SUNDAY NEWSTALK REPORT

John McCain was on Meet The Press and said he agreed with Bush that Iraq is critical to U.S. security. Once again, he said we just didn't have enough troops to handle the situation after we toppled Saddam. He told Timmeh that he has no problem with our selling fake news stories to the Iraqi press. Tim seemed a little surprised. McCain expects lots of indictments to result from the Abramoff scandal, and said Congressional investigative committees haven't been doing a very good job of looking into ethics problems. Duh.

Congressman John Murtha (D-PA) told George Stephanopoulos that the military is stretched so thin it can't do the job in Iraq, and that withdrawing our troops would help quell the insurgency. He suggested that the administration is coming around to his way of thinking, that we need a political solution rather than a military one

Robert Reich noted on This Week that we had an average job growth of 240,000 per month under Bill Clinton, and he never held a Rose Garden press conference to crow about it -- as George W. Bush did for a single month at 215,000 last week. George Will blustered about how well the economy is doing, but Reich pointed out that there's a disconnect between economic statistics and how the people feel. Hey guys, that might be attributed to the fact that wages and salaries are at an unprecedentedly slow growth rate, a million more people have been added to the poverty lists under Bush, ordinary workers are losing their pensions, Congress is cutting benefits for the poor as quickly as they cut taxes for the rich, and higher oil prices and healthcare costs are pinching the American middle class. But oh sure, as long as the stock markets are doing well and corporations are reporting record-high earnings, the economy is just dandy.

Well, blow me down. Cokie Roberts just made the point (TWICE) on This Week With George S. that if our mission in Iraq is to "export our values across the world," then our use of torture, subversion of a free press, and secret prisons aren't very likely to help the effort. She must have read this.

Stephen Hadley told Wolf Blitzer that we have a simply terrific Vice President. He sidestepped questions about his own involvement in the CIA leak scandal, using the same tactic as once before, referring to "press reports" instead of his own knowledge.

UPDATE: How could I forget to mention that McCain told Timmeh that Jack Murtha is being "too emotional" and recommending policy from "the heart" instead of the mind. Murtha, he said, goes to lots of funerals, and he thinks that's influencing him. McCain is such a jerk, and I'm really tired of hearing Democrats praise him for being a "maverick."