I've played and replayed, over and over, what should be an infamous segment from last week's presidential debate. You know, the one where Obama was describing John McCain as the go-it-alone guy who wouldn't even meet with the leader of Spain, a member of NATO.

Under his breath, John mumbles "horsesh*t" twice.

It takes me back to my summer camp days, in the Lake of the Ozarks. We were a bunch of rowdy teens. We could hardly sit still for a moment.

It happened again and again. School bus stops. Counselor stands up. Our ears are pummeled with a lecture on how important it is for us to behave in this public place. And half a dozen times during the speech, we mumble and cough "bullsh*t."

We couldn't even behave while being told to behave! The counselor is perplexed. Why are the campers laughing so uproariously?

The mumble-cough was something that took practice. John McCain has it down.

My defense? I was 13.

Obama noticed. You can see a slight glare in his eyes as he looks toward McCain while concluding his criticism of the elderly senator, who apparently mistook the debate hall for a summer camp school bus.

Is this the clown that people are seriously considering as the next president of the United States? The counselors that were smart to our antics called us just that: clowns. "Stop clowning around!" they'd yell.

McCain's mumble isn't the only thing that's bull about his bid for the presidency. The moose muck started piling with his vice-presidential pick and apexes into a mountain of lion excrement with his feigned pause to his campaign to save the fat cats who've been dropping on the American people since the bankers took over the government.

And there's another thing that's ordure: the silence from the moralizing right wing. Shouldn't its members be scathingly complaining, "If this is the way a senator running for president feels free to behave, then how are American fathers and mothers going to tell their kids to stop mumbling 'horsesh*t' when reprimanding their children?"

For the record, McCain does horsesh*t a great disservice. My Palomino drops some wonderfully aromatic and useful dung. McCain's attitude toward Spain, Iraq, and the rest of the world just plain stinks.