AP Sulks Because McCain Campaign Hasn't Ground to a Complete Halt

As evidence how pathetic this item is, they're using the Huffington Post as a source. My head hurts just trying to grasp that. Of course, they're too incompetent to even link the story, and my brain started melting trying to find it over there.

Anyway, since John McCain decided to put the nation's best interest in front of personal ambition, I guess the Internet sleuths decided to call around to see if every single McCain campaign employee was in a state of suspended animation.

Better they should ask why Howard Dean and his brother thought today was a good time to run an ad suggesting McCain is thisclose to death.

Still, the funniest part of this amateur attempt at gotcha is the non-bylined story calling the Huffington Post left-leaning. Yeah, so was Joe Stalin.

Republican presidential nominee John McCain vowed Wednesday to suspend his campaign to focus on the nation's financial crisis, but there were plenty of signs of activity Thursday — including an apparently live fundraising link on the campaign's Web site.

On Wednesday, McCain said: "Tomorrow morning, I will suspend my campaign and return to Washington after speaking at the Clinton Global Initiative. I have spoken to Sen. Obama and informed him of my decision and have asked him to join me."

He offered no details, but senior campaign adviser Steve Schmidt later told reporters: "We're just not going to engage right now in the back and forth of the campaign," adding that meant appearances, rallies and TV advertising would be canceled. In an e-mail to reporters, spokesman Brian Rogers added that fundraising would be halted, too.

McCain appeared that evening in an interview on CBS' newscast, but canceled a planned appearance on David Letterman's "Late Show." His vice presidential running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, made a highly visible visit to ground zero in New York on Thursday morning. McCain spokeswoman Nicole Wallace appeared on NBC's "Today" show.

The campaign sought to pull television ads off the air, but halting ads isn't like turning off a light switch because of the many broadcast stations must be contacted through middlemen. But Schmidt, speaking to reporters Thursday evening, said: "All of our television advertising at this hour is down."
...
E-mail messages continued to trickle out from the campaign, but at a far slower rate than normal. And the Huffington Post, a left-leaning Web site, said it had called 15 McCain campaign offices in battleground states, and none said it was suspending operations.