IS OBAMA TOO INSENSITIVE TO JOHN McCAIN'S FEEBLE MIND?

I'm getting old-- not as old as McCain, but old-- and I forget things. The other day I couldn't remember if it was my mother's maiden name of my first dog's name that I had chosen as the password for my alarm company and when I tried giving both, after triggering the alarm by accident, they sent the police. The L.A.P.D. charges $100 for a false alarm. Still, $100 is a lot less than 3 trillion dollars... and I'm not asking anyone to vote for me as president of the United States.

John McCain was born a couple of decades before me. Those who have been around him when the TV cameras aren't pointed in his direction say he's a mess, more like someone in his 80s than someone in his 70s. He should be taking it easy, maybe kicking back his participation in the Senate from missing about 56.4% of the votes to missing around 60% (like Tim Johnson did when he was hospitalized). After all, McCain's forgetfulness could potentially be very costly-- for all of us. Today Barack Obama gave a speech on Iraq that stands in great contrast to the Bush-McCain Stay the Course approach. The whole speech is more than worth reading.

But, right now, I just want to highlight Obama's gentle warning about McCain's state of mind:

Now we know what we'll hear from those like John McCain who support open-ended war. They will argue that leaving Iraq is surrender. That we are emboldening the enemy. These are the mistaken and misleading arguments we hear from those who have failed to demonstrate how the war in Iraq has made us safer. Just yesterday, we heard Senator McCain confuse Sunni and Shiite, Iran and al Qaeda. Maybe that is why he voted to go to war with a country that had no al Qaeda ties. Maybe that is why he completely fails to understand that the war in Iraq has done more to embolden America's enemies than any strategic choice that we have made in decades.

And speaking about McCain's mental confusion... he just did it again! Sam Stein: "For the third time in two days, the Arizona Republican has pushed the definitively false statement that the terrorist group Al-Qaeda was getting assistance from Iran, even though he was publicly ridiculed for the same false assertion on Tuesday." The corporate media is still too preoccupied with Obama's pastor to even care.


UPDATE: LETTERMAN HAS A PONT

David Letterman accounts for McCain's whole campaign stop in Iraq from a different perspective: he's old. Watch:



On the other hand, McCain was less senile in 1991. Back then he told Larry King that going into Iraq was a bad idea. "I'm not sure that if we did go in on the ground we could tell a Shiite from a Sunni, even from a Kurd. And who is it that we'd be fighting and battling against on the streets of Baghdad?" He still can't tell and he's bumbling and stumbling around in exactly the place a smarter and less power mad John McCain said we shouldn't invade.