Centuries-old John McCain is still saying he will never, ever, ever in the 400 years he plans to live attack the patriotism of Barack Obama.

That is just simply not true.

After Obama canceled his visit to a military hospital in Germany during his international masquerade, McCain and his lackeys jumped on him for skipping out because he couldn't bring the media with him.

The only problem with that claim -- and there is only one problem -- is that there is absolutely no evidence, no reports, no statements and no truth whatsoever to back it up.

The Obama campaign says it canceled the visit because the Pentagon was concerned it would become an inappropriate political event since one of the staff members is a military adviser.

But instead of checking that out, or looking up any real articles whatsoever, the senior senator from Arizona appeared on TV and made up the news.

McCain lied to Larry King on Monday night and said, "I know that, according to reports, that he wanted to bring media people and cameras and his campaign staffers."

False.

The Washington Post decided to look into this. They called up Tucker Bounds, McCain's fall guy. He said this: "It is safe to say that, according to press reports, Barack Obama avoided, skipped, canceled the visit because of those reasons. ... We're not making a leap here."

Oh yeah? Well show me those stories, Tucker.

The Post asked Bounds for the alleged "press reports." Then Bounds gave the Post three of them -- and none of them said anything about Obama wanting to take the media along with him. Leaps and Bounds, indeed.

A certain quote comes to mind after reading all this stuff about the McCain camp lying so bad to sway the electorate. Why is it so important for them to repeat that falsity over and over again?

"Because he knows it's very difficult to get Americans to believe something they know is false. So he tries to drum it into your minds by constantly repeating it rather than debate honestly the very different directions he and I would take the country."

Hey, guess who said that? Bingo! John McCain. And he said it about Barack Obama on June 3, the day the Illinois senator clinched the nomination. Granted, he was talking about how Obama annoyingly refers to the "Bush-McCain policies" of the past eight years every chance he can. And that's a pretty good point.

Still. We can only forgive so many memory lapses because of old age. The difference between lying and forgetting is pretty simple: Lies are repeated.