John McCain Repeats Questionable Claim at Campaign Stop

(Reuters) Boca Raton, FL - In a campaign appearance at an early morning pancake breakfast, John McCain today repeated claims that have been called into question by both the Obama campaign, the mainstream media, biologists, and experts on Russian history.

"My friends," said McCain to a crowd of nearly 3,000 octogenarians, "we are at war with an enemy that has attempted to undermine our civilization, from back when I spent five and a half years as a prisoner of the Viet-cong to when they tried to assassinate me and my father Czar Nicholas II in 1917."

This marks the fourth time in as many days that the McCain campaign has tried to equate the struggle against global terrorism with the cold war struggle against Communism, and has implied that he is the missing Russian Duchess Anastasia.

Bloggers on DailyKos were the first to identify this new campaign talking point, and question its veracity. The Washington Post later examined this and other recent statements made by the campaign and determined that such points were at best "suspect."

The Obama campaign immediately jumped on McCain's claims: "Senator McCain is obviously trying to deceive the American people. We have clear evidence that the Senator was born in 1936 in the Panama Canal Zone" said Obama spokesman Harvey Finklebaum.

McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds issued a swift response to the Obama campaign. "Senator Obama obviously can't go twenty minutes without trying to slander a man who spent 5 and a half years as a P.O.W., which is just what you would expect from an American hating Muslim terrorist. Who is he to question that Senator McCain didn't escape Lenin's execution squads by feigning death amongst the bodies of his family members and servants, made his escape with the help of a compassionate guard who rescued him from amongst the corpses after noticing that he was still alive, had a sex change, and flew five missions in Vietnam?"

The response did little to stop the Obama campaign, who sent Vice Presidential Candidate Joe Biden on CNN's Larry King Live program with three biologists, twelve Russian Historians, and Mr. McCain's own mother to prove that the Senator was born in 1936, in the Panama Canal Zone, and, most importantly, was not the 17 year old Russian Grand Duchess.

Fox News reported that, while it may seem that John McCain could not possibly be the lost heir to the Russian Empire, it was certainly premature to judge such matters without a full accounting of the facts.

This is not the first time Senator McCain has been accused of "playing fast and loose with the truth," in the words of an anonymous Obama campaign staffer. The McCain campaign has recently been accused by both the mainstream and internet news media of misrepresenting his opponent's positions, accusing Senator Obama of supporting sex-ed for kindergartners, misrepresenting his Vice Presidential candidate's support for earmarks, misleading media on estimated crowd sizes, downplaying his fragile health conditions, saying that the time was quarter til three (when is was most definitely half past five), claiming to have written the last three best Oscar Pictures, misleading reporters into believing that he can tell the difference between butter and I-Can't-Believe-It's-Not-Butter, claiming to have visited every country on the Earth, claiming to have the ability to speak with small mammals, claiming to be the inspiration for the song "My Humps," claiming to have the ability to see through walls, insisting that he was the inventor of fire, and claiming to have died aboard Apollo 15 twice.

Factcheck.org has debunked all of these claims, with the exception of the Senator's ability to speak to small mammals.

John McCain currently leads Senator Obama by 18 points in national polls of people who sleep with their sisters.