After McCain’s Tuesday night prebuttal speech trainwreck I was afraid he might keep going with no discernible message and just a lot of imagery and themes stressing age, being part of yesterday and generally being completely out of touch. But boy was I wrong. Here’s a screen capture of the front page of McCain’s website as of 3:55 PM this afternoon with the four tabs across the top apparently signaling McCain’s top four agenda items …

Late Update: Many of you have noted, as the Hotline Blog shows here, that McCain’s new logo appears to be literally ripped off from Obama’s logo — much as his new slogan is. I think this is actually part of McCain’s new plan to demonstrate leadership and demonize Obama by appropriating all his campaign iconography and slogans.

To demonstrate strong leadership amidst campaign turmoil, John McCain has forced all senior members of his campaign team to adopt his creepily awkward speaking style and Web -3.4 mentality …

(No foolin’: this is a real McCain campaign video.)

Some people seem to think torture and violations of the Geneva Conventions are a big deal. But not Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA). Apparently, it’s just the sort of stuff they did at frat parties back when he was in college. Putting panties on guys’ heads seems to be a particular favorite with him. We take a look in today’s episode of TPMtv …

High-res version at Veracifier.com.

There’s a certain “didn’t we know all this already?” quality to the Phase II report. But if you take a half a step back, the Administration’s brazen misuse of Iraq intelligence for its own political ends remains a remarkable episode, one which we’ll be peeling back the layers on for years to come.

Noted Israeli charlatan Benjamin Netanyahu is considering hiring Karl Rove to plan strategy for his bid for a second stint as Prime Minister of Israel.

How much longer is former Sen. Phil Gramm (R-TX) going to be John McCain’s top economics advisor? He’s already brought his ties to the mortgage crisis into McCain’s campaign. But this latest development could prove considerably more damaging.

Gramm is Vice Chairman of UBS Securities, the investment banking division of the Swiss uber-bank UBS. And UBS private banking arm is now the target of a major and wide-ranging criminal investigation into the bank’s efforts to help “high net worth individuals” evade hundreds of millions of dollars of US taxes. As the Times puts it, “The case could turn into an embarrassment for Marcel Rohner, the chief executive of UBS and the former head of its private bank, as well as for Phil Gramm, the former Republican senator from Texas who is now the vice chairman of UBS Securities, the Swiss bank’s investment banking arm.”

Political damage always depends heavily on whether the problems play to type. In this case, Gramm — renowned for his embrace of trickle-down economics and tax cutting for the wealthiest Americans — I think you could say that finding ways to help wealthy Americans finding illegal tax dodges fits the bill.

The key is just how closely tied into UBS Gramm’s work got him. He’s Vice Chairman of the investment bank part of UBS. And he also separately lobbied for UBS on the mortgage crisis front, though I think he no longer does. Our impression is that the Vice Chairman gig was not some fancy title just doled out to a political heavyweight — that he was really pretty deeply involved in the company’s affairs, though we’re still looking into that. Separately, there’s the question of the overlap between the company’s two divisions — private banking and investment banking. We’re continuing to look into it. Would appreciate insights from folks in the industry.

Ruth Rosen, on the post 9/11 editorial restraints that kept even a liberal paper from telling the whole truth about the lies and deception that led to America’s most catastrophic foreign policy disaster.

TPM Reader KB may be on to something:

The McCain campaign knows it can’t beat Obama in the optics of crowd size and enthusiasm. So they are going to try to use a kind of “silent majority” argument to make the case that Obama is not carrying the day with key voter groups.

To do this they will make contact with supposedly “disillusioned” former “Dems” and “Hillary supporters.” They will find ones who can speak well and are comfortable on camera and they will use them to shoot ads, get quoted in the media, get on Luntz-style cable TV focus groups, and most importantly insert them into any town-hall style events that Obama attends (with or without McCain).

They will be organized and made media-ready in a very savvy way that will function like Hamburger-helper to over stretched producers and editors.

The McCain camp will use any “moments” created by these sleepers to reinforce narratives about a “women problem,” or a “working class problem,” or a “jewish problem,” or a “catholic problem,” etc.

Remember back in 2000 when a New Hampshire woman named Katherine Prudhomme confronted Al Gore about Kathleen Willey and it generated days of coverage? That’s the sort of thing the McCain camp will be looking for in an attempt to push back on the larger sense of an Obama movement. But the media should put them in context.

Statistically speaking, these sleepers will be relatively meaningless. But the temptation to use them (rather than actual polling data) as dramatic pegs in coverage will be huge.

Jared Bernstein, on today’s new employment numbers, including the largest one month jump in unemployment since the mid-80s.

As everybody’s seen, Sen. Joe Lieberman’s antics have escalated pretty dramatically over the last few weeks and appear set to keep escalating over the course of what promises to be a vicious election season. But what happens after November?

At the moment, because of the Democrats’ razor thin margin in the senate, Lieberman has it within his power to turn the senate upside down. If Lieberman switched to the Republican caucus, it wouldn’t automatically switch the leadership. The parliamentary ins and outs are complicated. But basically the current organization lasts for the whole Congress unless they decide to reorganize. And since the Dems control the body the Dems would have to agree to do that, which seems unlikely. But Republicans would start pushing for it at every turn. And they’d have the precedent of 2001, which is not an exact parallel but close enough.

In any case, after November.

Five months is a long time in politics. But there’s a very strong consensus that Democrats will pick up seats in the senate — the question is how many. But any pick up would take away almost all of Lieberman’s remaining leverage, though he might have some thin remaining leverage on cloture. But whatever. Then, if Obama beats McCain, there’s also a Democratic president who’s really not favorably inclined toward Joe.

So if you’re getting more and more pissed at Lieberman’s antics, just a wait a few months.