McCain: On losing his mind and melting down while Obama is out of the country

The candidate as he pieces together his own frakkin' history and facts

You may have noticed a crazier tone to the McCain campaign in the last few days. They just aren't taking that Obama Middle east trip too well. It's going great for him, Obama looks Presidential, sounds smart and in control, leaders like him, Maliki went and endorsed his withdrawal plan, and it's going to end up with a giant speech in Germany which has been estimated to draw as many as a million people. John McCain couldn't draw a million people if he added up 100 events and promised free handjobs from Phil Gramm.

This Obama trip might have just broke McCain mentally. It started with basic country mangling. He imagined Czechoslovakia still existed and kept referencing it over a period of days. He then invented a border between Iraq and Pakistan during a question on Afghanistan and surmised on all the troubles there. He's a geography maverick not bound by real borders or the actual existence of countries. In his defense Iran is between Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, and the troubles he envisioned on the Iraqi/Paki border may have just been his desire to invade and war with Iran.

He then started running ads blaming Obama for high oil prices and claiming that drilling would lower them. This despite the fact that even he admits drilling may not effect prices for a decade or more. Further defending it by saying "The oil executives say that we could see the benefit of offshore drilling in just a couple years." Yes John, the oil executives will get benefits, not the American people. Then his surrogates went around claiming that McCain might actually pull out of Iraq sooner than Obama, with unicorns handing out free candy for the victory party. This was particularly interesting as McCain has even derided the idea that the troops could even be physically moved out in Obama's timeframe.

He then moved to accusing Obama of wanting to lose in Iraq for his own political benefit. For those of you scoring at home: losing=leaving, winning=staying. This even drove hoary old conventional wisdom molesters and maverick-lovers like Joe Klein to decry it as pathetic. Diamond J then whined about media coverage despite the fact that he is possibly the biggest benefactor of lapdog coverage in politics. The media slobbers over his 'maverick' persona so hard that most Americans are completely unaware of the far right positons he holds on many issues, nor the fact that he's been a rubber stamp for Bush over the last few years (to the tune of 95% and 100% voting records with the Bush Administration.)

So what does the biased, anti-McCain media do? Yesterday, in a CBS interview with Katie Couric, in the middle of an attack on Obama, he made an egregious gaffe on the timeline on the Anbar Awakening and the surge, showing a dramatic failure to understand just what happened there. What did CBS do? They covered it up and covered his ass. John-boy responded today by attacking people who had the temerity to point out that the violence reduction was preceded by numerous events in Iraq that led directly to the reduction and happened as much as a year before, and furthermore that the Anbar Awakening happened three months before plans for the surge were even announced, let alone implemented. Or, in short, he didn't know what the fuck he was talking about....again.

Then as the amusing closer to this multi-day meltdown, McCain had a spokesman go out and attack a statement Obama made this morning at the Holocaust museum in Israel that preventing genocide was a good idea. He had someone go out and try and call a guy who said 'never again' to the holocaust an insincere liar. Did I mention McCain went and made sure to pick a Jewish staffer to make the claim? Well he did. Joe Lieberman was busy.

What next for McCain? Hurling feces at people who come by to gawk at his hijinks? New and more imaginary countries and borders? Will we need to invade Narnia to ease tensions in Mos Eisley? Will news organizations just start piecing sane interview answers together from decades of McCain video? Stay tuned.

ADDENDUM: Pointing out facts is attacking the troops.

The troops weigh in.