They're back! I have to admit, ever since they were unmasked as phonies a few months back, I've been pining away for the McCain Girls. Those off-by-a-half-note harmonies, off-kilter dance moves, and fantastically bad special effects all had a special charm.

Without further ado, I want to share with you the satire of the satire... It's Raining McCain - Slayer Style!

In the immortal words of Stan Lee, "'nuff said."

Now you see it, now you don't.

I tried to show my Internet Advocacy Communication class the new McCain Girls video this evening. We have been following their adventures as we study YouTube's impact on the election, and POOF!, it was gone.

I just watched the new McCain girls video, "Here Comes McCain Again" and I am totally creeped out. Aside from the fact that they have butchered one of my favorite songs, the goth motif is really spooky. And the scene with McCain looking in through the window... call the cops! We got a peeping John.

The McCain Girls are back with another video; the LA Times on political video mashups; congrats to Jose Antonio Vargas and the rest of WaPo for their six (!) Pulitzers; a proposed bill restricting access to valuable mapping data in CA is dead; and the National Journal on McCain's recent surge of online videos.

Weighing in at not quite 2 tons of fun, the McCain Girls are tearing up the YouTube charts and shattering a whole lot of eardrums. Are they hip? Do they make John McCain hip? The jury is still out on that.

And while the McCain Girls have racked up more than a half million views in just one week, they are still a good bit shy of the total number times people have watched John McCain sing that old Beach Boy's ditty. Combining the various clips and mash-ups of the ol' hipster singing "Bomb Iran," McCain has been viewed at least 5 million times. More than 1.1 million of those views were of his unedited clip. For my money, though, I prefer Mike Gravel's remake of John Lennon's "Give Peace a Chance" to McCain's surf band homage:

The race may have winnowed down to three candidates, but the videos keep a-flowin'. John McCain's out with a new ad; a Robert Palmer tune gets an update; we meet John Barnes, a candidate who promises to stick to the issues; and those McCain girls continue to entertain.