Justice Antonin Scalia - It's Time to Retire

For regular readers it is no secret that I hold Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia in low regard and believe that it is far past time that the old bigot retire from the Court.  Scalia makes no effort to hide or disguise his prejudices and religious based bigotry.  Moreover, he makes a mockery of the canons of judicial conduct which govern the behavior of other federal court judges. Now, in the recent Supreme Court ruling that upheld the EPA's regulatory powers, Scalia wrote a dissent that suggest that senility can also be added to the reasons he needs to retire form the Court - or be removed.  Te only oher justice to join with Scalia was that mental midget of all mental midgets, Clarence Thomas.  Talking Points Memo looks at Scalia's major fuck up.  Here are highlights:

It's not often that a Supreme Court justice makes a factual blunder in a formal opinion.

Legal experts say Justice Antonin Scalia erred in his dissent in the 6-2 decision Tuesday to uphold the Environmental Protection Agency's authority to regulate coal pollution that moves across state lines. The Reagan-appointed jurist argued that the majority's decision was inconsistent with a unanimous 2001 ruling which he mistakenly said shot down EPA efforts to consider costs when setting regulations.

"This is not the first time EPA has sought to convert the Clean Air Act into a mandate for cost-effective regulation. Whitman v. American Trucking Assns., Inc., 531 U. S. 457 (2001), confronted EPA's contention that it could consider costs in setting [National Ambient Air Quality Standards]," Scalia wrote in his dissent, which was joined by Justice Clarence Thomas.

The problem: the EPA's position in the 2001 case was exactly the opposite. The agency was defending its refusal to consider cost as a counter-weight to health benefits when setting certain air quality standards. It was the trucking industry that wanted the EPA to factor in cost. The 9-0 ruling sided with the EPA. The author of the ruling that Scalia mischaracterized? Scalia himself.

The conservative justice's error was noted by University of California-Berkeley law professor Dan Farber, who called it "embarrassing" and a "cringeworthy blunder." . . . . "This gaffe is doubly embarrassing because Scalia wrote the opinion in the case, so he should surely remember which side won! Either some law clerk made the mistake and Scalia failed to read his own dissent carefully enough, or he simply forgot the basics of the earlier case and his clerks failed to correct him. Either way, it's a cringeworthy blunder."

Doug Kendall, the president of the Constitutional Accountability Center, a liberal legal advocacy group, said the error was mystifying and very unusual for a Supreme Court justice.

"It is a mind-blowing misstatement of a basic fact of the American Trucking Association ruling which Justice Scalia himself wrote. And it's not just a stray passage -- it's the basis for an entire section of the dissent," Kendall said. "It is very unusual to see a passage that so clearly misstates the fundamental facts of a prior ruling, especially one written by the justice himself."

As I said, if Scalia had any honor and wanted to protect his image in history, he'd resign now.  Sadly, given his hubris and arrogance, that is not what is likely to happen.

Caption This: John McCain Batshitery

I once held John McCain in high respect.  His selection of the lunatic from Wasilla as his running mate in 2008 ended that.  Now, having selected one of the most unqualified candidates ever, McCain has the nerve to criticize Susan Rice.  Oh, and if we are talking about dropped balls and incompetence in the foreign affairs realm, McCain has amnesia when it comes to Condolezza ice's major failings that (1) allowed 9-11 to happen and (2) allowed the USA to be taken to war in Iraq based on lies.

John McSenile - I Mean McCain - Wants New DADT Study

Either John McCain - who hence forth will be John McSenile on this blog - has truly gone senile or he's drinking Kool-Aid dispensed by Tony Perkins and similar members of the Christian Taliban. Both McSenile and the 13th century minded Christianists and Catholic Church leadership need to grasp that the world and views on homosexuality are changing whether they like it or not. On Meet the Press today, McSenile basically had a temper tantrum over the fact that the Pentagon study on DADT appears poised to deliver a result that McSenile and the Christian Taliban crowd don't like. McSenile would waste more time and more money for another study which, if not rigged, would deliver the same result. The following is a clip on McSenile on Meet the Press:

McSenile is quickly becoming the poster boy for the argument why we might want to have mandatory retirement ages for members of Congress. I continue to ask myself WTF happened to the McCain of a decade ago. Moreover, McSenile just won another 6 year term so, if he thinks he has to appeal to the Christian Taliban, he needs to wake up. The odds of a McSenile run six years from now are likely slim to none and even if he did run for re-election, over the next 6 years a goodly number of the gay-hating older generation will have died off. Here's Think Progress' take on McSenile's increasingly untethered behavior:
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McCain has always said he will reconsider his stance on DADT “the day that the leadership of the military comes to [me]” and says it should be overturned. Yet, when the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Adm. Mike Mullen and Defense Secretary Robert Gates came to McCain in February announcing they were in favor of repealing DADT, McCain invented a new condition — the completion of a study the Pentagon is conducting looking into the repercussions of repealing DADT.
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Last month, reports surfaced that the study had found that a majority of American servicemembers would not object to serving alongside openly gay troops. Then this week, sources familiar with the study, which is to be released in December, told the Washington Post that the study had concluded that repealing DADT will not disrupt the military during a time of war. But appearing on NBC’s Meet the Press today, McCain yet again moved the goal posts, deploying his latest stumbling block to repeal. The problem? The study McCain demanded is now not good enough
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“McCain seems to be saying he wants a do-over because he doesn’t like the findings and recommendations in the Pentagon report going to Secretary Gates,” the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, a gay rights legal group which works to end DADT, said in a statement responding to McCain today. “In other words, McCain is telling the Pentagon: Keep working until you produce the outcome I’m looking for.”
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Despite what McCain might think, the military has confidence in the quality of its study. Even the Marine Corps commandant, Gen. James Amos, to whom McCain refers during the Meet the Press interview, disagrees with McCain on the study. In September, during Amos’ confirmation hearings, McCain tried to get Amos to cast doubt on the study. But Amos rebuffed McCain, saying he was confident in it.

Ex-McCain Adviser: McCain Blinked

The last two days have been a bizarre psycho-drama generated by John McCain and/or his campaign. Between the faux suspension of his campaign, his wordless attendance at the White House meeting yesterday and now his capitulation to proceed with tonight's presidential debate one can only wonder whether McCain has gone crazy or had a bad mixture of meds. Whatever grandstanding he was trying to accomplish seems to have blown up in his face in the opinion of rational adults (admittedly, that category omits most of the religious based fanatics who now make up the GOP base). Even conservatives seem to realize that whatever McCain's intended ploy, it has not worked as planned. Here are highlights of comments from a former McCain adviser via Huffington Post:

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After days of saying that John McCain would not attend Friday's presidential debate unless an agreement on a bailout package for the markets was "locked-down," the McCain campaign has gone back on its word. On Friday, it announced that the Senator would head down to Mississippi even though, as they readily admit, much work remained needed on the bailout agreement.

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The whole episode left even conservatives admitting that the McCain campaign looked erratic and a bit foolish with no apparent direction or guiding principle."It just proves his campaign is governed by tactics and not ideology," said Republican consultant Craig Shirley, who advised McCain earlier in this cycle. "In the end, he blinked and Obama did not. The 'steady hand in a storm' argument looks now to more favor Obama, not McCain."

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Shirley added, "My guess is that plasma units are rushing to the McCain campaign as we speak to replace the blood flowing there from the fights among the staff." Adding to the rocky perception was a McCain campaign web ad released this morning declaring "McCain Wins Debate!" -- put out even before the candidate had announced he was planning to debate.

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[S]aid Howard Wolfson, formerly the communications director for Hillary Clinton, "John McCain's presidential campaign has been in a death spiral since the Wall Street collapse and this summit gambit was an attempt to pull out of it. But it hasn't succeeded because McCain hasn't done anything to move the ball forward."

Is John McCain Going Senile?

In light of McCain's selection of Christianist "witch hunter" believing Sarah Palin as his VP running mate, the state of McCain's health and mental functioning is utterly critical should he be elected. There have been numerous reports of McCain's gaffes on citing incorrect facts and information, but a recent gaffe is downright scary. Terrifying in fact if it accurately shows that McCain's losing it mentally. Do we want a man holding the office of president who doesn't know where Spain is located? Here are some highlights from Talking Points Memo:

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Well, we've heard the interview now. And John McCain either doesn't know who the Prime Minister of Spain is, thinks Spain is a country in Latin America, or possibly both.

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In case, you haven't seen our updates from last night, yesterday John McCain was interviewed on the Florida affiliate of Spanish radio network Union Radio. And in the interview McCain appeared not to know who the Prime Minister of Spain was and assumed he was some anti-American leftist leader from South America.

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After the interviewer presses him a couple times on the point and tries to focus him on the fact that Prime Minister Zapatero isn't from Mexico and isn't a drug lord either McCain comes back at her saying, "All I can tell you is that I have a clear record of working with leaders in the Hemisphere that are friends with us and standing up to those who are not. And that's judged on the basis of the importance of our relationship with Latin America and the entire region."

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Then there's a moment of awkward pause before she says. "But what about Europe? I'm talking about the President of Spain." McCain: "What about me, what?

The Palin Candidacy Farce

UPDATED: in addition to the New York Times story discussed below which demonstrates the idiocy of McCain's selection of Sarah Palin as his running mate, Andrew Sullivan has a column uin the Times of London that rips both McCain and the GOP. I cannot say it any better than Andrew has enunciated as to why Palin's selection is an abomination. Here are highlights from Andrew's column:

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Formerly sane people have written of the McCain campaign’s selection of this running mate as if it represents a new face for Republicanism, . . . I’m afraid I cannot join in. In fact I cannot say anything about this candidacy that takes it in any way seriously. It is a farce. It is absurd. It is an insult to all intelligent people. It is a sign of a candidate who has lost his mind. There is no way to take the nomination of Palin to be vice-president of the world’s sole superpower - except to treat it as a massive, unforgivable, inexplicable decision by someone who has either gone insane or is managerially unfit to be president of the United States. When, at some point, the hysteria dies down, even her supporters will realise that, by this decision, McCain has rendered himself unfit to run a branch of Starbucks, let alone the White House.

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She is the biggest joke to be put on a ticket in national politics. The most accurate thing said about her in the past two weeks was said on the day she was picked. It was said by Alaska’s Republican state senate president, Lyda Green: “She’s not prepared to be governor. How can she be prepared to be vice-president or president? Look at what she’s done to this state. What would she do to the nation?”

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Today's New York Times has a brutal story on Sarah Palin's tenure as Governor of Alaska. It makes it clear that Palin - like all too many Christianists I have encountered in the political realm - has been mean spirited and vindictive once in office and not one to actually practice the true Gospel message. Oh yes, there's a lot of lip service about being pro-life, supporting family values, and opposing the "gay agenda," but when and where it counts, the behavior is amateurish, craven and nasty. Palin comes across as even more peevish than Emperor Cheney and as totally unconcerned about the competence of appointees to an extent that she makes the Chimperator look competent. Secrecy and furthering personal vendettas through political power are NOT what one wants in a vice president and potential president of the United States. All in all, one has to wonder what the Hell was John McCain thinking in selecting Palin? If McCain/Palin promise to bring change, it will be a change of from bad to worse. Here are some story highlights:
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WASILLA, Alaska — Gov. Sarah Palin lives by the maxim that all politics is local, not to mention personal. So when there was a vacancy at the top of the State Division of Agriculture, she appointed a high school classmate, Franci Havemeister, to the $95,000-a-year directorship. A former real estate agent, Ms. Havemeister cited her childhood love of cows as a qualification for running the roughly $2 million agency.

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[A}n examination of her swift rise and record as mayor of Wasilla and then governor finds that her visceral style and penchant for attacking critics — she sometimes calls local opponents “haters” — contrasts with her carefully crafted public image. Throughout her political career, she has pursued vendettas, fired officials who crossed her and sometimes blurred the line between government and personal grievance, according to a review of public records and interviews with 60 Republican and Democratic legislators and local officials.

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Interviews show that Ms. Palin runs an administration that puts a premium on loyalty and secrecy. The governor and her top officials sometimes use personal e-mail accounts for state business; dozens of e-mail messages obtained by The New York Times show that her staff members studied whether that could allow them to circumvent subpoenas seeking public records.

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[I]nterviews make clear that the Palins draw few distinctions between the personal and the political. “The Palin family gets upset at personal issues,” he added. “And at our level, they want to strike back.”

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The new mayor also tended carefully to her evangelical base. She appointed a pastor to the town planning board. And she began to eye the library. For years, social conservatives had pressed the library director to remove books they considered immoral. “People would bring books back censored,” recalled former Mayor John Stein, Ms. Palin’s predecessor. “Pages would get marked up or torn out.”

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As she assembled her cabinet and made other state appointments, those with insider credentials were now on the outs. But a new pattern became clear. She surrounded herself with people she has known since grade school and members of her church.

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Ms. Palin chose Talis Colberg, a borough assemblyman from the Matanuska valley, as her attorney general, provoking a bewildered question from the legal community: “Who?” Mr. Colberg, who did not return calls, moved from a one-room building in the valley to one of the most powerful offices in the state, supervising some 500 people.

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Many lawmakers contend that Ms. Palin is overly reliant on a small inner circle that leaves her isolated. Democrats and Republicans alike describe her as often missing in action. Since taking office in 2007, Ms. Palin has spent 312 nights at her Wasilla home, some 600 miles to the north of the governor’s mansion in Juneau, records show. During the last legislative session, some lawmakers became so frustrated with her absences that they took to wearing “Where’s Sarah?” pins. . . . Mayors across the state, from the larger cities to tiny municipalities along the southeastern fiords, are even more frustrated. Often, their letters go unanswered and their pleas ignored, records and interviews show. *

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The administration’s e-mail correspondence reveals a siege-like atmosphere. Top aides keep score, demean enemies and gloat over successes. Even some who helped engineer her rise have felt her wrath. . . . As Ms. Palin’s star ascends, the McCain campaign, as often happens in national races, is controlling the words of those who know her well. Her mother-in-law, Faye Palin, has been asked not to speak to reporters, and aides sit in on interviews with old friends.

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P.S. Maureen Dowd describes Palin as follows:
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Like W., Sarah has the power of positive unthinking. But now we may want to think about where ignorance and pride and no self-doubt has gotten us. Being quick on the trigger might be good in moose hunting, but in dealing with Putin, a little knowledge might come in handy.

Sarah Palin’s Worldview

With each passing day it should become increasingly obvious that the selection of Sarah Palin as John McSenile's running mate is an insult to every American other than perhaps the deranged elements of the Christian Right who are not, in my opinion, "dealing with a full deck" in any event and who always put religious fanaticism ahead of logic, reason and competence. As I have mentioned before, I have real suspicions whether or not Palin was foisted on McCain by the far right elements in the GOP such as James Dobson and other Christianists. If such is the case, McCain's knuckling under shows he is too senile to be president. Today's New York Times in its main editorial raises similar concerns which ought to demonstrate that by picking Palin, John McCain has confirmed that he is not fit to be president. Here are some editorial highlights:
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As we watched Sarah Palin on TV the last couple of days, we kept wondering what on earth John McCain was thinking. If he seriously thought this first-term governor — with less than two years in office — was qualified to be president, if necessary, at such a dangerous time, it raises profound questions about his judgment. If the choice was, as we suspect, a tactical move, then it was shockingly irresponsible.

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The idea that Americans want leaders who have none of those things — who are so blindly certain of what Ms. Palin calls “the mission” that they won’t even pause for reflection — shows a contempt for voters and raises frightening questions about how Mr. McCain and Ms. Palin plan to run this country.

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One of the many bizarre moments in the questioning by ABC News’s Charles Gibson was when Ms. Palin, the governor of Alaska, excused her lack of international experience by sneering that Americans don’t want “somebody’s big fat résumé maybe that shows decades and decades in that Washington establishment where, yes, they’ve had opportunities to meet heads of state.”

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But that is not what troubled us most about her remarks — and, remember, if they were scripted, that just means that they reflect Mr. McCain’s views all the more closely. Rather, it was the sense that thoughtfulness, knowledge and experience are handicaps for a president in a world populated by Al Qaeda terrorists, a rising China, epidemics of AIDS, poverty and fratricidal war in the developing world and deep economic distress at home.

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This nation has suffered through eight years of an ill-prepared and unblinkingly obstinate president. One who didn’t pause to think before he started a disastrous war of choice in Iraq. One who blithely looked the other way as the Taliban and Al Qaeda regrouped in Afghanistan. One who obstinately cut taxes and undercut all efforts at regulation, unleashing today’s profound economic crisis. In a dangerous world, Americans need a president who knows that real strength requires serious thought and preparation.

Is Sarah Palin Representative of McCain's Flawed Judgment?

The New York Times has a new piece out today that raises real questions as to what John McCain was thinking - or not thinking as may be more the case - when he selected Sarah Palin as his VP running mate. It increasingly seems as if McSenile did very little homework before selecting Palin and he may have foolishly set the stage for one embarrassment after another. This is certainly NOT the judgement one wants in a president. We have already suffered through eight years of the Chimperator's idiocy and non-researched actions. Palin's selection suggests a McCain presidency would be a Bush third term in even more ways than otherwise anticipated. Let me be clear, I am not attacking Palin as a person (although I DO find her Christian Right beliefs scary). I merely believe that her selection was idiocy on McCain's part. He should have thoroughly researched her BEFORE he selected her, not afterwards. Here are some story highlights:

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ST. PAUL — A series of disclosures about Gov. Sarah Palin, Senator John McCain’s choice as running mate, called into question on Monday how thoroughly Mr. McCain had examined her background before putting her on the Republican presidential ticket. . . . . Aides to Mr. McCain said they had a team on the ground in Alaska now to look more thoroughly into Ms. Palin’s background. A Republican with ties to the campaign said the team assigned to vet Ms. Palin in Alaska had not arrived there until Thursday, a day before Mr. McCain stunned the political world with his vice-presidential choice. The campaign was still calling Republican operatives as late as Sunday night asking them to go to Alaska to deal with the unexpected candidacy of Ms. Palin.

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While there was no sign that her formal nomination this week was in jeopardy, the questions swirling around Ms. Palin on the first day of the Republican National Convention, already disrupted by Hurricane Gustav, brought anxiety to Republicans who worried that Democrats would use the selection of Ms. Palin to question Mr. McCain’s judgment and his ability to make crucial decisions. At the least, Republicans close to the campaign said it was increasingly apparent that Ms. Palin had been selected as Mr. McCain’s running mate with more haste than McCain advisers initially described.

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[T]he campaign was bombarded by outrage from influential conservatives who predicted an explosive floor fight at the convention and vowed rejection of Mr. Ridge or Mr. Lieberman by the delegates. Perhaps more important, several Republicans said, Mr. McCain was getting advice that if he did not do something to shake up the race, his campaign would be stuck on a potentially losing trajectory.

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In Alaska, several state leaders and local officials said they knew of no efforts by the McCain campaign to find out more information about Ms. Palin before the announcement of her selection, Although campaigns are typically discreet when they make inquiries into potential running mates, officials in Alaska said Monday they thought it was peculiar that no one in the state had the slightest hint that Ms. Palin might be under consideration. “They didn’t speak to anyone in the Legislature, they didn’t speak to anyone in the business community,” said Lyda Green, the State Senate president, who lives in Wasilla, where Ms. Palin served as mayor.

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Representative Gail Phillips, a Republican and former speaker of the State House, said the widespread surprise in Alaska when Ms. Palin was named to the ticket made her wonder how intensively the McCain campaign had vetted her. “I started calling around and asking, and I have not been able to find one person that was called,” Ms. Phillips said. “I called 30 to 40 people, political leaders, business leaders, community leaders. Not one of them had heard. Alaska is a very small community, we know people all over, but I haven’t found anybody who was asked anything.”

John McSleaze

I have less respect for the man with each passing day. Imagine not know how many homes one owns. That's beyond out of touch!!

Is John McCain Stupid? Or Just Going Senile?

After nearly eight years of the cretinous Chimperator, does the USA really need another president who cannot get facts right and seems to be living in a bubble? Personnaly, I say NO!! We have had one idiot-in-chief and do not need another one. Plus, in addition to resorting to sleazy low life tactics ala Karl "Turd Blossom" Rove's minions, McCain increasingly is looking like he's either an idiot or going seriously senile and suffering from memory lapses. And if he's this bad now, WTF will he be like in say two or three years from now if he is elected? The prospect should make voters shudder. Even the Wall Street Journal - hardly an ultra-liberal publication - seems to be noting the problem as in a column today. Here are some highlights:

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Is John McCain losing it? On Sunday, he said on national television that to solve Social Security "everything's on the table," which of course means raising payroll taxes. On July 7 in Denver he said: "Senator Obama will raise your taxes. I won't." This isn't a flip-flop. It's a sex-change operation.
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The one thing -- arguably the only thing -- the McCain candidacy has going for it is a sense mong voters that they don't know what Barack Obama stands for or believes. Why then would Mr. McCain give voters reason to wonder the same thing about himself? You're supposed to sow doubt about the other guy, not do it to yourself.

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The one thing -- arguably the only thing -- the McCain candidacy has going for it is a sense among voters that they don't know what Barack Obama stands for or believes. Why then would Mr. McCain give voters reason to wonder the same thing about himself? You're supposed to sow doubt about the other guy, not do it to yourself.

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Yes, Sen. McCain must somehow appeal to independents and blue-collar Hillary Democrats. A degree of pandering to the center is inevitable. But this stuff isn't pandering; it's simply stupid. Al Gore's own climate allies separated themselves from his preposterous free-of-oil-in-10-years whopper. Sen. McCain saying off-handedly that it's "doable" is, in a word, thoughtless.

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The forces arrayed against Sen. McCain's candidacy are formidable: an unpopular president, the near impossibility of extending Republican White House rule for three terms, the GOP trailing in races at every level, a listless fundraising base, doubtful sentiments about the war, a flailing economy. The generic Democratic presidential candidate should win handily. Barack Obama, though vulnerable at the margin, is a very strong candidate. This will be a turnout election. To win, Mr. McCain needs every Republican vote he can hold.

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Why make it harder than it has to be? Given such statements on Social Security taxes, Al Gore and the "inspirational" Speaker Pelosi, is there a reason why Rush Limbaugh should not spend August teeing off on Mr. McCain? Why as well shouldn't the Obama camp exploit all of this? If Sen. Obama's "inexperience" is Mr. McCain's ace in the hole, why not trump that by asking, "Does Sen. McCain know his own mind?"

How Obama Became Acting President

The caption to this post is the headline on Frank Rich's column today in the New York Times. As always - at least in my opinion - Rich does a wonderful job in analyzing and commenting upon the ongoing issues of the presidential campaign and on the larger world scene. Sadly, too many in the media are not reporting on John McCain's gaffes, factual errors, and general deterioration vis-a-vis the candidate he seemed in 2000 when I activelt supported him. No matter how you try to dress him up, there are serious danger signals going off and they are not getting the proper attention they require. This nation cannot afford another out of touch presiident who cannot even get his facts straight in prepared statements. The thought of a Chimperator II is down right terrifying. Here are highlights from Rich's column:

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The growing Obama clout derives not from national polls, where his lead is modest. Nor is it a gift from the press, which still gives free passes to its old bus mate John McCain. It was laughable to watch journalists stamp their feet last week to try to push Mr. Obama into saying he was “wrong” about the surge. More than five years and 4,100 American fatalities later, they’re still not demanding that Mr. McCain admit he was wrong when he assured us that our adventure in Iraq would be fast, produce little American “bloodletting” and “be paid for by the Iraqis.”

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“We have one president at a time,” Mr. Obama is careful to say. True, but the sitting president, a lame duck despised by voters and shunned by his own party’s candidates, now has all the gravitas of Mr. Cellophane in “Chicago.” The opening for a successor arrived prematurely, and the vacuum had been waiting to be filled. What was most striking about the Obama speech in Berlin was not anything he said so much as the alternative reality it fostered: many American children have never before seen huge crowds turn out abroad to wave American flags instead of burn them.

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While drama-queen commentators on television last week were busy building up false suspense about the Obama trip — will he make a world-class gaffe? will he have too large an audience in Germany? — few focused on the alarms that Mr. McCain’s behavior at home raise about his fitness to be president.

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nce again the candidate was making factual errors about the only subject he cares about, imagining an Iraq-Pakistan border and garbling the chronology of the Anbar Awakening. Once again he displayed a tantrum-prone temperament ill-suited to a high-pressure 21st-century presidency. His grim-faced crusade to brand his opponent as a traitor who wants to “lose a war” isn’t even a competent impersonation of Joe McCarthy. Mr. McCain comes off instead like the ineffectual Mr. Wilson, the retired neighbor perpetually busting a gasket at the antics of pesky little Dennis the Menace.

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The week’s most revealing incident occurred on Wednesday when the new, supposedly improved McCain campaign management finalized its grand plan to counter Mr. Obama’s Berlin speech with a “Mission Accomplished”-like helicopter landing on an oil rig off Louisiana’s coast. The announcement was posted on politico.com even as any American with a television could see that Hurricane Dolly was imminent. Needless to say, this bit of theater was almost immediately “postponed” but not before raising the question of whether a McCain administration would be just as hapless in anticipating the next Katrina as the Bush-Brownie storm watch.

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When not plotting such stunts, the McCain campaign whines about its lack of press attention like a lover jilted for a younger guy. The McCain camp should be careful what it wishes for. As its relentless goading of Mr. Obama to visit Iraq only ratcheted up anticipation for the Democrat’s triumphant trip, so its insistent demand for joint town-hall meetings with Mr. Obama and for more televised chronicling of Mr. McCain’s wanderings could be self-inflicted disasters in the making.

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Mr. McCain may be most comfortable at town-hall meetings before largely friendly crowds, but his performance under pressure at this year’s G.O.P. primary debates was erratic. His sound-bite-deep knowledge of the country’s No. 1 issue, the economy, is a Gerald Ford train wreck waiting to happen in any matchup with Mr. Obama that requires focused, time-limited answers rather than rambling.

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The election remains Mr. Obama’s to lose, and he could lose it, whether through unexpected events, his own vanity or a vice-presidential misfire. But what we’ve learned this month is that America, our allies and most likely the next Congress are moving toward Mr. Obama’s post-Iraq vision of the future, whether he reaches the White House or not. That’s some small comfort as we contemplate the strange alternative offered by the Republicans: a candidate so oblivious to our nation’s big challenges ahead that he is doubling down in his campaign against both Mr. Maliki and Mr. Obama to be elected commander in chief of the surge.