Presidential

Senator Barack Obama in Iraq with General David Petraeus:

BOTH Photos: (AP Photo/Ssg. Lorie Jewell, HO)

Was this a fake interview with General Petraeus? Andrea Mitchell does everything she can to carry water for John McCain and ends up looking just as irrelevant, confused and as lost as he is. These are the photos that the chattering class in Washington DC did their damnedest to keep you from seeing because it blows their "narrative" sky high. John McCain doesn't look Presidential--he looks confused and lost when compared to Obama.

And doesn't the good General look like he's found a new friend?

[h/t to Daily Kos diarist drational...]

UPDATE: More desperate hysterics from the right wing (Instapundit):

A PREDICTION: If Barack Obama is elected President, he'll be far more warlike than President Bush, and far more warlike than his pre-election rhetoric suggests. Because before he's elected President, attacks on America are just attacks on America. But after he's elected President, attacks on America will also be attacks on Barack Obama.

And Keith Olbermann will describe the mushroom cloud over Tehran as "awesome in its rampant Technicolor beauty."

Yeah, that'll happen--if only because the calm, cool, rational people always fly off the handle for no reason and start wars while the insecure, daddy-hating dry drunks always make sane, sober choices. And doesn't that also mean that Obama really is patriotic? Just sayin'.

--WS

Rice Bars US Embassies From Helping Candidates--AFTER McCain Got Help From US Embassy in Colombia

Someone on Capitol Hill needs to bring the Secretary of State before their committee and start asking some very pointed questions--as in, "are you going to use the State Department to influence the Presidential election?"

The night before presumptive Democratic nominee Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) left for Afghanistan, Iraq and Western Europe for a tour of US bases overseas, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice issued a cable to US missions forbidding them from holding events for presidential candidates or arrange meetings for them.

Rice issued no such cable prior to foreign excursions by presumptive Republican nominee Sen. John McCain (R-AZ).

In a cable sent late Thursday, according to a copy leaked to the Washington Times, Rice enjoined American diplomats to treat the candidates as "members of Congress visiting in personal or semi-personal capacities," but "with additional restrictions based on rules related to political activity."

That's right--she didn't instruct officials at the US Embassy in Colombia to treat John McCain like this. In fact, US Embassy officials went with him on his ridiculous boat ride junket:

McCain and his wife, Cindy, were briefed on interdiction efforts then toured the bay in a fast boat, named “Midnight Express 39,” with U.S. Embassy officials, Colombian military and government officials and the Secret Service. The boat is part of a 12-boat drug interdiction fleet that the Colombian navy bought from the United States with funds from Plan Colombia – the 10-year, $5-billion-dollar U.S. program.

McCain, dressed in khakis, a blue-and-white button-down shirt and a Navy baseball cap, arrived with Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.).

Coincidentally, Obama has Senators Chuck Hagel and Jack Reed with him--one Republican and one Democrat. McCain couldn't even be bothered to take a Democrat with him.

This is an outrageous abuse of power. The Hatch Act has never meant anything to these people, nor has restraint or common decency. Every time someone criticizes the left wing blogosphere for using obscenities or expressing outrage needs to understand something--the Republicans in this country abuse their power on a daily basis in ways no one ever thought possible without regret or remorse.

If the full weight of the Executive Branch is now going to align itself with the McCain campaign, then the US Congress better step in and stop it by any means necessary.

--WS

Why is Hagel Getting Time With Obama?

I can see one side of this--Obama is bipartisan and can work with Republicans! But I can also see a side of this that makes more sense to me--who cares what Chuck Hagel thinks about anything? He's a lame duck, he's got a pro-Bush voting record a mile long, and he takes up a space that a better Republican Senator could have taken. By better I mean, not quite so taken with the forces of evil--someone Obama can work with. He's proven he can work with Dick Lugar--so why not take the occasionally sane Susan Collins, semi-reasonable Chuck Grassley, a lost cause like John McCain's other BFF Thad Cochran, or surprise the hell out of everyone and take the wretched Lindsey Graham and humiliate him by letting him speak?

The buzz this week that Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska is planning to join Sen. Barack Obama on an up-coming visit to Iraq is correct, two sources with knowledge of the trip confirmed Friday.

Nebraska Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel, center, is joined by Democratic Sens. Joe Biden of Delaware, left, and Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, right, in a news conference on Capitol Hill on January 17, 2007 in Washington, D.C., to oppose the president’s troop increase in Iraq. (Getty)
A spokesman for Sen. Obama declined to comment on any details or even confirm the date uncertain trip, citing security concerns. A spokesman for Sen. Hagel did not respond to requests for comment.

While it is standard practice for such trips—known as CODELS, or congressional delegations—to be bipartisan, in this highly charged election year it is likely to raise eyebrows that the retiring Nebraskan senator—a prominent Iraq War critic—is the Republican expected to join the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee on what is sure to be a closely watched visit to the region.

Chuck Hagel might tell you he's with you, but the record shows that he's just going to vote with Bush anyway.

Come to think of it, quite a few Democrats do, too. Never mind.

--WS

Worth noting

Senator Hagel won't endorse McCain, in fact, he openly expressed willingness to serve in an Obama cabinet. (Of course he made the obligatory I-remain-a-registered-republican "for now" qualifier.) In an interview on Bloomberg Television's "Political Capital With Al Hunt," to be broadcat today, he said that while he has policy differences with both candidates, his disagreement with Obama "probably is not as big" as his differences with McCain, but for the record he stated "I don't have any plans to endorse any candidate."

Hagel broke with his party over the war in Iraq, which he called a "catastrophic mistake." He voted with Democrats to withdraw troops and against President Bush's troop buildup in Iraq last year.

Hagel criticized McCain for saying that Obama, the Democrats' likely presidential nominee, misunderstands the war in Iraq and was wrong to oppose the troop buildup. Hagel called McCain's criticism a "superfluous, gratuitous political comment."

He isn't endorsing, at least not yet, but he has intimated that he would be willing to serve as Obama's Secretary of Defense. I was thinking more along the lines of Secretary of the Treasury, since he made millions and millions of dollars as a successful and prudent banker, after all, and we need someone with real world economics experience, given the economic mess of elephant-poop proportions we're up to our necks in...But ignore that - that's just me being practical again...

~~BG