Desperate Times Call For Desperate Lies

It may have been that once upon a time, John McCain showed actual leadership. Perhaps he was the glue that had once held together the desperate American POW's at the Hanoi Hilton, the rock, the immovable capstan to which these brave men would cling during a cruel and painful detention that, to them, was destined to last forever.

No more.

Now, McCain's version of proving his leadership bona fides at a time when he's slipping in the polls like an elephant on an ice floe is to attack Barack Obama by taking cues from his running mate Klondike Annie.

At the risk of alienating his handlers at the Commission for Presidential Debates, McCain plans on bringing up during their third and final debate Obama's flimsy and brief association-by-guilt with William Ayers, whom McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds called a "terrorist" in the same sentence in which he was openly referring to the Illinois senator by name.

OK. Let's have this dialogue. After all, all's fair in love, war and politics and Johnny boy has been prolific and well-versed in all three. If McCain wants to be colossally stupid enough to bring up Obama's "association" with William Ayers then Obama is free and clear to bring up Charles Keating and McCain's much more collusive relationship with him.

And since Obama's half Kenyan, then he should have even more leeway to bring up Sarah Palin's own much more recent and, by all accounts, ongoing relationship with witch-hunter Thomas Muthee. How about Sarah's and Todd's very recent if not still active association with a radical, anti-American secessionist group that doesn't quite see America the way you and I do, once led by a, well, terrorist named Joe Vogler?

Maybe, while he's at it, Obama can also mention why Jerome Corsi, the King of the 527's, got kicked out of Kenya a week ago after publishing a book entitled "The Obama Nation." (For some wonderful quotes from Jerome and some background on this dirty GOP trickster, go here.)

What the fuck. We've already agreed no one can fix the economic mess that we're in. One way or the other we're going to be in Iraq for at least another two years. So let's use this last debate to have a good ole fashioned, Tammany Hall-class dead catting session.