Today, President Bush took a swipe at people for “speculating” that this trip to Europe may be his last trip as president:

This has been a good trip. By the way, some are speculating this is my last trip. Let them speculate. Who knows?

But some of these speculators include Bush himself. While in Slovenia just last week, Bush confirmed that this trip will be his last while in office:

It’s interesting, my first visit as U.S. President to Europe included a — my first stop in Slovenia. My last visit as U.S. President to Europe includes first stop in Slovenia. It’s a fitting circle.

Watch the two appearances:

As Deb Riechmann of the AP writes, “Maybe it was a long week of travel and he forgot. Maybe he was suggesting that he might return to Europe as a private citizen, which is an entirely different point. Or maybe he was just speculating.”

Parents Magazine has asked Cindy McCain and Michelle Obama to share their favorite cookie recipes, with readers voting on their favorite. “Apparently, the winner of the cookie contest has predicted the election the past four times.” However, McCain’s recipe for Oatmeal-Butterscotch cookies is an exact copy of Hershey’s recipe. In April, the McCain campaign was caught having duplicated three recipes from the Food Network almost word-for-word, posting them on the campaign website. The error was blamed on a “low-level unpaid staffer.”

Good catch by David Corn who notes that one of Barack Obama’s senior hires, Jim Messina, is currently chief of staff for Max Baucus. Joe Lieberman’s now winning the “worst Senate Democrat” race in a landslide, but before Lieberman really kicked it into overdrive, Baucus was in contention (see, e.g., here and here) so this isn’t a very reassuring move.

During a press conference today, a reporter asked Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) if he was offended when, in August 2006, former Virginia senator George Allen used the word “macaca” to refer to a campaign volunteer of Indian descent working for Jim Webb’s campaign. McCain brushed off the question about the racial slur, saying only that he “thought it was very wrong” and “urged Senator Allen to apologize for that very quickly“:

Q: Many voters in Virginia took offense when Senator Allen used the word ‘macaca’ to describe one of Senator Webb’s volunteers who was of mixed ethnic background. Did you take offense when Senator Allen used that word?

McCAIN: Well, I thought it was very wrong and in fact, right away I urged Sen. Allen to apologize for that very quickly.

At the time, however, McCain didn’t seem all that offended by Allen’s remark. McCain appeared with Allen at a rally in Norfolk, VA, just five days after the incident. During that appearance, he praised Allen for his “leadership, his vision and his courage.” “We all make mistakes, and I have made my share,” said McCain [RichmondTimes-Dispatch, 8/17/06].

In fact, it’s not clear that McCain understood why the Macaca reference was offensive. Macaca often refers to a “monkey,” but can also be “considered a racial slur against African immigrants.” Yet at that rally with Allen, McCain remained attached to monkeys and cracked a joke about a man who used a monkey to get out of performing air raid drills. In the end, the monkey — rather than the man — is promoted to admiral. An excerpt from the joke:

I caught this monkey, and I trained the monkey that when the siren went off, he’d come out of the jungle, get into my airplane, start the engine, sit there, the “all clear” siren would go off, he’d shut down the engine, get out of the airplane and go back in the jungle. It was wonderful. I was sleeping like a baby.

Well, sure enough, one night it was not just Washing Machine Charlie. It was a real Japanese air raid. I came out of my tent just in time to see that monkey taking off in my airplane. I said, ‘Well, I can certainly see why you were not promoted!’ He said, ‘That’s not what makes me mad. The monkey retired as an admiral last week!’

Allen also went on to showcase McCain in television ads during his campaign.

It’s sometimes difficult for someone like me to remember that many people — most of them in fact — don’t get the bulk of their political news from the internet and haven’t ever watched a political video on YouTube or Brightcove. Still, the pace of the growth remains extremely impressive.

For now, though, we’re in an interesting middle ground where for a wide swathe of people online media is a hugely important slice of our information diet. For others, though, it’s as if it doesn’t exist at all. Consequently, there’s a lot of opportunity for very segmented messaging. And in an election cycle where we also seem to be looking at a lot of age polarization in political allegiance, this can wind up having huge impacts. Obama can, for example, use the internet to do “base-energizing” stuff knowing that this will reach a huge proportion of his supporters while also remaining invisible to large groups of other voters who he may want to be courting in different ways.

A new World Public Opinion poll of 20 nations finds that just 2 percent say that they have “a lot” or “some” confidence that President Bush will do “the right thing regarding world affairs.” Bush ranks below Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, but just edges out Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf:

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