From the AP:

John McCain embraces and expels Washington like an accordion player belting out a song.

Squeeze in and he touts his vast knowledge of the capital city. Draw out and he casts himself a reformer bent on changing its ways.

Obama gets a more assertive riff going here on the economy and John McCain’s remarkable story of being brought up by a pack of lobbyists but turning out to be a reformer:

McCain supporting Hillary Clinton backer Lady Lynn Forester de Rothschild, international financier who splits her time between homes in New York and London, says she can’t support Obama because he’s “an elitist” …

In an interview with CNN this summer, Forester did not hide her distaste for eventual Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama.

“This is a hard decision for me personally because frankly I don’t like him,” she said of Obama in an interview with CNN’s Joe Johns. “I feel like he is an elitist. I feel like he has not given me reason to trust him.”

Forester is the CEO of EL Rothschild, a holding company with businesses around the world. She is married to international banker Sir Evelyn de Rothschild. Forester is a member of the DNC’s Democrats Abroad chapter and splits her time living in London and New York.

Sounds like a natural McCain supporter.

More of this the better. Can we arrange for Cruella de Ville’s and Richie Rich’s endorsement of McCain too? Even Endicott Billionson?

Sarah Palin goes mano-a-mano with Sean Hannity starting tonight. Here’s a preview:

Presidential candidates usually have to wait until they’re elected to start obstructing investigations into their own wrong-doing. But ready on day one as he is, John McCain and Sarah Palin are getting a jump on this front too. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen an instance of a president, let alone a presidential candidate, quite this nakedly doing everything in his power to shutdown an investigation. And look closely — Palin herself has at this point entirely turned the obstruction over to the McCain campaign. They’re even the ones who make the announcements. (I won’t get into the battery of lawyers plumbers up in Alaska getting all the small fry to clam up and digging up dirt on all Palin’s accusers.)

Meanwhile, the claim that the Obama camp has ‘tainted’ the trooper-gate investigation is truly risible. This investigation was well underway and already looking bad for Palin and her husband well before John McCain picked her as his running mate. (We know: we were already covering it.) What I do not think that many people know is that this investigation up in Alaska has actually been authorized and is being run by Republicans. They make up a majority in the state senate. The committee member overseeing the investigation happens to be a Democrat. But at any moment of their choosing, they could pull him off the case, overrule his decisions, or shut the investigation down entirely.

Palin’s response to this — to the question of how Obama could have tainted the investigation which is under the control of Alaska Republicans — is to claim that there are actually a lot of Republicans in Alaska who oppose her. And that’s true. But observing that a sizable number of officeholders of your own party think you’re probably a crook too does not amount to an affirmative defense. Really, it doesn’t.

The fall back defense, when claims about Obama’s ‘taint’ fall flat, is that Palin’s someone who ‘shakes things up’. That’s what she’s done in Alaska and that’s what she’s going to do in Washington.

But a pattern of crony hiring and politicized firings of public officials all followed up by stonewalling and obstruction of justice really would not amount to ‘shaking things up’ in Washington. After eight years of President Bush, that’s more like steady as she goes.

TPM Election Central has the first peek at a new mailer being sent out as part of a swing-state blitz by the union-backed independent group Working America.

Ruth Marcus tries as hard as she can to balance it out but is finally forced to conclude that McCain is a liar and a disgrace.

Fox News’s Greta Van Susteren conducted the first interview of Todd Palin since his wife Sarah was named the Republican vice presidential nominee. She grilled Todd on everything from the story behind the name “First Dude” to how he feels about the name “First Dude.”

Full-size video at TPMtv.com.

TPM Reader TR sees the forest for the trees in Trooper-Gate:

Let’s assume for a minute that Palin, McCain and all of their collective cronies are right about the trooper-gate investigation being 100% a partisan witch hunt, notwithstanding the original vote. So freakin’ what? In the US, congress and state legislatures are tasked with investigating actions of the executive offices. The executives can then present evidence to defend themselves, and their evidence can include displays of outright partisanship if they find it. They cannot legally, however, just ignore the legislative bodies. They are legally required to cooperate. This is theoretically what makes us different from countries like North Korea, Musharraf’s Pakistan, Zimbabwe, etc.

On a second point, how is McCain’s campaign legally able to insert itself into an issue that is solely about Alaska? The investigation has nothing to do with anything outside of Alaska and it predates Palin’s VP candidacy, so it seems to me like some kind of obstruction or interference from a legal point of view.

Remember, the game here is to delay, delay, delay until after the election.