Surely You Jest, Sen. McCain!

That McCain. Always ready with a lame joke at someone else's expense. Guy's a groan a minute - he should go into improv.

Get a load of his latest schtick:

LAS CRUCES, N.M. — Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) called lobbyists “birds of prey” Wednesday and vowed to enforce a lifetime ban on lobbying for members of his administration.

“Whenever there’s a corrupt system, then you’re going to have these birds of prey descend on it to get their share of the spoils,” McCain said in a half-hour interview with Politico following a town-hall meeting in the southern part of this swing state.

Ha ha ha ha ha! Ho ho hee hee *snort* heh. That's a good one, John. That's really fucking hilarious! Because we all know you in actual fact love lobbyists:

In that same interview, McCain said "lobbyists don't come to my office." Maybe that's because they're too busy working for his campaign. According to reports, at least 150 lobbyists are working for and raising money for his campaign, including campaign manager Rick Davis, senior advisor Charlie Black, top foreign policy advisory Randy Scheunemann, and McCain's handpicked Deputy Chair of the Republican National Committee Frank Donatelli. No wonder John McCain bragged in his 2002 book that he "can claim with gratitude a good number of lobbyists as friends and supporters." In fact, the John McCain who called lobbyists "birds of prey" today called lobbying "an honorable profession" in 2005.

Poor News Blaze. They just didn't get the joke, did they?

But McCain still has 115 lobbyists raising money and helping to run his campaign. And apparently, they all understand McCain’s anti-lobbyist efforts are simply for show:

At 4 p.m. Monday, campaign finance chair Susan Nelson convened a conference call with lobbyist supporters and fundraisers to assuage their bruised egos and pass along positive polling data, according to two participants in the session.

“I think they were trying to make the point that this is not an attack on lobbying or any of the people on the campaign,” said one participant in the conference call, speaking on condition of anonymity. “They want to move forward. My sense is everyone gets the joke.”

See? We've all known since May, when poor Johnny had to purge a few of his lobbyists to make it look good for the yokels, that he's just joshing when he bashes lobbyists. It's all in good fun.

After all, without his lobbyists, Johnny wouldn't even have a campaign: