OK, for those readers that refuse to see John McCain as the continuation of the ruinous thinking of the Bush 43rd administration, Karl Rove & Co. joining McCain’s war room should now be proof enough. The Arizona Republican is the embodiment of business as usual. Even worse, the McCain campaign is going ugly fast and is completely untethered to the truth.

By comparing Barack Obama to Britney Spears and Paris Hilton in July, McCain displayed an act of desperation, which easily qualifies as “jumping the shark.” The word sad also comes to mind.

It seems the straight talk express is spinning out of control.

Once asking for a “respectful campaign,” team McCain now includes Karl Rove; Steve Schmidt, Bush’s 2004 attack man; and Mark McKinnon, the president’s media strategist. Ken Mehlman, Bush’s 2004 campaign manager, now serves as an unpaid consultant. Rove recently donated money to the McCain campaign. A top McCain adviser characterized Mehlman and Rove as informal advisors.

With this lineup of political operatives, it’s little surprise McCain has turned mean and ugly. These are the same people that ravaged the aging war hero when he challenged team Bush for the 2000 Republican nomination and John Kerry in 2004.

Flash forward four more years and Rick Davis, the king of contempt, is once again leading Team McCain into the down and dirty. Davis was the national campaign manager of McCain’s 2000 bid and worked on the presidential campaigns of Bob Dole, George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan. We’re talking deep ugly.

Not a day goes by where McCain & Co. fail to demonstrate how intellectually bankrupt he and the ruling status quo really are. By offering up only tired platitudes about victory and winning the surge amidst a steady stream of empty negativism and cheap-shot sound bites, McCain reveals himself a bitter puppet of the business-as-usual crowd.

Besides wars for oil and drilling for oil, what exactly does John McCain stand for other than John McCain?

I know he wants to reduce taxes during a time of war without saying how he will pay for his oil wars. I know he wants to drill for oil off the coast of Southern California and build 45 nuclear reactors by 2030. He has also voted to defund renewable and solar energy and to discontinue desert protection in California.

It’s clear John McCain is big on domestic spying, supports the use of torture and censorship, wants to deny women reproductive freedom and wants to deny equal rights to Americans identifying as homosexual. I also know John McCain voted against repealing tax subsidies for companies who move U.S. jobs offshore.

Representing nothing but the failed policies of the 20th century, the only game John McCain can play is the strategy of napalm negativity. Without anything positive to offer the voters of the United States, the only option available to him is the politics of personal destruction.

In the last month, John McCain has proven he lacks the judgment, critical thinking skills and emotional maturity to be president. The fact that Republicans deemed George W. Bush better suited for the Oval Office than the Arizona senator says more about the man than I ever could.

John McCain is so 20th century.