Obama corrects gaffe on kin's participation in freeing Auschwitz

Republicans tried yesterday to jump on it as a question of Barack Obama's judgment. His campaign chalked it up to an innocent mistake.

The latest gaffe in the presidential campaign started during a Memorial Day event in New Mexico, where Obama talked about his uncle being among the US troops who liberated the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz. "And the story in our family was that when he came home, he just went up into the attic and he didn't leave the house for six months," Obama said.

The veracity of the recollection started rebounding around the blogosphere, then yesterday, the Republican National Committee issued a missive.

"Barack Obama's dubious claim is inconsistent with world history and demands an explanation," RNC spokesman Alex Conant said. "It was Soviet troops that liberated Auschwitz, so unless his uncle was serving in the Red Army, there's no way Obama's statement yesterday can be true. Obama's frequent exaggerations and outright distortions raise questions about his judgment and his readiness to lead as commander in chief."

Later yesterday, Obama's campaign said he simply named the wrong concentration camp.

"Senator Obama's family is proud of the service of his grandfather and uncles in World War II - especially the fact that his great uncle was a part of liberating one of the concentration camps at Buchenwald," spokesman Bill Burton said in a statement. "Yesterday he mistakenly referred to Auschwitz instead of Buchenwald in telling of his personal experience of a soldier in his family who served heroically."

FOON RHEE

Study: Bush contributors raised $5.8m for McCain
PHOENIX - President Bush plunged yesterday into a fund-raising tour for Senator John McCain, but don't expect to see much of the two men together.

The president held a closed event with McCain on the presumptive GOP nominee's home turf - the first time Bush, whose popularity still sags at record lows, appeared with McCain since he endorsed him at the White House nearly three months ago.

Bush is also holding two private fund-raisers for McCain today in Utah. Those events will also benefit the national Republican Party.

While there has been quite a bit written about McCain's struggles in recruiting President Bush's top fund-raisers, a campaign finance watchdog group said yesterday that nearly three dozen have helped McCain raise at least $5.8 million.

Campaign Money Watch compared lists of "pioneers" and "rangers" who raised $100,000 and $200,000, respectively, for Bush, with McCain's lists of "trailblazers" and "innovators," who raise $100,000 or $250,000, respectively.

Thirty-four people appear on both lists.

GLOBE STAFF AND AP

MoveOn attacks McCain with humor, foreboding
An antiwar group aggressively backing Barack Obama, MoveOn.org, has two new TV ads attacking John McCain - one light and humorous, the other dark and foreboding.

The first, in a takeoff on the opening theme to the "Patty Duke Show" from the 1960s, says McCain and President Bush laugh alike, walk alike, and talk alike - trying to drive home Democrats' argument that a McCain presidency would be the equivalent of a third Bush term.

"You can lose your mind," the singers end the spot, "when cousins are two of a kind.

The second goes after Charlie Black, a top adviser to McCain, and his ties in his lobbying career to dictators in Angola, the Philippines, and Zaire.

The ad calls on McCain to fire Black - and tries to highlight the number of lobbyists in the upper reaches of McCain's campaign. Several have resigned, and McCain instituted a tougher conflict-of-interest policy.

FOON RHEE

Obama tries to link McCain to Bush economic policies
As John McCain hammers Barack Obama daily on foreign policy, the Democrat is returning the favor on domestic issues.

In a speech yesterday in Las Vegas - a fast-growing city hit particularly hard by the home foreclosure crisis - Obama sought to link the presumptive Republican nominee to what he calls the "disastrous" economic policies of President Bush.

Obama said President Bush offered a housing plan that was "too little, too late," and McCain's plan "amounts to little more than borrowing bad ideas from George Bush."

Obama says besides a $10 billion fund to aid homeowners, he supports a plan offered by Senator Chris Dodd of Connecticut and Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts to create a Federal Housing Administration program to encourage lenders to buy or refinance existing mortgages, and to convert them into stable 30-year fixed mortgages.

FOON RHEE