Thoughts from Kansas

Earlier today, John McCain got a bit confused.

In and of itself, that wouldn't be so unusual. He's old and slightly crazy, so confusion is part of his daily experience. He can't tell Sunni from Shiite, Iran from Iraq, Iraq from Afghanistan, Czechoslovakia from the Czech Republic, or his wife from a telecom lobbyist.

This confusion was special, though. McCain was asked how many houses he owns, and:

"I think — I'll have my staff get to you," McCain told Politico in Las Cruces, N.M. "It's condominiums where — I'll have them get to you."

Which is fine. I lose track of my property ownership all the time. Without some sort of spreadsheet, who can really keep count?

Politico continues:

The correct answer is at least four, located in Arizona, California and Virginia, according to his staff. Newsweek estimated this summer that the couple owns at least seven properties.

And a Politico analysis later in the day found McCain's family owns at least eight properties, according to property and tax records, as well as interviews.

Some of the confusion may relate to the fact that McCain bought 2 multi-million dollar luxury condos in a Phoenix high-rise, which were then connected into one gigantic McMansion.

Further analysis revealed a family parking lot valued at $1 million.

Two of the McCain homes are in and around San Diego, where home foreclosures are breaking records:

Those waiting for signs that the housing slump is nearing an end were disappointed Thursday, as MDA DataQuick reported 2,004 San Diego County homes went into foreclosure in July, a 9 percent increase over June and a jump of nearly 213 percent over last year.

The July foreclosure tally was a record high since DataQuick began monitoring mortgage failures in 1988. It marked the county's 40th consecutive month of year-over-year increases in both foreclosures and notices of default, the start of the foreclosure process. …

The continuing rise in foreclosures “reflects the weak housing market,” [Alan Gin, economist for the Burnham-Moores Center for Real Estate at the University of San Diego] added. “Prices are going down. A lot of people find it easier to walk away from their mortgages than fighting to stay in the house.”…

New foreclosures are outnumbering the sale of foreclosed properties. Countywide, a record 41 percent of all resale homes sold during July had been foreclosed on within the previous 12 months, DataQuick reported.

Let's look at that last stat. Forty percent of houses sold in San Diego County last month were foreclosures. Four in ten. How soon until it's half? All while Cindy McCain describes her blasé approach to scooping up snooty digs on the San Diego coast:

In an interview with Cindy McCain in the June issue of Vogue magazine, conducted from the newer Coronado condo, she explained that her husband, a Navy veteran, initially wasn't keen on the idea of a pied-à-terre in Coronado.

"When I bought the first one, my husband [John McCain], who is not a beach person, said, 'Oh this is such a waste of money; the kids will never go,'" she said in Vogue. "Then it got to the point where they used it so much I couldn't get in the place. So I bought another one."

The two condos cost in the realm of $5 million, and the McCains seem to have no problem keeping up with their payments. Then again, McCain is rich enough to pay cash.