From Jonathan Martin:

Asked what work John McCain did as Chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee that helped him understand the financial markets, the candidate’s top economic adviser wielded visual evidence: his BlackBerry.

“He did this,” Douglas Holtz-Eakin told reporters this morning, holding up his BlackBerry. “Telecommunications of the United States is a premier innovation in the past 15 years, comes right through the Commerce committee so you’re looking at the miracle John McCain helped create and that’s what he did.”

Al Gore, call your office.

Isn’t Research in Motion, the maker of the Blackberry, a Canadian company?

Late Update: TPMCafe contributor and former FCC Chairman Reed Hundt sends this along: “John McCain is so out of touch that his economics adviser thinks he deserves credit for creating a Canadian company.”

George Saunders’ New Yorker piece had me shooting coffee out of my nose this morning. Very, very funny.

Watch as CNN’s Candy Crowley struggles mightily to maintain balance at the expense of accuracy:

As Josh noted yesterday, Crowley is not alone in relying on the comfort of false equivalencies to avoid having to make professional judgments.

Late Update: Greg Sargent has more.

The Obama camp quickly turns John McCain’s remark yesterday that “the fundamentals of our economy are strong” into a TV ad. That and the day’s other political news in the TPM Election Central Morning Roundup.

Richard Cohen jumps waaaaaaaaaay off the tire swing.

I mean, this is betrayed lover counter-tire-swingism. Must read.

Kissinger, who is one of McCain’s foreign policy advisors, is now openly supporting Obama’s call for high level talks with Iran.

Who would you expect to announce that Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin won’t cooperate with the Alaska Legislature’s probe into whether she abused the power of her office in Trooper-Gate?

Not Palin herself. Nor the spokesperson for the Governor’s Office. Nor the lawyer the state is paying to represent her in her official capacity in the case.

Instead, that announcement was made today by a spokesperson for John McCain’s presidential campaign.

Just keep that in mind as this case unfolds.

Let me get this straight. John McCain’s top economic advisor, former Sen. Phil Gramm, is the guy who authored the deregulation law that most agree is the ultimate cause of today’s financial meltdown. Tomorrow’s and probably next week’s too. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. John Thain, CEO of Merrill Lynch, which swirled into brokerage oblivion today, is one of McCain’s top economic advisors too. And now McCain says he’s going to clean up the mess by putting in tighter regulations and oversight even though he’s always supported lax oversight and his top economics guy is the one who loosened the rules in the first place.