There's Only One Version Of History John McCain Follows: His Own!

It ain't easy being Gramps McCain. As if trying to turn into a bag of Earl Gray in order to defeat some insane, initial-named birther, J.D. Hayworth, isn't hard enough, Johnny has the unfortunate task of doing it all while fighting a losing battle with dementia, and a daughter and trophy wife who simply will not stop getting bound and gagged for gays. Oh, Walnuts!

And still, John McCain thinks denouncing birthers will win him a Republican primary. Which it won't, but hey, it's still a better strategy than pretending everyone else suffers from the same mind tricks, selective memory problems, misfiring synapses, and plaque build-up apparently ravaging his 73-year-old brain.

Which helps explain why Sen. John McCain has decided to go maverick on reality, rewriting his own version of history, one which makes him actually look like he is capable of being more than a washed-up anger ball whose claim to fame was languishing in a Hanoi prison camp after accidentally crashing his plane deep in enemy territory nearly half a century ago.

Like how he never suspended his presidential campaign to address the 2008 financial crisis, but if he did it was only because President George W. Bush called and forced him to because his sage wisdom was the only thing that could save America from total financial calamity.

Saying a worldwide economic catastrophe was imminent and that he needed his help, McCain said Bush called him in off the campaign trail, "I don't know of any American, when the president of the United States calls you and tells you something like that, who wouldn't respond," McCain said. "And I came back and tried to sit down and work with Republicans and say, 'What can we do?' "

And that's not it either! Did you know that Barack Obama was so jealous of McCain's brilliant decision to suspend his campaign that he stole the idea and also temporarily suspended his campaign in a cheap ploy to avoid debating such an exciting, charismatic orator with as much mass appeal as Johnny Mac Daddy on prime-time television?

"[Bush] didn't ask me to suspend my campaign," said McCain. "I suspended my campaign -- as did Senator Obama -- to come back to Washington because the President had told me that we were in a world financial collapse. That's why I did what I did. I always said that consistently."

See? He's consistently maintained that Bush asked him to suspend his campaign to help out, until admitting that was actually nothing but a desperate figment of his wild imagination. Of course, the real truth is that Obama DEFINITELY suspended his campaign too, though. He's sure of it. Absolutely positive, in fact. Without a doubt, 100 percent that is what happened. That much he knows is true.

Except for the little fact that Obama never announced he was suspending his campaign when he went to Washington to join McCain, Bush, and congressional leaders, for a White House meeting on the crisis, engineered by McCain himself. Quite the opposite, in fact, with Obama saying he still planned to show up for the presidential debate that Friday, arguing that a president needed to be able to do two things at once.

Of course, when asked whether his memory of events was the same as Gramps over here, Steve Hildebrand, who ran the Obama campaign's field operation, told TPM: "Nope. We proceeded directly ahead, pointing out along the way that McCain was incapable of doing two things at once."

Nonsense! John McCain is perfectly capable of lying about two things simultaneously!

As for his own bizarre, misguided hiatus from campaigning, McCain eventually acknowledged that he may have given the Arizona Republic a different impression about the extent of Bush's role in his decision, saying, "If I mischaracterized it, or misstated, fine. But I have consistently said, ever since the beginning, at the time, that I was coming back because I was told by the President of the United States that we were on the verge of a financial crisis."

And since he was on the verge of a mental crisis himself, his decaying mind figured who better to help steer the country--and his psyche--back on track?

Even if things didn't end up going his way, he could always resort to his backup current strategy of pretending events unfolded the way he would have liked, or at the very least, make sh*t up as he goes along.

Like how he would NEVER would have voted for that terrible, Socialist $700 billion bailout package for the banks if he wasn't tricked by those dirty weasels Henry Paulson and Ben Bernanke into believing the bailout money would help struggling Americans pay for their mortgages, not fat cat Wall Street bankers pay for their gold-and-diamond encrusted pulley-and-lever systems to help them maneuver more efficiently to the vending machines down the hall.

According to the Arizona Republic:

[T]he four-term senator says he was misled by then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke. McCain said the pair assured him that the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program would focus on what was seen as the cause of the financial crisis, the housing meltdown.

"Obviously, that didn't happen," McCain said. "They decided to stabilize the Wall Street institutions, bail out (insurance giant) AIG, bail out Chrysler, bail out General Motors ... What they figured was that if they stabilized Wall Street -- I guess it was trickle-down economics -- that therefore Main Street would be fine."

God Damn liars! Sure, everyone understood that TARP was focused on stabilizing Wall Street, not directly on the housing market, in order to prevent a total collapse of the financial system. Including John McCain. But what everyone seems to not understand is that was John McCain then, this is John McCain now.

And much like Reality is Reality, and Delusion is Delusion, never the twain shall meet.