About a month ago I e-mailed this message to info@gop.com:

I received an e-mail from you asking me to donate to John McCain's campaign. My position is very simple. Get McCain to change his mind and commit to extracting oil from ANWR and the lower Gulf of Mexico and I will make a very generous donation to his campaign.

This week he stated that he favors letting the states decide if they want to allow oil exploration and extraction off their shores and that he would reconsider his opposition to drilling in ANWR. That's not quite what I asked for but it's close enough. I'm not under any pretense that my message alone caused McCain to change his mind but I feel that I should hold up my end of the bargain.

Here's my next challenge for McCain. Make this announcement in a major speech and I will make a second contribution of double the amount of the first one:

As President you will oppose the revival of the Lieberman-Warner global warming bill and that you will veto it if it is passed by Congress. You have reconsidered the pros and cons of the bill and you now feel that the cons outweigh the pros. Chief among the cons is the devastating economic effect on the poor working class.

I have e-mailed the text of this post to the GOP.

On a related note, I heard Barack Obama criticizing McCain's revised stance on oil drilling. He said that drilling offshore and in ANWR won't lower fuel prices today, tomorrow, next week, next year or even in five years. Well Barack, what about in six years or ten years? Even at my age I think I might need some fuel ten years from now and would like to think I'll be able to afford it on my fixed retirement income. I thought leadership was about where we're going, not where we are.

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In her latest column Susan Estrich gets all worked up about John McCain's campaign tactics. McCain is finally pointing out some bad things about Barack Obama and Susan doesn't like it.

Our retirement plans and college savings accounts are shrinking, and McCain is shrinking right with them. He’s not just on the verge of getting clobbered in the election. He’s on the verge of becoming an object of utter ridicule.

Let's see now Susan. First, it looks like you want to be near the front of the line in dishing out the ridicule. Second, do you really expect us to believe that you would prefer that McCain play nice (according to your rules) and stay in the running? Third, do you really expect us to believe that you're not actually afraid that his being an ol' meany might work for him?

What’s worse is the content of the negative ads. They aren’t about policy and issues.

For a political operative like Estrich, "policy and issues" are what only the opposition should be constrained to talk about. Anyway "policy and issues" cover a lot of ground, especially issues. Estrich is apparently insisting that Obama hanging out with militant revolutionaries is not an issue. I beg to differ and apparently so does McCain.

I'm about fed up with all the policy and issues crap. I don't decide whom to vote for based on what they say they will do. I decide based on what they've already done up until this point. I vote on the record not on promises. A real debate for me would have the two candidates facing one another and taking turns revealing everything they know about the other. Forget policy and issues.

They’re screaming bloody murder that Barack Obama left a phone message two years ago for a guy (William Ayers) who engaged in radical activity when Barack Obama was 8 years old and living in Indonesia.

Obama supporters harp constantly about the 8-year-old thing. What is the relevance of that? Would Obama pardon a murderer and free him from prison just because the murder occurred when Obama was 8 years old. Anyway, Ayers is still a radical revolutionary; he just seems to have stopped throwing bombs.

Ayers, who is a neighbor of Obama’s, even had some kind of meet-and-greet for him 13 years ago, when Obama was running for state Senate, making him one of about a million people who’ve opened their homes and their checkbooks to the guy.

One in a million huh? Let's put that in perspective. Say that Obama spent only 15 minutes at each of these in-home meet-and-greets. Then it would have taken more than 28 years of 24/7 meeting and greeting. Obama is now 46 so he would have had to start when he was 18 years old. Hey, that's only 10 years after Ayers bombed the US Capitol.

U.S. Senator John McCain tried to use his influence to help a crook named Charlie Keating, one of the worst of the saving and loan robbers, a man who ripped off everyone in sight, including American taxpayers. That’s OK. Forgive and forget.

Susan, how can we forget if you keep reminding us? Now you're being negative just like McCain. Don't give me that tit-for-tat stuff; you should be above that. Anyway, you conveniently failed to mention that McCain was exonerated in the Keating Five mess by a Senate investigation.

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