That in a nutshell is the genesis of Schecter's new book, The Real McCain: Why Conservatives Don't Trust Him and Why Independents Shouldn't. Betrayed by McCain across almost every issue foreign and domestic, Schecter now says "I realized I'd been snookered." The result in The Real McCain is an essential handbook for the 2008 election, a chronicle of John McCain's devolution from mythical maverick to craven opportunist.

I recently had the chance to catch up with Schecter to talk about his book and his take on the political landscape in the run-up to the election in November. Our conversation, like his book, was fast-moving and frequently funny.

At the outset, it's worth noting that Schecter is in some ways an unlikely messenger against McCain. To be sure, the progressive firebrand and Democratic strategist (his resume features work on Bill Clinton's 1996 reelection campaign and a stint with uber-polling firm Penn Schoen) proudly advances the liberal line on cable news shows, in newspaper columns as well as at blogs including FireDogLake and Huffington Post. But in the past, the New Yorker crossed the partisan no-man's land to pull the lever for Republican Governor George Pataki. And, as he put it, "I'm embarrassed to admit that I once voted for Rudy Giuliani."

But Schecter's dalliance with the dark side reached its apogee with then straight-talking moderate John McCain. "There's a reason I liked him in 2000," Schecter said. Bucking the party line on women's reproductive rights, McCain in 1999 announced "certainly in the short term, or even the long term, I would not support repeal of Roe v. Wade, which would then force X number of women in America to [undergo] illegal and dangerous operations." McCain similarly opposed the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, claiming in 2001, "I cannot in good conscience support a tax cut in which so many of the benefits go to the most fortunate among us at the expense of middle-class Americans who need tax relief." And Schecter remembered John McCain's August 1990 words on the eve of the Gulf War:

"If you get involved in a major ground war in the Saudi desert, I think support will erode significantly. Nor should it be supported. We even cannot contemplate, in my view, trading American blood for Iraqi blood."

Fast forward to the 2008 election, as Schecter details, and John McCain the maverick, the reformer and the moderate is a distant memory. "That McCain," he writes, "is no longer with us, if he ever truly was."

So when publisher PoliPointPress began looking to the liberal commentariat last year for a campaign '08 profile of John McCain, Cliff Schecter was a natural selection. As he described it, "I was looking for redemption."

The result in The Real McCain is a devastating account of John McCain's transformation from ersatz GOP rebel to, as Schecter bluntly phrased it, "whore for the Bush administration." Starting with McCain's February 2007 visit to the National Religious Broadcasters convention to reach out to those he once deemed "agents of intolerance," The Real McCain takes readers on a tour of John McCain's endless reversals on the road to the White House. From abortion, supply side tax cuts and the religious right to benefits for the troops, detainee torture and the complete post-Keating Five embrace of the K Street lobbying machine and so many more, Schecter recounts McCain time and again swapping principle for political expediency. (In a chapter titled "McCain Has Left the Building," Schecter approvingly cites a high ranking Senate staffer who aptly summed it up, "Whenever we see anyone wearing their flip-flops, we say, 'I see you have your McCains on today.'")

To trace the twists and U-turns of McCain's political career, Schecter builds on Jacob Weisberg's notion of the Three McCains. ("McCain was not always a moderate, tolerant character," Weisberg famously said, "He was a conservative before he was a liberal before he became a conservative again.") In The Real McCain, the Arizona Senator emerges as a piece of buggy software, with each successive version exposing new flaws while becoming ever harder to understand.

As Schecter recounts, version 1.0 was the Goldwater libertarian of McCain's early years in the House and Senate. But in the run-up to the 2000 election, McCain found a new niche and created a new persona to outflank George W. Bush and Steve Forbes during the Republican primaries. As he put it, "McCain seemed to spot his best chance as staking the out the position of the moderate Republican - McCain 2.0."

That McCain, the maverick of the "Straight Talk Express," cemented his status as a media darling which no development to contrary since seems able to dislodge from the minds of the press corps. (It's no accident MSNBC's Chris Matthews acknowledged, "The press loves McCain. We're his base.")

Alas, that McCain, too, is history, replaced by the neo-conservative release 3.0. Still stinging from his 2000 defeat, McCain in the intervening years reinvented himself again. Eager to please the GOP's hard right base that rejected him earlier, John McCain heading into the 2008 Republican primaries reversed course on the Bush tax cuts, called for overturning Roe v. Wade, backtracked on his own immigration reform proposal and sounded even more belligerent than the President on Iraq and Iran. As the Arizona Republic reported, that McCain was hardly a maverick, voting with his party when it mattered most since 1999. In 2007 alone, McCain voted with George W. Bush 95% of the time. By 2008, his record reached a perfect 100%. As for the "fully formed neoconservative McCain," Schecter says, "call him McCain 3.0."

Since Schecter's book was published, John McCain breezed through the GOP primaries to lock up the Republican presidential nomination. I asked Schecter if Americans were witnessing a McCain Version 4.0, a born-again moderate racing to the center to distance himself from his debilitated Republican Party and its wildly unpopular president.

According to Schecter, I'm giving John McCain way too much credit. With his stands on global warming, ANWR and offshore drilling, for example, changing "from one day to the next," Schecter said, "he's killing his campaign."

"McCain 4.0 doesn't know who the hell he is. He's running in all directions. He's combined all three McCains to try to thread the needle between a rock and a far-right place."

No doubt the most controversial part of Schecter's book arose from his investigation into John McCain's legendary temper. His startling allegation that back in 1992 McCain called his wife Cindy a "c-word" in front of reporters (who spoke of the episode to Schecter only on the condition of anonymity) created a media frenzy - and blowback. Schecter acknowledged the press coverage has been a "double-edged sword," bringing his book notoriety and sales perhaps at the expense of its big picture critique of McCain's policies, persona and temperament. "I do worry that the larger message hasn't gotten out there," he told me, noting that some cable news shows might be "scared of having me on" due either due to the subject matter of the incident or out of fear of offending McCain. In the wake of Bill Clinton's MonicaGate, Schecter sighed, "I can't believe the media would be so squeamish."

At the end of the day, Schecter stands by his decision and his sources. Given the three sources who each covered McCain going back into the 1990's, "it would be a disservice" not to have gone forward with the story. (For its part, the McCain campaign branded Schecter a "trash journalist." The candidate himself has not formally denied the allegations.) Further bolstering his case, Schecter notes, two of his other revelations about McCain (one involving a scuffle with now-indicted Congressman Rick Renzi, the other McCain's role in the attempted sacking of Common Cause president Chellie Pingree over campaign finance reform) were subsequently corroborated by the Washington Post and the American Prospect, respectively.

Ultimately, Cliff Schecter's book The Real McCain is not about the myriad, salacious details of the private life of the Vietnam war hero turned White House hopeful. "This is a cautionary tale," Schecter writes, of:

"A conditional friend to conservatives, an appealing maverick to independents, and a noxious Bush apologist to Democrats, McCain is a unique blend of allegiances and enmities unprecedented in American politics."

Unfortunately, for too many Americans - and especially the American media - John McCain is still a kind of political Rorschach test in which people see what they want to see.

But not Cliff Schecter. Not anymore.

(Note: For the purposes of full disclosure, it should be noted that Cliff Schecter and I have cited each other's material in our respective writing and have corresponded in the past.)

Unfortunately, many in the McCain camp remain suspicious of Romney, if for no other reason that John McCain hates the man. Their clashes during the Republican primaries, highlighted by Romney's accusations about McCain's out of control temper, might have something to do with it.

Which isn't to say John McCain and Mitt Romney have nothing in common. The campaigns of both men quickly ran into trouble over the issue of divestment from Iran, which quickly ensnared both McCain's lobbyist braintrust and Romney himself. On many occasions, John McCain has promised to follow Osama Bin Laden to "the gates of hell;" when he endorsed McCain in February, Mitt Romney promised to go with him. Like the millionaire McCain, the the half-billionaire son of auto magnate George Romney lambasted the "elitist view" of Barack Obama. And to be sure, John McCain badly needs money and Mitt Romney not only has it, but has already proven he can help him get more.

But the bad blood between the two doubtless still exists. During the GOP primaries, McCain and Romney clashed bitterly over Mitt's supposed Iraq withdrawal timelines and Mac's questionable conservative cred. Worse yet, in January the Romney campaign put out a memo showcasing McCain's legendary anger management problems and calling into question his fitness for office.

As his make-or-break Florida primary contest against John McCain approached in late January, Mitt Romney abandoned his pledge that "I'm not going to talk about the character of the people I'm running against." Instead, the Romney campaign produced a video and an accompanying memo titled, "The McCain Way: Attack Republicans - A Top 10 List." Echoing many of the episodes detailed in Sunday's WaPo piece, Mitt Romney refuted John McCain's past claims of serenity ("Do I insult anybody or fly off the handle or anything like that? No, I don't.") going back to 1999.

Sounding more like The Real McCain author Cliff Schecter than John McCain's #2, Romney in his top 10 list included some of McCain's greatest hits - literally. In addition to dropping the f-bomb on fellow Republican Senators Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and John Cornyn (R-TX), McCain "repeatedly" called New Mexico's Pete Domenici an "a**hole." While the Romney list features some comparatively minor McCain blow-ups towards Dick Cheney, Mitch McConnell and other leading lights of the GOP, it also claims that in 1995, John McCain "had a scuffle" with then 92-year old Strom Thurmond.

Here are the Romney campaign's top 10 episodes of "the McCain way" of rage and fury. Only the heading for each is shown below; the details and list of references are provided in the full memo, which is available at the Boston Herald:

1. Defending His Amnesty Bill, Sen. McCain Lost His Temper And Screamed, "F*ck You!" At Texas Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX).


2. In 2000, Sen. McCain Ran An Attack Ad Comparing Then-Gov. George W. Bush To Bill Clinton.


3. Sen. McCain Repeatedly Called Sen. Pete Domenici (R-NM) an "A**hole," Causing A Fellow GOP Senator To Say, "I Didn't Want This Guy Anywhere Near A Trigger."


4. Sen. McCain Had A Heated Exchange With Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA) And Called Him A "F*cking Jerk."


5. In 1995, Sen. McCain Had A "Scuffle" With 92-Year-Old Sen. Strom Thurmond (R-SC) On The Senate Floor.


6. Sen. McCain Accused Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) Of the "Most Egregious Incident" Of Corruption He Had Seen In The Senate.


7. Sen. McCain Attacked Christian Leaders And Republicans In A Blistering Speech During The 2000 Campaign.


8. Sen. McCain Attacked Vice President Cheney.


9. Celebrating His First Senate Election In 1986, Sen. McCain Screamed At And Harassed A Young Republican Volunteer.


10. Sen. McCain "Publicly Abused" Senator Richard Shelby (R-AL).

As it turns out, Mitt Romney's vice presidential ambitions have already encountered opposition among right-wing hard liners. Conservative godfather Paul Weyrich, who backed Romney's presidential bid, publicly came out against him in April. Weyrich joined two dozen other conservative activists in signing a letter titled, "No Mitt."

Still, politics produces strange bedfellows. Back in 1980, Ronald Reagan tapped his former rival George H.W. Bush, the man who labeled his supply-side tax cuts "voodoo economics," to be his number two. No doubt, Mitt Romney called John McCain far worse. Yet despite their personal antipathies, the two may end up together in what could be a dream ticket - or just a Republican nightmare.

That's the message emerging for two stories this weekend. First comes word, as Newsweek reported, that the McCains are delinquent in paying property taxes on an oceanfront condo in tony La Jolla, California. (That seaside getaway is not to be confused with the one of the McCains' other seven homes now up for sale, a Phoenix condo featuring "remote control window coverings.")

San Diego County officials, it turns out, have been sending out tax notices on the La Jolla property, an oceanfront condo, for four years without receiving a response. County records show the bills, which were mailed to a Phoenix address associated with Mrs. McCain's trust, were returned by the post office. According to a McCain campaign aide, who requested anonymity when discussing a private matter, an elderly aunt of Mrs. McCain's lives in the condo, and the bank that manages the trust has not been receiving tax bills on the property. Shortly after NEWSWEEK inquired about the matter, the McCain aide e-mailed a receipt dated Friday, June 27, confirming payment by the trust to San Diego County in the amount of $6,744.42. County officials say the trust still owes an additional $1,742 for this year, an amount that is overdue and will go into default July 1. Told of the outstanding $1,742, the aide said: "The trust has paid all bills shown owing as of today and will pay all other bills due."

As Dan McAllister, treasurer- tax collector for San Diego put it, "We do hear an awful lot of excuses for why people don't pay." Apparently, the $100 million couple fell behind on their mail.

Given John McCain's stern morality when it comes to the American foreclosure crisis, the La Jolla debacle is particularly ironic. In March, after all, McCain initially rejected a role for the federal government in alleviating the wave of home foreclosures crippling the economy. "Any assistance must be temporary," McCain said on March 25th, "and must not reward people who were irresponsible at the expense of those who weren't." Before reversing course just two weeks later, McCain admonished Americans delinquent on their mortgage payments that they should join the ranks of those:

"Doing what is necessary -- working a second job, skipping a vacation, and managing their budgets -- to make their payments on time."

As we also learned this weekend, John McCain's tone deafness regarding Americans' economic woes extends to skyrocketing gas prices. Just three weeks after insisting his critics' claim of a "Bush-McCain policy" is "false," McCain exhibited precisely the same detachment about fuel costs as the man he seeks to replace.

Earlier this year, President Bush was rightly lambasted for his stunning acknowledgement that he "hadn't heard" about predictions of gasoline prices hitting $4 a gallon. This week, John McCain followed suit, arguing that it "doesn't matter" that he doesn't know the price of gas. As Martin Wicksol of the Orange County Register documented:

WICKSOL: When was the last time you pumped your own gas and how much did it cost?

MCCAIN: Oh, I don't remember. Now there's Secret Service protection. But I've done it for many, many years. I don't recall and frankly, I don't see how it matters.

I've had hundreds and hundreds of town hall meetings, many as short a time ago as yesterday. I communicate with the people and they communicate with me very effectively.

McCain could have made the point that, as he did in April and June, Americans' pain at the gas pump is merely "psychological."

In a final irony, it is worth recalling that it is the millionaire McCain who branded his opponent Barack Obama "elitist." What would McCain have Americans do about that statement? As with so many of the contradictions and ironies which leave his mouth, forget about it.

Even as poll after poll shows Barack Obama consolidating his sizable leads among women in general and Hillary Clinton supporters in particular, the American media soldiers on in its attempt to manufacture dissent. CNN is no exception. Last night, Larry King featured disgruntled Clinton backer turned McCainiac, Cynthia Ruccia of the group Women for Fair Politics. Decrying the supposed sexism of the Democratic Party and the press, Ruccia made the case for John McCain, who just happens to be among the most sexist presidential candidates in recent memory.

To be sure, Ruccia displayed the kind of cognitive dissonance and post-primary fury that make her an exception to the rule among Clinton supporters. Decrying the "sexism" of the media, the Democratic Party and some Obama surrogates, Ruccia declared that nothing Barack Obama might do could alter her decision to support John McCain:

KING: Are you pro-choice?

RUCCIA: I am pro-choice.

KING: You know he's opposite polls there.

RUCCIA: Our organization is about sexism and we do have a position on Roe v. Wade in this election, if people want to go to WomenForFairPolitics.com. But our subject is really sexism. We feel there needs to be a change in women's issues now as well, because as long as the women's movement is defined by abortion, we'll never take on the horrendous sexism that came out. And our organization came together so that no woman running for president will go through what Hillary Clinton went through.

KING: Could Obama do anything to change your mind?

RUCCIA: I don't think so.

On the issues, of course, John McCain is a polar opposite to Hillary Clinton. Appearing on a panel discussion later in the show, early Clinton advocate Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schulz (D-FL) made the case that Ruccia's position was self-destructive and self-defeating:

"I'm not sure what was in Cynthia's Corn flakes. At the end of the day, if her response to support McCain is the opposite of what matters to women. When it comes to the economy, women are more likely to be beneficiaries of the increase in the minimum wage, which Senator McCain opposed. Women are more likely to be facing foreclosure because of subprime loans. In fact, John McCain voted against the Fair Pay Act. So he opposes equal pay for equal work."

But leave aside for the moment McCain's horrendous stands on the issues most important to women voters. It's McCain's horrendous behavior towards American women, including those closest to him, that should send disappointed Clinton backers fleeing for the exits.

John McCain's unique blend of adolescent gutter humor and periodic eruptions of misogyny is now legend. And it should come as no surprise that Hillary Clinton and even her daughter Chelsea were past targets of McCain's sexism, sexism either unknown to or conveniently ignored by likes of Cynthia Ruccia.

At an event in South Carolina last November, John McCain and his supporters showed the warm welcome Hillary's ardent followers can expect (video here). When a woman asked, "how do we beat the bitch?" McCain laughed and called hers an "excellent question." As ABC recounted the encounter:

An older woman stood and asked him, "how do we beat the bitch?" Groans and applause followed.

"May I give the translation?" McCain asked.

"I thought she was talking about my ex-wife," joked a man in the audience.

"But that's an excellent question," McCain said. "You might know that there was a poll yesterday, a Rasmussen poll, identified, that shows me three points ahead of Senator Clinton in a head-to-head matchup."

"I respect Senator Clinton, I respect anyone who gets the nomination of the Democrat party," McCain continued.

McCain showed so much respect for Hillary Clinton that he refused to apologize the next day. (Worse still, his campaign claimed media bias in the coverage of the affair, and sought to raise money from its Hillary-hating supporters in its wake.)

Ten years ago, John McCain extended his "respect" for Hillary Clinton to her then-teenaged daughter Chelsea. As David Corn reported in Salon, John McCain back in 1998 used the occasion of a Republican Senate fundraiser to slander President Clinton's daughter and attorney general. Following in the proud tradition of Rush Limbaugh (who in 1993 called the young Chelsea "a dog"), Mr.Straight Talk joked:

"Why is Chelsea Clinton so ugly? Because her father is Janet Reno."

As Maureen Dowd rightly predicted at the time, Senator McCain's vulgar slur produced no backlash, as he is "so revered by the press that his disgusting jape was largely nudged under the rug."

But McCain's response to Dowd provides a telling glimpse into the character of the man who would succeed George W. Bush as the next Republican president. In a phone interview, McCain brushed off his grotesque insult as the equivalent of a rambunctious teenager egging a neighbor's house:

''This is the bad boy,'' he said in a phone interview. ''It was stupid and cruel and insensitive. I've apologized. I can't take it back. I could give you a whole bunch of excuses, but there are no excuses. I was wrong, but do you want me crucified? How many days does it need to be a story?''

McCain's jaw-dropping, Tailhook-era attitudes toward women are directed towards his own staff as well. As reliably Republican water carrier Peggy Noonan recounted just today in the Wall Street Journal, the real McCain was on display during a February interview with the Mark Leibovich of the New York Times:

"[He] volunteered that Brooke Buchanan, his spokeswoman who was seated nearby and rolling her eyes, 'has a lot of her money hidden in the Cayman Islands' and that she earned it by 'dealing drugs.' Previously, Mr. McCain had identified Ms. Buchanan as 'Pat Buchanan's illegitimate daughter,' 'bipolar,' 'a drunk,' 'someone with a lot of boyfriends,' and 'just out of Betty Ford.'"

Of course, the indignities suffered by the Hillary Clinton and campaign staffers at the hands of John McCain pale in comparison to his treatment of his own wives.

John McCain might lead the supposed party of family values, but you'd never know it from his own life. In his book, The Real McCain, author Cliff Schecter cited anonymous sources who allege that McCain called his beer heiress wife Cindy a "trollop" and the "c-word" in front of reporters in 1992. And as Salon detailed back in 2000, John McCain's adulterous pursuit of the second Mrs. McCain was well underway even as he was still dispensing with the first Mrs. McCain:

It seems that McCain, who had once revealed to fellow prisoners of war in Vietnam that he wanted to be president, was restless in 1979. As Navy liaison to the Senate, he didn't have the career momentum he had counted on to propel him into an admiralty and on to the White House. He was 42, mired in stifling ordinariness. (Civilians call it "midlife crisis.")

But McCain was making bold career moves on the home front, hotly pursuing a 25-year-old blond from a wealthy Arizona family -- while married. Carol, his wife at the time, had once been quite a babe herself apparently, until a near-fatal car accident (while her husband was in Vietnam) left her 4 inches shorter, overweight and on crutches. The couple had three children, whom Carol cared for alone while her husband was in Vietnamese prisons.

McCain's strategy worked perfectly: After chasing Cindy Hensley around the country for six months, he closed the deal late in the year, had a divorce by February and was married to Hensley shortly thereafter. Bingo! McCain was a candidate for Congress by early 1982, his coffers full, his home in the proper Arizona district purchased.

As for the former Mrs. McCain, she has handled herself with a quiet dignity her husband never displayed. Now 71, Carol said in a recent interview, "I have no bitterness," adding:

"My marriage ended because John McCain didn't want to be 40, he wanted to be 25. You know that happens...it just does."

As Hillary Clinton of all people knows, it does just happen. But that doesn't mean her understandably disappointed supporters should excuse that kind of callousness towards women from John McCain. As Clinton herself said during her joint appearance with Barack Obama today:

"To anyone who voted for me and is now considering not voting or voting for Senator (John) McCain, I strongly urge you to reconsider."

Sadly, while most American women have heard Hillary Clinton's pleas, Cynthia Ruccia isn't listening.

UPDATE: Almost on cue, John McCain chose today to make a wife-beating joke. As Huffington Post reported, McCain explained why he did not choose Governor Jim Gibbons (now in the midst of a messy divorce) as his Nevada campaign chair:

Q: Maybe it's the governor's approval rating and you are running from him like you are from the president?

McCain: (Chuckling) And I stopped beating my wife just a couple of weeks ago...

If nothing else, a Republican ticket of John McCain and Mitt Romney would offer Americans the potential for great theater. For openers, the fact that the two men essentially hate each other could make for great drama. And as his comments yesterday suggest, the return of their common ex-adviser Mike Murphy to the stage could bring much needed - if unintended - comedy all the way to November.

Murphy, who served as a campaign strategist for Senator McCain in 2000 and Governor Romney in 2002, reemerged on Wednesday on Dennis Miller's radio show to defend McCain adviser Charlie Black's belief that a new terrorist attack would b a "big advantage" for his candidate. Echoing an old Seinfeld episode about "field of vision," Murphy crudely attributed Black's inadvertent truth-telling to the presence of cleavage:

MURPHY: Well, he's an old friend of mine, so I'll defend him. I don't know what happened. I think there must have been tremendous reporter cleavage involved or something.

MILLER: hahahahahahaha

MURPHY: Charlie got off his focus, he's a good guy, he's apologized for it.

(That the Fortune reporter who interviewed Black was a man - editor David Whitford - speaks volumes to Murphy's lack of familiarity with the facts as well as decorum.)

As Mitt Romney learned the hard way in 2005, Mike Murphy may fancy himself a junior Karl Rove, but lacks the unshakeable message discipline to play the part. As Romney ramped up his bid for the GOP presidential race, Murphy in a rare moment of candor undermined Mitt's new brand of social conservativism on the issue where it mattered most: abortion. Murphy said of Romney's about-face in Massachusetts:

"He's been a pro-life Mormon faking it as a pro-choice friendly."

Of course, John McCain ultimately may pass over Mitt Romney as his choice for vice president in favor of another entertaining choice, like the exorcist Bobby Jindal, high-profile dating enthusiast Charlie Crist, or the sex-deprived Tim Pawlenty. But if McCain does tap Romney, the odds are good that Mike Murphy will provide comic relief throughout the campaign.

When it comes to his foreign policy, John McCain is a revisionist historian and a particularly clumsy one at that. Having asked Americans to ignore his record as the master of disaster on Iraq, John McCain similarly underwent an election-year transformation from rabid France-basher to born-again multilateralist and fawning Francophile. Now, the McCain campaign is hoping to erase any vestiges of John McCain's 2007 pledge to expel Russia from the G8.

As Reuters reports, an anonymous McCain adviser essentially told Americans not to look behind the curtain on Mr. Straight Talk's two-faced posture towards Moscow:

He also dismissed McCain's comment last October on Russia and the G-8 as "a holdover from an earlier period," adding: "It doesn't reflect where he is right now."

McCain's retreat from his hard line against Putin's Russia began in May. In what was billed as a major address on nuclear non-proliferation, John McCain offered the latest installment in the ongoing saga of strategic incoherence that passes for his foreign policy. Just months after calling for a "League of Democracies" and the expulsion of Russia from the G8, McCain in an abrupt about-face portrayed Russia as an essential partner in the global struggle to contain the spread of nuclear weapons.

Over the past year in multiple speeches and in his November 2007 article in Foreign Affairs, McCain outlined a vision of the world's 100 democracies as like"-minded nations working together in the cause of peace." The organization, which would not include Russia, could act "with or without Moscow's and Beijing's approval." As the LA Times noted, McCain's League "could use military force as well as economic and diplomatic pressure" in Iran, Darfur and other global hot spots.

As former Bush UN Ambassador John Bolton noted last month, McCain takes a particularly dim view of the prospects for partnership with Russia. McCain, he said approvingly:

"Takes an even harder line than I do. He wants to toss them out of the G-8. He is not about to be pushed around by an assertive Putin."

Which is precisely what so concerned foreign policy realists here at home and America's friends abroad. Despite McCain's claims to the contrary, the Los Angeles Times reports that "European officials were cautious." In April, one senior EU official said McCain's league, with its confrontational stance towards Russia, "can appear as something divisive." Ford and Bush 41 national security adviser Brent Scowcroft wrote "that it was a 'bad idea' to create a new bloc in global affairs that would divide the world 'between the good and the evil.'" As ThinkProgress reported earlier this month, McCain's plan to eject Russia from the G8 wasn't merely dangerous, it was impossible:

The Group of Eight, or G-8, as it's popularly known, makes decisions by consensus, so no single nation can kick out another. Most experts say the six other countries - Great Britain, France, Italy, Germany, Japan and Canada - would never agree to toss Russia, given their close economic ties to their neighbor. A senior U.S. official who deals with Russia policy said that even Moscow would have to approve of its own ouster, given how the G-8 works.

"It's not even a theoretical discussion. It's an impossible discussion," said the senior official, who requested anonymity because he wasn't authorized to speak publicly. "It's just a dumb thing."

Alas, that was then, this is now. Fast forward to Tuesday's speech and McCain's plan to boot Medvedev's Russia is nowhere to be found. No doubt eager to both continue his move to the center and try to offset Barack Obama's leadership on the proliferation issue, McCain today decided to go to Russia with love.

McCain's threat to blackball the Russians wasn't merely absent from his speech. The Republican nominee promised close American consultation with Moscow in reducing the nuclear stockpiles of both nations, as well as limiting tactical nuclear weapons deployed in Europe:

"As our two countries possess the overwhelming majority of the world's nuclear weapons, we have a special responsibility to reduce their number. I believe we should reduce our nuclear forces to the lowest level we judge necessary, and we should be prepared to enter into a new arms control agreement with Russia reflecting the nuclear reductions I will seek. Further, we should be able to agree with Russia on binding verification measures based on those currently in effect under the START Agreement, to enhance confidence and transparency. In close consultation with our allies, I would also like to explore ways we and Russia can reduce - and hopefully eliminate - deployments of tactical nuclear weapons in Europe. I also believe we should work with Russia to build confidence in our missile defense program, including through such initiatives as the sharing of early warning data and prior notification of missile launches."

And when it comes to Iran and its nuclear program, McCain acknowledged the special role Russia may still have to play in reaching a solution short of American military action:

"Nations that seek nuclear fuel for legitimate civilian purposes will be able to acquire what they need under international supervision. This is one suggestion Russia and others have made to Iran. Unfortunately, the Iranian government has so far rejected this idea. Perhaps with enough outside pressure and encouragement, they can be persuaded to change their minds before it is too late."

This is McCain's second substantial deviation from his previously stated foreign policy vision in the last two months. In April, McCain reversed course on the role of his League of Democracies as a military organization, claiming the group would not use military force and concluding "it does not envision military action." No doubt, John McCain's new-found embrace of Russia will cool the ardor of neo-conservatives such as Charles Krauthammer, who had praised McCain's "hidden agenda" behind his League as having the goal to "essentially kill the U.N."

And so it goes for the supposed maverick John McCain. His tough talk towards Russia of only month ago is replaced by a new commitment to multilateralism that global nuclear non-proliferation - and American politics - require.

John McCain isn't a psychologist, but he's playing one on TV. Again. For the second time in two months, the supposed maverick turned modern day Freud has diagnosed Americans' economic ills and concluded that it's all in our heads. And to be sure, his recommended therapy - offshore oil drilling and a gas tax holiday - are the equivalent of "take two aspirin and call me in the morning."

At a town hall meeting in Fresno on Tuesday, McCain finally overcame his own cognitive dissonance on the issue of offshore oil drilling. Acknowledging the inescapable conclusion that expanded oil exploration off Florida and California would have no impact on gas prices for years, McCain insisted it was nonetheless the right tonic for Americans' economic woes:

"I don't see an immediate relief, but I do see that exploitation of existing reserves that may exist -- and in view of many experts that do exist off our coasts -- is also a way that we need to provide relief. Even though it may take some years, the fact that we are exploiting those reserves would have psychological impact that I think is beneficial."

While Dr. McCain's about-face on offshore drilling is new, his conclusion that the deepening American economic crisis is merely psychological is not.

On Tuesday, McCain prescribed his summer gas tax holiday for America's depressed drivers, explaining "In the short term I'd like to give you a little relief for the summer on the gas tax." But back in April, Sigmund McCain told Fox News host Neil Cavuto that his placebo was just what the doctor ordered for Americans' fragile psyches, if not their pocketbooks:

"I'm very concerned about it, Neil. And obviously the way it's been going up is just terrible. But I think psychologically - and a lot of our problems today, as you know, are psychological - the confidence, trust, the uncertainty about our economic future, ability to keep our own home. This might give them a little psychological boost. Let's have some straight talk, it's not a huge amount of money."

Of course, John McCain is nothing if not ironic. On more than one occasion, McCain prescribed eBay as the cure for recession and poverty. This latest episode of McCain as economic know-nothing turned armchair psychologist came on literally the same day Karl Rove branded Democrat Barack Obama as the "coolly arrogant", "country club" snob. John and Cindy McCain, after all, are worth an estimated $100 million and own eight homes (though the one with "remote control window coverings" is now up for sale). And, as it turns out, the $373,000 the couple would save annually from John McCain's tax plan would more than offset their $225,000 in credit card debt.

Even more ironic, though, is John McCain trying to diagnose Americans' economic mental health given his own profound suffering from a variant of the "Sybil complex." Sybil was a woman who in the 70's exhibited 16 different personalities. As it turns out, John McCain is a man in his seventies who has displayed different personalities - and changed positions - on dozens of issues.

For the Washington Post's Richard Cohen, John McCain's spineless opportunism is just in our heads. Just like, according to Dr. McCain, the economic slowdown.

While a terrorist attack on the U.S. homeland would be a tragedy for the American people, it would apparently be viewed as a blessing by the campaign of John McCain. On the same day that USA Today reported that terrorism is the only issue on which Americans clearly prefer John McCain to Barack Obama, McCain senior strategist Charlie Black admitted of another terror strike here, "certainly it would be a big advantage to him."

As it turns out, John McCain and his surrogates not only believe that what's good for Al Qaeda is good for Republican prospects in the fall. They also argue the flip-side of the terror card: merely the specter of an Obama presidency would help achieve the GOP's second goal, an attack on Iran. Call it John McCain's "Bring 'Em On" strategy.

On Monday, John McCain claimed to reject and Charlie Black claimed to apologize for Black's invitation of an Al Qaeda attack. Sadly, McCain has a proven track record of extolling the virtues of terror threats as a tonic for Republican electoral misfortunes.

McCain said as much in the run-up to the 2004 election. Referring to a recently released tape from the still at-large Osama Bin Laden, McCain in October 2004 saw the upside for President Bush's prospects:

"I think it's very helpful to President Bush. It focuses America's attention on the war on terrorism. I'm not sure if it was intentional or not, but I think it does have an effect."

In December 2007, McCain also saw the carnage and chaos in Pakistan as a potential boon to his own White House hopes. When it came to highlighting his much-hyped national security cred, the assassination of Benazir Bhutto was all good. While her murder and the tumult it produced was "an unfortunate event," to again quote Charlie Black, "it helped us." As CNN's Dana Bash noted Monday, McCain concurred with Black's assessment that Bhutto's killing "reemphasized that this is the guy who's ready to be Commander-in-Chief:"

BASH: I was actually with Sen. McCain the very day that Benazir Bhutto was assassinated...He really did understand from that moment that this was something that he thought could help him in the race at that point to be the Republican nominee. In fact, at that event that very day I asked Sen. McCain if he thought it would help his political campaign and he said pretty much "Yes." So it's not a secret that back then that Sen. McCain and his campaign thought it would help.

But even failing the arrival of the wished-for Al Qaeda Kicker for McCain, his neo-conservatives allies still have another terror card up their sleeves. Just the likelihood of Barack Obama's election, they warn, will certainly lead to the bombing of Iran before the year is out, either by President Bush or by Israel.

Appearing on Fox News Sunday this past weekend, Bill Kristol told host Chris Wallace that rather than allow a change of course towards Tehran by Obama, President Bush might well "launch a military strike" before or after the election:

WALLACE: So, you're suggesting that he might in fact, if Obama's going to win the election, either before or after the election, launch a military strike?

KRISTOL: I don't know. I mean, I think he would worry about it. On the other hand, you can't - it's hard to make foreign policy based on guesses of election results. I think Israel is worried though. I mean, what is, what signal goes to Ahmadinejad if Obama wins on a platform of unconditional negotiations and with an obvious reluctance to even talk about using military force.

Meanwhile, former UN ambassador and McCain hardliner John Bolton contended the same day that if George W. Bush didn't attack Israel before the start of an Obama presidency, the Israelis would:

"I think if they [Israel] are to do anything, the most likely period is after our elections and before the inauguration of the next President. I don't think they will do anything before our election because they don't want to affect it. And they'td have to make a judgment whether to go during the remainder of President Bush's term in office or wait for his successor."

(As if on cue, it was revealed that Israel conducted a massive aerial exercise in the Mediterranean earlier this month, featuring over 100 F-16 and F-15 planes in what many saw as a simulated assault on the Iranian nuclear complex at Natanz.)

Ironically, John McCain released an ad just three weeks ago designed to distance himself from George W. Bush by proclaiming, "only a fool or a fraud talks tough or romantically about war." But while tweaking Bush's foolish belligerence as exemplified by statements like "dead or alive," "bring 'em on," "I'm a little envious" and "kick ass," McCain only served to highlight his own. McCain, after all, joked that he would "bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran" and claimed he would follow Osama Bin Laden to "the gates of hell." McCain, too, announced that he is the "worst nightmare" of Hamas and Al Qaeda.

But should they attack the United States between now and November, as McCain suggested in 2004, "I think it's very helpful."

Two months after I first highlighted John McCain's prescription of eBay as the cure for what ails the economy, economists are finally weighing in. As Bloomberg reports, the feedback isn't pretty. While McCain, who has admitted knowing little about economics and even less about computers, may envision a nation of auctioneers, "new people selling stuff out of their closet on EBay isn't growing the economy."

That's the message from economist Betsey Stevenson, a professor at the Wharton School of Business.

"In terms of jobs, there's no net increase in GDP that comes from trading stuff that's already made. To trade things that are produced in other countries just to swap them,'' -- conveys a message, "that America can't produce anything and that's a very dismal view of the U.S. economy."

Lehman Brothers' Ethan Harris noted that while eBay no doubt transformed an "incredibly inefficient market for junk and turned it into a very efficient market for junk," at the end of the day:

"It's an example of good old-fashioned U.S. ingenuity, but selling used products is a limited business model."

That hasn't stopped John McCain and his senior adviser, rumored vice presidential possibility and former CEO Meg Whitman from making online auctions of Barbie dolls, Hummel figurines and car parts the centerpiece of their Disownership Society.

During his now-forgotten "Forgotten Places" tour two months ago, McCain told an audience in Inez, Kentucky, "You have a right to expect us to show as much concern for helping you create more and better choices to make for yourselves as we show any other community in America." And one of those better choices, according to John McCain, is to become a seller on the auction site, eBay:

"Today, for example, 1.3 million people in the world make a living off eBay, most of those are in the United State of America."

Ebay's Whitman couldn't have put it better herself. In fact, she put it almost exactly the same on way on CBS 60 Minutes in March. As she told Lesley Stahl:

"We have about - around the world, about 1.3 million people make most, if not all, of their living selling on eBay."

For its part, the McCain campaign appears unconcerned about key sectors of the American economy hemorrhaging jobs. Back in January, John McCain told an audience in Michigan that he didn't want to raise "false hopes that somehow we can bring back lost jobs," adding that it" wasn't government's job to protect buggy factories and haberdashers when cars replaced carriages and men stopped wearing hats." Douglas Holtz-Eakin, his chief economic adviser, echoed that line:

"We shouldn't be obsessed with looking backwards all the time, and saying, 'Gee, where did those jobs go?'''

Nonplussed by those job losses, John McCain thinks even less about the economists who savaged his vision of American eBay economy. On June 12, the computer and economics non-savant rejected their objections:

"You know the economists? They're the same ones that didn't predict this housing crisis we're in. They're the same ones that didn't predict the dot-com meltdown. They're the same ones that didn't predict the inflation that's staring us in the face today."

As Fortune suggested yesterday, his eBay potion isn't the only reason economists will shake their heads in disbelief when McCain speaks on the economy. Asked "what do you see as the gravest long-term threat to the U.S. economy," Senator McCain replied:

"Well, I would think that the absolute gravest threat is the struggle that we're in against radical Islamic extremism, which can affect, if they prevail, our very existence."

Back in 2003, General Tommy Franks called Bush Iraq intelligence fabulist Douglas Feith "the f**king stupidest guy on the face of the earth." Two years later, Colin Powell's one-time aide Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson said of Feith "seldom in my life have I met a dumber man." Defending Condoleezza Rice's - and by extension, President Bush's - pre-war "smoking gun/mushroom cloud" Iraq talking point, Douglas Feith today once again justified his critics' low opinion of him.

Writing at the National Review, Feith argued that Rice's September 8, 2002 statement on CNN was not either "a gaffe or a lie." Instead, he contended, Rice was merely "highlighting the limits of U.S. intelligence" in what he deemed "an important and accurate statement":

"You will get different estimates about precisely how close he is." She presented a summary of what the CIA was saying at the time about Iraq's nuclear weapons program, and then added: "The problem here is that there will always be some uncertainty about how quickly he can acquire nuclear weapons. But we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud."

There are, of course, a few problems with Feith's exercise. First, Feith's offers an abridged version of Rice's comments, selectively excluding her points about "shipments into Iran" and those "aluminum tubes" that "are only really suited for nuclear weapons programs." While Feith laughably claimed that "Rice and all the other top Bush administration officials relied on erroneous intelligence" and that "they did so in good faith," Rice's mistaken claims were hotly disputed within the American intelligence community, as the 2002 NIE and the Senate Intelligence Committee's Phase 2 report made clear.

The second of Feith's fallacies is the implication of his assertion that "was a clear and proper warning that our country was subject to surprise." Apparently, wars of preemption are fine even when the data is dubious or the threat is unclear. Put another way, when in doubt, wipe 'em out.

But perhaps the most comic aspect of Feith's defense of Rice is his implicit attack on President Bush. During his now infamous October 7, 2002 saber-rattling address in Cincinnati, Bush made the same smoking gun/mushroom cloud reference. But in Bush's case, there were no qualifications about "uncertainty" or "different estimates" of Saddam's nuclear threat:

"Some citizens wonder, after 11 years of living with this problem, why do we need to confront it now? And there's a reason. We've experienced the horror of September the 11th. We have seen that those who hate America are willing to crash airplanes into buildings full of innocent people. Our enemies would be no less willing, in fact, they would be eager, to use biological or chemical, or a nuclear weapon.

Knowing these realities, America must not ignore the threat gathering against us. Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof -- the smoking gun -- that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud...

...Understanding the threats of our time, knowing the designs and deceptions of the Iraqi regime, we have every reason to assume the worst, and we have an urgent duty to prevent the worst from occurring."

Less than three weeks ago, the Senate Intelligence Committee released its long delayed Phase 2 report on the Bush administration's uses - and misuses - of pre-war Iraq intelligence. As McClatchy noted, a bipartisan majority of the Committee concluded that "Bush knew Iraq claims weren't true." One of its key conclusions concerned administration claims regarding the Iraqi nuclear program, noting that "Bush and other officials failed to disclose that the State Department disputed that finding."

That would be the same State Department now run by Condoleezza Rice. So while General Tommy Franks may not be the brightest blub, his dim assessment of Douglas Feith continues to ring true.

On Friday, Scott McClellan learned the hard way that the Bush White House is a lot like the Soprano family. As HBO's legendary Jersey mobster Tony Soprano once put it, "Once you're into this family, there's no getting out." Judging by McClellan's treatment at the hands of George W. Bush's foot soldiers on the House Judiciary Committee, today's Republican Party shares the Soprano family values.

Testifying about the Plamegate affair, the former White House press secretary turned tell-all author found that the same Bush politics of payback that savaged Valerie and Joe Wilson applied to him as well. Talking to McClellan as if he was Soprano turncoat Sal "Big Pussy" Bonpensiero, Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) announced, "Scott McClellan will have to wrestle with whether it was worth selling out the president and his friends for a few pieces of silver." Iowa's Steve King theatrically chastised McClellan for betraying what can only be described as a blood oath to George W. Bush:

"Couldn't you have taken this to the grave with you and done this country a favor?"

That McClellan would pay a price for going against the family became clear as soon as details of his book What Happened appeared in the press. On May 29th, President Bush's friends on Fox and Friends swore a vendetta against McClellan. As host Gretchen Carlson put it:

"Scott McClellan better not have any skeletons in his closet. I hope he didn't do anything that he doesn't want the world to know about because we all have, and all of his secrets are going to be coming out."

On Friday, Congressman Ric Keller (R-FL) went digging for those skeletons. Furious that McClellan, who during the 2000 campaign helped candidate Bush evade allegations of past cocaine use only to now air his doubts about the President's previous penchant for blow, Keller asked:

"Do you recall if you've ever used illegal drugs?"

As for former While House capos and consiglieres including Ari Fleischer, Dan Bartlett and Karl Rove, McClellan the faithful Bush soldier turned traitor isn't the Scottie they knew. "Something changed, something happened to Scott the last six months," Fleischer said, "to put him on a different path." One-time Cheney aide and omnipresent right-wing talking head Mary Matalin put McClellan's treachery this way:

"The irony is that he got that job out of loyalty. This will stand as the epitome, the ultimate breach of that code of honor."

After learning that his Uncle Junior and his own mother Livia conspired to have him whacked, Tony Soprano declared them each "dead to me."* Apparently, when it comes to Scott McClellan, President Bush and his army of conservative thugs couldn't agree more.

* In Godfather II, Michael Corleone, too, declared his brother Fredo "dead to me." Ironically, "Fredo" happens to be George W. Bush's nickname for disgraced Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, the one man who through a unique combination of deceit, stupidity and selective amnesia still keeps his boss' secrets secret.

Earlier this week, I detailed how John McCain, John Yoo and Justice Antonin Scalia in the wake of the Court's Boumediene decision all continued to peddle the discredited Republican talking point about "30 former Guantanamo detainees" who had "returned to the fight." Now a devastating new report released Tuesday from Seton Hall professor Mark Denbeaux puts to rest the Scalia's "urban legend."

That figure of 30 terror recidivists unleashing a bloodbath had been debunked by earlier studies from Denbeaux's team and recent investigations from the McClatchy papers. But Denbeaux's updated analysis, including the revelations that the Defense Department itself backtracked from the infamous Gitmo 30 in July 2007 and May 2008, shows the extent to which Justice Scalia engaged in cherry-picking dubious data to bolster his blood-curdling Boumediene dissent last week. And it hasn't stopped the exaggerated number of Gitmo repeat terrorists (like the cry of "worse than Dred Scott") from becoming a standard Republican talking point since the Court's restoration of habeas corpus last week.

ABC News Thursday provided a new twist on Alberto Gonzales' role in the converging Bush administration torture and prosecutor purge scandals. According to ABC, the new Attorney General Gonzales in early 2005 sacked top administration lawyer Daniel Levin over his December 2004 memo declaring "torture is abhorrent," only to promise him a U.S. attorney slot to placate him. But lost in ABC's account is the fact just before he carried out his retribution against Levin, Alberto Gonzales lied to the Senate about President Bush's torture policies during his January 2005 confirmation hearings.

As ABC reported, the former White House Counsel and new Attorney General sought to punish - and then silence - Levin, who was then acting head of the DOJ's office of special counsel:

Gonzales, who was just taking over as attorney general, asked Justice Department lawyer Daniel Levin to leave in early 2005, shortly after Levin wrote a legal opinion that declared "torture is abhorrent" and limited the administration's use of harsh interrogation techniques.

At the time, Levin was in the middle of drafting a second, critical memo that analyzed the legality of specific interrogation techniques, like waterboarding.

Gonzales, however, was concerned about how it would be perceived if Levin were ousted immediately after issuing the opinion - and just before he finished another - so he offered Levin a less significant job outside the Department of Justice at the National Security Council, sources tell ABC News.

Gonzales then assured Levin he would, at some point, recommend him for a plum job as the U.S. attorney in Los Angeles, sources tell ABC.

As it turns out, Levin never got the U.S. attorney post, instead opting for private practice because "he never believed Gonzales was serious."

The rest, as they say, is history. Gonzales and Karl Rove started their discussions about replacing U.S. attorneys, which led to the prosecutors purge the following year. Levin was replaced in the acting role by Bush sycophant and torture apologist Steven Bradbury, whose confirmation has been blocked by the Senate. And as the New York Times reported last October, it was none other than Bradbury who penned two secret 2005 memos authorizing the Bush administration's regime of detainee torture. Finally in December 2005, the President issued a signing statement to the Detainee Treatment Act, ensuing that "the decider" would retain the right to determine what constituted "cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment of detainees."

(For the latest on the unfolding blight on the United States that is President Bush's detainee policy, see this week's devastating coverage from McClatchy.)

The United States Senate, however, never got an inkling of this during Alberto Gonzales' during January 2005 confirmation hearings. In claiming that an August 2002 memo had been "rejected by the executive branch," Gonzales almost certainly perjured himself.

As the Times details, beginning in August 2002, the infamous Bybee memo drafted by torture apologist John Yoo was the basis for the Bush administration's interrogation techniques for terror detainees worldwide. Defining torture as "equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death," the White House endorsed brutal techniques up to and including waterboarding. But while Daniel Levin opened his December 30, 2004 memo by proclaiming simply that, " Torture is abhorrent to both American law and values and to international norms," the new Attorney General in February 2005 and again later that same year issued those secret memos which "provided explicit authorization to barrage terror suspects with a combination of painful physical and psychological tactics, including head-slapping, simulated drowning and frigid temperatures."

But that uninterrupted policy of detainee torture is not what Alberto Gonzales described to Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI) during his confirmation hearing in January 2005. The August 2002 memo, Gonzales claimed had been withdrawn, and questions about the extent of presidential war powers eclipsing laws and treaties of the United States were merely "hypothetical."

FEINGOLD: The question here is: What is your view regarding the president's constitutional authority to authorize violations of the criminal law, duly enacted statutes that may have been on the books for many years, when acting as commander in chief? Does he have such authority?

The question you have been asked is not about a hypothetical statute in the future that the president might think is unconstitutional; it's about our laws and international treaty obligations concerning torture.

The torture memo answered that question in the affirmative. And my colleagues and I would like your answer on that today...

GONZALES: Senator, the August 30th memo has been withdrawn. It has been rejected, including that section regarding the commander in chief authority to ignore the criminal statutes.

So it's been rejected by the executive branch. I categorically reject it.

And in addition to that, as I've said repeatedly today, this administration does not engage in torture and will not condone torture.

And so what we're really discussing is a hypothetical situation that...

As for Alberto Gonzales, the disgraced former AG finally found a job this month as a special master in a patent case. But as Bush's "Fredo" disappears into professional obscurity, his criminality will remain an unforgettable - and inexcusable - part of the Bush legacy.

Earlier this year, the Politico's Mike Allen (video here) asked the GOP presidential contenders whether they used a PC or Mac. In his response, McCain revealed that when it comes to high tech devices large (like private jets) or small (like personal computers), he is dependent on his beer heiress wife:

"Neither. I'm an illiterate that has to rely on my wife for all of the assistance I can get."

But just because John McCain doesn't know how to connect to eBay doesn't mean he doesn't have connections to eBay. As I first detailed on April 25th, former eBay CEO Meg Whitman is not only a senior adviser to John McCain, but plays ventriloquist with him when it comes to the economy.

During his now-forgotten "Forgotten Places" tour two months ago, McCain told an audience in Inez, Kentucky, "You have a right to expect us to show as much concern for helping you create more and better choices to make for yourselves as we show any other community in America." And one of those better choices, according to John McCain, is to become a seller on the auction site, eBay:

"Today, for example, 1.3 million people in the world make a living off eBay, most of those are in the United State of America."

Ebay's Whitman couldn't have put it better herself. In fact, she put it almost exactly the same on way on CBS 60 Minutes in March. As she told Lesley Stahl:

"We have about - around the world, about 1.3 million people make most, if not all, of their living selling on eBay."

That John McCain, who more than once admitted his limited knowledge of the economy, would parrot one of his most senior campaign aides is unsurprising. But that he would cite eBay as the way forward for a community where 37% live in poverty and 40% of the wage income comes from mining seems remarkably callous, even by McCain's standards.

No doubt, tens of thousands off people make a good living as eBay sellers. As eBay's Whitman told CBS' Stahl, "people can supplement their income from several thousand dollars a month to...I think our top seller on eBay grosses $20 million." But for a country slipping into recession and facing the loss of thousands of good paying manufacturing jobs in a rapidly globalizing economy, a high-speed Internet connection and an eBay virtual storefront is hardly a substitute.

As American workers confront increasing insecurity due to competition in China, India and elsewhere, John McCain apparently believes they should follow in the footsteps of Whitman's legions who earn their living selling "high tech electronic equipment, maybe it's audio equipment, maybe it's Barbie dolls, maybe it's collectibles, or a certain niche of collectibles, of coins, of china." Instead building products and offering services for the world, McCain's Americans should just sell stuff to each other. And when all else fails for distressed homeowners, McCain's Americans should just join the rapidly growing ranks of those:

"Doing what is necessary -- working a second job, skipping a vacation, and managing their budgets -- to make their payments on time."

Of course, John McCain isn't speaking from personal experience when it comes to either computers or financial hardship. (As it turns out, one of McCain's 8 homes - the one with "remote control window coverings" - is now up for sale.) Knowing even less than Ted Stevens ("series of tubes") or George W. Bush (who "clicks around" on "the Google"), John McCain nonetheless offered the Internet as the answer for Americans struggling to make ends meet.

UPDATE: On June 23rd, McCain campaign aide Mark Soohoo reassured American voters that "You don't actually have to use a computer to understand how it shapes the country" and that "John McCain is aware of the Internet."

John McCain's campaign launched a new effort this week to whitewash his calamitous record of egregious errors and flawed forecasts when it comes to Iraq. As ThinkProgress reported, the McCain web site has unveiled a very elegant - and very selective - new timeline highlighting John McCain's "judgment" on Iraq. Hoping that voters will forget his disastrous predictions throughout 2002 and 2003 in the run-up to the war, the McCain timeline unsurprisingly starts in August 2003. Unfortunately, a timely Los Angeles Times interview with the infamous "Curveball" will remind Americans just how wrong John McCain has been about Iraq from the very beginning.

As the LA Times recounts, Rafid Ahmed Alwan, aka Curveball, played an essential role in the Bush administration's justification for war with Iraq. Despite warnings from CIA officials such as Tyler Drumheller that claims from Curveball were unreliable and unbelievable, the German intelligence asset's tall tales became a foundation for the White House's rationale for war:

President Bush declared in his State of the Union address in January 2003 that "we know" that Iraq built mobile germ factories. Then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell highlighted Alwan's supposed "eyewitness" account to the U.N. Security Council when he pressed the case for war.

Among those taken in was John McCain, who bought in to the WMD horror stories lock, stock and two-smoking barrels. In October 2002, McCain took to the Senate floor to sound the alarm about Saddam's weapons:

"He has developed stocks of germs and toxins in sufficient quantities to kill the entire population of the Earth multiple times. He's placed weapons laden with these poisons on alert to fire at his neighbors within minutes, not hours, and has devolved military authority to fire them to subordinates. He develops nuclear weapons, with which he would hold his neighbors and us hostage."

On February 13, 2003, McCain again showed his "judgment" on Iraq, declaring:

"Proponents of containment claim that Iraq is in a 'box.' But it is a box with no lid, no bottom, and whose sides are falling out. Within this box are definitive footprints of germ, chemical and nuclear programs."

McCain's confidence was unshaken into June 2003, when he said, "I remain confident that we will find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq." Alas, as the Los Angeles Times noted today:

In October 2004, more than a year after the invasion, a CIA-led investigation concluded that Baghdad had abandoned all chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs after the 1991 Persian Gulf War. The germ trucks never existed.

What the LA Times' interview of and investigation into Alwan also reveals is just what a pathetically awful fabulist Curveball was:

He claimed, for example, that the son of his former boss, Basil Latif, secretly headed a vast weapons of mass destruction procurement and smuggling scheme from England. British investigators found, however, that Latif's son was a 16-year-old exchange student, not a criminal mastermind.

His one-time supervisor Hilal Freah, a British-trained engineer and friend of Alwan's mother, recounted Curveball's duplicity:

"Rafid told five or 10 stories every day," Freah said in an interview. "I'd ask, 'Where have you been?' And he'd say, 'I had a problem with my car.' Or, 'My family was sick.' But I knew he was lying."

He had a gift for it and "was not embarrassed when caught in a lie," Freah said.

At the Djerf al Nadaf warehouse, laborers treated seeds from local farmers with fungicides to prevent mold and rot. But Alwan convinced his BND [German intelligence] handlers that the site's corn-filled sheds were part of Iraq's secret germ weapons program. He worked there, he told them, until 1998, when an unreported biological accident occurred.

In fact, Alwan had been dismissed three years earlier, in 1995, after inflating expenses and faking receipts for tools, supplies and lamb for a party.

"I fired him," Freah said. "He was corrupt and he was found stealing."

For his part, Rafid Ahmed Alwan alias Curveball is unrepentant about his record when it comes to his role in enabling the war in Iraq. Rather than scorn, he claims, he deserves to rewarded and respected:

"Everything I said was true. And everything that's been written about me is wrong. It's all wrong. The main thing is, I'm an honest man"

"For what I've done, I should be treated like a king."

Which sounds a lot like John McCain.

In case there was any doubt that former Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson is now performing the same role for the Republican Party on the Washington Post opinion pages, today's column should put it to rest. Labeling former comedian turned Minnesota Senate candidate Al Franken a "vulgarian," Gerson proclaimed the Democrat's satirical writing of the past the "Federalist Papers of lifestyle liberalism." As it turns out, Gerson not only has no sense of humor, he has no sense of balance: the legion of Republican vulgarians whose stench still taints Washington needless to say go unmentioned.

No doubt, Franken the comedian could talk - and write - some trash. (That said, Franken's performance during my 2005 interview of him was 2005 was strictly PG.) In his quest to aide the puerile Norm Coleman (a vulgar man who tastelessly declared of his late predecessor, "I am a 99 percent improvement over Paul Wellstone"), Gerson blasted Franken for off-color material past. A satirical 2000 piece titled "Porn O Rama" especially drew Gerson's ire:

"Porn-O-Rama!" is a modern campaign document every voter should read -- the Federalist Papers of lifestyle liberalism. It has the literary sensibilities and moral seriousness of an awkward adolescent nerd publishing an underground newspaper to shock his way into campus popularity. But, in this case, the article was written in 2000 by a 48-year-old man.

Of course, if Michael Gerson is worried about the "moral seriousness" of an "awkward adolescent," he should start with his former boss and current occupant of the oval office. Candidate George W. Bush, after all, called a New York Times reporter a "major league a**hole." (His vice president concurred "big time" and for good measure later told a United States Senator to "go f**k" himself on the floor of the Senate.) President Bush's own sensibilities include a grotesque nonchalance when it comes to matters of life and death, war and peace, as his "dead or alive," "bring 'em on," "I'm a little envious" and "kick ass" tough talk demonstrates.

Then there is John McCain, whose politics Gerson lauds as an example of "civility and generosity that challenge selfishness and prejudice." Last November, McCain laughed when a support asked him about running against Hillary Clinton, "how do we beat the bitch?" And in 1998, the paragon of virtue joked at a Senate GOP fundraiser:

"Why is Chelsea Clinton so ugly? Because her father is Janet Reno."

That same John McCain also dropped the F-bomb on his Republican allies John Cornyn (R-TX) and Chuck Grassley (R-IA). He also called his fellow GOP Senator Pete Domenici (R-NM) an "a**hole." In 2006, McCain came to blows with his now-indicted Arizona colleague Rep. Rick Renzi, who objected to Mr. Straight Talk taunting him as "boy." In 1995, McCain had a "scuffle" on the Senate floor with then-92 year old Strom Thurdmond. And in 1992, McCain in the presence of reporters allegedly called his wife Cindy the c-word. It's no wonder that Mitt Romney, the man who would clearly love to be McCain's running mate, in January published a list of the future GOP nominee's top 10 moments of adolescent fury.

McCain has had plenty of company when it comes to Republican vulgarians in Congress. Mark Foley's pursuit of underage House pages, a long running scandal his GOP colleagues Dennis Hastert (R-IL) and Tom Reynolds (R-NY) helped conceal, helped cost the Republicans control of Congress in 2006. Clinton inquisitor, family values crusader and Louisiana Senator