On October 3, 1938, Adolf Hitler's armies marched into Sudetenland, a part of Czechoslovakia. Germany said it was responding to separatist demands from the large German population that lived there and that she was merely honoring their desire for reunion with Germany. Hitler's tanks took over a vital part of an independent country that had largely rejected his overtures and allied itself with the West. Neither Britain, France or the United States did a thing to stop him.

Touring America's oilrigs and nuclear plants, John McCain sometimes sounds as if he'll produce enough wind to power the nation all by himself. So strongly does his current rhetoric smell of methane – the gas emanating from manure – that he might even qualify for an alternative energy tax incentive.

The Democratic Speaker of the House and a co-author hired to try to add flavor to bland Beltway establishment oatmeal have penned a self-help book for “America's daughters” to help them “Know Your Power.” It's a dreadfully pedestrian text (“As long as we recognize the power within us, we will continue to have choices, and we will continue to lead.”), surpassed in its dreadfulness only by the timing of its publication.

You couldn't pass a grocery store line this weekend without seeing the picture-perfect smiles of the Obama family. There were Barack Obama's young daughters (whose privacy their parents so sanctimoniously claim to want to protect) flashing their pearly whites on the cover of People magazine...

Forced to cancel a planned visit to an oil platform off the Mississippi coast last week because of inclement weather – and the untimely leaking of hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil by a shipwreck in the vicinity – John McCain finally got his photo op at a Bakersfield derrick on July 28. Speaking on site, the Arizona senator delivered extraordinarily good news to the beleaguered gasoline-consuming public as he explained why we must drill offshore.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has cut the legs out from under John McCain by basically endorsing Sen. Barack Obama's troop-withdrawal plan.

Barack Obama knows which countries border Iraq; he understands the difference between Shia and Sunni; and he is probably aware that Czechoslovakia no longer exists – but as John McCain complains, the young senator has “no military experience whatsoever.” Indeed, like both of the last two presidents, Sen. Obama possesses scant credentials in national security and foreign policy.

A jaw-dropping political miracle may be on the horizon. No, I'm not talking about the second coming of the Obamessiah. I'm talking about the long-deserved comeuppance of troop-smearing, pork-feasting, scandal-tainted Democratic Rep. Jack Murtha of Pennsylvania.

An expression of outrage is the highest compliment that politicians can bestow upon a satirist. So when spokesmen for Barack Obama and John McCain echo each other and many another stuffed shirt in complaining about the recent cover of The New Yorker, the magazine's editors and cartoonist Barry Blitt should accept such remarks in precisely that spirit.

The Democrats' single most important domestic proposal – universal health insurance – may blow up in Barack Obama's face when voters are exposed to the deadly details.