During the Democratic Convention, the desperately seeking second Mitt Romney has been John McCain's faithful attack dog. On Tuesday, Romney announced that John McCain had "earned" his too-many-to-remember houses with his "hard work," while playing the false Rezko card against Barack Obama. On Wednesday, Romney upped the ante, suggesting that McCain's multiple mansions were reasonable compensation for "being homeless for five years." But as it turns out, back in January Mitt Romney sounded a lot more like Democrats Harry Reid, Barbara Boxer and Dick Durbin in warning Americans that John McCain's dangerously out-of-control temper made him unfit for office.

Romney's top 10 list includes 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).

During his first president run back in 1999, John McCain tried to defuse the growing concerns over his hot temper, insisting, "Do I insult anybody or fly off the handle or anything like that? No, I don't." But when the Washington Post in April detailed, John McCain's legendary temper, pundits, politicians and armchair psychologists alike weighed in on the Arizona Senator's litany of f-bombs, fisticuffs and frothing. But while McCain spokesman Mark Salter called the Washington Post piece "99% fiction," one national Republican leader had already taken great pains to back up its account.

That would be John McCain's would-be running mate, Mitt Romney.

UPDATE: On the VP rumor front, Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty is said to be clearing his schedule, while security is being stepped up around Mitt Romney's family. His past attacks aside, Mitt's mansions and the Romney riches could be a powerful argument against putting him on the ticket.

That's the word from the architect of John McCain's health care proposals, John Goodman. No one in the United States is uninsured, Goodman, pronounced, because Americans have access to emergency room care. As the Dallas Morning News reported:

Mr. Goodman, who helped craft Sen. John McCain's health care policy, said anyone with access to an emergency room effectively has insurance, albeit the government acts as the payer of last resort. (Hospital emergency rooms by law cannot turn away a patient in need of immediate care.)

"So I have a solution. And it will cost not one thin dime," Mr. Goodman said. "The next president of the United States should sign an executive order requiring the Census Bureau to cease and desist from describing any American - even illegal aliens - as uninsured. Instead, the bureau should categorize people according to the likely source of payment should they need care. So, there you have it. Voila! Problem solved."

For a candidate who diagnosed the economic downturn as "psychological", the semantic solution to the crisis in medical coverage is unsurprising. And to be sure, with its GOP "Emergency Room" health care plan, the McCain campaign is just following in the footsteps of Republicans deniers George W. Bush and Tom Delay.

During a July 2007 visit to Cleveland, President Bush unveiled his emergency room cure for the ills of the U.S. health care system. Rejecting the expansion of the successful - and even more popular - State Children's Health Insurance Program (S-CHIP), Bush assured Americans that there was no crisis in medical coverage:

"I mean, people have access to health care in America. After all, you just go to an emergency room."

In November, indicted former House majority leader Tom Delay took Bush's health care clown show overseas. Speaking in the UK, Delay announced:

"By the way, there's no one denied health care in America. There are 47 million people who don't have health insurance, but no American is denied health care in America."

But while his comments were greeted in England (as the AP reported) with "derisive laughter," no one was chuckling back home.

As it turns out, of course, millions more Americans are denied - or are forced to deny themselves - health care each year. Just days after Delay spoke, a new report from the Economic Policy Institute showed a dramatic decline in employer-provided health care. That drop-off from 64.2% of Americans covered through workplace insurance in 2000 to just 59.7% in 2007 added 2.3 million more people to those without coverage. And in June, a devastating new assessment from the Commonwealth Fund showed fully 25 million Americans are now "underinsured," a staggering 60 percent jump since 2003. All in all, 42% of the people in the United States under age 65 have insufficient insurance - or simply none at all.

(As it turns out, the recent dip in the number of uninsured to 45.7 million is due almost exclusively to expanded state and federal government insurance programs, including Medicare, Medicaid and SCHIP. Of course, John McCain joined President Bush in opposing the expansion of the popular program providing coverage for children.)

And to be sure, America's overflowing emergency rooms do not have the capacity, staffing or funding to be the health care solution of last resort. A 2006 report by the Institute of Medicine revealed that U.S. emergency rooms can barely cope with the volume of patients in the best of circumstances:

The study cited three contributing problems to the rise in emergency room visits: the aging of the baby boomers, the growing number of uninsured and underinsured patients, and the lack of access to primary care physicians.

The report found that 114 million people, including 30 million children, visited emergency rooms in 2003, compared with 90 million visits a decade ago. In that same period, the number of U.S. hospitals decreased by 703, the number of emergency rooms decreased by 425, and the total number of hospital beds dropped by 198,000, mainly because of the trend toward cheaper outpatient care, according to the report.

And that's in the best of times; the forecast for the worst of times is grimmer still. A March 2008 study from the House Oversight and Government Reform showed an American ER system woefully unprepared to handle a "predictable surprise" of a terrorist attack on the scale of the 2004 Madrid bombing:

The results of the survey show that none of the hospitals surveyed in the seven cities had sufficient emergency care capacity to respond to an attack generating the number of casualties that occurred in Madrid. The Level I trauma centers surveyed had no room in their emergency rooms to treat a sudden influx of victims. They had virtually no free intensive care unit beds within their hospital complex. And they did not have enough regular inpatient beds to handle the less severely injured victims. The shortage of capacity was particularly acute in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C.

Particularly acute in Los Angeles, indeed. As CBS reported, security cameras captured the death last year of Edith Isabel Rodriguez in a Los Angeles emergency room lobby, a woman who lay without help on the floor for 45 minutes as hospital personnel passed by.

And the scene was repeated on June 19 in New York, where 49 year old Esmin Green collapsed and died while waiting almost 24 hours in the emergency room of a psychiatric hospital. (The video of the CBS segment is available here.)

Later this summer, John McCain will address the Republican National Convention in Minneapolis. There, he will talk in glowing terms about the McCain health care plan, one virtually identical in its outlines - and dismal shortcomings - as that of President Bush. As Minnesota Public Radio recently detailed, the emergency rooms of Minneapolis and St. Paul are prepared to handle the GOP faithful should they become sick before, during or after McCain's speech.

Then again, in the America of George Bush, John McCain and the Republican Party, no one is denied health care, not even the "whiners." They can always go to the emergency room.

Monday was a miserable day for the Dow, with the market suffering a 242 point drop. But rather than joining "so-called market analysts" in attributing the sell-off to credit market woes, higher oil prices and a fluctuating dollar, the National Review's resident class warrior Larry Kudlow found a predictable villain. Despite the inescapable history that the stock market does better under Democratic presidents than Republican ones, Kudlow blamed the market steep slide on the opening of the Democratic Convention in Denver.

Unsurprisingly, the reliably Republican Kudlow faithfully regurgitated every GOP talking point in laying the Wall Street's woes at the door of the DNC:

"Are the Denver Dems downing the stock market today? The Dow is off 230 points, starting right from the get-go. So-called market analysts are blaming financials and the credit crunch as they always do. But there’s more.

Obama and Biden gave us plenty of class warfare in their Springfield, Ill., get together on Saturday. Tax the rich. Redistribute income and wealth. Go after all those corporate meanies. Trade protection...

...With the Denver Dems strutting their stuff, this could be a bumpy week for stocks. Did anyone say free-market capitalism is the best path to prosperity?"

Of course, as the record shows, the best path to prosperity is to elect Democratic presidents.

The superior performance of Democratic presidents covers virtually the entire spectrum of economic indicators. As Elliott Parker of the University of Nevada, Reno detailed in a 2006 paper, since 1949 Democratic administrations have done better than Republican ones when it comes to unemployment (5.2% to 6.0%), job creation (-.0.4% decrease in unemployment, compared to 0.3% increase), GDP growth rate (4.2% to 2.9%), and even corporate profits as a share of GDP. And to be sure, he found the Dow benefits from Democrats in the White House.

There's no shortage of studies to show that stock market returns are higher under Democratic leadership. (As it turns out, Wall Street's performance is also better when Democrats control Congress.) In 2000, Pedro Santa-Clara and Rossen Valkanov of UCLA's Anderson School of Business concluded that "that the average excess return in the stock market is higher under Democratic than Republican presidents - a difference of 9 percent per year for the value-weighted portfolio and 16 percent for the equal-weighted portfolio." As the New York Times noted of UCLA study in 2003:

"It's not even close. The stock market does far better under Democrats...

...Professors Santa-Clara and Valkanov look at the excess market return - the difference between a broad index of stock prices (basically the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index) and the three-month Treasury bill rate - between 1927 and 1998. The excess return measures how attractive stock investments are compared with completely safe investments like short-term T-bills.

Using this measure, they find that during those 72 years the stock market returned about 11 percent more a year under Democratic presidents and 2 percent more under Republicans - a striking difference."

In 2002, Slate similarly concluded that "Democrats, it turns out, are much better for the stock market than Republicans":

Slate ran the numbers and found that since 1900, Democratic presidents have produced a 12.3 percent annual total return on the S&P 500, but Republicans only an 8 percent return. In 2000, the Stock Trader's Almanac, which slices and dices Wall Street performance figures like baseball stats, came up with nearly the same numbers (13.4 percent versus 8.1 percent) by measuring Dow price appreciation. (Most of the 20th century's bear markets, incidentally, have been Republican bear markets: the Crash of '29, the early '70s oil shock, the '87 correction, and the current stall occurred under GOP presidents.)

According to almanac editor Jeffrey Hirsch, the presidential party figures are among the most significant he's found. If the stock market were random, we'd expect such a result only one-quarter of the time. "I don't know why people are convinced Republicans are good for the stock market," Hirsch says.

Why? Because Republican water carriers like Larry Kudlow continue - with great success - to perpetuate the myth that the regulation-free policies of the GOP that so benefit them personally somehow help the American people overall.

Back in April, CNBC's Kudlow compared the economic downturn to an enema, declaring, "Recessions are therapeutic." Needless to say, Kudlow's "let them eat cake" pronouncement is not true. Then again, neither is his myth that Republicans are better than Democrats for the stock market.

Almost three years after his indictment on conspiracy and money laundering charges, former House Majority Leader Tom Delay may escape prosecution. Thanks to a technicality in Texas' money laundering statute, the man who once compared himself to Jesus may walk out of court, if not on water.

The Austin Statesman reported this morning that the charges against Delay and his two co-conspirators John Colyandro and Jim Ellis "may be dismissed because the 2002 campaign finance case involved checks and not cash." Delay's possible get-out-of-jail free card, the paper reported, may be found in the fine print of the state's 1993 law:

The state's 3rd Court of Appeals on Friday actually upheld the money-laundering indictments against DeLay's two campaign associates, John Colyandro of Austin and Jim Ellis of Washington.

But the ruling contained a silver lining for the trio's lawyers because it concluded that the state's money-laundering statute - written in 1993 to combat illicit drug activity by focusing on the cash in the criminal transactions - did not apply to checks at the time DeLay is accused of laundering corporate money into campaign donations

Should the Texas' courts ultimately rule in his favor, it would mark the second time Delay would be beneficiary of legal technicalities. In December 2005, a Texas judge threw out a charge of conspiracy to violate the election code by making an illegal corporate contribution. That ruling was upheld by an appeals court panel which concluded that timing is indeed everything:

Last summer the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals confirmed the dismissal of a separate indictment against DeLay and his associates on a charge of conspiring to violate the state election code. The court ruled that conspiracy did not apply to election code violations until 2003 - a year after the $190,000 exchange - when the Legislature changed the law.

Delay's indictment arose from his unprecedented - and successful - 2002 scheme to redesign Texas state legislative districts to ensure a Republican majority in the state. Since Texas law forbids corporate contributions to candidates, Delay's co-defendant Colyandro sent $190,000 in checks collected by Texans for a Republican Majority (TRMPAC) to the Republican National Committee. Days later, the RNC then funneled the $190,000 directly back to seven GOP candidates. Ultimately, the gambit worked perfectly, as Delay's new map produced a 21-11 Republican majority in 2004, a sweeping change from the 17-15 Democratic edge previously. (In 2006, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Delay's redistricting dirty work by a 7-2 vote.)

Once again, it's looking like Tom Delay will get away with it. Having left the House of Representatives in disgrace, the pioneer of the Republican "criminalization of politics" defense may yet enjoy a political resurrection. Given his past comparisons to Christ and his insistence that God speaks to him, Tom Delay will no doubt consider that altogether fitting.

No doubt, history will not be kind to George W Bush. And to be sure, Bush is already returning the favor. Apparently stunned by the Russian assault on Georgia, President Bush forgot his invasion of "sovereign" Iraq and declared, "Such an action is unacceptable in the 21st century". As it turns out, John McCain, Condoleezza Rice and Mitt Romney all failed the same test on 21st century history.

While unwilling to acknowledge that he had misread Vladimir Putin's soul back in 2001, President Bush on August 11th issued a tough statement about Moscow's massive retaliation against Tbilisi:

"It now appears that an effort may be underway to depose Russia's duly elected government. Russia has invaded a sovereign neighboring state and threatens a democratic government elected by its people. Such an action is unacceptable in the 21st century."

While Bush misspoke in describing "Russia's duly elected government," his point about a nation threatening a democracy was a none-too-thinly veiled effort to distinguish Moscow's invasion of Georgia from his own in Iraq.

For her part, Secretary of State Condi Rice didn't even bother with that feeble distinction. Rice, who in a replay of her pre-9/11 failure apparently missed the memo "Putin Determined to Strike in Georgia," also selectively edited the Iraq war out of the 21st century. On August 18th, she said:

"But I just want to emphasize again, Russia is a state that is unfortunately using the one tool that it has always used, that will make it - that - when it wishes to deliver a message, and that's its military power. That's not the way to deal in the 21st century."

Bush's would-be successor John McCain, too, got it wrong. On August 13th, McCain as part of his effort to capitalize on the Georgia crisis pronounced:

"In the 21st century, nations don't invade other nations."

That's McCain's selective amnesia would extend to the Iraq war is unsurprising. He wasn't merely wrong at almost every turn in the run-up to and the occupation of Iraq, he also happened to be one the war's biggest cheerleaders. Quick to cite the September 2001 anthrax attacks as a potential pretext to attack Saddam, in January 2002 McCain simply exhorted Americans, "next up, Baghdad!"

Then there's Mitt Romney. Rumored to top John McCain's list of potential running mates, Romney told right-wing radio host Hugh Hewitt that Russia's assault on Georgia should cost it the 2014 Olympic Games:

"Well, Hugh, my own view is as the Caucuses are a hot spot, and as Russians have shown their willingness to act militarily against a sovereign nation, that the International Olympic Committee ought to revisit locating the Games elsewhere."

(Romney's willingness to parrot John McCain's talking points as part of his transparent effort to join the ticket borders on the comic. When Romney endorsed the Arizona Senator in February, he signaled his desire to follow John McCain follow Osama Bin Laden to the "gates of hell.")

With the leading lights of the Republican Party having failed 21st Century History 101, the task was left to the ever-excreable Dick Morris to explain it away on Fox News. Appearing on Hannity and Colmes, Morris comically argued that the American invasion of Saddam Hussein's Iraq came at the request of a democratically-elected government in Baghdad. Attacking Barack Obama's self-evident message to the Russians that "it helps if we are leading by example," Morris argued:

"Where he's wrong is that we went into Iraq at the invitation of the government, not as an invasion."

"We're in Iraq as the result of a democracy asking for us to come in there. It's not an invasion."

And so it goes. The best and brightest of the GOP fundamentally misrepresent recent history, yet theirs is labeled the party of national security. And John McCain, the man who repeatedly failed the commander-in-chief test on Iraq, gets glowing grades from the media just the same.

Mitt's Mansions. To be sure, Mitt Romney may not have as many houses as John McCain, but he does have more money. The son of auto magnate George Romney, the former Massachusetts governor is worth an estimated $500 million. His stable of homes includes his tony Belmont, Massachusetts estate in addition to "two vacation homes, a lake house in New Hampshire and a ski house outside Park City, Utah." (Mitt's declaration of his Utah property as his primary residence almost disqualified him from his 2002 gubernatorial run in Massachusetts; the crisis was resolved when he paid Utah back the $54,000 his earlier claim had saved him.)

Mitt's Illegal Immigrant Workers. During the Republican primaries, Romney's tough talk on immigration was undermined by the presence of illegal aliens working at his home. As the Boston Globe reported in December 2006, Romney hired a landscaping firm that routinely utilized illegal alien workers to tend to his 2-1/2 acre family residence just outside of Boston. The firm also tended to the grounds of his one of his five sons, Taggart. The Globe team interviewed four undocumented workers in Guatemala who confirmed that Romney never asked for them or their employer to produce immigration papers. Confronted by Globe reporters at the Republican Governors Association conference in Miami, Romney simply said, "aw geez," and walked away. Given John McCain's own confused position on illegal immigration, the addition of Romney to the ticket would only further cloud the issue.

His Sons Serve America By Serving Mitt. The image of the Romney clan doesn't merely communicate "idle rich," it represents incarnate a rejection of John McCain's supposed "Country First" campaign theme. In Iowa in August 2007, Romney answered a question about why none of his five sons were serving in Iraq by responding that they served America by serving him:

"My sons are all adults and they've made decisions about their careers and they've chosen not to serve in the military and active duty and I respect their decision in that regard. One of the ways my sons are showing support for our nation is helping me get elected because they think I'd be a great president."

As for Mitt's own military service, he avoided duty in the rice fields of Vietnam while performing his Mormon mission outside Paris.

Swallowing $45 Million in Campaign Loans. Speaking of Mitt's sons, a large part of their massive inheritance has already been spent. In a sign of both his immense wealth and his desperation to be John McCain's running mate, Mitt Romney in July decided against recouping the staggering $45 million he personally loaned his own campaign. While that frees Mitt to raise money for McCain and McCain alone, voters can only wonder in amazement what they might have with that $45 million.

Downsizing Workers in Indiana. Romney would also be a liability for John McCain in the hard-fought but usually Republican state to Indiana. Romney's ostentatious wealth is one thing, but his 1990's business deals that drove layoffs in the Hoosier State is something else. The tale of SCM, a northern Indiana-based stationery company purchased by Ampad, a firm owned by Romney and a group of investors, came to dominate his failed 1994 campaign against Ted Kennedy:

Management has shed 41 of 265 blue-collar jobs, cut wages, tripled some workers' health insurance payments, abolished most of their seniority rights and junked the prior management's union contract, which had two years to run.

Losing the Dog Vote. There are roughly 60 million dogs in the United States and their owners will be none too happy with Mitt Romney. Even Fox News' Chris Wallace took Mitt to task for taking family vacations with his Irish Setter Seamus in a kennel tied to the roof of his car. After an incredulous Wallace said of his own Yellow Lab, "I would no sooner put him in a kennel on the roof of my car than I would one of my children," Romney claimed ignorance of the Massachusetts law he had violated with his penchant for rooftop canine waterboarding.

Romney's Mac Attack. During the GOP primaries, the man who would be John McCain's running mate decried "the McCain way" of uncontrolled fury towards friends and foes alike. 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 an April Washington Post 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.

Still, the buzz continues around the choice of Mitt Romney as John McCain's #2. But more than the fact that the two men hate each other, Romney's own gin-and-tonic sipping lifestyle is exactly what John McCain doesn't need right now. With his pledge to expand the GOP to "Sam's Club, not just the country club," Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty must be looking pretty good right now.

Sometimes, a single gaffe - real or imagined - comes to symbolize an entire presidential campaign. With Americans struggling as unemployment topped 7% in 1992, President George H.W. Bush saw his reelection prospects dimmed by his reported amazement at a simple grocery store checkout scanner. But while Bush 41's defining out-of-touch moment may be the stuff of political mythology, John McCain's stunning ignorance about how many homes he owns may soon come to define his run for the White House.

To be sure, the $100 million man did not endear himself this week to Americans under siege from high gas prices, skyrocketing home foreclosures and rising unemployment. Having defined Saturday the line between middle class and rich at $5 million, John McCain then declared Wednesday "I define rich in other ways besides income." But in the course of that same interview with the Politico, McCain made what could be a momentum-stopping misstep:

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said in an interview Wednesday that he was uncertain how many houses he and his wife, Cindy, own.

"I think - I'll have my staff get to you," McCain told Politico in Las Cruces, N.M. "It's condominiums where - I'll have them get to you."

The impact of idle rich presidential candidates appearing oblivious to the hardships of working Americans can't be understated. On February 5th, 1992, the New York Times reported on George H.W. Bush's scanner snafu in a piece titled, "Bush Encounters the Supermarket, Amazed." Attending the National Grocer's Association convention in Orlando, Bush was impressed:

"If some guy came in and spelled George Bush differently, could you catch it?" the President asked. "Yes," he was told, and he shook his head in wonder.

Then he grabbed a quart of milk, a light bulb and a bag of candy and ran them over an electronic scanner. The look of wonder flickered across his face again as he saw the item and price registered on the cash register screen.

"This is for checking out?" asked Mr. Bush. "I just took a tour through the exhibits here," he told the grocers later. "Amazed by some of the technology."

For days, the White House protested that President Bush has seen such scanners "many times" and, as the Times reported on February 13th, 1992, "that he was impressed by a new generation of high-technology devices and not the type most people see every time they go to the supermarket." But the damage was already done. Reviewing the videotape, the Times concluded "Mr. Bush seemed unfamiliar with even basic scanner technology." And the image of the aloof, gin-and-tonic sipping, anyone-for-tennis Bush 41 came to define his failed reelection effort.

Two weeks ago, blogger Brendan Nyhan criticized the Los Angeles Time and the New York Times for perpetuating a myth about Bush the Elder and the dreaded scanner. "The Times," he argued, "had not been at the event in question but instead based its story on a pool report, which indicated that Bush was impressed by new scanner technology that could weigh groceries and read damaged bar codes." So when the New York Times on August 3, 2008 mocked the computer illiterate John McCain as "the analog candidate," Nyhan insists its comparison below to Poppy was unfair:

"Mr. McCain's sense of wonder evoked the episode in the early 1990s when George H. W. Bush became overly impressed upon seeing a price scanner at a supermarket check-out counter. It suggested to some people that the president, who had spent four years in the White House after spending eight years as vice president, was out of touch with the lives of average Americans."

But whatever happened in 1992, there can be no question about John McCain's shocking disconnect from the lives of real Americans. While he can't keep track of the 7, 8 or even 10 homes he owns, millions of Americans are struggling to hold onto the one they know they have - for now.

UPDATE: Marc Ambinder asks the question, "McCain Is To Houses What GWBH Was To Grocery Store Scanners?"

In Ohio, Bob Ney was released after serving 18 months of his two and a half year term for public corruption. (Ney's time was trimmed by a year after he pulled a "full Foley" and entered an alcohol rehabilitation program.) In November 2006, Ney pleaded guilty to conspiracy and making false statements after receiving gifts and golf trips in exchange for favors for Abramoff clients. In February of this year, Ney was moved to the halfway house to serve out the rest of his time.

But while John McCain certainly had no role in Ney's wrongdoing, his attendance at the Reed fundraiser on August 18th is a self-inflicted wound. In June 2006, Indian Affairs Committee then chaired by Senator McCain issued a report detailing $5.3 million in payments Reed garnered from Abramoff's Indian casino clients. Amazingly, McCain never called Reed to testify, despite the Committee's conclusions that Reed had in essence laundered money for Abramoff while working both sides of the casino issue. As the New York Times noted:

In many cases, the report found, payments to Mr. Reed were handled through third parties in what appeared to be an effort to disguise the fact that the money was from tribes with large casino operations.

The report quoted a tribe leader from Louisiana as saying he was told to keep quiet about Mr. Reed because "he's Christian Coalition - it wouldn't look good if they're receiving money from a casino-operating tribe to oppose gambling."

Ultimately, that appearance of impropriety doomed Ralph Reed's political career among the very Christian conservatives he once championed. Reed's defeat in the 2006 race for Georgia's Lt. Governor can be explained by Phil Dacosta, a Georgia Christian Coalition member and former Reed backer:

"After reading the e-mail, it became pretty obvious he was putting money before God. We are righteously casting him out."

Far from casting him out, John McCain is joining Ralph Reed and the moneychangers in Atlanta on Monday. But while McCain has boasted of leading the Abramoff investigation, on the 18th he'll stand with Reed, a man who once asked Jack Abramoff to help him start "humping in corporate accounts."

Yesterday, John McCain unveiled a disingenuous new ad touting himself as the "Original Maverick." Designed to distance himself from President Bush, the spot portrays McCain as a rebel battling the special interests in his own party. Of course, during the Republican primaries McCain was telling a much different story. Then, the original Maverick was a "True Conservative."

McCain's tack to the hard right during the GOP primaries reached its apogee in his ad titled, "True Conservative." In that spot (video here), McCain portrayed himself as reliably well to the right, even on social issues:

Announcer: As a prisoner of war, John McCain was inspired by Ronald Reagan.

Mr. McCain: I enlisted as a foot soldier in the Reagan revolution.

Announcer: Guided by strong conservative principles, he'll cut wasteful spending and keep taxes low. A proud social conservative who will never waver. The leadership and experience to call for the surge strategy in Iraq that is working. John McCain: The true conservative. Ready to be commander-in-chief on Day One.

It's no wonder McCain in February announced:

"I would be proud to have President Bush campaign with me and support me in any way that he feels is appropriate. And I would appreciate it."

Alas, that was then, this is now. (Which might explain why the video for "True Conservative" is no longer featured at the McCain web site's multimedia archives. Interestingly, clicking on the YouTube video in the New York Times February 1, 2008 article about the ad produces the error message, "We're sorry, This video is no longer available.")

The GOP nomination won, John McCain began his frantic scramble back toward to the political center and away from George W. Bush and the festering carcass of the Republican Party. His senior adviser Charlie Black gave a hint of centrist things to come with his laughable pronouncement last month that his man was "slight right of center."

Which brings us to McCain's new ad unveiled yesterday, titled "Broken." Gone is any talk of loyalty to the ideals of the Republican Party. And to be sure, McCain's past praise for the "great progress economically" of the Bush years is also conveniently forgotten.

ANNOUNCER: Washington's broken. John McCain knows it. We're worse off than we were four years ago.

Only McCain has taken on big tobacco, drug companies, fought corruption in both parties. He'll reform Wall Street, battle Big Oil, make America prosper again.

He's the original maverick.

One is ready to lead -- McCain.

Today, the multimillionaire husband of a beer heiress rolled out another ad, this time snarkily asking about Barack Obama, "Is the biggest celebrity in the world ready to help your family?" For his part, John McCain is offering a tax plan that would help his own family to the tune of over $370,000 a year.

So the question remains, which John McCain is running for President? The "true conservative" or the populist maverick? Or to harken back to the old TV game show, What's My Line, will the real John McCain please stand up?

The leading lights of the Republican Party like to endlessly badmouth trial lawyers. Endlessly, that is, until they need one. Former Mississippi Senator Trent Lott is no exception.

Back in 2004, Lott ridiculed John Edwards, saying of John Kerry's running mate, "He's a charming guy who was a suing lawyer -- that's S-U-I-N-G lawyer." But when his own house was demolished by Hurricane Katrina three years ago, Lott was only too happy sue State Farm Insurance to pay for it. And as it turns out, Trent Lott may soon need a different kind of lawyer - a criminal defense attorney - for his own shady role in the case.

First, little history. On September 2, 2005, President Bush arrived in the Gulf Coast to belatedly assess the devastation from Katrina first-hand. If nothing else, Bush promised, Lott's beach-front home in Pascagoula would be rebuilt:

"The good news is -- and it's hard for some to see it now -- that out of this chaos is going to come a fantastic Gulf Coast, like it was before. Out of the rubbles of Trent Lott's house -- he's lost his entire house -- there's going to be a fantastic house. And I'm looking forward to sitting on the porch."

But as Lott and thousands of other Mississippi residents soon learned, State Farm Insurance had other ideas when it came to the implications of wind versus water damage in its homeowners' policies. In December 2005, Lott represented by his brother-in-law Richard "Dickie" Scruggs, filed a federal lawsuit against State Farm to force the insurance giant to pay for the flood damage.

Three years later, Trent Lott is in some hot water of his own. As ThinkProgress reported, State Farm lawyer Jim Robie alleged that Lott "urged witness to give false information" in the case. In an interview in LegalNewsLine, Robie claimed Lott "initiated contact with people surrounding this case" in a scheme with Richard and his son Zach Scruggs to defraud the insurance company:

According to court records, Robie asked [Zach] Scruggs, "Has it been your custom and habit in prosecuting litigation to have Senator Lott contact and encourage witnesses to give false information?'"

In response, Scruggs invoked his Fifth Amendment right not to comment.

"Clearly, the record couldn't be more plain that Sen. Lott and his associates were talking to people that were key advisers to Mr. Scruggs, paid consultants and those who were creating an illusion that simply doesn't have any basic fact," Robie told Legal Newsline on Thursday...

"Have you ever had a U.S. Senator call you?" he asked rhetorically.

Robie declared that he would take depositions from Dickie and Zach Scruggs, testimony "which will now have to take place in a federal penitentiary." That odd location is the result of the Scruggs' earlier conviction in a case in which they tried to bribe Judge Bobby DeLaughter. The supposed enticement to DeLaughter wasn't cash, but a spot on the federal bench which a certain Mississippi Senator could help facilitate. For his part, as The New Yorker reported in May, Lott "denies any wrong-doing" and "says that he customarily made calls regarding potential federal judgeships and never recommended DeLaughter."

State Farm's Robie promises to continue to probe the influence of Lott in the battle between the insurance company and its policyholders. As for Lott, it turns out the Senator-turned-lobbyist is quite fond of "S-U-I-N-G" lawyers like Dickie Scruggs after all. And that's a good thing; he may yet join him in prison.

Republican presidential nominee John McCain is fond of claiming, "I know how to win wars." Apparently, he also has ideas about how to start them. In the fall of 2001, McCain suggested the recent anthrax attacks that so terrified Americans might be a perfect pretext for war with Iraq.

That revelation comes via ThinkProgress in the wake of this morning's revelations about the suicide of Bruce Ivins, the Fort Detrick biodefense researcher about to be indicted for the 2001 attacks. As it turns out, McCain like other conservatives was quick - and only too happy - to point the finger at Saddam Hussein. Appearing on the David Letterman show on October 18, 2001, McCain suggested that the anthrax attacks augured a "second phase" in the war on terror, this time against Baghdad:

LETTERMAN: How are things going in Afghanistan now?

MCCAIN: I think we're doing fine...I think we'll do fine. The second phase - if I could just make one, very quickly - the second phase is Iraq. There is some indication, and I don't have the conclusions, but some of this anthrax may - and I emphasize may - have come from Iraq.

LETTERMAN: Oh is that right?

MCCAIN: If that should be the case, that's when some tough decisions are gonna have to be made.

Whether or not Ivins was guilty of the allegations remains to be seen and may never be known. But thanks in part to spurious government leaks abetted by media outlets like ABC, John McCain and his allies in the Bush administration looked to that mysterious white powder as magic pixie dust for starting a war with Iraq seven years ago.

The timing of McCain's 2001 jaw-dropping attempt to manufacture a casus belli with Baghdad couldn't be more ironic. Only yesterday, ThinkProgress detailed Seymour Hersh's assertion that Vice President Cheney hoped to start a shooting war with Tehran by deploying bogus Iranian PT boats manned by Navy SEALS who would in turn trigger an incident in the Persian Gulf. And Kevin Drum reminded us, British memos revealed that in January 2003 President Bush proposed disguising U.S. aircraft flying over Iraq in UN colors to lure Saddam to fire on them.

As I noted earlier this week, John McCain's record on Iraq disqualifies him using the very commander-in-chief test he touts. Now we can add ham-handed efforts to gin up a conflict with Saddam over the 2001 anthrax attacks to list of reasons why John McCain must never occupy the White House.

Which is exactly the road John McCain is traveling in his quest for the White House. On Wednesday, his campaign ridiculed Obama as a "celebrity" in a spot featuring Britney Spears and Paris Hilton. (In a redux of the 2006 "Call Me" ad which helped defeat Harold Ford in Tennessee, the clip's association of Obama with the two white women let McCain play the race card.) It's no wonder long-time McCain adviser John Weaver called the ad "childish," a part of a negative strategy which he claimed "diminishes John McCain." With friends like that, who needs enemies?

And that was just Wednesday afternoon. That morning, the Washington Post, the New York Times and the Politico all blasted the McCain camp over its blatant lie that Barack Obama skipped a visit to U.S. troops in Germany because "the Pentagon wouldn't allow him to bring cameras." Even NBC's Andrea Mitchell (a.k.a. Mrs. Alan Greenspan), who happened to have been with Obama in Europe, protested that the McCain ad was "literally not true."

The New York Times, which endorsed John McCain during the Empire State primary, showed buyer's remorse on Wednesday morning. In an editorial simply titled "Low Road Express," the Times denounced McCain's puerile politics. Pointing the finger at the "low-minded and uncivil playbook" adopted from Karl Rove, the editorial criticized McCain's slash and burn strategy:

"In recent weeks, Mr. McCain has been waving the flag of fear (Senator Barack Obama wants to "lose" in Iraq), and issuing attacks that are sophomoric (suggesting that Mr. Obama is a socialist) and false (the presumptive Democratic nominee turned his back on wounded soldiers).

Mr. McCain used to pride himself on being above this ugly brand of politics, which killed his own 2000 presidential bid."

The New York Times is surely correct that John McCain, of all people, knows about being on the receiving end of "this ugly brand of politics." As I've documented before, McCain in the wake of his surprise victory in the 2000 New Hampshire primary was brutalized by the campaign of George W. Bush. The character assassinations, smears and lies the Bush camp dished out in South Carolina included push polls implying McCain was anti-Catholic, his wife Cindy a drug addict, and that he had fathered an illegitimate black child with a prostitute. And all of these slurs came as candidate Bush chastised McCain that he couldn't "take the high horse and then claim the low road."

In January 2000, the future President Bush confided in a friend about John McCain:

"There's a reason all those colleagues of his in the Senate support me and not him. They think he's sanctimonious, and they're right."

As it turns out, George W. Bush, a man who was wrong about virtually everything else, was right about John McCain. And myriad other Republicans, including several Senate colleagues and even VP hopeful Mitt Romney, agree. Hopefully, it's not too late for the American people to learn the truth about the ever-sanctimonious and increasingly dirty-dealing John McCain.

UPDATE: As the New York Times reported on Thusday, McCain has learned from the master and is now trying to ''create a negative narrative about Barack Obama is being coordinated by veterans of President Bush's 2004 bid."

In the wake of Phil Gramm's disastrous "whiners" remarks three weeks ago, John McCain claimed his close friend and key economic adviser "does not speak for me - I speak for me." Sadly for Mr. Straight Talk, Gramm that very day was in New York meeting with the Wall Street Journal editorial board to explain McCain's economic policies. Now, as it turns out, on issues from the economy and foreign policy to a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq, John McCain doesn't speak for John McCain.

That was the clear message from Douglas-Holtz Eakin, the Republican nominee's chief economic adviser. After a study this week from the Tax Policy Center (TPC) showed McCain's public promises would add an additional $2.8 trillion to the sea of red ink already entailed by what his campaign has laid out privately, Holtz-Eakin in essence suggested that what John McCain says simply can't believed. As Slate noted:

Douglas Holtz-Eakin, McCain's chief economic adviser, says the numbers he provided to the TPC aren't secret - they're the same ones he provides to anyone who asks. He also disputes the way the study takes suggestions McCain has made on the stump out of context. "This is parsing words out of campaign appearances to an unreasonable degree," Holtz-Eakin said. "He has certainly I'm sure said things in town halls" that don't jibe perfectly with his written plan. But that doesn't mean it's official.

This isn't the first time that Holtz-Eakin has advised that John McCain's words should be taken with a very large grain of salt. On multiple occasions dating back to 2005, for example, McCain admitted his own feeble grasp of economics. In December 2007, McCain acknowledged, "The issue of economics is not something I've understood as well as I should." Two years earlier, he said, "I still need to be educated.

As it turns out, Holtz-Eakin assured voters in March, McCain's dismal understanding of the dismal science is just another example of the famous McCain humor at work:

"He has this wonderful self-deprecating sense of humor and out of his months comes things sometimes like 'yeah, I'm not that good on the economy' in an effort to make a small joke."

McCain's word similarly "cannot be trusted" when it comes to foreign policy. Last November, McCain penned an article in Foreign Affairs in which he announced his intent to expel Russia from the G8. In a March 26th speech, he made his plan crystal clear:

"We should start by ensuring that the G-8, the group of eight highly industrialized states, becomes again a club of leading market democracies: it should include Brazil and India but exclude Russia."

But facing almost universal condemnation from foreign policy analysts who characterized booting Russia from the G8 as logistically impossible and just plain "dumb," the McCain campaign quickly disowned it. On June 25th, Reuters reported that an anonymous McCain adviser claimed the policy towards Russia was no longer operative:

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."

Yet one month later, John McCain was back on the trail, calling once again for Moscow to get the heave-ho. Appearing today on ABC This Week with George Stephanopolous, McCain insisted it was back on:

STEPHANOPOULOS: Let me ask you about your position to exclude Russia from the G-8. How are you going to get that done? Every other G-8 nation is against it.

MCCAIN: Well, you have to take positions whether other nations agree or not, because you have to do what's best for America...

Sometimes it is John McCain himself who makes clear that John McCain doesn't speak for John McCain. On Meet the Press in January with the late Tim Russert, it was McCain who insisted "I don't know where you got that quote from" when confronted with his 2005 statement about his ignorance of economics. And now, McCain has again said that he didn't say something he said.

This morning, John McCain denied he used the word "timetable" in reference to withdrawing American troops from Iraq. After having previously supported a 100 year U.S. presence in Iraq, McCain in May shortened that to five years. On Friday, facing Prime Minister al-Maliki's endorsement of Barack Obama's proposed 16 month time frame for a U.S. drawdown, McCain acknowledged, "I think it's a pretty good timetable." But just two days later, McCain insisted to George Stephanopolous that those words never crossed his lips:

STEPHANOPOULOS: You shouldn't have used the word timetable.

MCCAIN: I didn't use the word timetable. That I did - if I did...

STEPHANOPOULOS: Well, it's a pretty good timetable.

MCCAIN: Oh, well, look. Anything is a good timetable that is dictated by conditions on the ground. Anything is good.

One month ago, John McCain blasted his opponent, claiming, "You know, this election is about trust, and trusting people's word, and unfortunately apparently on several items, Senator Obama's word cannot be trusted." As it turns out, John McCain's own campaign staff doesn't trust what John McCain says. Apparently, neither does he.

Whether the result of crass political opportunism, transparent deceit or just plain confusion, on at least 7 occasions this week alone, Wrong Way McCain couldn't remember what he stood for, if anything at all.

Equal Pay. As part of his ongoing (and failing) effort to reach out to women voters, McCain on Friday proclaimed:

"I'm committed to making sure that there's equal pay for equal work. That there is equal opportunity in every aspect of our society. And that is my record and you can count on it." (video here)

Unfortunately, as with his bogus claims regarding Hurricane Katrina, McCain's record shows just the reverse. In April, Mr. Straight Talk not only skipped the vote on the Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, but announced he would have opposed the bill because it "opens us up to lawsuits for all kinds of problems." The solution for American women, McCain argued then, isn't to fight pay discrimination, but "education and training."

Football Follies. For 35 years, John McCain has told the tale of duping his Vietnamese captors by giving them the names of the Green Bay Packers instead of other pilots in his squadron. As recently as 2005, McCain confirmed for CNN that the account in his memoir Faith of My Fathers and the A&E biopic based on it was accurate.

But on Friday, McCain offered a made-to-order biographical facelift for a Pittsburgh audience. With Pennsylvania and its 21 electoral votes in play (compared to just 10 in Wisconsin, home of the Packers), McCain's story suddenly honored the hometown team. As he told KDKA-TV (video here):

"When I was first interrogated and really had to give some information because of the physical pressures that were on me, I named the starting lineup -- defensive line -- of the Pittsburgh Steelers as my squadron-mates!"

For its part, the McCain campaign rejected suggestions of a Pittsburgh Pander, instead claiming the episode was an "honest mistake" and that "if bloggers want to make fun of John McCain because he forgot which team he used under torture, that is their right."

Phil Gramm and America's "Mental Recession." Earlier in the week, McCain's "Jobs for America" economy road show went off the rails when his chief adviser and UBS vice chairman Phil Gramm declared the economic downturn a "mental recession" and America a "nation of whiners." But while a defensive McCain insisted at a press conference Thursday, "I strongly disagree," on two different occasions earlier this year McCain, too, deemed the recession "psychological."

In June, McCain declared that his born-again support for offshore drilling would have a "psychological impact that I think is beneficial." And back in April, Sigmund McCain told Fox News host Neil Cavuto that his gas tax holiday placebo was just what the doctor ordered for Americans' fragile psyches, if not their pocketbooks (video here):

"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."

On Thursday, McCain told reporters that Phil Gramm "does not speak for me - I speak for me." That same day, as the Washington Post reported, Phil Gramm was in New York, "where he was meeting with the Wall Street Journal Editorial Board on McCain's economic policies."

First Term Balanced Budget Pledge. McCain's economic woes this week extended to on-again, off-again, on-again promise to balance the federal budget by the end of his first term. After first making the pledge in February to end the red ink by 2013, by April McCain had backed off, claiming "economic conditions are reversed." That same month, his adviser Douglas Holtz-Eakin was targeting 2017, while claiming, "I would like the next president not to talk about deficit reduction."

Alas, on Monday, the commitment that "John McCain will balance the budget by the end of his first term" magically reappeared in his "Jobs for America" document, if not in the abridged statement signed by 300 economists. Luckily (or unluckily) for McCain, no one believes his fuzzy math, anyway. As the New York Times said Sunday of the self-proclaimed "foot soldier" in the Reagan Revolution, "there he goes again."

Insurance Coverage for Contraception. In much the same way McCain fudged his record on equal pay to hoodwink women voters, his surrogate-gone-wild Carly Fiorina on Monday tried to sell a bill of goods when it came to Mr. Straight Talk's opposition to requiring insurance companies which cover Viagra to also pay for birth control.

When a reporter the next day asked his position on the issue, McCain bumbled and stumbled before ultimately claiming he didn't know what it was:

When McCain was asked for his position on the issue, he said - with a nervous laugh - "I certainly do not want to discuss that issue."

The reporter pressed. "But apparently you've voted against -"

"I don't know what I voted," McCain said.

The reporter explained that McCain voted against a bill in 2003 that would have required health insurance companies to cover prescription birth control. "Is that still your position?" she persisted.

During the awkward exchange, with several lengthy pauses, McCain said he had no immediate knowledge of the vote. "I've cast thousands of votes in the Senate," McCain said, then continued: "I will respond to - it's a, it's a..."

(As it turns out, this was hardly McCain's first bout of squeamishness - or amnesia - when it comes to the issues of contraception, abstinence and AIDS.)

Teaching Intelligent Design. As Steve Benen noted last week, McCain's discomfort and confusion regarding evolution and intelligent design is the stuff of legend. "In 2005," Benen wrote, "McCain endorsed intelligent design creationism, a year later he said the opposite, and a few months after that, he was both for and against creationism at the same time."

In an interview with the New York Times on Sunday, John McCain again punted on the issue:

Q: How do you feel about teaching evolution in schools?

Mr. McCain: I think, first of all, it's up to the school boards. That's why we have local control over education. So my personal view is that children should be exposed to as much as they possibly can so that they can make their decisions and be the best informed. But I really believe that school boards are elected in order to make a lot of those decisions, and I respect their decisions unless they are unconstitutional in some way or, you know.

Q: If you were on a school board, how would you vote?

Mr. McCain: I don't know, Adam. I'd have to see the proposal, I'd have to see where it lies in the curriculum, I'd have to - I can't. I'm not running for school board.

Support from Veterans Groups. No area hits closer to home for John McCain than his treatment of - and support from - veterans groups. Having already received credit from President Bush for backing the new GI Bill he opposed, McCain this week mistakenly claimed he enjoyed the backing of all veterans' organizations.

Confronted by a Vietnam veteran at a Denver town hall meeting Monday, McCain insisted (video here):

"I've received every award from every major veteran's organization in America. I received every organization in America their awards...The reason why I have a perfect voting record from organizations like the Veterans of Foreign Wars, the American Legion and all the other veterans service organizations is because of my support of them."

Of course, as ThinkProgress detailed, McCain's record is far from perfect and his support from unanimous among veterans' organizations:

He received a grade of D from the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America and a 20 percent vote rating from the Disabled Veterans of America; Vietnam Veterans of America noted McCain had 'voted against us" in 15 "key votes."

As for the American Legion and the Veterans of Foreign Wars - with whom McCain claims to have a "perfect voting record" - both groups vigorously supported Sen. Jim Webb's (D-VA) GI Bill that McCain tirelessly opposed.

And so it goes. After a disastrous week in which he also called Social Security "an absolute disgrace" and joked about killing Iranians not by bombing them but by using cigarettes of mass destruction, Wrong-Way McCain doesn't know whether he's coming or going. And yet some in the American media can still be trusted to conclude that a week which should have ended his presidential hopes was "won" by John McCain.

In San Diego today, John McCain will make a most unusual pitch to Hispanic voters at the annual convention of the National Council of La Raza. Having performed a complete 360 degree turn on the immigration reform package he once championed, McCain now insists that he's "earned" the trust of Latino voters.

In his remarks, McCain will ask the attendees to join him in a bout of selective amnesia by forgetting his just-in-time abandonment of his own comprehensive immigration bill during the GOP primaries:

"I took my lumps for it without complaint. My campaign was written off as a lost cause. I did so not just because I believed it was the right thing to do for Hispanic Americans. It was the right thing to do for all Americans.

I do ask for your trust that when I say, I remain committed to fair, practical and comprehensive immigration reform, I mean it. I think I have earned that trust."

No doubt, over the past five years, McCain's path on immigration reform has been circuitous, even circular. In 2003, he proclaimed "I think we can set up a program where amnesty is extended to a certain number of people who are eligible." During Senate debate over issue in September 2006, McCain praised his colleagues who "rejected the argument for an 'enforcement first' strategy that focuses on border security only, an ineffective and ill-advised approach."

But after being pummeled by his Republican presidential opponents and conservative primary voters who helped torpedo his Senate immigration reform bill, John McCain in 2007 underwent a conversion on the road to the GOP nomination. As the ultra-right Washington Times noted in January 2008:

The Arizona Republican now says that, in the wake of last summer's defeat of "comprehensive immigration reform," he has "gotten the message" that the border must be secured before the status of illegals already in the United States can be dealt with.

McCain testified to his dramatic turnabout on comprehensive immigration reform during a January 30, 2008 GOP debate. As ThinkProgress recounted, McCain announced he would not vote for his own bill today:

Q: At this point, if your original proposal came to a vote on the Senate floor, would you vote for it? [...]

McCAIN: No, I would not, because we know what the situation is today. The people want the borders secured first.

But with the Republican nomination won and the need to quickly move to the electoral center now a pressing priority, McCain reversed himself yet again. Speaking to the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials in June, McCain pledged that if elected, he would make immigration reform that includes a pathway to citizenship for illegal residents "my top priority." But the confusion and conflicting promises in McCain's tightrope walk on immigration were on display in that same speech:

"Many Americans, with good cause, did not believe us when we said we would secure our borders, and so we failed in our efforts. We must prove to them that we can and will secure our borders first."

To be sure, winning over Hispanic voters will be a tall task for McCain. Thanks to the xenophobic immigrant bashing of the GOP, McCain already trails Barack Obama among Hispanic voters by wide margins ranging from 25% to 34%. (In comparison, John Kerry beat George W. Bush by only 53% to 44% among Latino voters.) No doubt, the initial decision of all of the Republican presidential hopefuls (save John McCain) to skip a September Univision Hispanic presidential forum didn't help matters any. As La Raza's Cecilia Munoz aptly put it:

"It's not just that they are not coming. It's that some of them are visibly insulting us."

As for the conservative base McCain wooed during the Republican primaries, his second immigration U-turn isn't winning him any fans, either. The right-wing blogosphere erupted against McCain's latest Hispanic outreach ad, which one called "monumentally stupid." Referring to McCain's campaign as a "fatally ill patient," right-wing godfather Richard Viguerie said last week that McCain's pandering on issues like immigration "has done little to convince conservatives they should come off the sidelines and fight for him."

Clearly, conservative hard liners don't trust John McCain. And given his gymnastic flip-flops and political opportunism on immigration reform, America's 43 million Hispanic voters shouldn't trust him, either.

In an interview Wednesday with the Washington Times, the UBS vice chairman followed McCain's lead in decrying Americans' imaginary financial woes:

"You've heard of mental depression; this is a mental recession," he said, noting that growth has held up at about 1 percent despite all the publicity over losing jobs to India, China, illegal immigration, housing and credit problems and record oil prices. "We may have a recession; we haven't had one yet."

"We have sort of become a nation of whiners," he said. "You just hear this constant whining, complaining about a loss of competitiveness, America in decline" despite a major export boom that is the primary reason that growth continues in the economy, he said.

Of course, while the flat-lining U.S. GDP numbers suggest the nation is not yet technically in a recession, the 400,000 jobs shed over the past six months and the record home foreclosure rate are not figments of Americans' imaginations.

That Gramm, a purveyor of a financial instrument affectionately known as "death bonds" and seen in many quarters as an architect of the mortgage market meltdown, would be so cavalier is unsurprising. John McCain, on the other hand, despite his 8 homes and wife's $100 million fortune is running for president and has to manufacture at least the facade of compassion.

And yet McCain, too, similarly has claimed the downturn is mental.

But back in April, Sigmund McCain told Fox News host Neil Cavuto that his gas tax holiday 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."

At a town hall meeting in Fresno two weeks ago, McCain touted his born-again support for off-shore drilling as Prozac for the economy. 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."

By now, McCain should have learned his lesson about telling Americans that their financial troubles are just in their minds. Back in April, McCain recanted his April 17 claim that the Bush years had produced "great progress economically." By the next day, he grudgingly admitted "Americans are not better off than they were eight years ago." And while McCain stumbled again Tuesday by telling MSNBC's Joe Scarborough "I imagine we are" in a recession, by later in the day he got his story straight for the Pittsburgh Tribune Review:

Trib: Are we in a recession now in your opinion?

McCain: Of course, I believe that we're in a recession, but the important thing, you know, people sit around the kitchen table at night saying how are we going to make the mortgage payment? They're not saying, hey, you think we're in a recession? Or just, this is an economic dip, you know, what do you think we're - they're saying how are we going to make our payment this month? How are we going to stay in our home? So and so just lost his job. So that really is -- and I don't mean to be disrespectful of your question, I apologize if I was. But I think, yeah, I'd say we're, certainly in the minds of millions and millions of Americans, we are in a quote recession.

Gramm and McCain's distaste for using the word "recession" is understandable, given the Republican Party's prospects in this election year. (And to be sure, the only "R-word" more painful for the GOP to utter right now is "Republican.") So, better to deny the reality of voters' economic hardship and brush it off as all mental.