What color is the sky in his world?

Former President Jimmy Carter was giving an interview with USA Today yesterday and said that Sen. McCain has been “milking” his time as a POW to his advantage at every opportunity.

Well, that appears to have pissed off South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford, who labeled Carter’s comments “absurd” and said “I’ve spent a lot of time with John McCain over the years and it’s something he doesn’t bring up in personal conversation. It’s something that you have to pull out of him just because it’s something that he doesn’t talk about. And so, does he have admirers that talk about that searing life experience and the character that it would develop? […] With all do respect, I think it’s a crazy claim.”

I’m… I’m sorry… his time as a POW is something he “doesn’t talk about”… seriously? That’s what you’re going to say??

Give me a break…

McCain not only has a long and storied history of discussing his POW experience… at length… but he’s also very well adept at doing so when it has absolutely nothing to do with the topic at hand.

He did it most recently during an appearance on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. After Leno asked him how it’s possible that he couldn’t remember how many houses he owns, McCain said; “I spent five and a half years in a prison cell, I didn’t have a house, I didn’t have a kitchen table, I didn’t have a table, I didn’t have a chair.”Aaaaaaannnnnddddd???? What does that have to with the question at hand? If Jay had any balls he would have asked a follow-up question consisting of; what the fuck does that have to do with anything??

It doesn’t… and it proves that McCain DOES talk about his time as a POW and he DOES use it, or at least tries to use it as an advantage.

ThinkProgress has a few more examples of McCain “not” talking about this POW experience:

“– Raising his POW experience to justify his love of the song ‘Take a Chance on Me’ by Abba. “A lot of my taste in music stopped about the time I impacted a surface to air missile with my own airplane,” McCain said to Walter Issacson at the Aspen Institute. (In fact, Abba
began recording years after he was shot down.)

– Raising his POW experience to justify his opposition to universal healthcare. “I did have a period of time where I didn’t have very good healthcare, I had it from another government. Look, I know what it’s like not to have healthcare,” McCain said on ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos.

– Raising his POW experience to attack political opponents. “Senator Clinton tried to spend $1 million on the Woodstock concert museum. Now, my friends, I wasn’t there…I was tied up at the time,’” McCain said during a primary debate.”

McCain uses his time as a POW to his advantage. I know that. He knows that. Everyone outside the traditional media knows that. Why do we continually act as though he doesn’t?

It’s logical that someone who is a veteran would use that experience in stories… but when one brings it up and the subject at hand has absolutely nothing to do with POW’s or veterans or the military… well, there’s something wrong there.

Why is it when I hear McCain talk I instantly think of Grandpa Simpson?

“We can't bust heads like we used to, but we have our ways. One trick is to tell them stories that don't go anywhere. Like the time I took the fairy to Shelbyville. I needed a new heel for my shoe so I decided to go to Morganville, which is what they called Shelbyville in those days. So I tied an onion to my belt, which was the style at the time. Now to take the ferry cost a nickel, and in those days, nickels had pictures of bumblebees on them. Give me five bees for a quarter you'd say. Now where were we, oh ya. The important thing was that I had an onion on my belt, which was the style at the time. They didn't have white onions because if the war. The only thing you could get was those big yellow ones.”

McCain is not only senile, but his surrogates – regardless of age – are as well it seems...

No way. No how. No Grandpa Simpson McCain.