with commentary.  As long as it seems, I believe it sums the article up succinctly:

Few politicians have so actively, or successfully, crafted their own myth of greatness. [Obama’s two memoirs aside]  Intent on winning the presidency at all costs, he has reassembled the very team that so viciously smeared him and his family eight years ago, selecting as his running mate a born-again moose hunter whose only qualification for office is her ability to electrify Rove’s base.  [Oh, my God!  Not a BORN-AGAIN moose hunter!] He saw 9/11 gave Bush and his failed presidency a second life. [Bush’s presidency was 9 months old at the time]

“John has made a pact with the devil,” says Lincoln Chafee, the former GOP senator, who has been appalled at his one-time colleague’s readiness to sacrifice principle for power. [Lincoln Chafee ought to know, the dried up old godbotherer] Trailing his hard-charging, hard-drinking father from post to post, McCain didn’t play well with others. [Which would be cool if he were a member of Oasis]  McCain was not only a lousy student, he had his father’s taste for drink and a darkly misogynistic streak. [Which is why it’s so hypocritical that he chose Palin]  He continued to get sauced and treat girls badly. [Which would be cool if he were a member of Oasis]  In Rio, he hobnobbed with admirals and the president of Brazil. McCain chased a lot of tail. [WWBCIHWAMOO]  He hit the dog track. [Oh, my God!  The DOG track?]  Developed a taste for poker and dice. [Oh, my God!  Poker and dice?] He picked up models when he could, screwed a stripper when he couldn’t. [WWBCIHWAMOO] After a game of tennis, McCain prevailed upon the undersecretary of the Navy that he was ready for Vietnam, despite his abysmal flight record. [Oh, my God!  TENNIS?]  With a close friend at the base, an alcoholic Marine captain, McCain formed the “Key Fess Yacht Club,” which quickly became infamous for hosting toga parties in the officers’ quarters and bringing bands down from Memphis to attract loose women to the base. [WWBCIHWAMOA] Showing his usual knack for promotion, McCain rose from “vice commodore” to “commodore” of the club. [What happened to the vice?]  Now 30 years old, McCain was trying to live up to his father’s expectations, to finally be known as something other than the fuck-up grandson of one of the Navy’s greatest admirals. [Good thing Obama doesn’t have daddy issues]  Clank. Clank. Two 1,000-pound bombs dropped from under the belly of McCain’s stubby A-4, the Navy’s “Tinkertoy Bomber,” into the fire.  [OMG!  CLANK?  CLANK?]  Johnny “came through without a scratch.”  [Fucker]  The explosion set off a chain reaction of bombs, creating a devastating inferno that would kill 134 of the carrier’s 5,000-man crew, injure 161 and threaten to sink the ship. [Biden’s helicopter got forced down by enemy fire in Afghanistan] Hope then “gallantly took command of a firefighting team” that would help contain the conflagration and ultimately save the ship. [The writer would have done the same, but not McCain] McCain took no part in dousing the flames himself. [Having just rolled out of his plane] McCain watched the conflagration unfold on the room’s closed-circuit television — bearing distant witness to the valiant self-sacrifice of others who died trying to save the ship, pushing jets into the sea to keep their bombs from exploding on deck. [Snickering as he stirred his Manhattan]  McCain zipped off to Saigon for what he recalls as “some welcome R&R.” [Where he chased tail, WWBCIHWAMOO] Sipping scotch and reflecting on the fire aboard the Forrestal, McCain sounded like the peaceniks he would pillory after his return from Hanoi.  [OMG?  SCOTCH?]  McCain had cajoled his way onto the strike force — there were medals up for grabs. [Gotta collect ‘em all]  The plant had recently been rebuilt after a previous bombing run that had earned two of the lead pilots Navy Crosses, one of the force’s top honors. [Fuckin’ glory hound]  McCain didn’t “jink.” [Always junking when he should jink]  Instead, he stayed on target and let fly his bombs — just as the SAM blew his wing off.  [Dumbass completed his mission]  To watch the Republican National Convention and listen to Fred Thompson’s account of John McCain’s internment in Vietnam, you would think that McCain never gave his captors anything beyond his name, rank, service number and, under duress, the names of the Green Bay Packers offensive line. [Not to listen to McCain’s account, though]  Soon after McCain hit the ground in Hanoi, the code went out the window. [Dude!  He sold out!]  “I’ll give you military information if you will take me to the hospital,” he later admitted pleading with his captors. [Lying bastard]  But during the course of his medical treatment, McCain followed through on his offer of military information. [OMG!  Military information?]  Only two weeks after his capture, the North Vietnamese press issued a report — picked up by The New York Times — in which McCain was quoted as saying that the war was “moving to the advantage of North Vietnam and the United States appears to be isolated.” [Gee, I wonder whether he’d read that in The Rolling Stone, or whether Charlie gave him the info]  He also provided the name of his ship, the number of raids he had flown, his squadron number and the target of his final raid. [OMG!  THE NUMBER OF RAIDS?] In August 1968, over the course of four days, McCain was tortured into signing a confession that he was a “black criminal” and an “air pirate.” [Racist]  McCain spent the next three and a half years in Hanoi biding his time, trying to put on weight and regain his strength, as the bombing ordered by his father escalated. [Slacker]  “In some respects, I’m not sure that’s the kind of character I want sitting in the Oval Office. I’m not sure that much time in a prisoner-of-war status doesn’t do something to you.” [They’re heroes, of course; just completely mad heroes]  “When he came back from Vietnam, he accused the liberal media of undermining national will, that we could have won in Vietnam if we had the national will.” [Poor fucking media; how they’ve suffered]  By any standard, McCain treated her contemptibly. [By the standard of Bill Clinton?] Whatever his dreams of getting laid in Rio, he got plenty of ass during his command post in Jacksonville. [WWBCIHWAMOO]  This time, Carter — his pork-busting efforts undone by a turncoat Navy liaison — signed the bill. [With that immortal spine]  In the spring of 1979, while conducting official business for the Navy, the still-married McCain encountered Cindy Lou Hensley, a willowy former cheerleader for USC. [God, how gauche]  McCain’s second marriage — rung in at the Arizona Biltmore with Gary Hart as a groomsman — was consummated only six weeks later, on May 17th. [OMG!  Gary Hart?  CONSUMMATED?] Within minutes of the incumbent’s official retirement announcement, Cindy McCain bought her husband the house that would serve as his foothold in the district. [Which would have been okay, if it had been Hillary in NY]  And he began an unethical relationship with a high-flying and corrupt financier that would come to characterize his cozy dealings with major donors and lobbyists over the years. [Tony Rezko?]  McCain and his family took at least nine free trips at Keating’s expense, and vacationed nearly every year at the mogul’s estate in the Bahamas. [OMG? MOGUL’S?  Which would be cool if it were Biggie] There they would spend the days yachting and snorkeling and attending extravagant parties in a world McCain referred to as “Charlie Keating’s Shangri-La.” [OMG!  SNORKELING?] McCain voted to confirm Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court.  [RACIST!] In 1983, McCain broke with Reagan to vote against the deployment of Marine peacekeepers to Lebanon. [OMG!  Broke with REAGAN?]  The unorthodox stance caught the attention of the media — including this very magazine, which praised McCain’s “enormous courage.” [OMG!  ROLLING STONE?]  It was the beginning of a beautiful friendship. [Though not nearly as beautiful as that with O!  “By Isis, I will give thee bloody teeth!”]  In the year before his Senate run, McCain had championed legislation that would have delayed new regulations of savings and loans. [Not at all like Democratic votes against oversight for Fannie and Freddie]  Grateful, Keating contributed $54,000 to McCain’s Senate campaign. [Not at all like Fannie and Freddie]  By the time the S&L collapsed two years later, taxpayers were on the hook for $3.4 billion, which stood as a record for the most expensive bank failure — until the current mortgage crisis. [OMG!  $3.4 BILLION?]  In addition, 20,000 investors who had bought junk bonds from Keating, thinking they were federally insured, had their savings wiped out. [Those securities weren’t secured?]  Cindy became addicted to Vicodin and Percocet. [WWBCIHWAMOO]  She directed a doctor employed by her charity — which provided medical care to patients in developing countries — to supply the narcotics, which she then used to get high on trips to places like Bangladesh and El Salvador. [OMG?  PLACES?  LIKE EL SALVADOR?]  Cindy staged a seemingly selfless, Oprah-style confession of her past addiction. [Which would be cool if it were Gwen Stefani]  Mr. Straight Talk was born. [Senator ACORN was hatched]  Unfortunately, any lessons McCain learned from the Keating scandal didn’t affect his unbridled enthusiasm for deregulating the finance industry. [Which is why Democrats were so opposed to his efforts to regulate the mortgage GSEs.  HYPOCRITE!]  Indeed, if the current financial crisis has a villain, it is Phil Gramm, who remains close to McCain. [No, it is ACORN, Democrats including Obama, Gorelick, Johnson, and Raines]  As chair of the Senate Banking Committee in the late 1990s, Gramm ushered in — with McCain’s fervent support — a massive wave of deregulation for insurance companies and brokerage houses and banks, the aftershocks of which are just now being felt in Wall Street’s catastrophic collapse. [Who’s in charge of Ways and Means, again?]  Whatever McCain’s romantic entanglements with the lobbyist Vicki Iseman, he was clearly in bed with her clients, who donated nearly $85,000 to his campaigns. [Whatever Dan Rather’s relation to the truth, I seldom wear pajamas]  There is no small irony that the Reform Institute — founded to bolster McCain’s crusade to rid politics of unregulated soft money — itself took in huge sums of unregulated soft money from companies with interests before McCain’s committee. [Like Obama’s unreported foreign campaign contributions?]  EchoStar got in on the ground floor with a donation of $100,000. A charity funded by the CEO of Univision gave another $100,000. Cablevision gave $200,000 to the Reform Institute in 2003 and 2004 — just as its officials were testifying before the commerce committee. [That’s bad.  Is McCain going to have his own Youth Corps, too?]  The candidate is only five-feet-nine, making him the shortest party nominee since Michael Dukakis. [OMG?  5’9”?]  “At least I don’t plaster on the makeup like a trollop, you cunt.” [What has Dowd ever done to him?]  “Are you calling me stupid?” Grassley demanded. “No, I’m calling you a fucking jerk!” yelled McCain. [A valid distinction, but hardly Straight Talk]  Sen. Bob Kerrey later told reporters that he feared McCain was “going to head-butt Grassley and drive the cartilage in his nose into his brain.” [I can tell when that sort of thing’s about to happen]  In 1999, he told Sen. Pete Domenici, the Republican chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, that “only an asshole would put together a budget like this.” [OMG!  REPUBLICAN?]  In April 2007, when a voter at a town-hall session asked him about his policy toward Tehran, McCain responded by singing, “bomb bomb bomb” Iran. [Which would have been cool, had the Clash sung it]  The loose talk was meant to incite the GOP base, but it also aggravated relations with Iran, whose foreign minister condemned McCain’s “jokes about genocide” as a testament to his “disturbed state of mind” and “warmongering approach to foreign policy.” [Yeah, it’s a drag when a head of state jokes about that kind of thing, instead of really meaning it, man]  In 1993, he railed against Clinton’s involvement in Somalia, sponsoring an amendment to cut off funds for the troops. [OMG!  FUNDING FOR TROOPS?]  In 1998, he formed a political alliance with William Kristol, editor of the neoconservative Weekly Standard, who became one of his closest advisers. [OMG!  BILL KRISTOL?] Privately, McCain brags that he was the “original neocon.” [And I am the Queen of Rumania]  While he was there, he dropped by a supercarrier stationed in the Arabian Sea that was dear to his heart: the USS Theodore Roosevelt, the giant floating pork project that he had driven through over President Carter’s veto. [Giant pork project still projecting eeeeeevil American hegemony]  He “is the classic opportunist,” according to Ross Perot, who worked closely with McCain on POW issues. [Having worked closesly with the Daley Machine]  “He’s always reaching for attention and glory.” [OMG!  ROSS . . . who?]  In June of this year, McCain reversed his decades-long opposition to coastal drilling — shortly before cashing $28,500 from 13 donors linked to Hess Oil. [Not that it might have had anything to do with oil prices; it’s not all about oil]  Instead, with Rove protégé Steve Schmidt at the helm, McCain has turned the campaign into a torrent of debasing negativity, misrepresenting Barack Obama’s positions on everything from sex education for kindergarteners to middle-class taxes. [Bristol Palin is Trig’s Mother!]  “I’m sure John McCain loves his country,” says Richard Clarke, the former counterterrorism czar under Bush. “But loving your country and lying to the American people are apparently not inconsistent in his view.”  [I’m not sure that O! loves his country, so there’s no hypocrisy there]