How Low McCan You Go?

I'm getting extremely tired of reading bogus claims that Obama canceled a trip to see wounded soldiers in Germany because he couldn't take cameras with him. It's flat-out wrong and even the dirty McCain campaign has tried to distance themselves from it, but I still see idiots posting it on various message boards and other social networking sites. First off, Obama visited troops in Kuwait without any major media - any video you see of that visit is from the military folk who were there. Secondly, there is no evidence whatsoever that supports the idea that Obama wanted to take the press with him. The reason why the event was canceled is because Obama feared that visiting wounded troops alone (which he is allowed to do as a sitting senator) would be seen as using those brave men and women as props for political gain.

Oh but that's so far-fetched, who would think of that? The McCain Campaign:

What the McCain campaign doesn't want people to know, according to one GOP strategist I spoke with over the weekend, is that they had an ad script ready to go if Obama had visited the wounded troops saying that Obama was...wait for it...using wounded troops as campaign props. So, no matter which way Obama turned, McCain had an Obama bashing ad ready to launch.

Pretty disgusting if true, and based off this week's attack ads, I'm inclined to believe it. Have you seen the latest from team McCain - an ad that compares Barack Obama to Britney Spears and Paris Hilton, saying he's the biggest celebrity in the world, but unfit to lead. Yes, this is how they attack Barack Obama after a crowd of 250,000 Germans are chanting his name and waving American flags. Sorry John, but the world wants Obama to be president not because he's a movie star, they want him to be president because they know he's not a continuation of the last eight years of the worst president in American history. He's young, he's a new kind of politics, he actually cares about the rest of the world and doesn't think the world revolves around America. How are these bad things again? God forbid citizens of other countries look to America to lead the world again rather than continue being the laughingstock of it.

It's just another in the long line of embarrassingly lame attacks from the McCain campaign and his "supporters." I put supporters in quotes because I don't think anyone actually supports McCain, I just think they're supporting whoever is against Obama. The other big story today is that Obama is playing the "race card from the bottom of the deck." Really? The elderly white man is going to even attempt that one? Seems like a dangerous tightrope to walk. All this because Obama is claiming that the right-wingers are going to try to paint him as "different," "has a funny name," or "arrogant."

All of which is completely true - "different" can be any time FOX News tries to report on pretty much anything he does. Remember the time he and his wife did the now infamous "fist bump?" FOX called it a "terrorist fist-jab," proving that they are the whitest network on television.

"Funny name" - Again last week, FOX News mixed up Osama/Obama. While displaying footage of Osama bin Laden on screen, the text below read "Obama's TV aim." This being at least a dozen times they've done it with about twenty days between the previous "mix-up." Still, no one has been fired for it.

"Arrogant" - Another fun attack to use against Obama is that he is "presumptuous," acting like he's already the president. This while John McCain releases ads with the text "PRESIDENT McCAIN" running along the screen, yeah... not presumptuous at all. MSNBC's Rachel Maddow made an extremely good point about this today, mentioning the racial undertones of such an attack. Claiming Obama is "presumptuous" is almost like saying he's not "knowing his place," which of course really opens the doors to the race card that the right-wing claims they're not playing. This is also equally hilarious because while saying he's acting like he's the president, the McCain campaign says Obama is not "presidential." Well, he's either one or the other, can't be both, can he?

Well, now that I think about it, if you want to find someone who is acting like he's president but isn't very presidential, you can find him in the Oval Office anytime he's not on vacation in Crawford, Texas.