But he still hasn't lost Joe Scarborough

If John McCain has lost the Murdoch Street Journal, how long is it before he loses everyone else?

Is John McCain losing it?

On Sunday, he said on national television that to solve Social Security "everything's on the table," which of course means raising payroll taxes. On July 7 in Denver he said: "Senator Obama will raise your taxes. I won't."

This isn't a flip-flop. It's a sex-change operation.

He got back to the subject Tuesday in Reno, Nev. Reporters asked about the Sunday tax comments. Mr. McCain replied, "The worst thing you could do is raise people's payroll taxes, my God!" Then he was asked about working with Democrats to fix Social Security, and he repeated, "everything has to be on the table." But how can . . .? Oh never mind.

I mean seriously....when you have a columnist at the Wall Street Journal not only using the kind of snark usually reserved for Democratic candidates with a brain in their heads, but very nearly slips in a Firesign Theatre reference, you know we are living in Very Strange Times.

There's a certain hysterical undertone to the McCain campaign these days. No one who doesn't feel that he was supposed to have a clear path to the presidency by running against That Clinton Woman and instead finds himself running against a rock star would allow his campaign to claim that his opponent is no different from Paris Hilton or Britney Spears or Lindsey Lohan.

I don't see what they're so upset about; after all, Faux Noise and CNN and everyone on MSNBC other than Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow is firmly in the McCain camp forevermore. Their candidate can't even construct a coherent English sentence anymore but he's less than ten points down in the polls -- a gap that's only one really effective Scary Negro Muslim Commie ad away from narrowing.

Of course McCain is trying to pander to so many constituencies now that he sounds alternately appallingly craven and utterly pathetic. He's trying to get the Christian Scold vote while at the same time chipping away at independents who could just as easily go for Obama. And the result is that not only has the so-called Straight Talk Express started running making all local stops and is in danger of derailing at any moment, but he's sounding more like one of Grandpa Simpson's disjointed rants every day.