Strange-Talk Express

[Cross-posted at Firedoglake, because, as ever, I'm lazy]

There are gaffes, and then there is straight out BS. The man who has been singing the praises of whatever re-imaginings of actual reality he can manage to shove down the throats of the press corp slathered in gallon jugs of Kirkland-brand barbecue sauce is on a new theme.

Demanding Barack Obama hang out with his Mentholatum-dipped posse on their jaunts to the land of never-ending-ever-impending-undefinable victory, Iraq.

As I posted yesterday, McCain has engaged a constant drum-beat the last nearly six-years praising Bush, but mostly himself, for the "always" successful policy that is the Iraq War. At least as it exists frozen in a Rich Lowry NRO special of May 2005, "We're Winning". McCain styles himself the new Admiral Farrugut, "Damn the facts, full speed-o-wank".

Because Obama refuses to sit for three days as the meat in a "McCain-Lieberman sandwich" McCain gets to call him a coward, rather than what he clearly is, a person of at least modestly refined taste.

So now the self-styled "Mr. Straight Talk" is adding another layer of fertilzer to the pile, because Obama will do things on his own schedule, rather than toady to McCain's agenda, the "Maverick" takes away his offer of a Werther's Original and makes proclamations like this yesterday in Reno (the press corps went, just to watch him lie):

"Why is it that Senator Obama wants to sit down with the president of Iran but hasn't yet sat down with General Petraeus, the leader of our troops in Iraq?"

That's funny, I remember just last month, when all three of the remaining Presidential Candidates sat down and had talks with Petraeus. It was in all the papers and McCain was even there:

The Senator who mined this turf most profitably was ... Barack Obama (a surprise, since you never expect a presidential peacock to be succinct or acute enough in these bloviathons). Obama hit Petraeus and Crocker with an artful series of questions about the two main threats: Sunni terrorists like al-Qaeda in Iraq, and Iran. He noted that al-Qaeda had been rejected by the Iraqi Sunnis and chased to the northern city of Mosul. If U.S. and Iraqi troops succeeded there, what was next? He proposed: "Our goal is not to hunt down and eliminate every single trace of al-Qaeda but rather to create a manageable situation where they're not posing a threat to Iraq." Petraeus said Obama was "exactly right."

And it is Obama that is supposed to have the problem -- not the self-proclaimed "Straight-Talker".

But then again, they do say short-term memory is the first thing to go.