I notice that the McCain campaign has now explicitly named Max Boot as a key advisor and campaign surrogate. So I’d be interested in seeing a list of all the completely insane things Max has said and written over the last decade. My favorite is when he told me — circa 2002 — that the US should seize and confiscate the Saudi oil fields and run them as a protectorate.

There are plenty of examples. And they’re a good way to illustrate the nuthouse a McCain foreign policy would be. Please take a look and see what you can find and then send in the best stuff with citations.

CNN punk’d on Palin probe? Check out this piece on her decision to cooperate with the investigation (i.e., the sham one she set up after McCain helped her shut down the real one.)

New dueling TV ads on the economy are out from both campaigns. That and the day’s other political news in the TPM Election Central Morning Roundup.

The guy John McCain has chosen to manage his presidential transition was lobbying for Freddie Mac until this month.

And from McCain …

McCain has labeled Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae as prime culprits in creating the financial storm that has roiled Wall Street and Washington.

“At the center of the problem were the lobbyists, politicians, and bureaucrats who succeeded in persuading Congress and the administration to ignore the festering problems at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac,” he said last week in Green Bay, Wisconsin.

Honestly, I expect a lot of hypocrisy of all politicians, of both parties. But John McCain is really in a class of his own.

The more he sees of it, the more Krugman likes Dodd’s plan.

Jon Alter has this so, so right.

From Countdown …

[Y]ou remember the Keating Five scandal that he was a part of, which, by the way, it’s crazy but there’s been very little about it in the press in the last few weeks. And McCain thinks he’s getting a hard time, he’s really getting a free ride on the fact that he was in the middle of the last great financial scandal in our country. But his reaction to that, you would have thought, would have been more regulation of the financial services industry. Instead he moved forward on campaign finance reform after being caught in that scandal, but did nothing – nothing – to try to prevent another savings and loan crisis from happening down the road. He was missing in action when it came to even learning the basic lessons of a scandal that he said taught him all kinds of things that he would never forget.

Let’s face it. On major economy-imperiling financial scandals brought about by lax regulation and help from lobbyist-encrusted politicians, McCain really is the candidate of experience.

I think Kos, Digby and Kilgore have this about right. The Republican/McCain plan is to get the Democrats to bail out the GOP’s Wall Street friends and then run against them for doing it.

McCain camp promises not to prioritize Middle East peace process and to scuttle Israel-Syria talks.

Things are very much in flux on the Hill as both parties grapple with this massive bailout proposal. From what we’re hearing, things are in such a preliminary stage that members are still trying to figure out basics like where colleagues stand and what type of legislation the bailout will be packaged as, let alone what it will contain.

TPMmuckraker obtained a copy of the outline of an alternative bailout plan being floated by Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA) that offers more oversight of the bailout, which isn’t hard to do, since the Administration’s proposal is virtually oversight-free.

Late Update: At least one Republican on the House Financial Services Committee considers the Paulson proposal is a no-go.