Nice distillation of McCain’s campaign from John:

None of this matters a whit when you have no message, and that is the unenviable position the Republicans are in right now. What is John McCain’s core message? I will tell you, as it is very simple- “Not Obama.” That is it. That is the sum total of the message. He and the Wasilla Wingnut have done nothing for the past two months but provide weak and ugly reasons why you should not vote for Obama, starting with the sneer de force at the RNC and continuing on to the present, where we learn that we should not vote for Obama because some plumber (but not really) is worried about socialism and because Obama knows a guy named Khalidi who does not agree with everything Bill Kristol says about Israel.

Per the Associated Press: McCain says Obama will ’say anything’ to win

Republican John McCain, taking a cross-state bus tour aimed at keeping vote-rich Florida from swinging to the Democrats, on Thursday accused rival Barack Obama of saying “anything to get elected.”

You mean like making crazy statements about ACORN stealing the vote for the GOP and McCain palling around with terrorists? Like claiming his clueless Vice President Candidate who doesn’t know what the Vice President does or what constitutes the Bush Doctrine is ready to be President? Like suspending his campaign to save the world and claiming credit for passing a finance bill that doesn’t pass, only to later claim he killed it? Like telling Dave Letterman he has to cancel his appearance to return immediately to Washington, then going to an interview with Katie Couric — which Letterman can see via internal feed?

What next? Maybe McCain can accuse Obama of being a rich elitist with 8 mansions and a beer heiress wife? Or complain about how Obama grimaces and grunts while he’s speaking during a debate? Or rudely refers to his opponent as “that one!”

Or maybe McCain will call just Obama short, old, and ill-tempered.

Anything can happen once a candidate crosses the rubicon of batshit-crazy.

It seems the bloom is off the Palin rose:

With the vice presidential candidates set to square off today in their only scheduled debate, public assessments of Sarah Palin’s readiness have plummeted, and she may now be a drag on the Republican ticket among key voter groups, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

Tonight’s heavily anticipated debate comes just five weeks after the popular Alaska governor entered the national spotlight as Sen. John McCain’s surprise pick to be his running mate. Though she initially transformed the race with her energizing presence and a fiery convention speech, Palin is now a much less positive force: Six in 10 voters see her as lacking the experience to be an effective president, and a third are now less likely to vote for McCain because of her.

Just the other day, with the kind of foresight that led him to declare the economy “fundamentally sound” just before a market collapse, McCain insisted “I think the American people have overwhelmingly shown their approval” for Palin, excepting the “Georgetown cocktail party” circuit.

Either McCain is once again badly out of touch or the Georgetown party circuit has become rather vast.

Shorter today’s Kristol Spoor:

There’s been a certain amount of pop sociology in America … that Sarah Palin’s inability to frame a single coherent thought and McCain’s total disconnection from economic reality coupled with wildly erratic statements and actions regarding the economy have hurt his campaign. There’s almost no evidence of that at all. McCain’s mastery of economics and Palin’s intelligent eloquence have always been the strengths of his campaign.

The Moderate Voice:

Ploy. Flailing. Cut and run. Stunt. Bizarre. Choking. Preemptive. Gimmicky. Brilliant. Retreat. Cowardly. Desperate. Surreal. Those are but a few of the words being used to describe McCain, but I think these sum it up best: Staggering cynicism.

From his metamorphosis from Mr. Clean to Mr. Dirty to his selection of Palin, cynicism has been the underlying theme of McCain’s run for the roses. It has inculcated nearly everything he has said and done since he became the last man standing after the Republican primaries, albeit the most elderly and addled.

There’s a line between “Maverick-y” and “erratic and unbalanced,” a line which McCain has crossed.

Despite McCain’s assurances Davis’s connections had been severed 3 years ago.

New York Times:

One of the giant mortgage companies at the heart of the credit crisis paid $15,000 a month from the end of 2005 through last month to a firm owned by Senator John McCain’s campaign manager, according to two people with direct knowledge of the arrangement.

~~~

Mr. Davis’s firm received the payments from the company, Freddie Mac, until it was taken over by the government this month along with Fannie Mae, the other big mortgage lender whose deteriorating finances helped precipitate the cascading problems on Wall Street, the two people said.

Naturally, John McStraighttalk was on top of this situation, just as he was clued in to the economy last week when he declared it “fundamentally sound.”:

From 2000 to the end of 2005, Mr. Davis received nearly $2 million as president of the coalition, the Homeownership Alliance, which the companies created to help them oppose new regulations and protect their status as federally chartered companies with implicit government backing. That status let them borrow cheaply, helping to fuel rapid growth but also their increased purchases of the risky mortgage securities that proved to be their downfall. . . . On Sunday, in an interview with CNBC and The Times, Mr. McCain responded to a question about that tie between Mr. Davis and the two mortgage companies by saying that he “has had nothing to do with it since, and I’ll be glad to have his record examined by anybody who wants to look at it.”

Nothing other than the firm Davis owns receiving $15,000 a month until the mortgage giant went under, when no one else working there apparently had any contact with it.

McCain camp’s response: snivel and whine about the press, without addressing the facts. Vintage Bush administration, 2005. Right Blogostan’s response: continue to act as the GOP’s witless echo chamber.

As we’ve noted, McCain’s rhetoric of late has become increasingly disjointed and unhinged, and it is drawing attention from conservative commentator George Will:

McCain Loses His Head

Under the pressure of the financial crisis, one presidential candidate is behaving like a flustered rookie playing in a league too high. It is not Barack Obama.

Channeling his inner Queen of Hearts, John McCain furiously, and apparently without even looking around at facts, said Chris Cox, chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, should be decapitated. This childish reflex provoked the Wall Street Journal to editorialize that “McCain untethered” — disconnected from knowledge and principle — had made a “false and deeply unfair” attack on Cox that was “unpresidential” and demonstrated that McCain “doesn’t understand what’s happening on Wall Street any better than Barack Obama does.”

~~~

To read the Journal’s details about the depths of McCain’s shallowness on the subject of Cox’s chairmanship, see “McCain’s Scapegoat” (Sept. 19, Page A22). Then consider McCain’s characteristic accusation that Cox “has betrayed the public’s trust.”

In any case, McCain’s smear — that Cox “betrayed the public’s trust” — is a harbinger of a McCain presidency. For McCain, politics is always operatic, pitting people who agree with him against those who are “corrupt” or “betray the public’s trust,” two categories that seem to be exhaustive — there are no other people. McCain’s Manichaean worldview drove him to his signature legislative achievement, the McCain-Feingold law’s restrictions on campaigning. Today, his campaign is creatively finding interstices in laws intended to restrict campaign giving and spending. (For details, see The Post of Sept. 17, Page A4; and the New York Times of Sept. 20, Page One.)

~~~

It is arguable that, because of his inexperience, Obama is not ready for the presidency. It is arguable that McCain, because of his boiling moralism and bottomless reservoir of certitudes, is not suited to the presidency. Unreadiness can be corrected, although perhaps at great cost, by experience. Can a dismaying temperament be fixed?

McCain’s reaction to Wall Street’s meltdown has been sheer buffoonery, more reminiscent of Keystone Kops than Senior Statesman. Last week he was in denial, claiming the fundamentals of the economy were sound — evidencing a complete disconnection with reality. Now, a short week later, after saying that as President he’d fire Cox — which the President lacks the authority to do — he rants about Wall Street corruption and greed in amorphous terms, says he’s going to reform the Washington Establishment he’s spent the last 26 years entrenching himself into, and then accuses Obama of lacking specifics. Specifics means more than “I was a POW for 5 years” and “I am a Reformer.”

McCain’s penchant for flying off the handle and making snap, uninformed and often dangerously wrong decisions was evident in another arena this week. Former Secretary of State Colin Powell refuted McCain’s claim that Georgia was blameless in setting off the tinderbox in Ossetia:

Now, in the current situation, the Russians acted brutally. I think they acted foolishly. But it was also absolutely predictable what the Russians would do. You could see them stacking up their troops.

And I think it was foolhardy on the part of President Saakashvili and the Georgian government to kick over this can, to light a match in a roomful of gas fumes.

SESNO: So you’re saying the Georgians provoked this?

POWELL: They did. I mean, there was a lot of reasons to have provocations in the area, but the match that started the conflagration was from the Georgian side.

AMANPOUR: And yet…

POWELL: And that’s a given.

AMANPOUR: And some debate in the presidential elections has basically been, “We are all Georgians now.” What does that mean? It’s the same as was said after 9/11.

POWELL: One candidate said that, and I’ll let the candidate explain it for himself.

But Powell seeming had some advice for McCain, advice that continues to go unheeded:

POWELL: No, the fact of the matter is that you — you have to be very careful in a situation like this not just to leap to one side or the other until you’ve taken a good analysis of the whole situation.

This was something that might have been avoided if people had looked at the Russian troops that were stacked up, if people had realized that the Russians were serious about South Ossetia and Abkhazia, and if perhaps more guidance and suggestions had been given to President Saakashvili beyond those that he received, it might have been avoided.

As he did in Georgia, this week McCain mistook activity for achievement, and confused haste with judgment. In an effort to appear on top of an informed about a situation where he was obviously clueless, he compounded his failure to keep apprised of the realities of the situation by making poor decisions.

McCain is reminiscent of our current President, Teh Decider, in more ways than one. Like Bush, he is quick to make bad decisions, and like Bush he is unlikely to ever admit those awful decisions were bad.

McCain’s selection of Sarah Palin for Vice President took place after his operatives nixed Tom Ridge and Joe Lieberman and after a rushed, half-assed vetting process which the McCain camp is now trying to correct:

A series of disclosures about Gov. Sarah Palin, Senator John McCain’s choice as running mate, called into question on Monday how thoroughly Mr. McCain had examined her background before putting her on the Republican presidential ticket.

~~~

Among other less attention-grabbing news of the day: it was learned that Ms. Palin now has a private lawyer in a legislative ethics investigation in Alaska into whether she abused her power in dismissing the state’s public safety commissioner; that she was a member for two years in the 1990s of the Alaska Independence Party, which has at times sought a vote on whether the state should secede; and that Mr. Palin was arrested 22 years ago on a drunken-driving charge.

Aides to Mr. McCain said they had a team on the ground in Alaska now to look more thoroughly into Ms. Palin’s background. A Republican with ties to the campaign said the team assigned to vet Ms. Palin in Alaska had not arrived there until Thursday, a day before Mr. McCain stunned the political world with his vice-presidential choice. The campaign was still calling Republican operatives as late as Sunday night asking them to go to Alaska to deal with the unexpected candidacy of Ms. Palin.

It seems that McCain is trying to emulate the Bush information-free decision making process. The Decider II. And of course, under the Bush method, you follow the fuck up with the lies:

Mr. McCain’s advisers said repeatedly on Monday that Ms. Palin was “thoroughly vetted,” a process that would have included a review of all financial and legal records as well as a criminal background check. A McCain aide said the campaign was well aware of the ethics investigation and had looked into it.

How thoroughly vetted was she? Judge for yourself:

“They didn’t speak to anyone in the Legislature, they didn’t speak to anyone in the business community,” said Lyda Green, the State Senate president, who lives in Wasilla, where Ms. Palin served as mayor.

Representative Gail Phillips, a Republican and former speaker of the State House, said the widespread surprise in Alaska when Ms. Palin was named to the ticket made her wonder how intensively the McCain campaign had vetted her.

“I started calling around and asking, and I have not been able to find one person that was called,” Ms. Phillips said. “I called 30 to 40 people, political leaders, business leaders, community leaders. Not one of them had heard. Alaska is a very small community, we know people all over, but I haven’t found anybody who was asked anything.”

The current mayor of Wasilla, Dianne M. Keller, said she had not heard of any efforts to look into Ms. Palin’s background. And Randy Ruedrich, the state Republican Party chairman, said he knew nothing of any vetting that had been conducted.

State Senator Hollis French, a Democrat who is directing the ethics investigation, said that no one asked him about the allegations. “I heard not a word, not a single contact,” he said.

And per today’s Los Angeles Times, Sarah Palin was a member of a secessionist political party which has for years attempted to obtain a plebescite which would allow Alaska to become an independent country:

Palin could face questions in on other facets of her past, such as her 1990s membership in the Alaskan Independence Party, a group that has pushed for more than 30 years to give Alaskans a vote on whether to secede from the union.

From the Alaskan Independence Party’s web site:

The Alaskan Independence Party’s goal is the vote we were entitled to in 1958, one choice from among the following four alternatives:

1) Remain a Territory.
2) Become a separate and Independent Nation.
3) Accept Commonwealth status.
4) Become a State.

The call for this vote is in furtherance of the dream of the Alaskan Independence Party’s founding father, Joe Vogler, which was for Alaskans to achieve independence under a minimal government, fully responsive to the people, promoting a peaceful and lawful means of resolving differences.

A quote from Joe Vogler, the AIP’s self-described ‘founding father’: “I’m an Alaskan, not an American. I’ve got no use for America or her damned institutions.”

Nice friends [add: and husband] ya got there, Sarah.

McCain picked an inexperienced politician who wants creationism taught in schools, who once aspired to have Alaska leave the very Union which, as Vice President, she would have to swear an oath to protect. This is clearly not the Republican Party of Abraham Lincoln.

McCain’s campaign is claiming that its hands were tied because of the need for secrecy — which is pretty obvious spin and bullshit. Obama managed to vet several possible choices for Vice President. It seems Johnny McFuckup was more interested in keeping his selection a surprise than insuring his selection was wise. No doubt he will point out he went 5 and a half years without a maid, let alone a vice presidential candidate.

Ineptitude, thy name is John McCain.

That the American people are unaware of the fact that McCain was a Prisoner of War.

McCain famously can’t remember how many houses he owns, but it also seems he doesn’t know what kind of car he drives. Billmon:

I see that John McCain not only is having trouble keeping track of his wife’s condos and mini-mansions, but also isn’t sure what kind of car he (or rather, his chauffeurs) drive when they transport him to those places.

. . . .

But McCain’s gaffes (if the decent into second childhood can properly be described as a “gaffe”) don’t just remind me of stereotypical geezer behavior. They’re starting to make him look like one old codger in particular: Admiral James Stockdale, Ross Perot’s vice presidential running mate way back in 1992.

Do you remember him? Also a navy pilot and Vietnam POW hero, Stockdale was selected by Perot more or less on the spur of the moment because the Reform Party needed a VP candidate to get on the ballot in a bunch of states. Stockdale was supposed to be a placeholder for a more “serious” pick to be named later. However, Perot’s people discovered, to their horror, that they couldn’t dump Stockdale without getting Perot booted off the ballot in a number of key states.

As Billmon points out, Stockdale was seriously devoid of the advanced bullshitting skills which help him to avoid saying he’s “out of ammo” and lacks the teams of handlers which McCain relies on to keep from saying crazy shit like al Qaida is a shiite group all the time. But the parallel is interesting. And he was just 69 years old when he was tabbed to be Ross Perot’s running mate in the 1992 election — or two years younger than McCain.