The headline: "Obama tour staged for political pop"

Or, "EXTREE, EXTREE, OBAMA RUNNING FOR PREZ!"

JERUSALEM — Barack Obama doesn’t travel light.

Halfway around the world, the Obama campaign machine appears as sprawling and seamless as it is on its home turf. As the presumptive Democratic nominee tours five countries in five days, he brings an entourage that would make a pop star envious.

From the saturated media coverage to the one-on-one meetings with heads of state, the trip already had a White House feel. The scope of the traveling staff simply adds to an aura of a president-in-waiting. On Tuesday, aides attempted to invoke White House rules and traditions by requiring reporters to withhold the names of senior advisers who brief the press. But they were reminded twice by reporters that they were not in the White House and that Obama was not the president.

AP - WASHINGTON - John McCain, acting through surrogates, today withdrew an earlier challenge to Barack Obama to play him in a game of one-on-one basketball on the court of his choice.

"Though it is true that Barack Obama accepted Senator McCain's challenge of last Thursday," said McCain Communications Director Jill Hazelbeck, "he took approximately 15 minutes to do so, during which Senator McCain's calendar filled up with really, really important stuff.  So, it's off.  You snooze, you lose."

My own little pet project for this week -- which this diary kicks off -- is to talk face-to-face with at least three moderates about the likely implications of a McCain presidency.  The purpose is to refute the notion that McCain thinks or votes like a moderate, and open the door for consideration of Obama as an alternative.

I will talk to one moderate from work, one from my extended family, and one from my social network, face to face.  To prepare, I consulted the non-partisan ontheissues.org and culled some especially juicy nuggets that reveal the "moderate McCain myth" for what it is.

Today, I'm calling for Kossacks to match me, and pledge to talk to three moderates in your circle as well.  Your ammunition is below the fold, complete with some editorializing as well.  Your pledges go in comments.

Woot!

From Kyle-Anne Shiver at (irony-laced title alert) American Thinker:

Barack Obama is quite fond of disparaging what he has derisively labeled, "the politics of fear."  Well, I'm a Mom, who has stood face to face with hordes of defiant teens and lived to tell about it, and I must say that I believe good ole fashioned "fear of God" to be one of the most beneficial and primary motivators of the human spirit.

Fear of God, fear of unpleasant consequence, fear of losing one's iPod, fear of failure, fear of taxpayer revolt, fear of public humiliation, fear of dire illness, fear of breaking one's neck, fear of prison, fear of dying.  Fear of losing one's liberties.  Fear of a sworn enemy.  Fear of going to hell.

This very positive force that innately urges all human beings to guard themselves from disasters, big and small, is one of the strongest protections we all have, and I'll not give mine up just because some fancy-dancy, highfalutin "talker" comes along and tells me it's a bad thing.  And as far as I'm concerned, anyone who does bow to this Obama idiocy is fit for the loony bin and a tight-fitting straight jacket.

Today brings news that voters appear evenly split between Obama and McCain when it comes to their plans for ending the war in Iraq.

I see this as evidence of two distinct problems:

1.  McCain continues to benefit from a sycophantic media willing to extend him an advantage on all matters military, historical misjudgments notwithstanding, and;

2.  Obama has been unable to frame his arguments on Iraq in such a way that draws a stark enough contrast with his opponent, and in such a way that places them in his larger context of hope and change.

This diary focuses on the second problem, as I think the first is largely outside our control.

AP, WASHINGTON - Democratic Congressional leaders have responded to Bush administration advisor Karl Rove's refusal to obey a congressional subpoena by proposing legislation that would render him immune from prosecution for any crimes he may have committed or may commit in the future.

The bill, expected to land in committee next Monday, has been named the Duty and Honor Act.

"We are a nation of laws," said sponsor Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV), "By exempting Mr. Rove from these laws, this legislation will ensure that no lawbreakers in this corrupt administration will go unpunished, as they will have committed no crimes."

It is sometimes said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome.

If that is the case, many of us here are clinically insane, and I am certifiably batshit.  I know this, because I just wiped the blood from my eyes and am preparing to charge headlong into the brick wall yet again.

You people are hopelessly naive.

Obviously, some of you tittybabies just fell off the turnip truck.

Let me tell you how things are.

It had been about a month since I'd checked out Free Republic, and was pleased to see that the unity and morale of the freepus Erectus continues its death spiral unabated.

Today's gnashing of teeth was in response to the latest brass-balls, Bizarro-Bush statement on the economy:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President George W. Bush reiterated on Wednesday that his administration believed in a strong dollar, and said the currency would reflect the relative strength of the economy.

"We're strong dollar people in this administration, and have always been for a strong dollar, and believe that the relative strengths of our economy will reflect that," Bush told reporters at a news conference ahead of his trip to Japan for a meeting of the Group of Eight rich nations.

Inflation is expected to be high on the G8 agenda next week. Some countries have blamed the weak dollar in part for pushing up prices for oil and other commodities.

Bush and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson have repeatedly expressed their belief in a strong dollar, only to see the currency fade. The euro hit a two-month high against the dollar on Wednesday.

Join me below the fold for teh comedy.

I come not to bury John McCain, but to encourage him to stay his course.

In the last 72 hours, McCain and his strategists have yet again demonstrated that they are strategically adrift, resorting to both outright lies and crypto-racist framing -- all on the single and seemingly benign topic of energy.

Associated Press - On the heels of proposing a $300 million reward to anyone who could invent a more efficient car battery for hybrid cars, John McCain has offered Democratic opponent Barack Obama a $300 million reward to endorse McCain's candidacy for president.

Excerpts from McCain's speech follow:

Prices at the pump biting you square in your rump?

Well, turn that frown upside down.  Our presnidette has a plan.

In 2000, it was prophesied:

Gov. George W. Bush of Texas said today that if he was president, he would bring down gasoline prices through sheer force of personality, by creating enough political good will with oil-producing nations that they would increase their supply of crude.

"I would work with our friends in OPEC to convince them to open up the spigot, to increase the supply," Mr. Bush, the presumptive Republican candidate for president, told reporters here today. "Use the capital that my administration will earn, with the Kuwaitis or the Saudis, and convince them to open up the spigot."

So we've got that going for us.  Which is nice.

Conservative NRO blogger Jim Geraghty asks why the apocryphal Whitey Tape bears such an astonishing resemblance to a plot point in the 2006 political thriller novel The Power Broker, by Stephen Frey:

A major plot line of the novel is the presidential campaign of Democrat Jesse Wood, aiming to be the country’s first African American president — "Wood was handsome, smart, charismatic, and being mentioned increasingly often in the press as someone who could unite a twenty-first century America growing more, not less, racially and economically divided." (p.35)

He’s a U.S. Senator from New York and former senior partner at a prestigious law firm. His backers include "some of the old Black Panthers." He wants to make Puerto Rico a state, and a recurring figure in his campaign is a controversial minister from Philadelphia called "Jefferson Roundtree."

Holy.  Shit.

Okay, pile in.

Obama supporters and Hillary supporters welcome.  What is NOT welcome is vitriol or acrimony or recrimination or bitterness of any flavor.  If you deal dirty you will be asked to leave, so the rest of us can get our love on.

I'll start, below the fold.

I see that my deceptive title has drawn you into my web.

So I must confess that Larry Johnson is, in fact, not Deep Throat.  I mean, at least as far as I know.

Actually, I take that back.  How do I know he's not Deep Throat?

Come to think of it, I don't.  Whoa.

Obama is getting hit, and hit hard, by McCain and the RNC, who have now launched an online clock counting the days since Obama has visited Iraq.

According to AP, Obama is considering a trip to Iraq in response:

Barack Obama -- increasingly under fire from John McCain as he appears poised to win the Democratic nomination -- said he is considering a trip to Iraq but dismissed as a political stunt an invitation by the Republican candidate to make the visit together.

No shit.  Just now.  On Fox News.  Hannity, Rove (& Colmes).

Hannity asked Rove why McClellan said in his book that he'd so rarely seen Rove and Scooter Libby together that the meeting was notable in itself.

Said Rove: "That just goes to show you how out of the loop he was."

From Christopher Beam over at Slate.com:

Lanny Davis, former special counsel to the Clinton White House and a high-profile fundraiser/surrogate for Hillary's campaign, circulated an e-mail a few days ago from Rear Admiral David Stone (Ret.), a Clinton supporter who has visited other veterans across the country. Stone's message includes this passage:

Of note, Senator Obama has zero—repeat zero—traction in the VFW and American Legion Halls. Veterans cite his refusal (until recently) to wear the American Flag pin, the photo where he is shown not saluting the Flag with his hand over his heart, ... his alleged MoveOn.Org relationship and that organization's innuendo (in an ad) of General Petraeus as a traitor, his relationship with Rev. Wright (who once said "God Damn America" in a sermon), Mrs. Obama's comment about only recently being proud to be an American, and Senator Obama's recent comment that some people were "bitter" about their economic situation and thus "cling" to guns and religion as a result...