The top ten ways that McCain has cheated

MS. ANDREA MITCHELL: * * * The Obama people must feel that he didn't do quite as well as they might have wanted to in that context, because that -- what they're putting out privately is that McCain may not have been in the cone of silence and may have had some ability to overhear what the questions were to Obama. * * * He seemed so well prepared.

When we heard that McCain was well prepared, we knew he must have cheated, so we sent the crack Pillage Idiot research team scurrying (yours truly sitting on the Metro with a note pad) to find out whether McCain had also cheated in the past.

The answer: He had, and we are not surprised at how frequent this behavior has been.

1. McCAIN CHEATED by tricking the North Vietnamese into imprisoning and torturing him for five years by falsely claiming he knew the recipe for egg salad that was so good you could plotz.

2. McCAIN CHEATED by duping his Hanoi Hilton guard into making a cross on the floor by telling the guard he'd play tic-tac-toe with him.

3. McCAIN CHEATED by pretending to cheat on his first wife in order to have a good response when some religious leader asked him to disclose his greatest moral failure.

4. McCAIN CHEATED by posting photos of Dick Cheney's crotch at the online dating site where he met Cindy.

5. McCAIN CHEATED, when calling for a surge in Iraq, by sneaking a glance into the future to see what the result was going to be.

6. McCAIN CHEATED by persuading Hillary to run for President by convincing her that no one could possibly support an inexperienced first-term black senator with a history of radicalism.

7. McCAIN CHEATED by advising Rudy Giuliani to campaign only in Florida, telling him that the election would be decided with a recount in that state.

8. McCAIN CHEATED by suggesting to John Edwards that he really needed to have a documentary made of his campaign.

9. McCAIN CHEATED by bribing Putin to invade Georgia while Obama was body surfing in Hawaii, so that McCain could look like a serious candidate.

10. McCAIN CHEATED by lying about his age, claiming to be 71, when in fact he's 171. His mother is actually 196.