Let me be perfectly clear: McCain is a liar.

John McCain recently said, "Because I have always had 100 percent, absolute truth and that's been my life of putting my country first. And I'll match that record against anyone's. And I'm proud of it. And an assertion that I've ever done otherwise, I take strong exception to."

How do you lie, sir? Let us count the ways ...

A good place to start is http://www.mccainpedia.org/index.php/Count_the_Lies -- but there are many more examples of his dishonesty:

* Shortly after announcing Sarah Palin as his running mate, the McCain campaign ran an ad claiming, "She stopped the Bridge to Nowhere," even though she supported the bridge project before changing her position late in the game. Asked about the bridge during her 2006 gubernatorial bid, Palin replied: "I'm not going to stand in the way of progress."

* Just a day after debuting a television ad warning that "big government casts a big shadow on us all," the Republican presidential hopeful told business leaders in Wisconsin that a new federal agency was needed to intervene in the markets. "Government," he said, "has a clear responsibility to act."

* At the Republican National Convention, McCain claimed Obama's national health insurance plan would "force small businesses to cut jobs, reduce wages and force families into a government-run health care system where a bureaucrat stands between you and your doctor." But according to FactCheck.org, Obama's plan does not place burdens on small business, and people would have the option of keeping their existing insurance plans.

* In a visit to Colorado, McCain told voters: "I want to look you in the eye, I will not raise your taxes nor support a tax increase. I will not do it." McCain later acknowledged to ABC's George Stephanopoulos that his health care plan could lead to some people paying taxes on employer-provided health insurance.

* On "The View," McCain claimed Sarah Palin did not take or request earmarks as governor of Alaska. "Not as governor, she didn't," McCain said, but in her first year in office, she requested $256 million in earmarks from the federal government.

* McCain has boasted of never requesting a single earmark, saying in January: "I have never asked for nor received a single earmark or pork barrel project for my state." Not entirely accurate. He's requested federal funding for special projects back home, including $10 million for a center at the University of Arizona, $5 million for a home-state water project and spending authority to purchase land around Arizona's Luke Air Force Base.

* In a campaign ad, McCain claimed Obama's election would result in "painful income taxes, skyrocketing taxes on life savings, electricity and home heating oil," the clear implication being that Obama wants to hike these tax rates. But FactCheck.org says Obama hasn't proposed a tax on electricity or home heating oil, and wouldn't raise taxes on investments for individuals earning less than $200,00 a year.

* McCain has repeatedly accused Obama of supporting higher taxes on people making as little as $42,000 a year. "Two times, on March 14, 2008 and June 4, 2008, in the Democratic budget resolution, he vote to raise taxes on people making just $42,000 per year," McCain said. This is a misleading claim, as Obama's votes were for non-binding resolutions, which supported allowing certain Bush administration tax cuts to expire but didn't actually have the effect of raising taxes.

* In last Friday's debate, McCain accused Obama of "voting to cut off funds for the troops in Iraq and Afghanistan," but Obama has consistently voted in favor of war funding bills, including an earlier version of the bill McCain was discussing. Obama voted against this particular proposal because it did not push the Bush administration toward a timetable for withdrawal.

* When he ran for president in 2000, McCain was asked what he thought of the Confederate flag. McCain answered, "As we all know, it's a symbol of racism and slavery," but his reply infuriated many South Carolina voters, and after the interview McCain's aides pushed him to undo the damage. He let them draft a statement "clarifying" his position, and he made a show of pulling the paper from his pocket and reading his revised remarks. "As to how I view the flag," it began, "I understand both sides." It went on to acknowledge that some people may deem the flag "a symbol of slavery"(McCain's original opinion), but that "personally, I see the battle flag as a symbol of heritage."

By the fourth or fifth time the question came up, McCain later wrote in his 2002 memoir, "Worth the Fighting For," he could have delivered the new response from memory.

"But I persisted with the theatrics of unfolding the paper and reading it as if I were making a hostage statement. I wanted to telegraph reporters that I really didn't mean to suggest I supported flying the flag, but political imperatives required a little evasiveness on my part. I wanted them to think me still an honest man, who simply had to cut a corner a little here and there so that I could go on to be an honest president. I think that made the offense worse. Acknowledging my dishonesty with a wink didn't make it less a lie. It compounded the offense ...

"I had not just been dishonest. I had been a coward, and I had severed my own interests from my country's. That was what made the lie unforgivable. All my heroes, fictional and real, would have been ashamed of me."

In case you missed it, he admitted lying.

* In a McCain ad released in September, an announcer says "Obama's one accomplishment? Legislation to teach "comprehensive sex education" to kindergartners. Learning about sex before learning to read? Barack Obama. Wrong on education. Wrong for your family."

Lies, all of it. First, the bill was not Obama's; it was introduced and sponsored by others. Second, the proposal never passed. Most important, the legislation said in several places that all sex ed had to be "age and developmentally appropriate" -- and it would have allowed parents to opt their children out of a sex education course. Obama backed teaching youngsters about inappropriate touching by strangers. What's wrong with that? I would think that preventing molestation would be something that all polticians could endorse. Apparently not.

The bottom line: McCain is not the paragon of virtue that he would have you believe. He's lied in the past, he's lying now, and he'll continue to lie to the American people in the future. And you may have noticed that I didn't say anything about the Keating Five, but I'll leave that for another time.