Egads!

Anyone see Sen. McCain with Snuffleupagus on "This Weak"?

McCain whined like a schoolgirl, feigning shock, shock, SHOCK I tell you! over Obama's tissue thin relationship with a guy who used to be a radical when Obama was 8 years old.

McCain nearly soiled his adult undergarments whining in manufactured outrage that Obama would dare associate in any way, shape, or form with a man, "terrorist", as McCain so hysterically labeled him on several occasions, who had once been a member of a student radical group in the turbulent '60s, a man, McCain railed, who was actually.... UNREPENTANT!!!!!.... in other words, he's never apologized adequately and was even quoted as saying he only wish he'd done more during the time.

McCain was about to bust a heart valve over this. He must have been practicing his fake outrage lately because he was chewing the scenery better than Jim Carrey.

But after sputtering and trying to remember the way they told him to describe it, and falling short, he finally got to a point where he got even MORE outraged. Something that apparently pissed grandpa off to the point where he was about ready to spit his teeth at someone.

What absolutely frosted McSame's hide was that Obama had DARED to bring up the fine Republican Senator (and OB/GYN) Dr. Tom Coburn, one of the most whacked out anti-abortion zealots in congress.

Obama, rightly, had said that he works with, likes, and admires Coburn, but Coburn has publicly stated in the past that perhaps we should institute the death penalty on anyone who performs an abortion.

Pretty damn extreme in anyone's book.

Obama's point then, was asking if he was supposed to condemn Coburn then, for having expressed such a radical view, advocating death to someone for performing a legal surgical procedure?

Obama's point was that these sort of idiotic attacks presume that people should spend their lives officially denouncing and renouncing and whatever sort of 'nouncing the right demands, ANYONE who has EVER, even decades previously, said ANYTHING, which might be considered offensive in any way.

In other words, a completely insane demand, but done with a straight face over in Republican land.

McCain was apoplectic that Obama would dare do something like this, and went on with his scripted lines, describing Coburn in near reverent hushed tones as a "doctor", and someone who regularly goes to his home state of Oklahoma to deliver "babies!", for God's sake. (as if that alone proves his sainthood.) and Obama was completely trashing this "good man" and on and on and on.

By the time he was done, he had Coburn healing lepers while Obama took a dump on his head.

One word describes McCain's performance, shameless, stark, shocking, utter, jaw-dropping, shamelessness.

The mummy went ballistic on this for several minutes as Boy George attempted to get a word in edgewise.

He finally let McCain sputter to something resembling composure and then asked McCain about his SEEKING and enthusiastically ACCEPTING the direct endorsement of Rev. John Hagee, discussed here previously, who descibes the Catholic Church as, "The Great Whore", among other lunatic pronouncements too numerous to list.

Did McCain denounce Hagee for these extreme views? Does he agree with them?

Oh, of course not, McCain went on, suddenly knocked ass over teakettle off his high horse, and with that famous seething tenseness immediately returning to his face and voice. He sputtered on and made a complete and utter ass out of himself after Stephanopolis forced him to casually admit that accepting Hagee's endorsement was "probably" a mistake. But then amazingly he went on to inartfully explain why he wasn't going to reject Hagee's endorsement just because he might disagree with him on some issues, that he admires Hagee for his apocalyptic weirdo support of Israel (so the Jews can help end the world so Hagee can get to heaven while the Jews burn in hell, in Hagee's version of events.)

After making an ass out of himself, McCain typically turned and bristled at Stephanopolis with his trademark threatening tone thinly disguised with a fake chuckle, saying pointedly, "Thanks for the question.", no doubt followed by a string of unvoiced profanity.

McCain within the span of a couple minutes:

-Went completely bat-shit on Obama for some ridiculously manufactured association with a guy even Richard Daley calls a great citizen of Chicago, who did something bad when Obama was 8 years old, calling him a "terrorist" repeatedly.

- Admitted his direct solicitation of the endorsement of someone far more offensive to far more people than Ayers ever was or will be,

- Then used EXACTLY the same arguments to justify it, exactly the same arguments as to why it's unfair to try to tie him to Hagees views, as Obama has with his pastor and Ayers, and

- After admitting it was "probably" a mistake to go after and accept Hagee's endorsement, and admitting that Hagee's statements were offensive, went on to say he was "glad" to have the endorsement and that he admired Hagee, and when asked, said that even though Hagee condemns the entire Catholic religion, he still accepts his endorsement.

It's enough to make a sane person's head spin.

THIS is the guy they think is a "maverick"???!!! THIS is Mr. "Straight talk"???!!!

Amazingly there's a group that thinks we're stupid enough to swallow that.

This time I don't think we'll prove them right again.

And throughout the entire show, McCain did his creepy little menacing half-chuckle, punctuating every attack he made. It's sincerely creepy and beyond off-putting. ("My friend, I'm going to stick a knife in your neck, heh heh heh." Like Joe Pesci in "Goodfellas" when he scares the bejesus out of a guy by acting as though he's about to go off on him, then suddenly breaks into maniacal laughter as if it were all a joke.)

Well, ABC (probably wisely) doesn't provide transcripts of "This Week", but they did post a little blurb on McCain's amazing hypocritical double-gainer back flip-flop.

The transcript would have been much better, but you can watch the show online.(after sitting through a commercial, natch. And of note is that the top rated video on ABC's website is something about teens finding a large rodent. (Maybe the Republicans are right in assuming we're all shallow twits.)

Watch the thing if you can. His diatribe on Ayers is around 14:30 on the little counter at the bottom if you want to cut to the chase.

He has the right idea in attempting to find billions by cutting military spending that's currently wasteful and unnecessary. I'm also glad to hear him say he'd address the ENORMOUSLY expensive subsidy programs for big corporate farmers that no one ever seems to address. These programs amount to literally billions and billions of dollars, paying corporate farmers to keep the price of their crops artificially low and their profits artificially high. (where are all the free-market ideologues on that?)

McCain is also putting forward the unique, insane, and too-long unchallenged argument that we need tax cuts for the wealthy because the economy is going fine, or unless it's not, in which case, tax cuts for the wealthy is the solution for that too.

When Boy George raised the fact that McCain has had government health care for his entire life as son of a Naval officer and so on, McCain decided to evade it by making a funny. He said that there was a time when he didn't have government health care, because it was from another government, heh, heh, heh. (but seriously folks.) The line fell like a lead balloon.

Overall, it was just embarrassing.

I have occasional moments where I worry that McCain and the right might actually make it a close race with Clinton or more likely Obama.

This appearance wiped away any trace of doubt in my mind. If THIS is the guy they want to put against Obama.... bring it on.

My only hope is that they have a debate every other day during the campaign. By the time election day rolled around, the pundits would be wondering if McCain could carry his own family.