first he wasn't even going to attend, and now he wins preemptively. I think the robots are going haywire this week!

I steamin' media plate of pure McCainian manure.

... why couldn't you do this 5 years ago with Iraq?

This banner ad must have been purchased while his campaign was 'suspended' and he had no intention of even attending the debate. This just reiterates what an empty gesture that was.

There's reports it's a shopp... might want to verify this.

here's the unaltered page:

http://wsj.net/article/SB122238667352477103.html?mod=article-outset-box

Please, please, let this come up tonight in the debates. Please let Obama have a copy of it IN HIS HAND at the lectern and display it as part of his opening statement.

This is just pure comedic gold.

I really did think, until just now, that they were pulling off some kind of sneaky Karl Rove-esque trick that would somehow come off as genius in the end, but this seals the deal. McCain's people have no idea what they are doing at this point.

Congratulations...

At this point, it looks as if he is trying to throw the election. He doesn't want it any more & is just acting out at this point.

I'm no fan of McCain's -- but I don't see anything in the links Chris Cillizza provides that indicate this couldn't have been a cute little photoshop gag that we're all falling for because we're already so disgusted. Is there any real proof of this? Did Cillizza create the screen shot, or was it sent to him?

China just got busted for the same thing when a news article about their space launch about how successful the launch was with quote from the astronauts during the launch was released accidentally onto the web before the actual launch.

I guess you can teach an old dog, new tricks.

Dewey Defeats Truman!

It's a banner! They're all photoshopped!

The WSJ doesn't seem like the publication that would photoshop to make McCain look bad. It does, however, seem like the type to declare McCain the winner even if his head explodes & green ooze flows out.

It's on McCain's website.... I hardly think that the McCain campaign would be involved in a photoshop gag on it's own website.

Is someone trying to sabotage him? Seriously.

It's not that I'm not open to the idea that it's a 'shop and that the fellow at the Post has been duped. (I think it's only responsible to question visual evidence like that, in the Photoshop era.)

But I'm wondering how the URL of the actual page, which an0nymous posted above, is meant to prove that?

I mean, sure -- that's what the page looks like right now, without the "McCain won!" ad. But the logical theories would be: [1] what ad appears in that spot may rotate, and [2] while the screencapper managed to catch the mistake, the ad has since been pulled from the website, so if you go there right now you wouldn't see it ANYway.

Not seeing the ad there now isn't proof that the ad wasn't there at 10:16am (according to the timestamp on the screencap). But, you're right to say that the screencap isn't necessarily proof that the ad *was* there.

I'm afraid that to really believe it, we're going to need either a statement from the WSJ, admitting to the goof of having run the ad early; or a statement from the McCain campaign acknowledging that yes, they prepared the ads but didn't intend for them to be run until after the debate. I wouldn't find that to be all that scandalous, despite the whole "suspended campaign" nonsense. It's like printing up versions of "Super Bowl Champions!" for both possibilities beforehand, only more optimistic and politically strategic than pragmatic. The ad may have been prepared and submitted to the WSJ last week, to be held for running.

(Note: I think this is hilarious, the more so because it sounds of a piece with the way McCain's campaign has been flailing around the past few days. I'm just being skeptical, and pointing out that it's a little too conveniently hilarious. I'm not sure whether or not we're being punk'd, and by whom.)

Why is it that Republican trolls claim not to be McCain supporters and then go into a rap straight out of the Tucker Bound's latest blast fax?

"Pay no attention to the man behind that curtain!"

Are morons running his campaign?

Any fence sitters should be warned: if this is the skill with which he will be running his campaign, be afraid, be very afraid, of how he would run the country.

All the cosmologists, including Stephen Hawking, have said that time travel is not possible given the technology and physics now available. If McCain has made a breakthrough and has been able to find a wormhole in the space-time continuum, he ought to share it with folks like Brian Greene and Michio Kaku. Otherwise, he would do better waiting for the debate to declare that he's won it.

I can't believe I missed that earlier this week. Better late than never...

Sort of like Palin saying we'd achieved victory in Iraq.

Now I just wonder what would happen in this country if every one of you sent this to every one in your address book

It would drive a lot of traffic to the various urban legend websites that quickly debunk the Bakken fantasy.

This took all of two minutes on Google:

David Brooks, Sept. 26, 2008:

If McCain is elected, he will retain his instinct for the hard challenge. With that Greatest Generation style of his, he will run the least partisan administration in recent times. He is not a sophisticated conceptual thinker, but he is a good judge of character. He is not an organized administrator, but he has become a practiced legislative craftsman. He is, above all — and this is completely impossible to convey in the midst of a campaign — a serious man prone to serious things.

David Brooks, August 2, 2000:

So I am planning to vote for George W. Bush because he is a nice guy. As a nice guy he will attract and retain the loyalty of outstanding administration officials, and together they will promote policies that are smarter and bolder than we ever would expect, just from looking at Bush himself. As a nice man, he will prove remarkably adept at working with Congress, with Democrats, with the media and with all the other different people you need to handle as president. He will set a tone of bonhomie that will grease the machinery of government; things will actually get done in Washington again.