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In two Midwest swing states, Barack Obama is out-pacing John McCain when it comes to getting campaign offices open and workers on the ground.

In Missouri, Obama will soon have 30 offices open and 150 paid staffers, according to the Kansas City Star. The Democrat's campaign already has 50 staffers on the payroll. McCain has only four workers on the ground, with plans to expand to 50 people in about a dozen offices.

In Iowa, Obama has 15 campaign offices open while McCain's team is still trying to find locales for six offices, the Des Moines Register reported.

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee (R) said the John McCain campaign has not reached out to him or made any effort to vet him as a potential running mate.

Huckabee told an Iowa audience that the McCain campaign has not requested any personal background information from him, but added, "most everything that somebody would want or need to know is in some public record somewhere."

"I don't expect to be asked. I really don't," Huckabee said. "I mean, it's pretty obvious if you look at what I'm doing -- you know I'm not sitting around waiting on the phone to ring. Right now it would really mess up a whole lot of things I have going."

"I'm clearly not living with any expectation that this is going to happen for me."

President Bush repealed the executive ban on offshore oil drilling, trying to apply pressure on Democrats in Congress to go along.

"With this action, the executive branch's restrictions on this exploration have been cleared away," Bush said at a press conference Monday. "This means that the only thing standing between the American people and these vast oil resources is action from the U.S. Congress. Now the ball is squarely in Congress's court. Democratic leaders can show that they have finally heard the frustrations of the American people by matching the action I have taken today, repealing the congressional ban, and passing legislation to facilitate responsible offshore exploration."

Bush also said that it has been nearly a month since he called on Congress to lift its ban.

"And as the Democratically controlled Congress has sat idle, gas prices have continued to increase," he said. "Failure to act is unacceptable. It's unacceptable to me, and it's unacceptable to the American people."

Put Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) down as a skeptic of the government bailouts of mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

The ranking Republican on the House Budget Committee said on CNBC Monday that he has long been a critic of the government-sponsored mortgage companies and has tried to limit their activities for years.

"Fannie has -- and Freddie have all the benefits of being a private company with none of the risks," Ryan said. "And so, you know, I've been one of these GSE hawks for a long time, and now those chickens are coming home to roost. Now we don't have many options. We've got to get through this rough patch. What I'm worried about is, after the dust settles, what is it all going to look like?"He added: "Are we socializing credit risk in this country? Are we socializing investment risk? Are we going down that path? Are we going down the path of having this debt put on our books, a 50 percent increase in the public debt?"

Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.) took aim at John McCain over Iraq Monday, saying the Arizona senator and longtime military officer's Iraq policy fails to understand the reality of the situation.

Biden said McCain has a "total lack of understanding" and "no notion of what is going on" in Iraq.

"I don't understand anything about John's policy here," Biden said during a conference call with reporters. "I don't know what he is talking about except more of the same."

Biden said McCain's Iraq policy would "prevent" the US military from fighting resurgent al Qaeda and Taliban forces in Afghanistan and shows no "larger strategy" to fight terrorism beyond Iraq's border.

In an op-ed in Monday's New York Times, Obama called for a 16 month phased redeployment out of Iraq to free up troops to fight resurgent Taliban and al Qaeda forces in Afghanistan.

Biden called Obama's plan "profoundly right" and said it is "more in line with what our military needs are and what our military thinks."

In a hypothetical battle of New York City titans, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani would beat current Mayor Michael Bloomberg in a Republican primary for governor, according to a Siena College poll. But Bloomberg, elected as a Republican but who is now an independent, does better than Giuliani against Democratic contenders.

Bloomberg would beat both Gov. David Paterson (D) and Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, while Giuliani would lose to both.

"Where Bloomberg wins handily among independent voters and captures a sizable number of Democrats against Paterson or Cuomo, Giuliani does better than Bloomberg with Republicans, but doesn

Former Democratic Rep. Cynthia McKinney (Ga.) won the Green Party's nomination for president at its convention last weekend.

McKinney, who lost her 2006 race for Congress, is calling for the impeachment of President Bush and an immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq.

Her running mate will be self-proclaimed "Hip-Hop activist" Rosa Clemente.

The Greens hope to get their ticket onto the ballot of 40 states, the Chicago Tribune reports.

Barack Obama will rest up for next month's Democratic convention by spending some time in his native state, Hawaii, according to one of his supporters.

Rep. Neil Abercrombie (D-Hawaii) told the Associated Press it was a "virtual certainty" Obama would take a vacation there.

Obama was born on the island and went to high school in Hawaii. He last visited in December 2006.

Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) said that the crises of IndyMac bank and mortgage companies Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae are "different situations entirely."

In an interview on CNBC Monday, Dodd, chairman of the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, urged pundits and lawmakers not to lump the situations together. The Bush administration has called for bailouts of the three companies this past weekend. IndyMac is a private savings and loan entity while Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are government-sponsored mortgage companies.

Dodd remained upbeat about Fannie and Freddie's futures.

"Fannie and Freddie are very solid institutions," Dodd said. "They have more than adequate capital based on federal law. They have access to the capital markets. Obviously the fear that has been generated over the last number of days is not helping matters. And I hope the actions taken over the end of the weekend by the Treasury and the Fed are going to calm those concerns and we get back to Fannie and Freddie doing the incredibly important job of providing liquidity in a very, very, very bad market."

Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell (D) said Monday that he is 'absolutely not' being vetted as a running mate for Barack Obama, joking that "it would take so long to vet me...it would extend far past the convention."

Rendell added though that he has not heard of any potential Obama veep going through the vetting process.

"It hasn't happened with me, and I don't know any Democrat who's gone through that process, that seven-, eight-hour interview process. I think in terms of Senator Obama, I don't think they've shortened the list to the point where they're going to begin to start vetting quite yet," Rendell said on Fox.

Rendell supported Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) through the Democratic primary but has emerged as a top Obama surrogate since the Illinois senator clinched the Democratic nomination. Rendell's name has been widely mentioned in veep speculation because of Pennsylvania's strategic significance in the electoral college and his executive experience as Governor.