Isn't anyone paying attention to McCain?

I know the soap opera of the Clinton Delusion and attempts to turn Obama into a serial killer have been much more satisfying lately, but there is another interesting story: John McCain has gone bonkers.

The guy is old. This isn't normally a big deal, as long as the guy is "fit" (unless you're Ronald Reagan and you get a free "illness-enduced pass" after destroying the country--don't pick on those that can't fight back: as if that has anything to do presidential policies!), but you know, this guy is an old 71. There's 71 like my grandfather a decade ago with my grandmother feeding him greens and granola, and then there's this 71. A life in politics, half-a-decade as a POW. That puts a strain on a person. Well the cracks are showing.

So here's what we've really got: either he's lying to us and trying to manipulate us or else he's senile and forgets things, such as mixing up Shi'a and Sunni. Those are our options? Either he's evil or he's demented. Either he's completely unsuited or completely unfit. Either he's dangerous or he's dangerous. Or maybe dangerous.

He's admitted to having no economic experience and has no economic aptitude, suggesting he should have somebody teach him this stuff. OK. He also said that in 2005. And in 2000 when he ran the first time. One would think if he cared the least bit about this, he would have spent an hour a week for a semester of Econ at a community college sometime in the last 8 YEARS!

And he is using the same technique as Bush: he is trying to associate Iran to Iraq the way Bush (temporarily successfully) associated Afghanistan to Iraq. That, and both have tried to link al Qaeda to a country they are eager to bomb. And this is the foreign policy 'expert' in the race!

I know you are tempted to like McCain. He's folksy, grandfatherly (assuming your grandfather is unnaturally obsessed with bombing Iran), and he rides in a bus he calls "The Straight-Talk Express". He ran against Bush in 2000 and only lost because the Republican Party wanted a puppet president. He was a free thinker and showed great deference to those things that excite the populists among us. That 2000 McCain was so appealing. But he's gone. 2005 McCain took him out in the back and shot him in the back of the head. 2005 McCain has since evolved into 2008 McCain--the more senile, pandering, lying, demented version of himself. He has done the very thing that decent men in the Republican Party have been doing for decades: selling his soul to the devil for a shot at the top. Relatively decent men like George H. W. Bush and Bob Dole suddenly take a swan dive from the diving board of sanity into the pool evil and incompetence. We watched principled men of character making shady deals with the scum of the party to bring them along, pandering to the likes of Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell (for McCain, it's John Hagee) changing principled positions to the party line and sacrificing the one positive attribute they had: their character. John McCain, the straight-talker sold it years ago, sold it during the 2004 election, to hop in bed with George W. Bush, the great villain of recent presidential politics.

Which leads us to today. McCain, after his little Joe Lieberman-inspired correction, is still using as his platform for president that he should take us to war with Iran. This is what he's got. I sure hope we aren't this stupid.