John McCain has claimed that he believes “there is a special place in hell” for Tucker Eskew and the others who were behind the push-poll that implanted the idea in S.C. voters’ minds in 2000 that he had fathered an illegitimate black child, but that sure didn’t stop him from hiring Eskew to help prepare Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.

Jake Tapper: McCain Hires GOP Operative Who Helped Smear Him in South Carolina in 2000

Former officials of Sen. John McCain’s 2000 campaign expressed shock and disbelief Monday to learn than the GOP presidential nominee had hired South Carolina political consultant Tucker Eskew.

Eskew, along with Warren Tompkins and Neal Rhodes, were key members of then-Gov. George W. Bush’s South Carolina team during the 2000 primaries. McCain and his team long held Bush, Tompkins, Rhodes and Eskew responsible for the various smears against McCain and his family in the Palmetto state during that contentious contest. […]

Asked if the McCain campaign would have a comment about hiring one of the South Carolina strategists the senator and his 2000 campaign team once held responsible for smears against him, McCain 2008 spokesman Brian Rogers emailed, “No.”

This shouldn’t come as much of a surprise after McCain hired Rove’s protegé two months ago and began running the negative campaign he pledged not to. There’s apparently no depth of depravity that McCain won’t stoop to and no issue he won’t flip-flop on in an attempt to win this election.

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/09/02/mccain-sells-his-soul-hires-man-who-sunk-his-2000-campaign/

ECONOMY — WORKERS WORSE OFF ON PAY, EMPLOYMENT: A Rutgers University labor scorecard reported that workers are “in worse shape than they’ve been in years,” with 10 percent of Americans “unemployed, discouraged from seeking work or underemployed.” Median weekly earnings have not grown in real terms over the last eight years, and the federal minimum wage is now “worth 40 cents less per hour, in inflation-adjusted dollars, than it was a decade ago.” Despite these discouraging figures, President Bush declared in his radio address this week that “there have been some signs that our economy is beginning to improve.” In fact, Bush will leave the next president with a record deficit of over $480 billion, the worst housing crisis since the Great Depression, and the lowest rate of job creation in the last 40 years. “Professor Douglas Kruse, a labor economist who created the scorecard, said a sharp decline in the number of Americans able to find full-time jobs, along with growing consumer debt and health care costs, were causes for concern.”

www.americanprogressaction.org