Open Thread - GOP Meltdown Edition

by Steve Soto

AP photo of the hook-up McCain's camp didn't want the media to see Tuesday in Phoenix

So much news broke late Tuesday that I decided to put the Wednesday Open Thread up early and give you all several things to comment on.

Read what is in Scotty McClellan’s new tell-all, and see how everything we have thought all along was correct about this administration. Sure, he’s trying to sell books, and yes, he’s stabbing his boss in the back. But he didn’t have to come clean either, and yet he did. What does this mean for the Plame case?

Understand that when John McCain tells the middle class he cares about them and the mortgage mess, what he isn’t saying is that his economic policies and his solution for homeowners about to lose their homes was written by Phil Gramm while lobbying for UBS. At a time when congressional Democrats were working on a solution last fall that put homeowners ahead of Wall Street, it was Gramm, as an advisor to McCain, who was blocking such help as a lobbyist for giant overseas bank UBS. Remember that as Gramm was aiding and abetting the housing meltdown that destroyed thousands of American families while a McCain advisor, it was another McCain advisor Joe Lieberman who stopped former SEC chairman Arthur Leavitt from cracking down on Arthur Anderson, which led to Enron’s implosion and the destruction of the California economy several years later.

None of this should be surprising. Despite his rhetoric, McCain has actually been running a revolving door for lobbyists.

McCain’s campaign had a bad day in the home state Tuesday. Not only didn’t they sell enough tickets to fill the original venue for a Bush fundraiser for McCain, but the campaign did everything it could to keep the media from taking pictures of Bush with McCain. McCain wants the money, but without Bush being seen.

Wartime post-traumatic stress disorder cases jumped by 50% in 2007, just as George W. Bush and John McCain were telling us we were winning in Iraq.

Lastly, do Dianne Feinstein and Dick Lugar have the guts to go public and stop Bush from attacking Iran just before the Democratic convention?

OK, your turn. Take it away.