John McCain recently seems to have little problem uttering such blatantly false and idiotic statements that it  makes President Bush look like a statesman.

Today, Sen McCain said that “the fundamentals of our economy are strong, but these are very, very difficult times.”

He said this the same day that investment bank Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy and Merrill Lynch narrowly missed insolvency by selling itself to Bank of America. Saying that while two of the four remaining large investment banks on Wall Street give up the ghost is a rather clueless statement but he managed to top that later in the day by redefining what economic fundamentals are.

And my opponents may disagree, but those fundamentals — the American worker and their innovation, their entrepreneurship, the small business, those are the fundamentals of America, and I think they’re strong

It’s not just that his opponents disagree, the entire field of macroeconomic theory disagrees with him. American economic fundamentals are the inflation rate, gross domestic product (GDP), unemployment rate,  and other hard measurable factors.  According to Forbes magazine, core inflation “is up 3.6% over the past twelve months, the fastest unadjusted annual pace since May 1991.” Real GDP has been shrinking each year since 2004, and unemployment has gone up considerably since August 2007 from 4.7% to 6.1%. The sky may not be falling but these are not strong fundamentals.

This isn’t just a misstatement or an unusual errant assertion. Senator McCain has increasingly been making statements that are a blatant denial of reality.

Setting aside the normal political blather and partial truths both campaigns have engaged in, John McCain actually had the gall to publicly state that “in the 21st century, nations don’t invade other nations” after Russia invaded Georgia last month. Upon hearing that, I was half-expecting his head to implode from cognitive dissonance or to see him struck by lightning for saying it.

I expected a much more honest and higher level of discourse from him. For a man who sells himself as a straight talker, he’s been anything but the past couple months. What happened to you, John McCain?