By Steve Clemons

I’m in Oklahoma today — returning to D.C. on Monday. I paid $2.11 a gallon for gas in Bartlesville in fact. It was $2.36 in Centreville, Maryland on Saturday — and $2.94 in D.C. I just received this extensive profile by the New Yorker‘s Connie Bruck on Senator Chuck Hagel.

John McCain is said to be extremely “eaten up” that he allowed party advisers to push him to appeal to the base of the Republican Party and choose Sarah Palin over his preferred choice, Joseph Lieberman.

It just gets more and more weird.

I can’t validate this and probably won’t try for the time being. But I will report a reasonably high quality rumor that reached me from a high quality source.

I spent a bit more than 40 minutes this morning with Pedro Pedro Echavarria on C-Span’s Washington Journal You can watch the entire clip at your convenience on line by clicking here. The discussion focuses on the differences and similarities between John McCain’s and Barack Obama’s foreign policy views.

I caught this snippet tonight of an Australian political/policy blogger, Gary Sauer-Thompson, who was not so taken with the substance of an interview that Sky News Australia did with me — but rather that Sky News was taking bloggers and blogging seriously. I agree with the writer that this is a good thing.

Tomorrow morning, Thursday, I will be on C-Span’s Washington Journal starting at 8 am EST discussing the foreign policy views of John McCain and Barack Obama. Here are the texts of major speeches the candidates gave today. John McCain in Manchester, New Hampshire. Barack Obama in Richmond, Virginia. See you tomorrow morning.

The GOP has spent $150,000 on spiffing up Sarah Palin and her husband. Way to reach “Joe the Plumber”. . . obviously.

THIS EVENT CAN BE WATCHED ON LINE AT THIS LINK. Tonight at Washington’s National Cathedral, I will be helping to introduce a major event — attended by more than 1,200 people — titled “America and the World: Picking Up the Pieces.” The program will start at 7 pm and conclude at 9 pm EST.

This morning, a friend of mine, Marwan Kreidie, has a passionate and smart oped in the Philadelphia Inquirer that challenges the slur that John McCain indirectly embraced when an elder woman at a McCain rally said “I don’t trust Obama. . .He’s an Arab.