Happy Birthday, John McCain

One piece of new business and two updates regarding John McCain's campaign for the presidency:

* New business (or old, depending on how you look at it): McCain turns 71 today (Wednesday, Aug. 29), and to commemorate the event, anyone who wants to is urged to send him an e-mail birthday card -- along with a special contribution of $142, or even just $71 -- a dollar per year.

And now, the updates:

* First, to the previous McCain posting, in which we discuss "the youth vote." As the fall academic semester begins, MTV and MySpace announced plans to host a series of "real-time online conversations" with presidential hopefuls on college campuses this fall and winter. Twelve candidates have agreed to participate, and McCain is among them. (Also, McCain appears to have lost some friends. As of this writing, his friend count on Myspace is at 39,651. That's down 1,320 friends from Aug. 21.)

* Second, McCain, appearing on Charlie Rose's PBS show a few nights ago, elaborated on comments he'd made earlier this summer about the role of community colleges in helping along today's economy. Noting a 4.6% unemployment rate in the United States, he told Rose that one way to correct that is to retrain dislocated workers. And to do that, he says, "I believe we go to the community colleges. And we say to the community colleges, you know the education, you know the job market. You know the needs here. Design education and training programs and take in these displaced workers, and make them prepare to enter the job market."
-- Mary Beth Marklein