back this up, although possibly the figure could be contested (most likely, on the ground that McCain shouldn't be treated as actually meaning what he said on the campaign trail). But the number surely does not include the costs for all the overseas military activity that McCain is eagerly planning. That stuff can add up (e.g., $2 trillion so far in Iraq).McCain economist Doug Holtz-Eakin attempts to defend his side's relative budgetary integrity on the ground that they will cut spending vastly compared to the present path or Obama. Color me extremely skeptical. Taking into account the extensive military adventures that McCain, even if not actively planning, will nonetheless find himself irresistibly drawn into starting, the actual balance on projected spending may lie sharply in Obama's favor.
  Cindy McCain  , the wife of Republican presidential candidate John McCain  , went for X-rays at a Michigan hospital on Wednesday after an “enthusiastic supporter” shook her hand a little too hard, exacerbating a pre-existing carpal tunnel injury.  McCain was at a fundraiser in West Bloomfield, Mich., when “someone grabbed her hand really hard and then someone else was pulling her the other way,” McCain spokeswoman Jill Hazelbaker said. She was taken to Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak, where doctors determined she sprained her wrist.  McCain has had previous surgeries as a result of carpal tunnel syndrome, Hazelbaker said.  “Out of an abundance of caution, she decided to leave the event and visit the local hospital for X-rays where she was treated for a minor sprain. We appreciate everyone’s concern and she will be back on the campaign trail tomorrow,” she said.  That must have been one heck of a firm handshake.
 Laura Meckler reports on the presidential campaign from Birmingham, Mich.Sen. John McCain and actor Clint Eastwood spent some quality time together in Birmingham, Mich., outside Detroit, watching the Olympics and talking politics. Eastwood was in town shooting a movie, and McCain was campaigning for president. Eastwood is a great hero of mine, McCain told diners at Kerbys Koney Island, where he stopped by before leaving town this morning. His wife, Cindy, agreed that Eastwood was a hero to her as well.Eastwood, a Republican who served as mayor of Carmel, Calif., has known the McCains for some time, an aide said. Both were staying at the Townsend Hotel, and the two men, along with a few others from the McCain party, visited for about an hour in the McCains suite.
  As John McCain faces increasing pressure to select his vice presidential running mate, former Arkansas governor and one-time presidential candidate Mike Huckabee said Thursday values voters are watching closely for an abortion opponent.Huckabee said the Arizona senator must choose someone he is “comfortable with” and hopes that person opposes abortion rights, a hot-button issues that could inflame some voters among the party’s conservative base.McCain told the Weekly Standard on Wednesday that he has not ruled out choosing Pennsylvania’s popular former Gov. Tom Ridge as a running mate despite his support for abortion rights, a statement that has come under fire by some conservatives in recent days.“I wish he were pro-life,” Huckabee said of Ridge.In his interview with the conservative publication, McCain said the pro-life position is “one of the important aspects or fundamentals of the Republican Party.”“And also I feel that — and I’m not trying to equivocate here — that Americans want us to work together,” he said. “Tom Ridge is one of the great leaders and he happens to be pro-choice. And I don’t think that that would necessarily would rule Tom Ridge out.”McCain, who is against abortion rights, appeared to be testing the issue — weighing the benefits against the costs of picking Ridge, who could help the Arizona senator win Pennsylvania. The presidential election is won on a state-by-state basis with more populous states, such as Pennsylvania, carrying greater weight in the results.Huckabee said that if McCain’s vice presidential choice is “not hardcore pro-life,” he asks that he or she “not do anything that would be disruptive to what has been very important to the Republican platform.”Huckabee also expressed opposition to the prospect of choosing former Massachusetts governor and presidential candidate Mitt Romney.“I think a lot of people, not just social conservatives, but a lot of the Republicans I know are not necessarily comfortable with Romney,” he said in an interview with CBS News. “But it has nothing to do with religion. It has everything to do with inconsistencies in positions he’s held, and that’s it.”Huckabee ruled out any possibility that he will be asked to join the GOP ticket.“I have no expectations that I’m going to get that phone call,” he told FOX News.“My commitment is to support him. And I don’t request that he support me in order to get my support,” he added.The Associated Press contributed to this report.
  John Edwards was back on the menu at Hannity & Colmes last night (8/13/08) albeit with fewer fireworks than the night before. Democrats Kirsten Powers and Alan Colmes (in another unbalanced panel of two conservatives to one Democrat) did a fine job of arguing that if you’re going to condemn Edwards’ infidelity, you have to condemn John McCain’s, too. Hannity hilariously excused McCain with a melodramatic speech about his POW ordeal and then claimed that McCain “wasn’t the same person when he got back, for a short period of time.” But in fact, McCain’s extramarital affair with now-wife Cindy occurred six years after he came home from Viet Nam and a couple of years into his stint as Navy liaison to the Senate. Meanwhile, Hannity never did explain why Rudy Giuliani should get a pass even though Giuliani had been on the show earlier that night. With video.  With maximum Hanctimony, Hannity told Powers, “You can’t possibly understand, nor can any of us, what it would be like to be in a POW camp for five and a half years, never knowing if you’re gonna get out, getting your bones broken every day and tortured and then think you’re gonna be the same person.”Powers answered, “Sean, how can you make a case like that? ...He was dating Cindy McCain while he was married to somebody else. He had the capacity to date her but he can’t be with his wife? That if you’re a POW, you can cheat on your wife?”Hannity said, “You know what? He wasn’t the same person when he got back, for a short period of time. And why can’t you understand and put that in context?”Uh, maybe because he didn’t hook up with Cindy until six years after he got home? According to the New York Times, McCain came home from Viet Nam in 1973. The Arizona Republic reports that McCain met Cindy Hensley (now McCain) in 1979. As this article in The Times makes clear, McCain had been working as a Navy liaison to the Senate since about 1977, two years before he met CIndy. The Times described McCain's life as a liaison:  "(He sampled) life in the world’s most exclusive club as he escorted its members on trips around the globe — sitting with the sultan of Oman on the floor of his desert tent, or smuggling a senator’s private supply of Scotch through Saudi Arabian customs.He had found a sense of purpose in an apprenticeship to some of the Senate’s fiercest cold warriors. And in Senator John G. Tower, a hawkish Texas Republican, he had found a new mentor, beginning a relationship that many compared to the bond between a father and son.  It hardly sounds like someone in the throes of PTSD.In a sulky voice, Hannity ended the segment by saying, “I love how Democrats and liberals, who’ve never spent a day in battle or conflict don’t applaud what (McCain) did for five and a half years nor did they give him any texture or context to that.”Kind of the same treatment the non-serving Hannity gave veteran Kerry, eh?And, by the way, I urge everyone to email Hannity and ask him what the texture and context for Giuliani’s infidelities are.
 ABC News' Rick Klein reports in Thursday's Note: Now that Paris and Britney have been replaced by Vladimir and Dmitry, things look very serious for Sen. Barack Obama in a race that’s seen its landscape shift faster than shaved ice melts in the Kailua sun. (If he could only figure out that Hillary thing before we get to Denver . . . ) (And the poll we’ve all been waiting for has arrived -- the one that declares the race just about even.) Yet on the home front, it’s Sen. John McCain who’s playing a dangerous game, even w