Landstuhl Has Legs

John McCain is running an ad that goes after Barack for not visiting injured American troops in Germany.

During his trip to Germany, Obama was scheduled to visit the American hospitals at Ramstein and Landstuhl, but cancelled the trips after being told by Pentagon officials that he could only visit in his official capacity as a senator, not as a candidate.

The cancellation of the visit is the sort of decision that threatens to undo the positive image presented to U.S. military personnel from the photo-ops of Barack with troops from Afghanistan last week. Why did it happen?

I was going to be accompanied by one of my advisors (Major General Jonathan Gration), a former military officer." Continued Obama, "And we got notice that he would be treated as a campaign person, and it would therefore be perceived as political because he had endorsed my candidacy but he wasn’t on the Senate staff. That triggered then a concern that maybe our visit was going to be perceived as political.

The Judgment Tour

A British newspaper, seeking to give its readers a primer on Barack in advance of his arrival in Europe, had this to say about his plans for the war in Iraq:

Plans for Iraq

"On my first day in office, I would give the military a new mission: ending this war."

How is "ending the war" a plan? That's a goal, for which a plan is needed. Barack has yet to propose one to replace his abandoned 16 month withdrawal proposal.

Then there's this one:

Good friends

Celebrity supporters include Ben Affleck, George Clooney, Scarlett Johansson, Samuel L Jackson and Robert De Niro.

Those are his good friends? I think they're what we call Liberal Hollywood Celebrities who support Barack. His good friends are Jeremiah Wright, Tony Rezko and Reverend Pfleger.

The drugs

Obama has revealed that, as a youth, he did smoke marijuana. When asked if he inhaled, he said: "That was the point."

They left out his admission to doing "a little blow."

The fluff

American journalists are outdoing each other in a race to produce the fluffiest, most inconsequential coverage of the candidate. On Wednesday, cable news breathlessly reported that Obama had spent more time in the gym than on the campaign trail as he prepared for his European tour.

Ah, yes, the fluff. Finally they got one right. And "The Circus" isn't bad either.

The circus

Some of the biggest drama of the Obama tour is the jockeying of the big American media stars for exclusive interviews. They all want face time with the "The One", as he is derisively known by advisers of his opponent, the Republican John McCain. On board Air Force Obama and whizzing around in the "bubble" of blacked-out SUVs will be Katie Couric of CBS and Charles Gibson of ABC as well as the NBC News anchor Brian Williams. Star political reporters from the major newspapers and magazines are big-footing those who have followed Obama from the beginning.