<p>I apologize. I meant Cheney.</p>
<p>I have worked on a Pres campaign in my youth. Any time the candidate is traveling with the campaign, and the campaign is paying for it, it’s a campaign and not an official senate business visit. I don’t see a way around the rule, if it is indeed a rule, in this case. Obama may have made some mistakes, but this isn’t one of them.</p>
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<p>lol - you’re right!</p>
<p>j/k about the antichrist reference - I’m not THAT crazy!</p>
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<p>Sorry mini, but that’s just warped!</p>
<p>Cronie:</p>
<p>thanks for explaining. I had thought that if his staff had waited outside while he went in alone, that would have been okay.</p>
<p>“Sorry mini, but that’s just warped!”</p>
<p>Had Obama made as many errors about the central core of his campaign (fMcCain’s being foreign policy, and his war-hero-hood), he’d be a total laughingstock. The media has treated McCain with incredible kid gloves.</p>
<p>Packers or Steelers?</p>
<p>cronie - why did this whole trip have to be a campaign trip? I think McCain’s suggestion that Obama visit Iraq was probably meant that he should go as a Senator. </p>
<p>Yes, I know he’s a “candidate”, but if it’s a “campaign” trip, then why go to Germany, France, etc.? He’s campaigning over there??</p>
<p>This whole thing could’ve been so much more educational & productive if he would’ve just gone as a Senator. It probably would’ve done more for him as a candidate if it HADN’T been a “camapaign” trip.</p>
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<p>What IS the central core of his campaign?</p>
<p>He did go as a Senator, and Maliki used the occasion of the three visiting Senators to tell the U.S. to get out. (which our current Yo-Yo he would do when the Iraqis asked).</p>
<p>“What IS the central core of his campaign?”</p>
<p>Greater understanding in foreign affairs, proven leader, and grizzled war-hero who can be trusted. All of which he is quickly proving false, without any prompting from Obama.</p>
<p>bz–The Iraq and middle east tour was an official senate visit. He went with two other senators, a senate staff, and the whole nine yards, as a US Senator. Paid for by you and me. That;s why the DOD had no problem with him visiting hospitals, etc.</p>
<p>The other part- the Europe part- the people were paid from Obama’s campaign coffers. No other senators or senate staff were present. I think because there was no way this could be considered a fact finding trip that they did it through the campaign.- Honestly, would you have wanted to pay for his staff for this part of his trip? Didn’t think so.</p>
<p>I also think you can see the difference in tone between the two halves of the trip. On the Middle East part, he was a learner and observer. On the European part, he was more “the candidate” and , imo, an ambassador.</p>
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<p>mini - you know I was asking about “the central core of *BO’s * campaign!” It was your own quote after all.</p>
<p>You did a pretty good job of describing a few aspects of McCain’s persona tho’! </p>
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<p>I like that!
Thanks!</p>
<p>cronie - Ah so! He was campaigning in France & Germany. How many votes in the Electoral College do they have again??</p>
<p>“Had Obama made as many errors about the central core of his campaign (fMcCain’s being foreign policy, and his war-hero-hood), he’d be a total laughingstock. The media has treated McCain with incredible kid gloves.”</p>
<p>I read an article on Obama’s AIDs bill yesterday. Later in the article, it said that the bill was cosponsored by Obama and McCain. I was a bit curious as to why the headline called it Obama’s bill if it was cosponsored by the two of them (there may have been other sponsors). Of course the bigger question is why are we sending $50 billion to other countries for AIDs prevention and treatment when we have a crisis brewing in our own backyard? There were articles about the AIDs crisis in our own backyard with inadequate money for prevention and treatment. </p>
<p>Report warns of AIDS crisis across South
Half of deaths occur in 17-state region as federal, private money dries up</p>
<p>AIDS specialists are calling for a fundamental rethinking of HIV policy after a new report showed that infection with the virus was rising dramatically in the South even as it dropped everywhere else in the country.</p>
<p>The warning, issued this week by the Southern AIDS Coalition, a nonprofit partnership of government and private-sector programs based in Birmingham, Ala., concluded that AIDS was creating a health disaster in the South. </p>
<p>[Report</a> warns of Southern AIDS âcrisisâ - AIDS - MSNBC.com](<a href=“http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25819585/]Report”>http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25819585/)</p>
<p>“So, your husband knew that he had HIV?” Pinkston asked.</p>
<p>“Yes,” Ida Byther-Smith said.</p>
<p>“And never told you?” Pinkston asked.</p>
<p>“No, never,” she replied.</p>
<p>Byther-Smith is one of America’s new faces of AIDS, an African-American woman who contracted the disease from someone she trusted.</p>
<p>“I always believed in abstinence until you get married. But what did that get me? It got me AIDS!” she said. </p>
<p>AIDS activists complain they can’t get much attention either from the presidential candidates. When senators John McCain and Barack Obama do mention the disease, their concern is often directed toward AIDS in Africa - not AIDS in America. </p>
<p>[Black</a> America’s Exploding Health Crisis, African-Americans Make Up 49 Percent Of New HIV Cases - CBS News](<a href=“http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/07/24/eveningnews/main4291777.shtml?source=mostpop_story]Black”>http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/07/24/eveningnews/main4291777.shtml?source=mostpop_story)</p>
<p>“I like that!”</p>
<p>And I don’t like that he is making a hash of it. Really. I am enough of a realist to understand that, regardless of how I vote, McCain may become President. And I truly believe he is rapidly proving (without any help from Obama) that he is just not up to the task.</p>
<p>He isn’t the man I voted for in 2000.</p>
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<p>Well, you’ll believe what you want to believe. I think you’re wrong, however.</p>
<p>Cronie, according to NBC News, Obama could certainly have visited with one or two staffers, but he would have had to settle for military photographers.
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<p>He DID visit wounded soldiers, at the Combat Hospital in Baghdad, and didn’t make a big to-do about it.</p>
<p>But he canceled at Landstuhl. That’s the story that you don’t want to hear. He COULDN’T make a big deal in the Baghdad hospital, becasue DOD rules don’t allow it. It appears that he opted to skip Landstuhl after realizing he couldn’t make a media splash there. Or maybe he didn’t want to answer questions from the wounded troops about why he voted against funding them?</p>
<p>SS- I quoted Elizabeth Hibner who said he was not allowed to bring campaign staff, only Senate staff members. You then posted an NBC report where an unnamed official said the very same thing. He was allowed to bring SENATE staff, just not campaign staff or workers.</p>
<p>Don’t know how many times I have to say it. THERE WERE NO SENATE STAFF MEMBERS IN THE GROUP WITH OBAMA . They had all left, along with the other two senators after the Middle Eastern trip. He only had campaign workers with him in Europe. That is exactly why he didn’t go. It was not allowed.
Give it a rest,guys. I know you are dying for Obama to look like a creep for not visiting the troops, but he was told by the Pentagon, on the very day he was set to go, that he’d be breaking the rules if he did. He was not happy.</p>
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Doesn’t appear that way to me.</p>
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<p>From TPM cafe
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