“I’m always for less regulation. . . . I am a fundamentally a deregulator. I’d like to see a lot of the unnecessary government regulations eliminated, not just a moratorium.” — John McCain, March 3, 2008

I guess once you embrace Rove and Bush, it gets easier and easier to change positions on a dime and lie about your past record.

A decade ago, Sen. John McCain embraced legislation to broadly deregulate the banking and insurance industries, helping to sweep aside a thicket of rules established over decades in favor of a less restricted financial marketplace that proponents said would result in greater economic growth.

Now, as the Bush administration scrambles to prevent the collapse of the American International Group (AIG), the nation’s largest insurance company, and stabilize a tumultuous Wall Street, the Republican presidential nominee is scrambling to recast himself as a champion of regulation to end “reckless conduct, corruption and unbridled greed” on Wall Street.

“Government has a clear responsibility to act in defense of the public interest, and that’s exactly what I intend to do,” a fiery McCain said at a rally in Tampa yesterday. “In my administration, we’re going to hold people on Wall Street responsible. And we’re going to enact and enforce reforms to make sure that these outrages never happen in the first place.”

So now he’s McCain the Regulator.

More fun with McCain and his un-sound grasp of economics:

John McCain spent Monday claiming as he had countless times before — that the economy was fundamentally sound. Had he missed the collapse of Lehman Brothers or the sale of Merrill Lynch, which were announced the day before? Did he not notice the agonies of the American International Group? Was he unaware of the impending layoffs of tens of thousands of Wall Street employees on top of the growing numbers of unemployed workers throughout the United States?

On Tuesday, he clarified his remarks. The clarification was far more worrisome than his initial comments.

He said that by calling the economy fundamentally sound, what he really meant was that American workers are the best in the world. In the best Karl Rovian fashion, he implied that if you dispute his statement about the economy’s firm foundation, you are, in effect, insulting American workers. “I believe in American workers, and someone who disagrees with that — it’s fine,” he told NBC’s Matt Lauer.

For decades, typical Americans have not been rewarded for their increasing productivity with comparably higher pay or better benefits. The disconnect between work and reward has been especially acute during the Bush years, as workers’ incomes fell while corporate profits, which flow to investors and company executives, ballooned. For workers, that is a fundamental flaw in today’s economy. It is grounded in policies like a chronically inadequate minimum wage and an increasingly unprogressive tax system, for which Mr. McCain offers no alternatives.

John McCain has devolved into a say-anything-to-get-elected self parody. At least he didn’t try to use being a POW as an excuse for this bout of cluelessness.

Via Andrew Sullivan, Todd Palin’s former business partner — who the National Enquirer has reported as having an affair with GOP Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin — has filed an emergency motion to seal the court records from his divorce.

How bizarre if Palin could get away with lying her ass off on National Television about her record and Obama’s positions, and then succeed in ducking any serious questions from the Press, only to get tripped up by some trivial infidelity.

TPM solved the mystery of McCain’s green screen — it was the lawn from a picture of Walter Reed Middle School in North Hollywood California. But why would they flash a picture of a school from California situated in a Congressional District which votes 60-80% Democratic every election, in a neighborhood where open support for Obama over McCain runs about 10 to 1?

I’m surprised this hadn’t occurred to me. But several readers have suggested that perhaps one of the tech geeks charged with setting up the audio/visual bells and whistles for the evening was tasked with getting pictures of Walter Reed Army Medical Center but goofed and got this instead.

This is the only explanation that makes sense, given the whole theme of the GOP convention — trying to convince the American people that McCain will reform all the fuck ups he and his party has promoted the last 8 years, including this administration and the Republican’s shameful failure to care for our veterans. Despite McCain’s opposition to the new GI Bill of Rights, and failure to push his party’s president to fund veterans’ care at sufficient levels, the GOP figured that flashing a picture of what they thought was the largest veterans’ hospital would make up for years of neglect and inaction, the same way Palin railing about earmarks and pork barrel would negate her intense lobbying for earmarks as both mayor and governor in Alaska. Just like the Bush administration, they figure the photo op will make up for the ineptitude. At least the Bushites could pull off the photo op.

is stop digging.

The new McCain strategy is apparently to ignore the controversy over the inept vetting of Palin and hope it goes away.

Via Balloon Juice.

Okay, we already have the pregnant teenage daughter, the book banning/librarian-firing, the pork barrelling, Troopergate, and the links to the nutty secessionists — this after two week day news cycles.

Now there’s the former police chief of Wasilla accusing Palin of corruption, of firing him for enforcing the law against her campaign contributors.

Gov. Sarah Palin is already facing ethical questions over her firing of the Alaska public safety commissioner, and now she faces questions over the firing of a longtime local police chief.

After taking over as Mayor of the small town of Wasilla, Palin fired the longtime local police chief. The former police chief, Irl Stambaugh says he was fired because he stepped on the toes of Palin’s campaign contributors, including bar owners and the National Rifle Association.

Stambaugh’s lawyer, William Jermain, says the chief tried to move up the closing hours of local bars from 5 a.m. to two a.m. after a spurt of drunk driving accidents and arrests.

“His crackdown on that practice by the bars was not appreciated by her and that was one reason she terminated Irl,” said Jermain.

In his 1997 lawsuit, Stambaugh also alleged that his stand on restricting concealed weapons upset the NRA.

His suit was dismissed when a judge ruled that as mayor Palin could fire the police chief for any reason she wanted. (or properly stated, he didn’t need a reason at all)

Oddly enough, these allegations mirror fairly closely those of the current troopergate investigation — an accusation that Palin used public political power for personal ends.

And this is exactly the kind of thing which turns up if you actually talk to local people who worked with your candidate as part of a background check. Hell, Stambaugh’s accusations were a matter of public record. Maybe it will all turn out to be nothing, but the number of apparent skeletons falling out of the closet of Palin’s fairly short political career is pretty astonishing.

Gird yourselves for another round of Wingnut — and so-called Straight-talking Johnny — whining about the press reporting facts and stuff. For some reason McCain thinks the press should treat his candidacy and his clusterfornication of a decision-making process with the kind of Pravda-like deference our Press Corpse acceded to the Decider prior to the Iraq debacle. And, of course, you can expect the usual refrain about disgruntled former employees.

In the meantime, anyone know what Brownie is up to these days?

The McCain camp is pushing back on the story of its ineptitude in vetting Sarah Palin, but the facts and sources keep hitting McOops in the face:

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin was not subjected to a lengthy in-person background interview with the head of Sen. John McCain’s vice presidential vetting team until last Wednesday in Arizona, the day before McCain asked her to be his running mate, and she did not disclose the fact that her 17-year-old daughter was pregnant until that meeting, two knowledgeable McCain officials acknowledged Tuesday.

Palin was one of two finalists in the vice presidential sweepstakes who were interviewed last week by former White House counsel Arthur B. Culvahouse Jr., just days before McCain introduced her to the nation as his choice. The other finalist was Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty. One of the officials said Culvahouse was chasing down last-minute information about Pawlenty at the request of the campaign as late as last Thursday, the day McCain offered the job to Palin and she accepted.

A competent background check doesn’t interview the person the day before a decision is made, and accept everything said as gospel truth. A competent vetting will check the candidates statements against independent sources, and ask for additional information to clarify ambiguities as questions inevitably arise. I’ve been on hiring committees and we didn’t hire entry-level professionals based on so half-assed a process.

McCain has been the presumptive nominee for three months, and had three months to thoroughly investigate his potential choices for Vice President. Yet the process he used to check his Vice Presidential nominee’s bona fides bears more resemblance to a frat boy snorting coke and pounding out a crappy essay the night before his midterm is due than it does to a statesman who is asking to be the leader of the free world with his finger on the nuclear trigger.

GOP Vice President nominee Sarah Palin never actually registered as a member of the secessionist Alaskan Independence Party, she was just married to a member and attended or spoke to a number of its gatherings:

Tonight, Sarah Palin will be nominated as the Republican Party’s choice for vice president of the United States.

But back home, she has cheered the work of a tiny party that long has pushed for a statewide vote on whether Alaska should secede from those same United States. And her husband, Todd, was a member of the party for seven years.

“Keep up the good work,” Sarah Palin told members of the Alaskan Independence Party in a videotaped speech to their convention six months ago in Fairbanks. She wished the party luck on what she called its “inspiring convention.”

The Alaskan Independence Party, founded in 1978, initially promoted “the Alaskan independence movement.” But now, according to its website, “its primary goal is merely a vote on secession.”

~~~

With McCain’s campaign emphasizing patriotism — his latest slogan is “Country First” — the Palins’ links to a party founded by the late secessionist gold miner Joe Vogler could prove awkward.

“I’m an Alaskan, not an American,” Vogler is quoted as saying elsewhere on the party’s website. “I’ve got no use for America or her damned institutions.”

~~~

Palin and her husband attended the party’s 1994 convention at a Best Western in Wasilla, Alaska, said former Chairman Mark Chryson, a computer repairman who is now the party’s webmaster.

A former mayor of Wasilla, Palin also spoke to the party’s convention in the same hotel in 2006 when she was running for governor, Chryson said.

Well, that’s a lot better. At least she wasn’t stupid enough to register as a lunatic fringe kook, even if she lauds their goals.

MORE: Paul Campos writes a theory about why Palin may have flown to Alaska several months ago after her water broke, in defiance of all medical advice: “Now another explanation is available - one that reflects more generously on her potential psychological motivations, if not her overall mental state. If Palin is indeed a true believer in the views of the AIP, it may have been overwhelmingly important to her that her child be born in the right country.”

His pick of Palin may help sew up the book burning crowd as well:

Stein says that as mayor, Palin continued to inject religious beliefs into her policy at times. “She asked the library how she could go about banning books,” he says, because some voters thought they had inappropriate language in them. “The librarian was aghast.” That woman, Mary Ellen Baker, couldn’t be reached for comment, but news reports from the time show that Palin had threatened to fire Baker for not giving “full support” to the mayor.

Of course there’s probably substantial overlap between the book burners, and the right-to-lifers and those who want to teach creationism in public school already thrilled with Palin’s selection.

Palin is the gift that keeps on giving. Here she is in a taped message to her friends at the American Independence Party for their annual convention in March of this year.

Via JedReport. Check out the link for more, including statements regarding Palin from an AIP secessionist kook member.

Among the lovely items which can be purchased on the Alaskan Independent Party’s web store is a lovely shirt which reads “Joe was right.”

“Joe,” of course, being the self-described “founding father” of the AIP who famously said:

“I’m an Alaskan, not an American. I’ve got no use for America or her damned institutions.”

MORE: McCain camp is denying Sarah Palin’s involvement with the AIP, but records show her husband Todd was a registered member of the AIP until 2002, according to TPMMuckraker.

MORE: Drum (from his new blogging digs) summarizes the story — no official membership, but murky as to whether she was involved in the AIP. A source for the story is now saying she may have attended the AIP convention not as a member, but rather with her husband, who TPM confirmed was a registered member of the AIP from 1995-2002.