For the record:
Congratulations to TPM Cafe blogger "mcc" who accurately predicted John McCain's pick of Sarah Palin more than a month ago in a vote on the "Weekend Bloggers TPM V-P Predictions Thread": 
What did mcc know, and when did mcc know it???

Slate gives an interesting history of the use of "my friends" in American political rhetoric...

When McCain invokes "my friends," he's making an appeal to the old days—the really old days.

Perhaps that's why this Foghorn Leghorn-ish turn of phrase also finds popularity among conservative populists. Since its last major outing in 1989, the phrase's most notable public users have been Rush Limbaugh and Pat Buchanan, who deployed it six times in his 1992 RNC "culture war" speech. This was the hectoring strain of "my friendism" also favored by 1930s radio demagogue Father Charles Coughlin, and it's in these less nuanced uses that the phrase's dynamic becomes clearer: There's an implicit aggression originating in the singular form of the phrase. Generally, when someone not personally known to you addresses you as "my friend," the safe assumption to make is that he is not your friend. In the American vernacular, "my friend" precedes a punch in the face.

This is the discomfort of "my friends": Although it hopes to evoke amici's wave of the arm over the agora, on the stump it remains a phrase that demands fealty when, in fact, that relationship has not yet been granted to the candidate. It feels faintly bullying—an unpleasant echo of the singular menace of my friend.

The word on the street is that John McCain is a bellicose hot-head, impulsive, erratic, and prickly. If I were considering hiring McCain for a CEO job of a major corporation, or the country's top diplomat, or any position nearly as important as the presidency, I would have to think twice. I would have to ask, does he have the bearing, patience, good judgment and emotional stability needed?

Very recently McCain has given us new reasons to wonder if he's a loose cannon. Reportedly, he offered Sarah Palin the vice-president job at his home last Thursday even though he'd only met her once before at a Governor's conference. It even appears that he sent his team of vetters to Alaska to check out her background after making the offer. So his campaign had no less than five full months to make the best possible decision on McCain's running mate, and this is the best they can do? McCain seems to have failed the first test of his presidential decision-making abilities.

Now there's a short video from Robert Greenwald of Brave New Films to make the case that John McCain doesn't have the right temperament for the presidency. The star of the video is Phillip Butler, a man who has known McCain for 40 years, served closely with him, and was even another POW. Butler says:

John McCain would blow up and go off like a Roman candle at any possible time. The world is such a dangerous place and he has shown himself already to be bellicose. John McCain is not somebody that I would like to see with his finger near the red button.

Even if I were a Republican inclined to support McCain because I value his character and his policies, I would still be uneasy about McCain's emotional stability. I would need to view at least a summary of a full psychiatric assessment of McCain examining his potential post-traumatic stress and any other lingering effects of his internment. I would also want the opinion of more than one psychiatrist as to whether McCain is emotionally up for the job. I would want to know whether he has ever had anger management counseling, or whether he needs it.

Why isn't the media demanding more evidence that McCain is temperamentally and psychologically fit to be the president? Why don't we hear more about the several GOP Senators who have said they are scared about the idea of McCain in the White House? Why has McCain seemingly received a free ride from the media so far on the temperament issue? It's high time these questions were asked and answered.

Perhaps it's just that the Democrats haven't been willing to go on the offensive for fear that they will be perceived as attacking McCain's honorable record of national service. If so, now it the time to get this issue out on the table and let the American people decide.