Midday Open Thread

• Another earthquake, this time, 6.1 in strength, has rocked the Sichuan province.
• Cindy McCain's riches are causing more problems for John McCain:

  McCain, whose wife has come under fire for refusing to disclose her tax return documents, fielded tough questions about her investment in a mutual fund that deals in Sudan, as well as about the resignation of two McCain aides over their involvement in lobbying deals with the Myanmar junta.

  The Arizona senator said that he was not aware of his wife's investment in two mutual funds that include holdings in Oil & Natural Gas Corp., which in turn does business in the genocide-ridden African nation.

  "I didn't know anything about it, until I saw the story, obviously, because I don't have anything to do with her finances," McCain said.

  According to the Associated Press, Cindy McCain sold more than $2 million of investment in the two firms today after the connection to Sudan was disclosed. "We found out about it," McCain said today. "They found out about it and fixed the problem."

• So desperate to break the McCain-Bush connection, Republicans are now claiming that McCain is like . . . Lincoln?

  STEVENS POINT, Wis. - Republican National Committee Chairman Mike Duncan says like Abraham Lincoln, president candidate John McCain understands the importance of the struggle during wartime.

  Duncan likened McCain to Lincoln during a speech at Saturday's Wisconsin Republican convention.

  Square peg, meet round hole.

• 4,078 American troops have died in Iraq.  At least 29,978 have been wounded.  And still, with our troops being killed or injured every day, John McCain refuses to say how long he'll keep American troops there under these conditions.
• Democratic candidate in IL-10 on the skyrocketing costs of higher education:

  According to Seals, higher education costs have gone up 40 percent in the past five years. He said a year at a community college costs an average $13,000, the average cost for one year at a public, four year college is $17,000, and the average cost for a private four-year college is $32,000.

  "It's no surprise that two-thirds of students who graduate [college] are graduating in debt," Seals said. "And studies have shown that the average graduate is carrying about $19,000 of debt or more ... This really is shutting off opportunity for people to better their lives." [...]

  Seals told the teen journalists he's behind a plan first drafted by U.S. Rep. Rahm Emanuel, D-5th, of Chicago, called the "Universal Higher Education and Lifetime Learning Act." The act would collapse the various college tax credit options into one $3,000 tax credit available to single tax payers with an annual income up to $80,000 and married couples with an annual income up to $160,000 who are paying for community college, four-year college or graduate school.

• Mike Huckabee apologizes for his joke about Barack Obama being shot at:

  "Friday night, Huckabee took to his blog to apologize for the quip. "During my speech at the NRA 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," he wrote. "I apologize that my comments were offensive, that was never my intention.""

  - BarbinMD

• Many readers have wondered about the cell phone impact on polls. Mark Blumenthal at pollster.com interviewed Jeff Jones about a supplemental non-landline phone survey Gallup is conducting.

  Without cell phone interviews, and weighted using Gallup's usual likely voter model, McCain would get 49% to Obama's 46% (clarification: this result combines six Gallup/USAToday surveys conducted so far during 2008). With the cell-phone interviews included, the result is Obama 48%, McCain 47%.

  It's part of an interview series with pollsters from the AAPOR meetings. Check out the link for more pollster interviews. - DemfromCT